Course design

Course Design

FORMULATING GOALS AND OBJECTIVES

Goals are a way of putting into word the main purposes and intended outcomes of courses. They are general statements, but they are not vague. Goals must be explicit about what the students realistically should get out of the program within the constrains and resources of the course. They also provide a map of what teachers need to assess. We don’t have to use jargon. They are relatively long term

Note: Because of the unpredictability of happenings in the classroom, goals should be flexible enough to change, if they are not appropriate. i.e., “By the end of the course students will have developed the ability to use everyday expressions to satisfy immediate needs in a variety of situations.”

Objectives are statements about how the goals will be achieved. Main (or general) objectives can be broken down into smaller specific objectives. Objectives are in a hierarchical relationship to goals. Teachers usually organize three layers of goals and objectives. Each layer is more and more specific. Objectives are relatively short term.

Objectives and goals should be in a cause-effect relationship. “If objective, then goal.”

SpecificGoal

GeneralObjectives

GeneralObjectives

GeneralObjectives

SpecificObjectives

SpecificObjectives

SpecificObjectives

SpecificObjectives

SpecificObjectives

SpecificObjectives

SpecificObjectives

SpecificObjectives

SpecificObjectives

Broad Goal

SpecificGoal

Four-Part Scheme of Goal and Objectives form the Australian Language Levels

CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK OF GOALS

KASADepartment of Language Teacher Education at the School for International

Training

Knowledge goalsAwareness goals

Skill goalsAttitude goals

PCATStern (1992)

Proficiency goalsCognitive goalsAffective goalsTransfer goals

ATASKDavid ThomsonAwareness goals

Teacher goalsAttitude goals

Skill goalsKnowledge goals

Denise Maksail-Fine

Listening goalsSpeaking goalsReading goalsWriting goals

Cross-cultural skill goalsCooperative learning skill goals

LSSPMFred Genesee and John Upshur (1996)Language goalsStrategic goalsSocio-affective goalsPhilosophical goalsMethod or process goals

HOW KASA FRAMEWORK WORKS

Knowledge goals address what students will know and understand (about language, culture and society)

Awareness goals address what students need to be aware of when learning a language, how the language works, others’ use of language, the strategies they use as learners and extra linguistic factors in communication.

Skill goals address what students can do with the language. (Listening, speaking, reading, writing, as well as functions and tasks students accomplishers through language)

Attitude goals address the affective and values-base dimension of learning.

FORMULATING OBJECTIVES

Robert Mager (1962 )Mager, based on the behaviorism and stimulus response theories of learning, suggests that Performance objectives should contain three components: performance, condition, and criterion which describe what the learner will be able to do, the circumstances in which the learners are able to do something, and the degree to which they are able to do something.

Brown (1995) adds subject and measure, that is, who will be able to do something, and how the performance will be tested.“The most specific one can be, the more useful and comprehensible the objective will be to others”

Denise Maksail-Fine successfully used the way she conceptualized content as the framework for her goals and elements of the Mager/ Brown formula as the framework for her objectives.

GOALS, CONTENT AND SEQUENCING

It is possible to plan or evaluate the content of courses by looking at Language, Ideas, Skills, or Text (Discourse).Even if the selection of content for a course is based on topics, themes or situations, it is useful to check the language items that are covered to select the most useful ones.The way smaller goals and objectives are detailed will depend partly on the unit of progression for the course.

The Units of ProgressionThe UP are the items that are used to grade the progress of the course.Long and Crookes (1993) call units of progression “Units of analysis” and argue that their selection should be one of the starting points of curriculum design.The UP can be classified into two types: (1) Those that progress in a definite series, such as vocabulary levels, and (2) those that represent a field of knowledge that could be covered in any order, such as topics.

The order of items within a course is determined by pedagogical considerations an constraints such as: learner’s interest, available resources, and recycling of material.

WHAT WILL THE PROGRESSION BE USED FOR?

Units of Progression can be used for: Setting targets and paths to those targets Checking the adequacy of selection and ordering in a course Monitoring and reporting on learners’ progress and achievement in the course

Note: although a course may seem to have several units of progression, there is usually one on which the others are dependent. We must study the changes in each lesson and what reoccurs in order to define which of the units of progression is the controller.

Starting point Type Units of Progression

Determinants of Progression

Vocabulary Series Words Frequency levelsOccurrence in task

Grammar Series GrammaticalConstructions

FrequencyAcquisition stagesComplexity

Language Use Field Functions

Ideas Field TopicsThemes

Discourse Field Topic typesGenre

Situations and roles Field SituationsRoles

Component Skills Series Sub-skills Order of complexity

Strategies Field Strategies

Outcomes Field Real life outcomesTask outcomes

The sequencing of vocabulary in a course can be based on frequency levels. On the contrary, the sequencing of vocabulary should not be based on lexical sets groups of synonyms or opposites.

Tinkham (1993) “There should be the opportunity for learners to meet the same vocabulary in a variety of context and cross the four stands of a course.”

Sequencing of Grammar items in a course would consist of “verb form frequency count”. George (1963) suggests two stages. The stage 1 may be a course with 1500 to 2000 words over roughly two years of five weekly periods of English.

ImperativeDon’t + ImperativeSimple present (Actual and Natural)Verb + (to + Verb)Simple past (Narrative and Actual)Past participle

Stage 2

Simple past (Neutral and Habitual) Past Perfect (from Simple past narrative) Verb + ing (in Free Adjuncts) Noun + to + verb Simple present (Iterative and Future) Verb + to + (Verb dominant) Verb + Noun + to + Verb Noun + Preposition + Verb + ing Verb + ed (as Adjective in a Noun group) Verb + ing (as Adjective in a Noun group) Verb +ing (as noun) Can + Verb (immediately and characteristically able) May + Verb (possibility and uncertainty) ‘ll + Verb Must + Verb (necessity from circunstances)

Many courses use grammar as the major unit of progression. However, the selection and sequencing of the items gives no consideration of the value of learning particular items.

Infrequent items can be usefully introduced in courses where they are needed to be learned as memorized phrases.