ENG519 — Final Term Summary (Lectures 23–30)

📘 Lecture 23 — CURRICULUM APPROACHES IN LANGUAGE TEACHING: BACKWARD DESIGN

📖 Overview: This lecture examines backward design, a curriculum approach that starts with specifying learning outcomes before developing instructional processes and content. It explores how backward design contrasts with forward and central design, and discusses key applications such as competency-based instruction, needs analysis, subject-centered and learner-centered design approaches.

🗂️ Topics Covered

The lecture covers backward design as a curriculum approach starting with learning outputs, the significance of needs analysis within backward design, competency-based instruction as a practical application, and contrasts subject-centered design with learner-centered design in curriculum development.

📝 Lecture Summary

Topic-149: Backward Design

Backward design is the third curriculum approach, which begins with a specification of learning outputs and uses these as the basis for developing instructional processes and input. Following Wiggins and McTighe (2006), this approach starts with a careful statement of desired results or outcomes, from which appropriate teaching activities and content are derived. This is a well-established tradition in general education and has re-emerged as prominent in language teaching. It was sometimes described as an 'ends-means' approach, as seen in the work of Tyler (1949) and Taba (1962), who viewed instruction as the specification of ends as a prerequisite to devising the means to reach them.

The process consists of seven steps:

• Step 1: diagnosis of needs
• Step 2: formulation of objectives
• Step 3: selection of content
• Step 4: organization of content
• Step 5: selection of learning experiences
• Step 6: organization of learning experiences
• Step 7: determination of what to evaluate and of the ways of doing it

The role of methodology was to determine which teaching methods were most effective in attaining the objectives, and a criterion-referenced approach would be used for assessment. There is no place for individually-determined learning outcomes; the outcomes are determined by the curriculum designer.

🔑 Definition — Ends-Means Approach: An instructional design where the specification of ends (learning outcomes) is a prerequisite to devising the means (teaching methods and content) to reach them.

Topic-150: Significance of Needs Analysis within Backward Design Approach

Wiggins and McTighe (2006) criticized the use of classroom activities and processes as the starting point in instructional planning, arguing for starting with a clear description of learning outcomes. They recommend the following three steps:

• Identify desired results.
• Determine acceptable evidence of learning.
• Plan learning experiences and instruction.

The planning process begins with a clear understanding of the ends in mind. It explicitly rejects the process or activity-oriented curriculum as a starting point. It does not imply any particular pedagogical approach or instructional theory; a variety of teaching strategies can be employed, but teaching methods cannot be chosen until the desired outcomes have been specified.

Needs Analysis (identifying learning outcomes or objectives) is often seen to depend upon a systematic analysis of the learners' communicative needs. It emerged in the 1960s as part of the systems approach to curriculum development. Informal needs assessment deals with informal negotiation between class teachers and students through chats with individuals or groups to select a focus for the class.

The steps involved in needs analysis are:

• Identify learner's communicative needs.
• Develop statements of learning objectives.
• Identify linguistic content and skills needed to attain the objectives.
• Prepare course plans.
• Select materials and teaching methods.

💡 Why this matters: Needs analysis ensures that curriculum design is responsive to actual learner requirements rather than being driven by predetermined content or activities alone.

Topic-151: Competency-based Instruction within Backward Design Approach -I

Competency-based Instruction (CpBI) is a widely used example of backward design. The starting point is a specification of learning outcomes in terms of 'competencies' — the knowledge, skills, and behaviors learners involved in performing everyday tasks and activities, which learners should master at the end of a course. Competency-based education has much in common with performance-based instruction, mastery learning, and individualized instruction. It is outcome-based and adaptive to the changing needs of students, teachers, and the community.

🔑 Definition — Competencies: The knowledge, skills, and behaviors learners need to perform everyday tasks and activities, which differ from other goals and objectives by describing the student's ability to apply basic and other skills in situations commonly encountered in everyday life.

CpBI is based on a set of outcomes derived from an analysis of tasks typically required of students in life role situations.

Topic-152: Competency-Based Instruction within Backward Design Approach II

An example of CpBI used in developing a vocational curriculum for refugees and immigrants in the US (Mrowicki, 1986) involved the following process:

• Needs analysis.
• Identify topics for the survival curriculum (e.g., banking, health, shopping).
• Identify target tasks, design tasks.
• Identify competencies for each topic.
• Group competencies into instructional units.
• Identify the language knowledge and skills needed for each instructional unit (e.g., the 4 skills, vocabulary, and grammar).
• Choose instructional materials.

Competency-based approaches offer teachers an opportunity to revitalize education and training programs. The quality of assessment improves, as does the quality of teaching and student learning, through clear specification of expected outcomes and continuous feedback. Like other backward design approaches, CpBI makes no assumptions about teaching methods since any set of classroom activities can be used that enables students to master the desired competencies. However, since student learning is assessed on performance and demonstration of pre-specified skills, teaching is generally based on helping learners acquire communicative skills needed for specific situations, tasks, and activities.

💡 Why this matters: CpBI focuses on demonstrable, real-world skills rather than abstract knowledge, making learning directly applicable to life situations.

Topic-153: Subject-centered Design

In this system, the main focus is on curriculum development (not human development), with subject specialists developing "high standards" for student uniformity. This reflects what society believes all students should know and be able to do at grade-level checkpoints. Teachers are told what and how to teach. The main goal and purpose is to standardize students, making them alike with a "core curriculum." A large amount of meaningless testing is imposed on teachers to inflict on students. Teachers have big classes that restrict them from forming close relationships with each child. Parents are usually not involved except to help with teacher-assigned homework. Teachers spend much time imparting the state curriculum, focusing on what students don't know and can't do. Students are required to do teacher-assigned homework and are not encouraged to ask questions. Learning merely to pass tests is shallow and temporary.

Topic-154: Learner-centered Design

The concept of learner-centeredness has been invoked with increasing frequency in recent years. The philosophy has strong links with experiential learning, humanistic psychology, and task-based language teaching. This approach places the learner at the center of the pedagogic process and sees education not as receiving information but as intelligent inquiry and thought (Gibbons, 2002). A learner-centered curriculum contains similar elements to traditional curriculum development — planning (including needs analysis, goal and objective setting), implementation (including methodology and material development), and evaluation. However, the main difference is that in learner-centered curriculum, the curriculum is a collaborative effort between teachers and learners. Therefore, learners need to be systematically taught to implement a learner-centered approach. Language programs should have dual goals: language content goals and learning process goals.

Learner-centered curriculum allows students to participate more fully in arranging their own learning experiences so that two key objectives are realized:

1. Students participate in shaping the curriculum, addressing contextual issues including new situational/personal culture.
2. Student involvement enables meta-learning — providing them the opportunity to learn about the design and construction of purposeful learning activities.

🔑 Definition — Meta-learning: Learning about the design and construction of purposeful learning activities; the process of students understanding how to manage their own learning.

⭐ Key Takeaways

Backward design is a curriculum approach that prioritizes learning outcomes as the starting point, with instructional processes and content derived from those outcomes through careful needs analysis. Competency-based instruction represents a practical application of backward design, focusing on real-world skills and performance-based assessment. While subject-centered design standardizes students through a core curriculum and top-down instruction, learner-centered design places students at the center through collaborative curriculum development and dual language and learning process goals. The critical distinction across all approaches is whether the starting point is input (forward), process (central), or output (backward), with backward design ensuring clear alignment between intended results, evidence of learning, and instructional planning.

🧠 Quick Revision Questions

1. What are the seven steps in backward design according to Tyler (1949) and Taba (1962)?
2. How does needs analysis function differently in backward design compared to forward or central design?
3. What distinguishes competencies from other types of student goals and objectives in competency-based instruction?
4. What are the three steps recommended by Wiggins and McTighe (2006) for implementing backward design?
5. How does learner-centered design differ from subject-centered design in terms of teacher and student roles?

