READING QUIZ Nº1

1 The origins of language

curriculum development

Ingrid López

Hellen Quintana

Cristian Sandoval

María Jesús Villa

This text provides a systematic introduction to the issues involved in planning, developing, and evaluating effective second and foreign language programs and teaching materials. The three aspects of the processes that we consider very important are:

a.- Contents in the developing process, its important to know what we are going to teach depending on the level of the students, ages, etc.

How should contents be selected?

b.- Methodology in implementing process, because teacher have to choose the right methodology depending on the kind of students they have, and in their different abilities to learn.

Which Methodology should be used?

c.- Evaluation Criteria in evaluation process, because there are many factors (stress, tiredness, etc) that affect the results of an evaluation and some times it doesn’t reflect what student really know.

How learner should be evaluated?

Key stages in the curriculum development process are examined, including the difference between syllabus design and curriculum development, which is that in the first one (syllabus design) is just concerned with the selection, sequencing and justification of the content of the curriculum and the second one (curriculum development) includes the processes that are used to determine the needs of a group of learners. What, When and How to teach and How to evaluate.

Besides this text makes reference to syllabus and we, as future teachers, should have a kind of relation with the syllabus developed in language programs. Fortunately, we are familiar with some English Books like “Project Plus” (Oxford), Magic Teens (Richmond Publishing), New Headway (Oxford) among others, and we can say they are pretty good and well organized. They show very clear the fundamental objectives of the program and the ways that those are going to take effect.

Characteristics of a Language Teaching Method

(a) Methods continue, in one way or other, in the time.

(b) Methods are specifications for the processes of instruction on language teaching.

(c) Methods prescribe not only the way a language should be taught.

(d) Methods also prescribe the order in which contents should be presented.

The issues of selection and graduation to language teaching today are highly relevant because of time and some others factors that do not allow teachers to teach the whole of language. Then it is very important to select what or everything to teach to the student.

The factors that influence current views of selection and gradation are:

A) the amount of time available for teaching.

B) The objetive of the courses.

C) The teaching method use.

D) Select the words according to the kind of students

E) Select the words that could be used in everyday life’s students.

This text also makes reference to a low-level language teaching, and here there are some factors that influence the selection and gradation of grammatical items in the text. We consider those are the following:

a) First should be taught Structures that are similar to those of the native language (Linguistic

distance)

b) Simple structures should be taught before complex structures (Intrinsic difficulties)

c) Some structures will be need early, can not be postpones. (Communicative need)

d) The frequency of occurrence of structures and grammatical items in the target language

(frequency)

If the grammatical material is not be graded first, is going to be impossible to know what tenses and moods are the most important and useful for the leaners.

Concepts of selection and gradation are compatible with the use of authentic texts or sources in language teaching becauseone thing help to the other. To teach efectively, we as teachers must select the texts according to our goals. Also we must be clear about all the aspects present in the textbook, and if it has a continuity, is clear, is simply to teach or not, is useful for the students, if it has frecuency and if the textbook present a logical progression.

INowadays word lists such as those illustrated in Appendix 1 and 2 are not very common because people are just interested in knowing the meaning of a word and that's all. For us and for those that study English I think this kind of word lists are very useful because they show you the different branches that a word could have depending on the context, etc.