course planning and syllabus design

PAPER

LANGUAGE ASSESSMENT

“Course Planning and Syllabus Design“

Created by :

Ari Hidayat: (2317089)

Fachrul Ramadhan: (2317094)

Serly Dwi Yusfendi: (2317099)

Lecturer :

Absyahrini Kardena, M. Pd

ENGLISH EDUCATION DEPARTMENT

EDUCATION AND SCIENCE OF TEACHING FACULTY

INSTITUTE OF ISLAMIC RELIGION (IAIN) BUKITTINGGI

Course Planning and Syllabus Design

A number of different levels of planning and development are involved in developing a course or set of instructional materials based on the aims and objectives that have been established for a language program.

1.      The course rationale

A starting point in course development is
a description of the course rationale. This is a brief written description of the reasons for the course and the nature of it. The course rationale seeks to answer the following questions:

Who is this course for?

What is the course about?

What kind of teaching and learning will take place in the course?

The course rationale answers these questions by describing the beliefs, values and goals that underlie the course. It would normally be a two- or three-paragraph statement that has been developed by those involved in planning and teaching a course and that serves to provide the justification for the type of teaching and learning that will take place in the course. It provides a succinct statement of the course philosophy for anyone who may need such information, including students, teachers, and potential clients. Developing a rationale also helps provide focus and direction to some of the deliberations involved in course planning. The rationale thus serves the purposes of :

1. Guiding the planning of the various components of the course

2. Emphasizing the kinds of teaching and learning the course should exemplify

3. Providing a check on the consistency of the various course components in terms of the course values and goals.

2.      Describing the entry and exit level

In order to plan a language course, it is necessary to know the level at which the program will start and the level learners may be expected to reach at the end of the course. Language programs and commercial materials typically distinguish between elementary, intermediate, and advanced levels, but these categories are too broad for the kind of detailed planning that program and materials development involves. For these purposes, more detailed descriptions are needed of students’ proficiency levels before they enter a program and targeted proficiency levels at the end of it. Information may be available on students’ entry level from their results on international proficiency tests such TOEFL, or IELTS. Or specially designed tests may be needed to determine the level of students’ language skills. Information from proficiency tests will enable the target level of the program to be assessed and may require adjustment of the program’s objectives if they appear to be aimed at too high or too low a level.

3.      Choosing course content

The question of course content is probably the most basic issue in course design. Given that a course has to be developed to address a specific set of needs and to cover a given set of objectives, what will the content of the course look like? Decisions about course content reflect the planners’ assumptions about the nature of language, language use, and language learning, what the most essential elements or units of language are, and how these can be organized as an efficient basis for second language learning. A writing course could potentially be planned around any of the following types of content:

1. Grammar     (e.g. using the present tense in description)

2. Functions    (e.g. describing likes and dislikes)    

3. Topics          (e.g. writing about world issues) etc.

4.      Determining the scope and sequence

Decisions about course content also need to address the distribution of content throughout the course. This is known as  planning the scope and sequence of the course. Scope is concerned with the breath and depth of coverage of items in the course, that is, with the following questions :

What range of content will be covered?

To what extent should each topic be studied?

Sequencing may be based on the following criteria

a) Simple to complex

One of the commonest ways of sequencing material is by difficulty level. Content presented earlier is thought to be simpler than later items. This is typically seen in relation to grammar content, but any type of course content can be graded in terms of difficulty.  For reading texts may be simplified at the beginning of the course and unsimplified at later. Or simple skills such as “literal comprehension” may  be required early on, and more complex skills such as “inferencing” taught at a later stage

b) Chronology

Content may be sequenced according to the order in which events occur in the real world. For example, in a writing course the organization might be based on the sequence writers are assumed to employ when composing: (1) brainstorming; (2) drafting; (3) revising: (4) editing. In a proficiency course, skills might be sequenced according to the sequence in which they are normally acquired : (listening); (2) speaking; (3) reading; (4) writing. Content may be sequenced according to when learners are most likely to need it outside of the classroom.  The sequence is: (1) Basic literacy skills (2) Personal identification (3) Money

c) Prerequisite learning

The sequence of content may reflect what is necessary at one point as a foundation for the next step in the learning process. For example, a certain set of grammar items may be taught as a prerequisite to paragraph writing. Or, in a reading course, word attack skills may be taught early on as a prerequisite to reading un simplified texts at later stages of the course.

d) Whole to part of part to whole

In some cases, material at the beginning of a course may focus on the overall structure or organization of a topic before considering the individual components that make it up. Alternatively, the course might focus on practicing the parts before the whole. For example, students might read short stories and react to them as whole texts before going on to consider what the elements are that constitute an effective short story. Or, students might study how to write paragraphs before going on to practice putting paragraphs together to make an essay

e) Spiral sequencing

This approach involves the recycling of items to ensure that learners have repeated opportunities to learn them

5.      Planning the course structure

The next stage in course development involves mapping the course structure into a form and sequence that provide a suitable basis for teaching. Some of the preliminary planning involved will have occurred while ideas for course content were being generated. Two aspects of this process, however, require more detailed planning : selecting a syllabus framework and developing instructional blocks These issues are closely related and sometimes inseparable but also involve different kinds of decisions.

