Designing a curriculum is a long and complicated
process. In designing a curriculum, there are many
important elements the designer must consider. Some of
them are goals, content and sequencing.
We will know more about the importance of goals in
designing a curriculum and where we can achieve these
goals. Moreover, what we can include in a content and how
to deal with the progression in the curriculum are
mentioned. Some approaches in designing a curriculum
will be mentioned with their advantages and
disadvantages as well.
let’s see together about goals, content and
sequencing!
• Content and sequencing must take account of
the environment in which the course will be
used, the needs of the learners, and principles
of teaching and learning.
1- Environment
Learners
Teachers
Situation
2- Needs
Lacks
Wants
Necessities
3- Principles
• The goals of a language lesson can focus on one or more
of the following:
• Languages
• Ideas
• Skills
• Or Text
• Making sensible, well-justified decisions about content
is one of the most important parts of curriculum design.
• What do you want them to know and be able to
do at the end of the semester?
• How will the course build on where students
started and help them move through the rest of
the curriculum?
• Curriculum content identifies what teachers are expected
to teach and students are expected to learn. Curriculum
content includes knowledge, skills and understanding that
students are expected to learn and will be described for a
particular learning area at a particular year level.
• Curriculum content is to be presented as ‘content
descriptions’ outlining what students are expected to learn
and teachers are expected to teach at each year level.
Content descriptions is to be accompanied by ‘content
elaborations’ which will illustrate and/or clarify the detail
of the content descriptions.
• Curriculum content is to be presented as detailed content
descriptions only.
• The units of progression in a course are items
that are used to grade the progress of the
course.
• They are what the curriculum designer sees as
being important for learning. This means that it
has an effect on the kinds of activities used
which is a part of the format and presentation
part of curriculum design.
• Units of progression can be used for a variety of
purposes:
• 1- Units of progression can be used to set targets and
paths to those targets.
• 2- Units of progression can be used to check the
adequacy of selection and ordering in a course.
• 3- Units of progression can be used to mentor and
report on learners’ progress and achievement in the
course.
• Articulating your beliefs and defining the context might
be considered as the foundation for the processes to
follow when organizing your syllabus. Needs analysis and
specifying the aims and objectives could go next. What
follows is what you must plan, organize and the decisions
to take about what should be taught first, second, third,
and so on.
• Structural
• Situational
• Topical
• Functional
• Notional
• Skills
• Task
•The sequencing of vocabulary in a course
can be loosely based on frequency levels
as it is in series of graded readers.
• Many courses use grammar as the major unit of progression.
• Infrequent items can be usefully introduced in courses
where they are needed to be learned as memorized phrases
rather than as structure to focus on.
• Grammatical and phonological structures are the organizing
principles-sequenced from easy to difficult or frequent to
less frequent Situations (such as at the bank, at the
supermarket, at a restaurant, and so forth) form the
organizing principle- sequenced by the likelihood students
will encounter them (structural sequence may be in
background)
• There in no standard list of language functions that
accompanied by frequency data.
• Some courses use functions as their units of
progression with each lesson focusing on a
different function or set of functions.
• Functions (such as identifying, reporting,
correcting, describing & so forth) are the
organizing principle-sequenced by some sense of
chronology or usefulness of each function.
• Discourse as the basis for units of progression
is more likely to be used in pre-university
courses where learners systematically cover a
range of relevant genres such as recounts,
information report and arguments.
• Some courses use skills and sub-skills as their units of
progression.
• There are 3 ways of defining sub-skills:
• 1- One is to look at the range of activities covered by a
skill such as speaking.
• 2- To look at the skill as a process and to divide it into
the parts of the process and this is a typical way of
approaching writing.
• 3- To divide up a skill is to use levels of cognitive
activity.
• A good language puts the learners in contact with ides
that help the learning of language and are useful to the
learners.
• The ideas of a course can be about:
• 1- Imaginary happenings.
• 2- An academic subject.
• 3- Learner survival needs.
• 4- Interesting facts.
• 5- Culture.
• A- The ideas content of the course helps
learning in the classroom because:
• 1- It makes the learners interested and
motivated.
• 2- It encourages normal language use.
