2 From syllabus design to
curriculum development
Hellen Quintana
Cristian Sandoval
María Jesús Villa
English became the central language around the world, when USA won the World war II, International tourism, commerce and trade expanded an enormous demand of English courses, and the searching for new methods was needed.
During the 1950s the most important thing that teacher taught was grammar and vocabulary, furthermore they were taught in the same way for everyone, the same English for the same learners’ needs. In 1960s teaching tried to resolve the learner needs discovering what were this needs ,they focus in student needs through answering this questions “How people learn” and “What language is” but the criticism been made were that those methodologies did not work very well, they still thought that Language was only grammatical competence, and they were wrong, they did not consider language performance and did not answer the “why people learn a 2nd language” and the results.
Despite of this criticism the ESP approach to language teaching considered learner needs, The big contribution of ESP was to focus students’ needs. English was taught for student who had different purposes, so the student did not need to learn everything only learn things she/he need to learn depending of their field, as a result the learner role or a particular role was consider.
ESP movement contributed to the concept of needs analysis with the separation of language, restriction: “basic skills”, selection: some vocabulary, grammar patterns, themes and topics: which are required by the learners’purposes, communicative needs. Also, only communicative needs by the learners’purposes.
Register analysis and discourse analysis contribute to ESP in the sense that..
Register analysis studies the language of such fields, it means, it analizes the words used for a specific situation and how some words have a higher frecuency than order words, also it analizes all kind the words as verbs, noun, etc and how these words contribute to form an organized sequence.
On the other side, discourse analysis is the analysis of units of organizations, it is focused at the level of the word and how these words are characterized in difficult use of language, all depend of the area that you want to analize. Discourse analysis examines the communicative contexts too.
Both of them help us to know students’ needs and it is demostrated in courses books, etc.
The importance of it, is when we want to get a job and we must learn or know a specific vocabulary from a special area, also we must know when we have to use a specific word and what we are trying to express. Some words could have a different meaning and it could be interpreted according to the situation, some words can be repeted in several times. The different areas are: medicine, journlism, etc
The features exemplified the sample of scientific english in appendix 1 and the lists of features of scientific english from Ewer and Hughes-Davies given in this chapter are:
- words similar in form but with different meanings for the same function
- most structural and qualifying words and phrases
- cause and result constructions.
- words similar in form but with different functions
- suffix.
Munby's model consists of two stages: Communication Needs Processor (CNP) and the interpretation of the profile of needs derived from the CNP in terms of micro-skills and micro-functions.
In a flight attendant that required training in english, the Munby Model should explores thoroughly every aspect relating to learner's needs.
1. Personal: Work Experience, age, sex nationality, cultural background.
2. Purpose: Develop oral and listening skills.
3. Settings: Type of airport and passengers
4. Interactional variables: Relation between he and the company and passengers
5. Medium, mode and channel: Spoken, face to face.
6. Dialects: Formal Language
7. Target Level: Advanced level
8. Anticipated Communicative events: Greetings, give information, answer
questions, etc.
9. Key: Unhurriedly, Courteously, Clearly, Politely
This indicates that it is taking into account language and culture and communication purpose, but pays no attention to implementation (activities, resources, and classroom dynamics)
Communicative competence is not only referred to the learner ability to apply and use grammatical rules, but also to form correct utterances, and know how to use them properly. For the other side, Grammatical competence is the ability to recognize and produce the distinctive grammatical structures of a language and to use them effectively in communication.
Ends-means model: Objectives, the ends of instruction, are first identified. The content
of instruction is selected to address the objectives, and the various instructional elements, the means, are then designed to assist students in attaining the objectives.
In other words, ends-means model it start with a determination of the kinds of language skills the learner needs in order to accomplish specific roles and tasks and then set out to teach the language needed to get there.
The limitations could be that the approach was sometimes reduced to a mechanistic set of procedures and rules know as a system-design model. The curricular system-design model has been prescriptive and rule-driven.
The selection of content is thought to be influenced in part by what is known about the learner and individual differences in background, ability, interest, and learning style. There is less concern for learning particular knowledge, so little distinction is made between the what (content) and how (delivery system) of instruction. What students are expected to learn is a product of the instructional activities, and may vary between learners. This is because it is thought that instructional content cannot be fully specified until student characteristics and interests are taken into account
Systems Approach
The systems approach considers two basic components: elements and processes. ELEMENTS are measurable things that can be linked together. They are also called objects, events, patterns, or structures. PROCESSES change elements from one form to another. They may also be called activities, relations, or functions. In a system the elements or processes are grouped in order to reduce the complexity of the system for conceptual or applied purposes. Depending on the system's design, groups and the interfaces between groups can be either elements or processes. Because elements or processes are grouped, there is variation within each group. Understanding the nature of this variation is central to the application of systems theory to problem-solving.
Curriculum development is used in this book to refer to the range of planning and implementation processes involved in developing or renewing a curriculum.
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