Curriculum, Approaches and Methods

Curriculum

Richards, Platt and Platt (1993)

Can be defined, as an educational program wich states

The educational purpose of the program

The content teaching procedures and learning experience which will be necessary to achieve this purpose

Some means for assessing whether or not the educational ends have been achieved

Allen quoted in Nunan (2000)

Involves philosophical, social and administrative factors

White (1993)

Components: purposes, content, methodology and evaluation

Course

Hutchinson and Waters (1996)

Is an integrated series of teaching-learning experiences, whose ultimate aim is to lead the learners to a particular state of knowledge

Syllabuses

Lee (1980)

Is a statement of what should be taught, year by year.

It contains points about the method of teaching and the time to be taken

Dubin & Olshtain (1997)

Is a more detailed and operational statement of teaching and learning elements

Approaches

Classical approach

Grammar translation approach

Direct approach

Audio lingual

Communicativa approach

Graves (2000)

Your view of what language is or what being proficient in a language means affects what you teach and how you teach it

Beliefs underlie the decisions you make

Your view of language

Your view of the social context of language

Your view of learning and learners

Your view of teaching

Factors to consider in defining context

People

Physical setting

Nature of course and institutions

Teaching resources

Time

Aims

Richards (2001)

Provide a reason for the program

Provide guidelines for teachers and learners

Provide focus for learning

Describe important and realizable changes in learning

Goals

Objectives are more specific than aims

Describe learning in terms of observable behaviour or performance

Describe learning outcomes in terms of what a learner will be able to do

Richards (2001)

Consistent with the curriculum aim

Precise

Feasible

Needs Analysis

Hutchinson and Waters (1996), Jordan (1997), Robinson (1990)

Target needs

Present situation

Language

Data obtained = posibility to formulate general aims and more specific objectives as intended outcomes

Types of Syllabuses

Structural

Grammatical and phonological structures

Situational

Situations form

Topical

Topics or themes

Functional

Functions

Notional

Conceptual categories called notions

Skills

Such as listening for main ideas, scanning a reading passage for specific information

Task

Activity based categories

Shape of Syllabus

Dubin and Olshtain (1997)

The basic dilemma which course planners must reconcile is that language is infinite, but a syllabus must be finite

The Linear Format

Teachers cannot change the order of units or skip some

The Modular Format

Academicallt oriented units are integrated

The Cyclical Format

Teachers and learners work with the same topic more than once

The Matrix Format

Maximum flexibility to select topics from a table of contents in a random order

The Story Line Format

Narrative

It could be used in conjunction with any of them

Organizing the course

Determining the organizing principle

Identifying the course units based on nthe organizing principle

Determining unit content

Organizing unit content

Sequencing the units

Language Testing

Brown (1995)

Tests can be used to drive a programme by shaping the expectations of the students and their teachers

Types of tests

Norm-referenced

Compare the relative performance of students to each other

Criterion-referenced

Texts intended to measure the amount of course material that each student has learned

Materials

Make decisions based on what you want your students to learn according to your goals and objectives and your syllabus focus

Scrivener (1997, quoted by Beretta, 1992)

Types

Formative evaluation

Improving ongoing programmes

Summative evaluation

Effects of a programme that has come to an end

Purposes of evaluation

To decide whether a programme has had the intended effect

To identify what effect a programme has had

To justify future courses of action

To identify areas for improvement in an ongoing programme

Approach

Describes the nature of the subject matter to be taught

Assumptions and beliefs about language and language learning are specified

It refers to the philosophy or belief system, that a method reflects

Method

The method is a general plan to present the material based on the approach we have

It is procedural

Here theory is put into practice and we choose about the particular skills and content to be taught

Technique

It is a particular trick, stratagem, or contrivance used to accomplish an immediate objective

Is implementational

Classroom procedures are described

Cognitive model

Atkinson (2011)

Mind as a computer

Operations are processed

Representationalism

The mind stores internal representations of external levels

Learning as a abstract knowledge acquisition

Abstracting the rules of the competence that underlies linguistic performance

Chomsky (1980)

Our minds contain a mental grammar that consists of universal principles that are common to all languages, and parameters that vary according to different languages

Grammar - Translation Method

Knowledge of the principles of language is acquired through the abstraction of the rules when studying grammar and carrying out translation activities