• 3- It makes learning easier.
B- The ideas content of the courses increases
the acceptability and usefulness of the course
outside the classroom because:
• 1-It helps learners' job study or living.
• 2- It develops awareness of another culture or cultures.
• 3- It maintains and supports the learners’ own culture.
• 4- It helps learners develop emotionally and socially.
• 5- It meets the expectations of the learners and their
parents.
Topics or Themes
(Such as health, food, clothing, and so forth) form the
organizing principle-sequenced by the likelihood that
students will encounter them (structural sequence may be
in background)
Conceptual Categories
(Such as duration, quantity, location, and so forth) are the
basis of organization- sequenced by some sense of
chronology or usefulness of each notion (structural and
situational sequences may be in background)
Skills
(Such as listening for main ideas, listening for
inferences, scanning a reading passage for specific
information, and so forth) serve as the basis for
organization sequenced by some sense of chronology or
usefulness for each skill (structural and situational
sequences may be in background)
Task or Activity-based Categories
(Such as drawing maps, following directions, following
instruction, and so forth) serve as the basis for
organization-sequenced by some sense of chronology or
usefulness of notions (structural and structural and
situational sequence may be in background).
The realization that many communicative language courses
were still largely based upon a sequence of language forms in
turn generated interest in task-based rather than tasksupported syllabuses.
Questions to help teacher and curriculum designer determine the extent
to which an activity is task-like :
1- Does the activity engage learners’ interest?
3- Is there an outcome?
4- Is success is judged in terms of outcome?
5- Does the activity relate to the real world activities?
If a task based syllabus is used, it is very particularly
important that there are other ways of checking the
coverage of content, vocabulary, grammatical items and
types of discourse. Good curriculum design involves the
checking of courses against a range of types of content.
• The lessons or units of a course can fit together in a
variety of ways.
• The two major divisions are weather the material in one
lesson depends on the learning that has occurred in
previous lessons.
• Let’s see two related approaches together!
• Most language courses involve linear development,
beginning with simple frequent items that prepare for
later more complex items.
• The worst kind of linear development assumes that once an
item has been presented in a lesson, it has been learned
and does not need focused revision.
• 1- Spiral Curriculum:
• It involves deciding on the major items to cover,
and then covering them several times over a
period of time at increasing levels of detail.
Spiral Curriculum
• The unit of progression is systematically varied
against another, so that the same items are met
with different contexts. For example the same
grammatical items are focused on across a
variety of topics.
•3- Revision Units:
• They are simply an addition to a linear model. At
certain points in linear progression, time is spent
revising previously met materials. Logically, the
relative amount of time is given to revision
should increase as the course progress.
Revision Units
4- Field Approach:
• The items to be covered are decided upon and
then the learners can start anywhere with the
material and end anywhere as long as it is all
covered.
• A modular approach breaks a course into independent
non-linear units. These units may be parts of lessons,
lessons or groups of lessons. Each unit or module is
complete in itself and does not usually assume knowledge
of previous modules.
- In language courses the language could be divided into
modules in several ways.
- The module could be skill-based with different modules
for listening, speaking, reading and writing and sub-skills
of these larger skills.
- The module could be based on language functions, or
more broadly situations dealing with the language needed
for shopping, emergency services, travel….etc.
After reviewing goals, content and
sequencing, we became more aware of the
operation of designing a curriculum.
We discussed the goals, how to include
them within the curriculum. Moreover, the
content and the important skills to be included.
At last, two approaches in designing a curriculum
and the advantages and disadvantages for each
one have been mentioned.
• The goals of English courses can relate to (1) language,
(2) ideas or content, (3) skills and (4) text or discourse
types. Look at statements of goals in course books and
then write no more than 50 words describing the
general goals of your course. You may find it useful to
begin your statement with “the main objective of this
course is . . . ”.
http://www.acara.edu.au/verve/_resources/Curriculum_
Design_Paper_.pdf
• http://cndls.georgetown.edu/support/course-design/
• http://fel.uqroo.mx/adminfile/files/memorias/Articulos
_Mem_FONAEL_III/Nunez_y_Bodegas_Irma_Dolores.
pdf