A syllabus describes the major elements that will be used in planning a language course and provides the basis for its instructional focus and content. The syllabus could be:

a) Situational:

Organized around different situations and the oral skills needed in those situations

b) Topical:

Organized around different topics and how to talk about them in English

c) Functional:

 Organized around the functions most commonly needed in speaking

d) task-based  :

Organized around different tasks and activities that the learners would carry out in  

English

Planners are influenced by the following factors:

a) Knowledge and beliefs about the subject area  :

A syllabus reflect s ideas and beliefs about the nature of speaking, reading, writing, or listening

b) Research and theory:

Research on language use and learning as well as applied linguistics theory sometimes leads to proposals in favor of particular syllabus types.                                                                                     

c) Common practice:

The language teaching profession has built up considerable practical experience in developing language programs and this often serves as the basis for different syllabus types

d) Trends:

Approaches to syllabus design come and go and reflect national or international trends

Two kinds of tasks have been proposed as a basis for syllabus design pedagogical tasks and real-world tasks. Pedagogical tasks are based on SLA theory and are designed to trigger second language learning processes and strategies. The following are tasks of this kind:

1. Jigsaw tasks:

These tasks involve learners in combining different pieces of information to form a whole (e.g. three individuals or groups may have three different parts of a story and have to piece the story together).

2. Information gap tasks:

Tasks in which one student or group of students has one set of information and another student or group has a complementary set of information. They must negotiate and find out what the other party’s information is in order to complete an activity.

3. Problem solving tasks

Students are given a problem and a set of information. They must arrive at a solution to the problem. There is generally a single resolution of the outcome

4. Decision-making tasks

Students are given a problem for which there a number of possible outcomes and they must choose one through negotiation and discussion

5. Opinion exchange tasks

Learners engage in discussion and exchange of ideas. They do not need to reach agreement.

Developing instructional blocks

A course also needs to be mapped out in the terms of instructional blocks or sections. Instructional block is a self-contained learning sequence that has its own goals and objectives and that also reflects the overall objectives, for the course. Instructional blocks represent the instructional focus of the course and may be very specific or more general. Planning the organizational structure in a course involves selecting appropriate blocks and deciding on the sequence in which these will appear.  In organizing a course into teaching blocks one seeks to achieve the following :

a) To make the course more teachable and learnable

b) To provide a progression in level of difficulty

Two commonly used instructional blocks are planning by modules and units.

1) Modules:

This is a self-contained and independent learning sequence with its own objectives. For example, a 120-hour course might be divided into four modules of 30 hours each. Assessment is carried out at the end of each module. Modules allow for flexible organization of a course and can give learners a sense of achievement because objectives are more immediate and specific. Care needs to be taken, however, to ensure that the course does not appear fragmented and unstructured.

2) Units:                                                                                                                

This teaching block is normally longer than a single lessen but shorter than a module and is the commonest way of organizing courses and teaching materials. It is normally a group of lessons that is planned around a single instructional focus. (sometimes units are referred to as a scheme of work). A unit seeks to provide a structured sequence of activities that lead toward a learning outcome. The factors that account for a successful unit include:

a) Length: Sufficient but not too much material is included

b) Development: one activity leads effectively into the next; the unit does not consist of a random sequence of activities.

c) Coherence: The unit has an overall sense of activities

d) Pacing: Each activity within the unit moves at a reasonable pace. For example, if there are five activities in the unit, one dos not require four times as much time to      complete as the others.

The issue of unit structure is also crucial in developing instructional materials. In planning an upper-intermediate-level course with a topical organization of units and an integrated syllabus  (Richards and Sandy 1998), the following solutions were reached with respect to unit structure.

a) Each of the two books in the series would have 12 units

b) Each unit would consist of 8 pages that divide into two 4-page lessons

c) Each unit is organized around a general theme such as creativity, communication,

    education and learning.

d) Each lesson focuses on a topic related to the unit theme.

6.      Preparing the scope and sequence plan

Once a course has been planned and organized, it can be describe. One form in which it can be described is as a scope and sequence plan. This might consist of a listing of the module or units and their contents and an indication of how much teaching time each block in the course will require

REFERENCES

Block, D. 1998. Tale of a language learner. Language Teaching Research 2(2): 148-   

      176.

Brindley, G. 1989. Accessing achievements in the learner-centred curriculum.    

     Sydney: National centre for English Language Teaching and Research.

Mohan, B. 1986. Language and content. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesle.