Curriculum development in Language Teaching

A Brief History of the beginning of teaching methods, and what caused the emergence of them. How the political and social states enquired the need for each method.

1. Eiram pro c eeds

2. Koya University Faculty of Humanity and Social Science Department of English language and Translation Curriculum Development in L a ngauge Teaching By Jack Richards Chapter Two Presenter: Eiram A m jed Khudhr

3. Content: Overview of the chapter One The quest for new methods Changing needs for foreign languages in Europe English for Specific Purposes Needs Analysis in ESP Communicative language Teaching Emergence of a Curriculum Approach in Language Teaching

4. Overview of Chapter One The approach to syllabus design outlined in Chapter 1 was largely sufficient to support language teaching up to the 1950s Darian (1972,94), commenting on the influential Michigan materials produced at the University of Michigan, complains: There is little in the way of "contextual material." Sentences chosen for exercises are perfectly normal utterances, but they seldom have any relation to one another. ... In addition, almost all responses are complexly controlled, and there is little provision for students to generate any utterances different from the controlled responses being practiced.

5. The quest for new methods Due to the need for English as a foreign or second language after world war II. B y refugees immigrants, foreign students raised a great necessity for English Language in Canada, United kingdom, United States, and Australia (Richards, 2001). It was assumed that in order to meet the changing needs of language learners, there must be a teaching material that meets the needs of these learners. Linguistics was a source of theories about the organization and structure of language and these were eagerly applied in the cause of new " scientifically based " teaching methods. In Britain, applied linguists developed a methodology that drew on oral approach: The new methodology had the below characteristics: A structural syllabus with graded vocabulary levels Meaningful presentation of structures in contexts through the use of situations contextualize new teaching points. A sequence of classroom activities that went like (P P P method) This was known as situational approach , or situational language teaching. A well-known course-book series based on this method is Robert O'Neill's Kernel series (Longman 1978) In countries and territories such as Singapore, under colonial administration " the curriculum of English- medium schools in die early 1950s followed the tradition of English teaching in British schools, with the integration of language and literature" (Ho1994, 222). The same applied in other colonies such as Malaysia, India, and Hong Kong.

6. Later this was replaced by a "TESL/TEFL" approach based on a structural syllabus. Rivers (1964) stated the assumptions of audiolingualism: Habits are strengthened by reinforcement. Foreign language habits are formed most effectively by giving the right response, not by making mistakes. Language is behaviour and behaviour can be learned only by inducing the students to behaver A similar approach was developed called audio-visual for including visual representations of language items. Although concern for method is certainly not a new issue for a FLT. It was aroused from the late 50s when teachers thought that there must be a method that can remedy all the problems of language teaching and learning.

7. Changing needs for foreign languages in Europe Although a radical change was seen in Europe in terms of integrating new methods for foreign language teaching, it had been given less interest or enthuthiasm form the learners, how people learn and what language is ___ Consideration of why people learn a second language, and evaluation of the language was missing. In 1970s they decided to re evaluate language teaching policies in regard of what year and what intensity( how many weeks) that policies could only be based on information about societies' needs : Does the community consider it important that all its members know a foreign language, or is this considered necessary only for certain professional domains?  How many languages, and which languages, are felt to be necessary? How great is the demand for each individual language? Does everyone need? How great is the demand for each individual language? Does everyone need the same skills, or the same level of command per skill? Is there a stable needs pattern?

8. English for specific purposes ESP came as a response to a number of practical concerns: T he need to prepare growing numbers of non-English background students study at America and British Universities. T he need to prepare materials to teach students who had already mastered General English, but now needed the use of English for employment such as non English background like: Doctors, nurses, engineers and scientists. T he need for materials for people needing English for business purposes. T he need to teach immigrants the language needed to deal with job situations . The material follows state of the art audio-visual course in "spoken colloquial English" "based on some selection and gradation by structural criteria, However it takes no account of functional communicative needs or the learner's own immediate situational needs. Ewer and Latorre Course in Basic Scientific English (1969) and Swales's Writing Scientific English is based on a frequency count of 3 million words of scientific English covering ten areas of science and technology.

