From syllabus design to curriculum development

From syllabus design to curriculum development

1. The teaching of English as a second or foreign language became an increasingly important activity after World War II. Immigrants, refugees, and foreign students generated a huge demand for English courses in the United Kingdom, Canada, the United States, and Australia. The role of English as a language of international communication had expanded rapidly by the 1950s

   • The initial response of the English-language teaching profession was to explore new directions in methodology.
     • The methodology had the following characteristics
       • A structural syllabus with graded vocabulary levels
       • Meaningful presentation of structures in contexts through the use of situations to contextualize new teaching points
       • A sequence of classroom activities that went from Presentation, to controlled Practice, to freer Production (the P P P method)

2. Teaching techniques made use of repetition of dialogues and pattern practice as a basis for automatization, followed by exercises that involved transferring learned patterns to new situations.

   • stated the assumptions of audiolingualism as:
     • Habits are strengthened by reinforcement
       • Foreign language habits are formed most effectively by giving the right response, not by making mistakes.
         • Language is behavior and behavior can be learned only by inducing the student to behaver

3. An important principle of ESP approaches to language teaching is that the purposes for which a learner needs a language rather-than a syllabus reflecting the structure of general English should be used in planning an English course

   • ning whether or not their planned destination was reasonable or proper." Different types of students have different language needs and what they are taught should be restricted to what they need
     • riculum studies the approach was sometimes reduced to a mechanistic set of procedures and rules known as a systems-design model.
       • an integrated plan of operation of all components (sub-systems) of a system, designed to solve a problem or meet a need