Approaches to course design

Wenlie Jean B. Tumana

What is a courseDesign?

It is the process by which the raw data about a learning need is interpreted to produce an integrated series of teaching-learning experiences.

What is its aim?

To lead the learners to a particular state of knowledge. This entails the use of the theoretical and empirical information available to produce a syllabus,

to develop a methodology for teaching those materials and

to establish evaluation procedures by which progress towards the specified goals will be measured.

What learners need and want may

conflict. We must remember that there are external constraints (classroom facilities/time) that will restrict what is possible.

We also have to take into account our own theoretical views and experiences of the classroom.

There are many different approaches to ESP course design.

1.LANGUAGE-CENTEREDCOURSE DESIGN

The simplest and more familiar kind to

English teachers. It aims to draw as direct a connection

as possible between the analysis of the target situation and the content of the ESP course.

Weaknesses:1. It starts from the learner and their needs.

- the learner is simply used as a means of identifying the target situation.

- it is not a learner-centered, but simply learner-restricted.

2. It is a static and inflexible procedure, which can take little account of the conflicts and contradictions that are inherent in any human endeavor.

3. It appears to be systematic.

4. It gives no acknowledgement to factors which must inevitably play in the creation of any course. Data is not important in itself.

5. The Lg-centered analysis of target situation data is only at the surface level. It reveals very little about the competence that underlies the performance.

Language-centered approach fails to recognize the fact that, learners being people, learning is not a straightforward, logical process.

2. SKILLS-CENTEREDCOURSE DESIGN

It is a reaction to the idea of specific registers of English as a basis for ESP and to the practical constraints on learning imposed by limited time and resources.

Its aim is not to provide a specified corpus of linguistic knowledge but to make the learners into better processors of information.

2 Principles:1. Theoretical hypothesis – underlying any

language behavior are certain skills and strategies, which the learner uses to produce or comprehend discourse.

A skills-centered approach aims to et away from the surface performance data and look at the competence that underlies the performance

Therefore, a sills-centered course will present its learning objectives in terms of both performance and competence.

General objective (i.e. performance level):The students will be able to catalogue books written in EnglishSpecific Objectives (i.e. competence level):The students will be able to:1. Extract the gist of a text by skimming

through it.2. Extract relevant information from the main

parts of the book.

2. The pragmatic basis for the skills-centered approach derives from a distinction made by Widdowson (1981) between goal-oriented courses and process-oriented ones.

In ESP the main problem is usually one of

time available and student experience. First, the aims may be defined in terms of what is desirable,

- i.e. to be able to read in the literature of the student’s specialism, but there may be nowhere near enough time to reach this aim during the period of the course.

Secondly, the students may be in their first year of studies with little experience of the literature of their specialism.

The emphasis in the ESP course is not on achieving a particular set of goals, but on enabling the learners to achieve what they can within the given constraints:

‘The process-oriented approach is at least realistic in concentrating on strategies and processes of making students aware of their own abilities and potential, and motivating them to tackle target texts on their own after the end of the course, so that they can continue to improve.’

The role of needs analysis in this approach is

twofold:1. It provides a basis for discovering the

underlying competence that enables people to perform in the target situation.

2. It enables the course designer to discover the potential knowledge and abilities that the learners bring to the ESP classroom.

This approach takes the learner more into

account: It reviews language in terms of how the mind of

the learner processes it rather that as an entity in itself.

It tries to build on the positive factors that the learner bring to the course (previous knowledge), rather that just on the negative idea of ‘lacks’.

It frames its objectives in open-ended terms, so enabling learners to achieve at least something.

This approach still approaches the

learner as a user of language rather than as a learner of language. The processes it is concerned with are the processes of language use not of language learning.

Identify target situation

Theoretical views of lg

Theoretical views of learning

Analyse skills/ strategies required to

cope in target situation

Select texts and write

exercises to focus on skills/ strategies in

syllabus

Write syllabus

Establish evaluation procedures

which require the use of

skills / strategies in

syllabus

3. Learning-centered Approach

Learner-centered approach Learning-centered

Approach It is based on the principle

that learning is totally determined by the learner even though teachers can influence what is taught.

The learner is one factor to consider in the learning process, but not the only one.

It is seen as a process in which the learner use what knowledge or skills they have to make sense of the flow of new information.

It is an internal process, which is crucially dependent upon the knowledge the learner already have and their ability and motivation to use it.

It is a process of negotiation between individuals and the society. Society sets the target and the individuals must do their best to get as close to that target as is possible.

Identify target situation

Analyse target situation

Analyse learning situation

Write syllabus

Write materials

Teach materials

Evaluate learner achievements

A lg- centred approach considers the learner to here.

A skills- centred approach considers the learner to here.

A learning- centred approach must consider the learner at

every stage

This approach has 2 implications:1. Course design is a negotiated process. The

ESP learning situation and the target situation will both influence the nature of the syllabus, materials, methodology and evaluation.

2. Course design is a dynamic process. It doesn’t move in a linear fashion. Needs and resources vary with time. The course design, therefore, needs to have built-in feedback channels to enable the course to respond to developments.

If we took a learning-centered approach, we would need to ask further questions and consider other factors, before determining the content and methodoly of the course:

1. What skills are necessary to be taught?2. What are the implications for methodology of having a

mono-skill focus?3. How will the learners react to doing tasks involving other

skills?4. Do the resources in the classroom allow the use of other

skills?5. How will the learners react to discussing things in the

mother tongue?6. How will the learners’ attitudes vary through the course?

Will they feel motivated?7. How do learners feel about reading as an activity?

Identify learners

Theoretical views of learning

Analyse learning situation

Analyse target situation

Theoretical view of lg

Identify attitudes/ wants/ potential of

learners 

identify needs/ potential/ constraints of learning/ teaching

situation

Identify skills and knowledge

needed to function in the target situation

Write syllabus/ materials to exploit the potential of the learning situation in the acquisition of the skills and knowledge

required by the target situation.Evaluation Evaluation

Conclusion Factors concerned with learning must be

brought into play at all stages of the design process. We have called this maximizing the potential of the learning situation.