9. Praninskas (1972) investigated the core vocabulary of academic reading materials . She carried out a word frequency count of ten university-level textbooks used in first-year courses at American university at Beirut. Check Appendix 2 Throughout the 1970s the ESP approach in language teaching drew on register analysis and discourse analysis to determine the linguistic charac teristics of different disciplines. R egister is a variety of language determined according to its use. The linguistic situations differ from each other in 3 respects: what is taking place, which part of language is playing, and who is taking part. Register analysis focused primarily at the level of the word and the sentence and sought to identify the registers that characterized different uses of language business letters, academic textbooks, and technical writing. D iscourse analysis was introduced in the 1970s to identify the linguistic structure of longer samples of speech or text . based on the analysis of units of organization within texts (e.g., narratives, instructions, reports, business letters) According to Jordan 1997 the scope of discourse Analysis was to examine the communicative context that affect language use.

10. Needs Analysis in ESP an ESP approach starts instead with an analysis of the learner’s needs. Different types of students have different language needs and what they are taught should be restricted to what they need. ( Schuts and Derwing 1981). The content of [ESP] courses are thereby determined BY: 1. Restriction : the basic (four) skills. 2. Selection : selection of the language items according to the learner’s objectives. 3. Themes and topics : only those topics that are the learner’ purpose. 4. Communicative needs Munby (1978), in an influential book of the time, describes a systematic approach to needs analysis in ESP course design and focuses on two dimensions : 1. T he procedures used to specify the target-level communicative competence of the students . 2. The procedures of turning the information into ESP syllabus . This approach of Munby was criticized for being subjective and arbitrary.

11. Communicative language Teaching CLT was a replacement for Audiolingual method in the late 1960s and 1970s. I t focuses on communication as organizing principle rather t ha n focusing on the mastery of grammatical structures of the language. CLT moved away from a focus on grammar as the core component of language abilities to a consideration of how language is used by speakers in different contexts of communication based on the setting, the roles of the participants, and the nature of the transaction was referred to as communicative competence . Wilkins 1976 described the traditional grammar based syllabus as synthetic approach , in which learning environment is not focused on as one of the building block of the approach. Learners had to adapt their behaviours to learn the global language. Analytical Approach is behavioural in which people are determined to learn for the purposes they have and gain performances they need to meet their objectives. Wilkins proposed the Notional syllabus that contains 3 categories of meaning , such as: semantico -grammatical meaning, modal meaning, and communicative function. The 3 rd category was considered as a beneficial and practical way of thinking about language syllabus.

12. Emergence of a Curriculum Approach in Language Teaching T he term curriculum studies refers to a very broad field that deals with planning instruction and the implementation of the instructional plan. Syllabus is a small part of content to be covered by a given course of a total school program. (Rodgers,1989) Curriculum is all the tasks students are engaged in through what they learn , how , and what style and methods are used to teach the subject. Tyler in 1949 had raised statement about the development of a curriculum. His model can be summarized as: Aims and Objectives Content Organization Evaluation Inglis in 1975 presented another model inspired by Tyler’s as below: Need 2. Plan (Aims and Objectives) (Strategies and Tactics) Implementation 4. Review ( Methods and Techniques) ( Evaluation and Consolidation)

13. Nicholls and Nicholls (1972) described a curriculum development that include four stages: The careful examination, The development and trial use in schools of those methods and materials The assessment of the extent to which the development has achieved the objectives. Feedback for further studies and development

14. Clark (1987) proposed the following steps in th e process of renewing the curriculum : T he review of principles to guide the language teaching/learning process. T he reworking of syllabuses embodying aims, objectives, content , and a broad methodology T he review of classroom teaching/learning strategies . T he choice, adaptation, and creation of resources embodying appropriate learning experience. T he review of assessment designed to monitor, record, report, and provide feedback on learner process. The review of classroom schemes of work relating all of the above together . T he review and creation of strategies designed to assist teachers to evalu ate classroom practices. T he identification of areas for research to determine possible ways forward in any of the above areas. T he review or devising of in-service education designed to assist teachers find solutions to their own classroom problems. (Richards, 2001)

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