Structural model

Language is a system of structurally related elements for the coding of meaning

Its target is seen to be the mastery of elements of this system

Phonological units: phonemes

Grammatical units: clauses, phrases, sentences

Grammatical operations: adding, shifting, joining, or transforming elements

Lexical items: function words and structure words

Functional model

Language is a vehicle for the expression of functional meanings and for performing real-world activities

Seeks to know how language is used to achieve different types of communicative purposes

Functional approaches emphasize the semantic and communicative dimension

Lead to a specification and organization of language teaching content by categories of meaning and function

Interactional model

Language is seen as a tool for the creation and maintenance of social relations

Areas of inquiry: second language acquisition, interaction analysis, conversation analysis and ethnomethodology

It focus on the patterns of moves, acts, negotiation, and interaction found in conversational and other kinds of exchanges and which are central to an understanding of discourse

Sociocultural model

Language is a communicative activity in which the social context is central

Konwledge is constructed through social interaction with others

It reflects culture, customs and beliefs

Genre model

Feez (1998)

Language is a resource for making meaning

The resource iof language consists of a set of interrelated systems

Language users draw on this resource each time they use language

Language users create texts to create meaning

Texts are shaped by the social context wich they are used

The social context is shaped by the people using language

Lexical model

Prioritizes the role of lexis and lexical, chunks or phrases in language and highlights the interrelatedness of grammar and vocabulary

It suggest that grammatical competences arises out of phrase - and lexically - based learning and argue for a greater role for vocabulary

Behaviorism

Learning is a process in which specific behaviors are acquired in response to specifici stimuli

Language was taught through extensive drilling and repetition exercise and through making use of activities that minimized the chances of producing mistakes

Cognitive - code learning

Language learning was a cognitive process depending on both deductive and inductive learning as well as meaningful practice

Creative - construction hypothesis

Learning is a creative process that has common features regardless of the learner´s language background

Errors are seen as evidence of learning rather than signs of faulty learning

It is implicit in Task - Based Language Teaching

Skill learning

Skills are integrated set of behaviours that are learned through practice

Learning involves development from controlled (consciously managed of skills) to automatic (skills not require conscious attention) processing

Interactional theory

Learning is an interactive process and depends on learners working together to achieve mutual understanding

Constructivism

Learning is seen as something that results from the learner´s internal construction of meaning (Williams and Burden, 1997)

Knowledge does not exist independently of the meaning constructed from experience by the learner

Learners are actively involved in their own process of learning

The organizer reorganizes new knowledge on the basis of existing knowledge, and social dimensions, as the learner interacts with others and solves problems through dialogue

Sociocultural learning theory

Language learning is resulting from dialogue between a learner and a more knowledgeable other person

Learning takes place in a particular social setting, in which there is interaction between people, objects and events

Individual factors

Learning styles preferences

Affective factors

Motivation

Learning strategies

analysis

Objectives

The degree to which a method has process - oriented or product - oriented objectives may be revealed in how much emphasis is placed on vocabulary acquisition and grammatical proficiency and in how grammatical or pronunciation errors are treated in the method

Syllabus

Is the form in which linguistic material is specified in a course or method

Types of learning and teaching activities

Teaching activities focus on grammatical accuracy and on communicative skills

Activities are design to activate specific second language acquisition processes and grammar.

Learner roles

Activities learners carry out

Degree of control learners have over the content of learning

Patterns of learner groupings adopted

Degree to which learners influence the learning of others

The view of the learner as processor, performer, initiator, problem-solver, or other

Teacher roles

According to

The types of functions teachers are expected to fulfill, whether that of practice director, counselor, or model

The control of the teacher has over how learning takes place

The degree to which the teacher is responsible for determining the content of what is taught

The interactional patterns that develop between teachers and learners

The role of instructional materials

Reflect decisions concerning:

Primary goal of materials

Form of materials

Relation of materials to other sources of input

The abilities of teacher

It concern how tasks and activities are integrate into lessons and use as the basis for teaching and learning

The use of teaching activities to present new language and to clarify and demonstrate formal, communicative, or other aspects of the target language

Drills, dialogues, information gap activities, etc

The ways in which particular teaching activities are used for practicing language

The procedures and techniques used in giving feedback to learners concerning the form or content of their ulterances or sentences