📘 Lecture 24 — Curriculum Approaches in Language Teaching: A Flexible Model

📖 Overview: This lecture explores the fundamental premise that there is no single "best" approach to curriculum design in language teaching. It argues that forward, central, and backward design can all be effective in different contexts, and may even operate concurrently. The lecture critically examines several curriculum models—including Content, Objectives, Process, and New Pragmatism—and concludes with an analysis of foundational curriculum frameworks like Tyler's, Wheeler's, Kerr's, and Bruner's Spiral models.

🗂️ Topics Covered

The lecture begins by introducing a flexible model for ELT curriculum, arguing that forward, central, and backward designs are context-dependent rather than universally superior. It then critically examines four ELT curriculum models: Content Model, Objectives Model, Process Model, and New Pragmatism. The lecture concludes by analyzing three foundational curriculum design frameworks—Tyler's linear model, Kerr's interrelated domains model, and Bruner's Spiral model—all of which shape contemporary thinking about curriculum development in language teaching.

📝 Lecture Summary

Topic-155: ELT Curriculum: A Flexible Model for a Changing World

Teachers and planners often ask which approach is best, but this lecture assumes there is no best approach. Forward, central, and backward design might work well in different circumstances and might work concurrently. Design goes backwards and forwards regardless of the starting point—a forward design has broad outcomes in mind, a central design may not specify goals in detail, and a backward design considers teaching processes when formulating outcomes.

Each approach makes different assumptions about context, including whether it is for large-scale or small-scale implementation, the role of instructional materials and tests, teachers' training level and English proficiency, the roles of teachers and learners, demands on teachers, level of teacher autonomy, and support provided for teachers.

A forward design option is preferred where a mandated curriculum is in place, teachers have little choice, rely on textbooks, have large classes, and where tests are designed centrally. Since forward design supports published materials, there is generally a wide range of teaching resources. It is also preferred where teachers have limited English proficiency and limited professional development opportunities, as specialists can handle planning.

Central design approaches do not require teachers to plan detailed learning outcomes, conduct needs analysis, or follow a prescribed syllabus, giving teachers considerable autonomy. However, method-based approaches may require teachers to understand obscure underlying theory and master difficult techniques. Post-method and learner-community approaches require high levels of professional knowledge and language proficiency, as strategies are developed according to the teacher's understanding of context.

A backward design option is preferred where a high degree of accountability is needed and resources can be committed to needs analysis, planning, and materials development. Well-developed procedures are available for implementing backward design. In large-scale national curriculum development, much activity is done by others, leaving teachers with implementation. In private institutes developing company-specific courses, a bottom-up approach by well-trained teachers may be adopted.

Topic-156: ELT Curriculum: Content Model

The central focus of this model is the content of what is to be learned by, or transmitted to, the learner. In the Classical Humanist tradition, content is a valued cultural heritage that contributes to the learner's intellectual development. From epistemological objectivism, content is knowledge identified as universal, unchanging, and absolute. This model has been dominant in Western education for centuries, derived from Aristotle and Plato.

However, Kelly (1989) points out the model is inadequate because it cannot cope with discussion of wider educational purposes, does not consider the individual learner's abilities or problems, or the complexities of the learning process itself. In ELT, this model underpins the grammar-based curriculum, where the syllabus is concerned with grammar and vocabulary. Learning experiences include drilling grammatically correct sentences, explanations of theory, memorization of vocabulary lists, and assessment based on producing grammatically accurate language.

🔑 Definition — Content Model: A curriculum model where the central focus is the content of what is to be learned by or transmitted to the learner, based on the belief that knowledge is universal, unchanging, and absolute.

Topic-157: ELT Curriculum: Objectives Model

Reconstructionism's main purpose is to bring about social change. Its origins lie in the scientific management of education and behavioral psychology in the early 20th century, which defined learning as observable changes in behavior that could be measured.

The clearest definition of behavioral objectives has three essential characteristics:

• They must unambiguously describe the behavior to be performed.
• They must describe the conditions under which performance will occur.
• They must state a standard of acceptable performance (the criterion).

The attraction of this model is that it provides:

• Clarity of goals: Objectives are clear to both teacher and learners, facilitating selection of materials and activities.
• Ease of evaluation: Clearly specified objectives allow for easy and accurate evaluation of learner and program success.
• Accountability: In formal and business sectors, it provides clear methods for needs identification, establishing learning purpose, and providing measurable "products."

🔑 Definition — Behavioral Objectives: Learning objectives that must unambiguously describe the behavior to be performed, the conditions under which it will occur, and the standard of acceptable performance (criterion).

Topic-158: ELT Curriculum: Process Model

From the process model perspective, the purpose of education is to enable the individual to progress towards self-fulfillment. It is concerned with developing understanding of the learning process, not just passive reception of knowledge or acquisition of specific skills.

The goals are not defined in terms of particular ends or products, but in terms of the process and procedures by which the individual develops understanding, awareness, and creates possibilities for future learning. Content is based on principles derived from research into learning development, and the overall purpose is to formulate objectives related to procedural principles.

Clark and White (2007) show that language teaching has been influenced by philosophical trends and broad educational developments, not isolated from the educational mainstream.

💡 Why this matters: The Process Model shifts focus from what students learn to how they learn, emphasizing that understanding and awareness are more important than specific behavioral outcomes.

Topic-159: ELT Curriculum: New Pragmatism

In practice today, the claim to use a communicative syllabus or curriculum approach is often made without real agreement on what "communicative" means and without clarification of principles and processes. Dubin and Olshtain (1986) identify three areas central to a communicative curriculum:

• Sociolinguistics
• Cognitively based view of language learning
• Humanistic approach in education

Topic-160: Tyler's and Wheeler's Models

Tyler's model for curriculum designing is based on four questions:

• What educational purposes should the school seek to attain?
• What educational experiences can be provided that are likely to attain these purposes?
• How can these educational experiences be effectively organized?
• How can we determine whether these purposes are being attained?

The model is linear in nature, starting from objectives and ending with evaluation. Evaluation is terminal. Key points include:

• Objectives form the basis for selection and organization of learning experiences.
• Objectives form the basis for assessing the curriculum.
• Objectives are derived from the learner, contemporary life, and subject specialist.
• Evaluation matches initial expectations with outcomes.

Topic-161: Kerr's Model

Kerr's model divides the curriculum into four domains (Urevbu, 1985):

• Objectives
• Knowledge
• Evaluation
• School learning experiences

Key points about the model:

• The four domains are interrelated directly or indirectly.
• Objectives are derived from school learning experiences and knowledge.

Objectives are divided into three groups:

• Affective
• Cognitive
• Psychomotor

Knowledge should be:

• Organized
• Integrated
• Sequenced
• Reinforced

Evaluation is the collection of information for making decisions about the curriculum. School learning experiences are influenced by societal opportunities, the school community, pupil and teacher relationships, individual differences, teaching methods, content, and learner maturity. These experiences are evaluated through tests, interviews, assessments, and other methods. Kerr asserts that everything influences everything else, and it is possible to start analysis at any point (Urevbu, 1985).

Topic-162: Spiral Model

In the 1960s, Jerome Bruner proposed a theory of cognitive growth emphasizing environmental and experiential factors in a child's education. He suggested intellectual ability develops in stages through changes in how the mind is used. Bruner's position was that young children need to learn the underlying principles of different concepts—the structure of ideas—rather than memorizing facts and data.

The spiral curriculum is predicated on cognitive theory advanced by Bruner (1960), who wrote "we begin with the hypothesis that any subject can be taught in some intellectually honest form to any child at any stage of development." Even the most complex material, if properly structured and presented, can be understood by very young children.

Bruner hypothesized that human cognition occurs in three relatively discrete stages:

1. Enactive — actually manipulating and interacting with objects
2. Iconic — manipulating images of the objects or phenomena
3. Symbolic — using symbols and abstract representation

🔑 Definition — Spiral Curriculum: A curriculum model based on Bruner's cognitive theory where concepts are revisited at increasing levels of complexity, with the hypothesis that any subject can be taught in some intellectually honest form to any child at any stage of development.

⭐ Key Takeaways

The most critical takeaway is that there is no single "best" approach to curriculum design; forward, central, and backward designs each suit different contexts depending on factors like teacher autonomy, class size, and resource availability. Students must remember that the Content Model focuses on transmitting fixed knowledge (grammar-based), the Objectives Model emphasizes measurable behavioral outcomes with three essential characteristics, and the Process Model prioritizes self-fulfillment and understanding over specific products. For foundational frameworks, Tyler's model is linear with terminal evaluation, while Kerr's model features four interrelated domains where everything influences everything else. Finally, Bruner's Spiral Model posits that any subject can be taught to any child at any developmental stage through the enactive, iconic, and symbolic stages of cognition.

🧠 Quick Revision Questions

1. What are the three essential characteristics of behavioral objectives in the Objectives Model?
2. Under what circumstances would a forward design approach be preferred over a backward design approach?
3. What are the four domains in Kerr's curriculum model, and how are they related to each other?
4. What are the three stages of cognitive development in Bruner's Spiral Model?
5. According to Dubin and Olshtain, what three areas are central to the concept of a communicative curriculum?

📘 Lecture 25 — TYPES OF SYLLABI IN LANGUAGE TEACHING

📖 Overview: This lecture surveys the major types of syllabi used in language teaching, from the traditional structural syllabus to more modern approaches like task-based and lexical syllabi. Understanding these types is crucial for curriculum designers to match syllabus design with learners' needs, institutional goals, and theories of language and learning.

🗂️ Topics Covered

The lecture covers seven major syllabus types: Structural Syllabus (based on grammatical forms), Situational Syllabus (organized around real-life situations), Functional/Notional Syllabus (focused on communicative functions and concepts), Skill-based Syllabus (centered on discrete language skills), Content-based Syllabus (teaching language through subject matter), Task-based Syllabus (using real-world tasks as the organizing principle), and Lexical and Cultural Syllabuses (emphasizing word chunks and cultural knowledge). Each type is examined with its underlying theories, merits, and drawbacks.

📝 Lecture Summary

Topic-163: Structural Syllabus

The structural syllabus is the most familiar syllabus type, based on the theory that grammatical or structural aspects of language form are the most basic or useful. Krahnke (1987) defines it as one where the content of language teaching is a collection of the forms and structures (usually grammatical) of the language being taught.

Breen (1987) sets forth three rationales for the formal syllabus: first, it is well-established and informed by a long tradition of linguistic analysis; second, it presents learners with a systematic and rule-governed subject matter, allowing them to see patterns and reduce the 'learning load'; third, because the linguistic system is analysable, these analytical categories can be incorporated into a teaching plan and may help learners uncover how the new language works.

Merits of the structural syllabus include: structure/grammar is the most general component of communicative competence; its content is relatively easy to describe (e.g., noun, verb, imperative); structural knowledge is the most measurable component of communicative competence; instruction in form can prevent later fossilization (cessation of learning); it offers a basis for providing feedback on accuracy; and it is culture-free.

Drawbacks according to Stevick (1972): it violates most types of reward needed for materials, including relevance to student's needs, completeness, authenticity, satisfaction with progress, and immediacy of use. Breen (1987) adds: there is little evidence that structural knowledge transfers to actual language use; it can mislead learners into thinking they are learning a language when they are learning facts about it; and sequencing or grading problems arise because a strictly structural syllabus prevents students from producing structures they haven't been taught.

🔑 Definition — Structural Syllabus: a syllabus where the content is a collection of the grammatical forms and structures of the language being taught. 📐 Formula: content = grammatical structures → learners study language forms systematically 📌 Example: A lesson sequence teaching present tense verbs first, then past tense, then future tense, with each structure taught in isolation before moving to the next.

Topic-164: Situational Syllabus

The situational syllabus emerged as an alternative to the structural syllabus, based on the premise that language is related to the situational contexts in which it occurs. The designer predicts situations the learner will encounter and uses these as a basis for selecting and presenting language content. Unlike the structural syllabus, it offers the possibility of selecting and sequencing different real-life situations rather than grammatical items.

Alexander (1976) differentiates three types of situational syllabus based on type of information: Limbo Situation (the specific setting is unimportant, e.g., introducing someone at a stadium); Concrete Situation (information about a specific and concrete setting, e.g., ordering a meal at a restaurant); and Mythical Situation (information depends on a fictional storyline with fictional characters in a fictional place).

Merits: taps students' knowledge of the world as an aid to learning; provides realistic materials; bridges cultural gaps through conversations implied with social conventions; is manageable as a foundation to incorporate other syllabus types; and offers countless resources to avoid repetition and boredom.

Drawbacks: too much use of predetermined and artificial situations can lead to lack of transfer, as students learn pre-learned routines rather than creative uses of language. Problems include: actual patterns of native speaker use in many situations are still unknown; it is difficult to write focused and natural dialogues; content tends to become outdated; it may reflect unwanted foreign language values (not culture-free); and it presents sequencing problems like the structural syllabus.

🔑 Definition — Situational Syllabus: a syllabus organized around the real-life situations in which the learner will use the language. 📌 Example: A unit on "At the Restaurant" teaching phrases like "I'd like to order the steak" and "Could I have the check, please?" rather than teaching all present tense verbs first.

Topic-165: Functional/Notional Syllabus

A functional-notional syllabus is based on learning to recognize and express the communicative functions of language and the concepts and ideas it expresses. Hedge (2000) highlights that the 'communicative revolution' of the 1970s urged educators to go beyond structural analysis and consider what 'communicative ability' entailed.

Underlying theories draw on descriptions of language emphasizing functional and social aspects of competence. These syllabuses consist of a list of functions (e.g., apologizing, requesting) and notions (e.g., past time, possibility) together with the linguistic exponents required to realize them in communication. The methodology was typically still accuracy-based, representing a Type A approach where objectives are defined in advance (White, 1988). The functional view highlighted the importance of discourse in context and acknowledged that knowledge of text structure is more useful than isolated grammatically correct sentences.

Merits: learners learn to use language to express authentic communicative purposes; motivation increases through expressing own purposes, ideas, and emotions; it teaches pragmatic aspects like politeness and cultural topics like greetings; it considers learner needs and meanings; and it places students and their communicative purposes at the core of the program.

Drawbacks: functions and notions are abstract and difficult for some learners; different structures often express the same function, making progression from simple to complex difficult; it is difficult to use for creating new sentences (Raine, 2010); and there are no clear-cut criteria for grading of functions, so grading depends mainly on the material designer's intuition (White, 1988).

🔑 Definition — Functional/Notional Syllabus: a syllabus based on the communicative functions (purposes for using language) and notions (concepts) that learners need to express. 📐 Formula: content = functions (e.g., apologizing) + notions (e.g., past time) + linguistic exponents (e.g., "I'm sorry I was late") 📌 Example: A unit on "Apologizing" teaching various forms like "I'm sorry," "Please excuse me," and "I apologize for" along with the notion of past time ("I'm sorry I was late").

Topic-166: Skill-based Syllabus

In a skill-based syllabus, the content of language teaching is a collection of specific abilities that play a part in using language (Richards, 2001). Skill-based syllabi group linguistic competencies (pronunciation, vocabulary, grammar, discourse) into generalized types of behavior, such as listening for the main idea, writing well-formed paragraphs, or giving effective oral presentations. Krahnke (1987) defines a skill as a specific way of using language that combines structural and functional ability but exists independently of specific settings or situations.

Underlying theories: approaching language through skills is based on the belief that learning a complex activity like "listening to a lecture" involves mastery of individual micro-skills. Brown (1995) notes that selection of skills is based on authors' perception of usefulness, while sequencing is based on chronology, frequency, or relative usefulness. The general theory is that learning complex behaviors is facilitated by breaking them down into small bits (skills), teaching the bits, and hoping learners can put them together when using language.

Merits: they focus on behavior or performance; teach skills that transfer to many situations; identify teachable and learnable units; provide a practical framework for designing courses and materials; and are most useful when learners need to master specific types of language use.

Drawbacks: Karahnke (1987) criticizes the assumption that ability to perform specific tasks is independent of overall language proficiency; Auerbach (1986) argues it may program students for particular behaviors and isolate them from broader achievements; Willis (2005) says it is not much more than a list of skills and micro-skills; and the list of skills cannot be understood in the same way by all participants.

🔑 Definition — Skill-based Syllabus: a syllabus organized around discrete language skills (micro-skills) that together make up complex language behaviors. 📌 Example: A course divided into units on "Listening for Main Ideas," "Scanning for Specific Information," "Writing Topic Sentences," and "Giving Oral Presentations."

Topic-167: Content Based Syllabus

Content-based instruction is an approach where teaching is organized around the content rather than around a linguistic syllabus (Richards & Rodgers, 2001). Krahnke (1987) defines it as teaching content or information in the language being learned with little or no direct effort to teach the language itself separately. It is considered a sub-category of process-oriented and analytic syllabus (Nunan, 1988). The content may come from other subjects (science, history) or from analysis of students' interests and needs (Nunan, 2004).

The rationale is that language is learned most effectively for communication in meaningful, purposeful contexts (Snow, 1988). In real life, people use language to talk about what they know, not about language itself. The integration of content provides both a motivational and cognitive basis for language learning.

Merits (Nunan, 2004): learners learn other aspects of school learning alongside language; it shares advantages of analytical syllabuses; integrates all four language skills; actively involves students; utilizes authentic tasks; and raises motivation and learner engagement.

Drawbacks: Ellis (2003) believes it may not result in high levels of grammatical and sociolinguistic accuracy; Brown (2007) argues teachers may be deterred by demands of content knowledge and feel unqualified to teach content areas; Short (1993) notes difficulty in assessment because it is hard to isolate language features from content objectives.

🔑 Definition — Content-based Syllabus: a syllabus organized around subject matter content (e.g., science, history) rather than linguistic structures or functions. 📌 Example: A science unit on "Photosynthesis" taught in English, where students learn English vocabulary and structures while learning the scientific process.

Topic-168: Task-Based Syllabus

The primary theory of learning underlying task-based instruction is Krashen's acquisition theory, which argues that the ability to use a language develops through exposure to the language and participation in using it (Krahnke, 1987). Nunan (2001) asserts that task-based syllabuses start with needs analysis, resulting in a list of target tasks learners need to carry out in real-life situations (e.g., job interviews, completing applications, finding one's way).

Skehan (2003) defines a task as an activity where: meaning is primary; learners are not given others' meanings to repeat; there is a relationship to comparable real-world activities; task completion has priority; and assessment is in terms of outcome. Candlin (1987) lists characteristics of a good task: promotes attention to meaning, purpose, and negotiation; encourages attention to relevant data; draws objectives from learners' communicative needs; defines a problem to be worked through; and provides opportunities for meta-communication and meta-cognition.

The psycholinguistic rationale (Ellis, 2009): learners have their own built-in syllabus directing how they learn the L2 system; the primary goal is development of implicit knowledge; implicit knowledge is best achieved through experiencing the L2 as a communicative tool; and resultant learning is incidental rather than intentional.

Merits: uses learners' real-life needs as learning experiences, providing motivation through immediacy and relevancy (Krahnke, 1987); can be a vehicle for instruction in other types of content; valuable for learners with clear, immediate needs; useful for learners not accustomed to traditional learning; helpful in ESP courses; helps learners acquire language; and grammatical and functional items reappear in diverse contexts (Nunan, 2004).

Drawbacks: ignores explicit meta-linguistic knowledge and focuses on fluency at the expense of accuracy (Nation & Macalister, 2010); requires high creativity and initiative from the teacher (Krahnke, 1987); and evaluation is difficult because the nature of tasks makes it hard to measure learning using traditional achievement tests.

🔑 Definition — Task-based Syllabus: a syllabus organized around real-world tasks that learners need to accomplish, with language learned through completing these tasks. 📌 Example: A unit on "Applying for a Job" where learners practice filling out application forms, participating in mock interviews, and writing cover letters, rather than studying verb tenses in isolation.

Topic-169: Lexical and Cultural Syllabus

The lexical syllabus emerged as a reaction against the traditional structural syllabus. The basic concept is that students must understand and use lexical phrases such as chunks, prefabricated patterns, and collocations. Lewis (1993) states that an important part of language acquisition is the ability to comprehend and produce lexical phrases as unanalyzed wholes, which become the raw data for perceiving patterns of language.

Criteria for selection of lexical items include: Frequency (listing most frequent expressions using language corpora); Teachability (piloting selected words and discarding those difficult to manage); Authenticity (items taken from authentic texts); Coverage (selecting generic, non-context-specific items); and Similarity (taking advantage of cognates shared by both languages, e.g., "mother" and "father" in Indo-European languages).

Merits (Sinclair & Renouf, 1988): practicality (learners benefit from common words in daily life); efficiency (offers only things worth learning); utility (focuses on function and usage of chunks, shifting from constructing messages to delivering them effectively); authenticity (all materials from authentic language use); and flexibility (independent of any methodology, can adopt any teaching practice).

Drawbacks: use of inflected forms does not correspond to natural language use; a high percentage of high-frequency words are function words not useful for negotiating intended messages; grammar is dealt with intuitively and is difficult to teach; and it is impossible to formally teach every discrete lexical item, so most acquisition must come from sources other than formal teaching (Lewis, 2002).

Cultural syllabus: Brown (2007) maintains that language and culture are intricately interwoven and cannot be separated. Stern (1983) proposes a four-dimensional model integrating: Language Syllabus (structural and functional), Communicative/Experiential Syllabus, and Culture Syllabus (socio-cultural knowledge and awareness). A cultural syllabus often addresses non-verbal and verbal components of language.

Merits (Fleet, 2006): increases communicative competence as language use must be associated with culturally appropriate behaviour (Peterson & Coltrane, 2003); allows more authentic language learning; motivates learners; and instils intercultural competence by affecting perceptions and attitudes toward the target language.

Drawback (Stern, 1992): major problems include the vastness of the culture concept, problems of goal determination and lack of accessible information, questions of syllabus design and difficulty adjusting culture's place in a language-oriented approach, and difficulty handling substantive subject-matter in a skill-oriented program.

💡 Why this matters: The lexical and cultural syllabuses represent a shift from viewing language as a system of rules to viewing it as a collection of meaningful chunks embedded in cultural contexts, influencing modern teaching approaches like the Lexical Approach.

🔑 Definition — Lexical Syllabus: a syllabus organized around high-frequency lexical phrases, chunks, and collocations rather than grammatical structures. 📐 Formula: content = lexical chunks (e.g., "I'm sorry," "by the way," "on the other hand") → learners acquire patterns from these chunks 📌 Example: A lesson teaching the phrase "I'd like to..." as a chunk for polite requests, then expanding to "I'd like to order," "I'd like to know," "I'd like to see," rather than teaching the conditional "would" as a grammatical structure first.

⭐ Key Takeaways

The structural syllabus is the most traditional type, focused on grammatical forms, but suffers from poor transfer to real communication. The situational syllabus improves relevance by organizing content around real-life contexts but struggles with authenticity and sequencing. The functional/notional syllabus revolutionized language teaching by prioritizing communicative purposes and learner needs, yet faces grading difficulties due to abstract functions. Task-based and content-based syllabuses represent modern, process-oriented approaches that emphasize meaningful use and incidental learning, though they may neglect explicit grammar instruction. The lexical and cultural syllabuses highlight the importance of formulaic language chunks and cultural knowledge, recognizing that language and culture are inseparable.

🧠 Quick Revision Questions

1. What are the three rationales Breen (1987) sets forth for the structural syllabus, and what is the main criticism regarding its transferability?
2. How does the situational syllabus differ from the structural syllabus in terms of content organization, and what are the three types identified by Alexander (1976)?
3. What is the difference between a "function" and a "notion" in a functional/notional syllabus, and why is grading problematic in this approach?
4. According to Krahnke (1987), what is the primary theory of learning underlying task-based instruction, and how does a task-based syllabus differ from a structural syllabus in its starting point?
5. What criteria are used for selecting lexical items in a lexical syllabus, and why does Brown (2007) argue that culture and language cannot be separated in teaching?

📘 Lecture 26 — Negotiated Syllabus

📖 Overview: This lecture explores the concept of a negotiated syllabus, where teachers and learners collaborate to make decisions about curriculum design. It examines the rationale behind this approach, provides practical examples, discusses requirements and assessment negotiation, and weighs the advantages and disadvantages of implementing such a syllabus in language teaching contexts.

🗂️ Topics Covered

The lecture introduces the negotiated syllabus (also called process syllabus) and its foundations in humanistic methodologies, learner-centered approaches, and needs analysis. It provides a concrete example with adult graduate students, discusses Breen's framework for negotiation procedures and course planning, explores partially negotiated syllabuses, explains how assessment can be negotiated, and concludes with a comprehensive analysis of disadvantages and advantages of this approach.

📝 Lecture Summary

Topic-170: Introduction to Negotiated Syllabus

A negotiated syllabus involves the teacher and the learners working together to make decisions at many levels of the curriculum design process. It is also called "process syllabus" (Breen, 1987). The word "process" indicates that the important feature of this type of syllabus is that it focuses on how the syllabus is made rather than what should be in it.

Clarke (1991) sees the interest in negotiated syllabuses arising from humanistic methodologies like community language learning which are very learner-centered, needs analysis which focuses on learners' needs, work in individualization and learner autonomy, and learner strategy research which sees the learner playing a central role in determining how language is learned. Breen and Littlejohn (2000) list situations where a negotiated syllabus is almost unavoidable:

• Where the teacher and students have different backgrounds
• Where time is short and the most useful choices must be made
• Where there is a very diverse group of students and there is a need to find common ground
• Where initial needs analysis is not possible
• Where there is no course book
• Where the students' past experiences must be part of the course
• Where the course is open-ended and exploratory

🔑 Definition — Negotiated Syllabus: A syllabus in which teachers and learners collaboratively make decisions about various aspects of curriculum design, focusing on the process of how the syllabus is created rather than predetermined content.

Topic-171: An Example of a Negotiated Syllabus

The example involves a class of adult graduate students preparing for post-graduate university study through English, coming from a wide variety of countries and disciplines.

The negotiation process proceeds as follows:

1. For the first two weeks, the teacher follows a set programme involving a large variety of activities
2. After two weeks, the teacher announces it is time for learners to take an active part in deciding what to do
3. The teacher and class members list activities on the board, then working in small groups discuss what should be removed and added
4. The next step is to rank the items and fit them into the class timetable, done in small groups and then with the whole class — during this discussion, learners negotiate with each other and with the teacher
5. The resulting timetable becomes the plan for the next one or two weeks
6. The teacher sometimes calls on learners to help prepare materials to cope with short preparation time

This is described as a conservative example because the class did not start with a negotiated syllabus from the very first day. The reasons include:

• Many learners came from backgrounds where teachers are highly respected and would feel uncomfortable telling the teacher what to do — the first two weeks allow learners to realize the teacher can be trusted
• Most learners had not experienced a pre-university course before, so the teacher wanted to show the range of goals and activities available
• The teacher wanted to show what they saw as important and what they taught well, hoping to influence later negotiation
• The teacher wanted to develop credibility before passing much control to the class

After trial and error, negotiation of an MA teaching methodology course was best done by presenting course members with a draft syllabus in which some items were non-negotiable, but many items and procedures were negotiable. Adding to the draft necessarily involved removing something to provide a place for the new topic. This use of a draft syllabus satisfied course members who felt uncomfortable with a completely negotiated syllabus, made negotiation more focused and efficient, and effectively dealt with the wide range of experience among course members.

📌 Example: A class of adult graduate students from diverse countries prepares for post-graduate study in English. The teacher follows a set programme for two weeks, then invites learners to list, discuss, rank, and schedule activities together. Groups report back, the board is revised, and the resulting timetable governs the next one to two weeks of class.

Topic-172: Requirements for a Negotiated Syllabus

Breen (1987) describes the decisions to be negotiated and the materials needed to make the syllabus work.

Negotiation procedure: How will the negotiation be carried out? When will it be done? How often will it be done? Who has the responsibility for organizing it? Who has the responsibility for checking that what is negotiated is actually done?

Course planning: participation: Who will work with whom? The range of answers includes individual work, pair work, groups working with the teacher, and the teacher working with the whole class.

Course planning: procedure: What kinds of activity will be worked on? The range of answers includes role play, information gap tasks, guided writing, extensive reading, and oral drills. Additional decisions include how long each activity will be worked on, how it will be worked on, and how the results will be assessed.

🔑 Definition — Negotiation Procedure: The agreed-upon method for carrying out negotiations, including timing, frequency, and responsibility allocation for organizing and monitoring the negotiated decisions.

🔑 Definition — Course Planning (Participation): Decisions about who works with whom, ranging from individual work through pairs and groups to whole-class instruction.

🔑 Definition — Course Planning (Procedure): Decisions about what kinds of activities will be used, their duration, methodology, and assessment methods.

Topic-173: Syllabuses with Some Elements Negotiated

Breen's description represents one end of the scale. It is possible to have a syllabus where some parts or aspects are negotiated while others remain under the teacher's or curriculum designer's control (Clarke, 1989).

Possible ways of dividing up the syllabus include:

• A fixed lesson or time of the day is set aside for negotiated activities (e.g., an hour each Friday afternoon)
• One or more of the four types of decisions (participation, procedure, learning goals, evaluation) is open for negotiation — Clarke (1989) suggests teachers encourage learners to take over some assessment activity
• Classes for one or more language skills, such as free-speaking activities, are planned through negotiation
• One or more parts of the inner circle of the curriculum design diagram is open to negotiation

💡 Why this matters: This flexible approach allows teachers to gradually implement negotiation without completely surrendering control, making it more practical and acceptable in various educational contexts and cultural settings.

Topic-174: Negotiating Assessment

Several reports focus on negotiation of assessment and evaluation because this has direct effects on goals and ways of achieving them.

Breen and Littlejohn (2000) identify four major factors affecting feedback through assessment:

1. The extent to which students are aware of the criteria being used
2. The relative emphasis given to what they have achieved as compared with what they have failed to achieve
3. The coincidence between what the feedback focuses upon and what the students themselves have recognized as particularly difficult
4. Whether or not they believe they can act on the basis of the feedback in a way that solves a recognized problem

Smith (2000) describes a very effective way of negotiating assessment where assessment includes not only the results of tests and assigned tasks, but also participation in class, homework, and class projects. The idea of a negotiated syllabus raises questions about the role of the teacher and the role of the commercially produced textbook (Richards, 1993).

🔑 Definition — Negotiated Assessment: An approach where assessment criteria, methods, and feedback mechanisms are collaboratively determined by teachers and learners, encompassing tests, tasks, participation, homework, and projects.

Topic-175: Disadvantages and Advantages of a Negotiated Syllabus

Disadvantages are of two major types. The first results from lack of knowledge or experience with such a syllabus:

• Learners may be reluctant to negotiate because they feel it should be the teacher's expertise guiding the course (gradual introduction can provide learner training to overcome this)
• Learners may not know enough of the range of options and thus may make unimaginative choices
• Teachers may feel using a negotiated syllabus removes too much of their power and status
• Learners may find it difficult to reach agreement about what they should be doing

The second major disadvantage is that a fully negotiated syllabus requires considerable teacher skill and time in accessing and producing resources. Where there are several teachers with similar classes, this load can be partly shared.

Solutions: Breen (1987) suggests using simple questionnaires, introduced and clarified through class discussion, to gather learners' opinions on what kinds of activities should be used. Because these questionnaires are done at the local class level, changes are relatively easy to make, and learners feel their opinions are being considered and acted upon.

Advantages come largely from the syllabus's responsiveness to learners' "wants" and the involvement of the learners:

• All courses have to adjust to the reality of the teaching situation, and the negotiated syllabus gives clear recognition to this
• Involving learners in shaping the syllabus has a strong effect on motivation, satisfaction, and commitment to the course
• The course changes from being the teacher's course to the learners' course
• If negotiation is carried out in English, this may be some of the most involving meaning-focused activity in the programme
• The negotiation develops learners' awareness of the goals of language-learning activities and how these goals can be achieved, which may make them better learners

💡 Why this matters: While negotiated syllabuses present challenges related to learner readiness and teacher workload, their benefits in terms of learner motivation, ownership, and meaningful language use make them valuable. Each disadvantage has potential solutions, and if the advantages are seen as substantial, the disadvantages need to be addressed rather than avoided.

⭐ Key Takeaways

A negotiated syllabus, also called a process syllabus, fundamentally shifts curriculum design from teacher-determined content to collaborative decision-making between teachers and learners. The approach requires careful planning of negotiation procedures, participation structures, and activity selection, with assessment being a particularly important area for negotiation. While disadvantages include learner reluctance, limited awareness of options, teacher status concerns, and increased workload, these can be addressed through gradual introduction, draft syllabuses with non-negotiable elements, and questionnaires. The major advantages are enhanced learner motivation, ownership, satisfaction, and the development of metacognitive awareness about language learning goals and processes.

🧠 Quick Revision Questions

1. What distinguishes a "process syllabus" from traditional syllabuses, and why is the term "process" significant?
2. List four situations where Breen and Littlejohn (2000) argue a negotiated syllabus is almost unavoidable.
3. In the example of adult graduate students, why did the teacher choose NOT to begin with negotiation on the first day?
4. What are the four major factors affecting feedback through assessment according to Breen and Littlejohn (2000)?
5. State two disadvantages and two advantages of a negotiated syllabus, and explain how the disadvantage of learner reluctance can be addressed.

📘 Lecture 27 — Appropriate Design: Feeding and Bleeding of Course Units

📖 Overview: This lecture explores the principles and approaches for designing coherent language course units, focusing on how to structure, sequence, and balance learning activities. It addresses critical perspectives on material design, including the relationship between input and uptake, and emphasizes the importance of creating materials that foster independent learning and meaningful engagement.

🗂️ Topics Covered

This lecture examines the concept of course units and their structure, including traditional unit design with presentation, controlled exploitation, free exploitation, and synthesis phases. It analyzes two key sequencing approaches: the writing-last solution and storyline solution, along with their respective criticisms. The lecture also covers coherence among course units, perspectives on materials design beyond language learning, and the crucial distinction between input and uptake in language learning materials.

📝 Lecture Summary

Topic-177: Appropriate Design: Feeding and Bleeding of Course Units

A course unit refers to the learning tasks included in a particular language syllabus, distinct from an individual lesson. The traditional unit structure follows four phases: Presentation (introducing new material), Controlled exploitation (guided practice), Free exploitation (independent practice), and Synthesis (integrating learned elements). Material designers must ensure exercises show coherent connection between various lessons, maintaining a clear relationship between presenting material and designing exercises.

Topic-178: Appropriate Design: Sequences of Activities in Course Units

Graham Low (2006) proposes two key approaches to sequencing activities. The first is the writing-last solution, where a unit ends with a writing task, primarily emphasizing grammatical acquisition. However, this approach can neglect listening and speaking activities. The solution involves multiple presentation designs that incorporate all four language strands: reading, writing, listening, and speaking.

The second approach is the storyline solution, which creates harmony throughout the unit by sequencing activities within a storyline situation. This approach focuses on both form and meaning of language. Designers must be aware of emotion and character elements to ensure students do not feel detached from the storyline.

🔑 Definition — Multiple Presentation Designs: Presenting the four strands of language learning (reading, writing, listening, and speaking) throughout the course unit rather than focusing on one skill.

Topic-179: Appropriate Design: Criticism on Materials

Both writing-last and storyline solution approaches have been criticized for creating a learner-as-observer syndrome, where learners remain at the center but may not actively engage. Low (2006) states that if learners cannot relate to what is presented in a unit, they may suffer from language learning syndrome. The solution involves using models and simulations to increase student attachment to the content.

For storyline situations where students cannot identify with characters or emotions, creative exploitation techniques or role-play exercises should be employed to enhance engagement.

🔑 Definition — Learner-as-Observer Syndrome: A condition where learners are placed at the center of instruction but remain passive observers rather than active participants, potentially hindering language acquisition.

Topic-180: Appropriate Design: Coherence of Course Units

Coherence is a systematic approach to aligning and sequencing specific ideas and determining the depth to which those ideas are examined, promoting integrated understanding in learners. Designing balance between units requires a blend of imagination, insight, understanding, and analytical reasoning. Material designers must be both critical and practical. A coherent curriculum builds ideas across time and disciplines by connecting topics and aligning instructional materials, instruction, and assessment, ensuring more student involvement.

💡 Why this matters: Coherence ensures that students build connections between concepts rather than learning isolated skills, leading to deeper, more transferable language competence.

Topic-181: Beyond Language Learning: Perspectives on Materials Design Introduction

Pardo and Tellez (2009) define material design as: "It includes adaptation, creation of learning and teaching exercises; a task, an activity, a lesson, a unit or a module composed of several units." The main focus is on outcome — how material affects learner's perceptions and perspectives. Designers must consider how actual students will react to material and how it demonstrates learner's needs. The six areas examined under this notion are:

• General or subject knowledge
• View of what knowledge is and how it is acquired
• View of what is involved in language learning
• Role relations
• Cognitive abilities
• Values and attitudes presented in the material

Topic-182: Beyond Language Learning: Perspectives on Materials Design Input and Uptake by Learners

Understanding input and uptake is crucial in language material design. Input refers to exposure of language given to students through various sources, either written or spoken. The teacher is a primary source of input, and the classroom environment where students interact also contributes to establishing input.

Uptake refers to posing questions to students to assess what they have learned and internalized through classroom activities. Well-designed material exposes students to language modalities, enhancing both input and output (what students actually learn from activities). It also enhances stimulation and reflection in learners. Materials should be designed to create independent learners who can think clearly and question acquired knowledge.

🔑 Definition — Input: The exposure of language given to students in the classroom through various sources, either written or spoken.

🔑 Definition — Uptake: The process of posing questions to students to assess what they have learned and internalized through classroom activities.

📌 Example: A teacher presents a dialogue (input), students practice it, and then the teacher asks comprehension questions (uptake) to determine what students have actually learned from the activity.

⭐ Key Takeaways

The lecture establishes that effective course unit design requires careful attention to structure, sequencing, and coherence. Traditional unit structure follows a presentation-controlled exploitation-free exploitation-synthesis pattern, while sequencing can follow either the writing-last or storyline approach, each with specific strengths and weaknesses. Criticisms of these approaches highlight the learner-as-observer syndrome, which can be addressed through models, simulations, role-play, and creative exploitation techniques. Coherence among units is essential for integrated understanding and requires a blend of imagination, insight, and analytical reasoning. Finally, material design extends beyond language learning to encompass learner perspectives, cognitive abilities, and values, with well-designed materials enhancing both input and uptake while fostering independent, reflective learners.

🧠 Quick Revision Questions

1. What are the four phases of the traditional unit structure, and what does each involve?
2. Compare the writing-last solution and storyline solution approaches to sequencing activities — what are their respective strengths and weaknesses?
3. What is the "learner-as-observer syndrome," and what solutions does Low propose to address it?
4. How does coherence among course units contribute to student learning, and what skills does a material designer need to achieve it?
5. Distinguish between input and uptake in language learning, and explain how well-designed materials contribute to both.

📘 Lecture 28 — Appropriate Design: Internal Organization of Course Units -II

📖 Overview: This lecture explores how language teaching materials can serve purposes beyond language learning itself, examining the "carrier content" embedded in materials and its impact on learners. It critically analyzes how materials shape learners' perceptions of knowledge, language learning, role relations, and social values, concluding with a framework for evaluating these hidden dimensions.

🗂️ Topics Covered

The lecture examines six key areas beyond language learning: the use of carrier content for additional learning, specialist subject knowledge integration, views about language learning presented through materials, role relations and classroom interaction frames, and the broader notion of going beyond language learning goals. It provides a set of evaluative questions for materials design and concludes with an introduction to the hidden curriculum concept in Lesson 29.

📝 Lecture Summary

Beyond Language Learning: Perspectives on Materials Design

Materials offer opportunities for additional learning through their carrier content—the thematic content used as a basis for language work. While most frequently fictional, this content can address wider educational goals by including texts about the natural world, social world, or famous people. Cook (1983) outlines possibilities for 'real content' including: i) another academic subject, ii) student-contributed content, iii) language itself, iv) literature, v) culture, and vi) 'interesting facts'. Two additional categories are proposed: 'learning itself' and 'specialist content'.

🔑 Definition — Carrier Content: The thematic or subject matter content used as a vehicle for language work in teaching materials.

💡 Why this matters: Carrier content determines whether learners gain only language skills or also acquire knowledge about the world, learning strategies, or professional expertise.

Beyond Language Learning: Subject Knowledge

Specialist content materials for specific purposes often fail to interest learners because they present familiar professional topics in a conventional or simpleminded manner (Hutchinson and Waters, 1984). To remedy this, materials should use content about which learners have reasonable background knowledge but with a new or unusual slant. This provides greater opportunities for additional learning outcomes through working with both language and content.

📌 Example: A course book for business correspondence uses simulations where learners, working in groups representing companies (e.g., a soft drinks manufacturer), make business decisions and write letters accordingly. Role cards provide specific business scenarios requiring decisions about equipment and correspondence.

Beyond Language Learning: Views about Language Learning

Stubbs (2014) argues that the selection, classification, and weighting of subjects in the school timetable defines what counts as legitimate educational knowledge. FLT materials in discrete textbooks both result from and reinforce subject divisions, explaining why much FLT material appears bland and content-less. The organization of materials and activities contributes to forming pupils' perception of the nature of school knowledge and how it is arrived at.

This is most evident in grammar teaching. Despite grammarians' discomfort with making definitive statements about grammatical explanations, most learners and teachers believe clear, unequivocal rules are possible. This image derives from the tone and organization of grammar books, which admit no suggestion that rules are mere hypotheses.

🔑 Definition — Frame (Bernstein, 2004): The actual relationship between teachers and pupils and the range of choices they have over what is done between them. A strong frame reduces the pupil's power over what, when, and how they receive knowledge.

Beyond Language Learning: Role Relations, Opportunities, Values and Attitudes

Learner interpretation is the key variable in determining actual learning outcomes. Materials must be considered in terms of what they suggest for learning classroom roles. The crucial factor is not only how learners interpret materials but also what actually happens in the classroom.

The concept of a 'frame' (Bernstein, 2004) examines role relations suggested by materials. Stubbs (2014) relates this to the IRF discourse structure (teacher initiates/pupil responds/teacher feedback) identified by Sinclair and Coulthard (2014). Numerous language teaching materials suggest this discourse structure for classroom work.

Beyond Language Learning: Notion of Going Beyond Language Learning

Materials contribute to learners' perceptions (of knowledge, language learning, and roles), their affective and cognitive development, and their general stock of information about the world. A set of basic questions can focus the attempt to look beyond language learning:

• Do the materials extend the learner's 'general' or 'specialist' knowledge?
• What view of knowledge do the materials present?
• Do the materials develop learners' understanding of language learning?
• How do materials structure the teacher-learner relationship?
• Do materials develop learners' general cognitive abilities?
• What social values and attitudes do the materials present?

💡 Why this matters: At the design stage, examining materials from multiple perspectives identifies aspects needing rethinking, supplementing, or abandoning, ensuring unintentional features match the expressed philosophies of designers.

Hidden Curriculum – Definitions

The hidden curriculum was introduced by Jackson (1986) in contrast with the formal curriculum, drawing attention to learning outcomes apart from those intended in the manifest curriculum. Hedge (2000) defines it as learning that goes on covertly beneath the surface of what the teacher sets out to teach, encompassing shaping of learners' perceptions about learning, their own role, the nature of the subject, and attitudes.

Farrel and Jacobs (2010) regard the hidden curriculum as "the knowledge, values, and beliefs that schools present to students." According to Wikipedia, it is a side effect of education including lessons learned but not openly intended. Barnes (1982) identifies two common characteristics: (1) they are unintended, not part of any teacher's objectives; (2) they tend to be social learning about what people expect and how to cope.

Scholars use different terms: Johnson (1989) uses 'hidden syllabus' and 'alternative curriculum' for teacher practices not conforming to official requirements. Nunan (1989) uses 'hidden agenda' to imply learners have their own agendas that determine what they take from lessons.

The working definition for language classrooms: everything carried out by the teacher and learner that is not planned or required by the official curriculum.

Hidden Curriculum in Terms of Teachers and Learners

Teachers convey socially-approved knowledge unconsciously while teaching the official curriculum. This includes social-moral habits, attitudes, informal school rules, and beliefs such as obedience, conscientiousness, punctuality, gender identity, and political awareness. Teachers reward hard-working, active learners while showing disapproval to late or lazy students, teaching students what constitutes a good pupil.

Teachers also teach in ways inconsistent with the official curriculum. Johnson (1989) notes that validation criteria from outside agencies constitute a new hidden curriculum. Pragmatic constraints include time, money, school leader values, and examination pressures. Teachers' qualifications, experience, preferred strategies, and target language proficiency also influence teaching acts.

📌 Example: Joseph O. Birdsong's article on teaching poetry in Nigeria shows that while the National Curriculum envisages an 'English studies' program blending language and literature, teachers avoid literature or make half-hearted attempts due to lack of confidence in handling literary texts.

Language Teachers Coping with the Hidden Curriculum

The mismatches between official and hidden curriculum cannot be eliminated completely but can be minimized. First, the hidden curriculum should be uncovered, discussed, and analyzed rather than avoided. Teachers should conduct self-examination through questions like: What must pupils do to gain my approval? What behavior do I reward or ignore?

Second, schools should provide continuous in-service teacher training to help teachers gain deep insights into the official curriculum and improve necessary knowledge and skills. Teachers should maintain an open and objective mind with the concept "Life is a learning process."

Third, a scientific, revisable, and on-going evaluation system should be constructed to evaluate both process and product in curriculum development, detecting problems with the hidden curriculum.

The existence of a hidden curriculum is a threat to successful implementation of the official curriculum. Language teachers should face it positively, uncover it, discuss it, and resolve problems it brings.

Hidden Agendas: Role of Learner in Program Implementation

Curriculum implementation involves dissemination of structured learning experiences, provision of resources, and actual execution in the classroom where teacher-learner interactions occur. Learners are critical elements, holding the key to what is actually translated and adopted from the official curriculum.

Learners influence teachers in selecting learning experiences because schools consist of multiple levels and class grades requiring preparation for disparities between slow and quick learners. The learner plays the role of exhibiting desirable discipline through maximum obedience to school rules, attending classwork, and completing assignments, tests, and examinations. For effective implementation, the learner should be physically, mentally, and emotionally available to the teacher.

Hidden Agendas: Practical Implications

Hidden agendas help teachers bridge the gap between planning, teaching, and learning objectives. Teachers should explicitly state course goals and objectives to students, and be aware of learners' perceptions and preconceptions. The curriculum should not be followed slavishly; teachers should take charge to redefine it when needed. There is no direct equation between planning and implementation of hidden curriculum—sometimes teaching must be adjusted according to needs, situations, and hidden agendas.

⭐ Key Takeaways

Materials design must consider not just language learning but also how carrier content, subject knowledge, and organizational structure shape learners' perceptions of knowledge, learning, and social roles. The hidden curriculum operates through teachers' unconscious transmission of social values and through discrepancies between official requirements and actual classroom practices. Language teachers must actively uncover, discuss, and analyze hidden curricula through self-examination and reflection, recognizing that learners bring their own hidden agendas that influence what they take from lessons. Continuous in-service training and systematic evaluation processes help minimize mismatches between official and hidden curricula. There is no direct equation between planning and implementation—teachers must flexibly adjust teaching according to learner needs, situations, and hidden agendas.

🧠 Quick Revision Questions

1. What are Cook's six categories of 'real content' that can be used in language teaching materials, and what two additional categories are proposed?
2. How does Bernstein's concept of 'frame' relate to the IRF discourse structure in language teaching materials?
3. What are the six basic questions used to evaluate materials beyond language learning outcomes?
4. What is the working definition of the hidden curriculum in language classrooms, and what are the two common characteristics identified by Barnes?
5. What three strategies can language teachers use to cope with and minimize the negative effects of the hidden curriculum?

📘 Lecture 29 — Curriculum Design-ENG519

📖 Overview: This lecture explores the evaluation of language learning tasks, classroom research limitations, and the theoretical framework for curriculum implementation. It also introduces the role of testing, monitoring, and assessment in language curriculum design, covering various test types and their practical applications for effective course delivery.

🗂️ Topics Covered

The lecture covers the evaluation cycle for language tasks as projected by Breen, the role of teachers in evaluating tasks, Stern's metaphor of "seeing the wood and the trees" regarding classroom research limitations, and the theoretical framework for curriculum implementation. It then shifts to testing in language curriculum design, including characteristics of tests, placement and progress testing, guidelines for monitoring and assessment, and various types of assessment such as placement, diagnostic, achievement, and proficiency assessment.

📝 Lecture Summary

Topic-194: Evaluation Cycle for Language Tasks

Tasks have much more efficacy in promoting knowledge, capabilities, and skills among second language learners. Dividing units into tasks is more useful for teaching better understanding of concepts. For example, rather than just teaching about verb or noun, teachers can create different tasks where students learn better while performing them. These tasks promote knowledge through language. Michael Breen (1987) considered tasks as the springboard for knowledge and capabilities. Tasks give liberty to bring in meaning-based and focused learning.

The quality of a task can be evaluated in terms of how it offers means for learning and new ways for promoting knowledge. There are different criteria of task as projected by Breen: 1) How it addresses learners' definition of progress, 2) Are learners progressive to the demands of a target language, and 3) How the tasks are open to diversity and change. Tasks can promote knowledge, skills, and capabilities only if learners are open to accept change and diversity and are more responsive towards needs, wants, and challenges.

Breen listed tasks into three different phases:

• Task as a work plan allows teachers to make groundwork to know preconceptions and past learning experiences of students, giving opportunity to see what students want in the classroom.
• Task in process creates the relationship between teacher and student during the processing of task.
• Task outcomes help to analyze what has already been learnt.

Topic-195: The Role of Teacher

A teacher plays a vital role in evaluating language learning tasks while implementing curriculum in the language classroom context. Breen lists different roles where a language instructor must look for these questions:

• To what extent was the task appropriate to learning objectives?
• To what extent was the content helpful?
• To what extent did the chosen procedure prove to be appropriate?
• What knowledge was contributed to the task?
• What was familiar?
• What was discovered?
• What do we actually do while working on a task?
• What did we discover about each other's contributions during the task?
• What did we discover about the classroom and materials?

Topic-196: Seeing the Wood and the Trees: Thoughts on LT Analysis Introduction

H.H. Stern (1983) looks at the classroom as a dynamic entity where much more is going on than expected. He draws teachers' attention to an insightful aspect that should be integral to language curriculum design. He projects that teachers often focus only on what actually takes place in the classroom and tend to overlook the significance of broader issues that occur outside the classroom.

Stern projects a metaphorical comparison that the teacher as researcher has an inability that 'we fail to notice the wood for the trees'. According to Stern, we see trees but do not distinguish between trees and wood. We look at classroom discourse but overlook the significance of broader issues outside the classroom.

Stern makes an interesting point that audiolingualism and cognitivism have changed the direction from language teaching to language learning. In the paradigm shift from language teaching to learning, instead of looking at language learning from the perspective of a method, much more focus is being paid to the learning process.

Topic-197: Limitations of Classroom Research

Classroom research is limited in terms of looking at the teacher at grass root level. Stern believes this can be seen in the perspective of changes and emphasis on language teaching analysis. For example, the method era paved the way for audiolingualism and cognitivism, shifting focus from language teaching to language learning.

The researcher believes that very few efforts have been made in implementing curriculum at classroom level, and it is the teacher who can be trusted with responsibility to ensure this implementation. The findings of classroom research can be related to:

• Policy specifications
• Theoretical approach

Topic-198: Theoretical Framework

Theoretical framework, as projected by Sterns, offers a remedy to limited classroom research regarding curriculum implementation at classroom level. Various variables are involved in this framework. The three independent levels are:

• Theoretical concepts: How groups of students make society and perceive language learning, what notions they carry towards language learning process, and what their cultural, religious, and social perspectives of language learning are. Before implementing the curriculum, teachers need to be clear about such theoretical concepts.
• Policy directives: Emphasizes looking at categories of content. Teachers need to be sure which content is related and how it can be taught in relation to other contents.
• Classroom behaviour: Revolves around two parameters: teacher talk and student talk. Student talk is more of a learner-centred teaching environment where students can speak with equal opportunity, and the teacher is not in front running the show.

Topic-199: Classroom Implementation

The metaphor of 'the wood and tree' helps to see classroom implementation — how it goes into the mind of the student and how the teacher makes practice of the curriculum offered by institutes. Before 1970, language teaching was method driven, known as the method era. With the arrival of audiolingualism and cognitivism, it moved towards communicative language teaching and the shift occurred from language teaching to language learning.

Three categories of classroom implementation:

• Teaching strategies: Originates from method debate but looks at concrete classroom activities. What strategies are being employed by teachers? There is need to adjust teaching strategy according to students' desire.
• Timing strategies: Under the direct control of the teacher, happens within the premises of the classroom.
• Social or interpersonal strategies

💡 Why this matters: Stern's framework provides teachers with a systematic way to analyze and improve curriculum implementation by considering theoretical foundations, policy requirements, and actual classroom dynamics.

Topic-200: The Role of Testing in Language Curriculum Design

The word 'test' tends to evoke fear in most students, but tests help teachers gather information to keep students happy and progressing. Testing is useful before students get started to know what kind of course to enroll them on, and along the way to check progress and find out if the course was successful in meeting objectives.

Schools deliver courses according to student needs. One useful test before meeting the student is a self-assessment test where students analyze how good they are at various aspects of the language, usually by rating themselves from 1-5 or completing sentences. The test can be made visual using pictures of different situations (listening to lectures, using the phone) and asking students how comfortable they are. Rating systems with smiley faces and frowning faces help convey the point. The test should go from really easy to gradually more difficult, and students can stop when questions get too tough.

Topic-201: Characteristics of Tests

Some establishments offer each student an interview with a teacher, which is basically a test. Although time-consuming, it provides a real view of speaking ability, the key language skill for most people. Listening is involved as you interact with students. For example, to try a past simple check question, you casually ask: 'How did you get here today? Did it take long?'

For an interview to be effective, let everyone introduce themselves. A second teacher may assess without speaking, though this increases nervousness. Explain what will happen, personalize questions if possible, and give each student feedback at the end.

Written placement tests are very common, allowing schools to test many new students simultaneously and providing a written record for files. Disadvantages compared to oral tests include: students complain about results more and ask for retakes, students tend to cheat and have warped results due to pressure, and sometimes students don't understand instructions.

Published tests can be purchased, or sections from course books can form the test. Reading passages can be included but tests should not appear too long. Tests should have an easy marking system, usually an answer key, to cut down on administration.

Proficiency tests assess a student's ability to perform particular tasks they will have to accomplish in the future. For example, if a student has been offered a restaurant job requiring English, you design a test covering taking orders and handling complaints. It doesn't matter whether the student has taken a course before — you simply need to know how well they may handle that job.

Topic-202: Testing to Establish the Best Course

Once students are enrolled, tests can be used to map progress and measure achievements. For courses of specific length, progress tests can be built in at various stages. Progress tests serve several purposes:

• Providing motivation for students to study. Targets and deadlines help some people get in gear, but for others they can be stressful and de-motivating.
• Providing a standard level for the class so students can be moved to a different course matching their proficiency level if necessary. Test results provide evidence for decisions.
• Highlighting gaps in teaching or course materials that need filling. The danger is training the class to pass the test rather than teaching English.

The way tests are handled depends on importance and main objective. Teachers may tell students the topic and ask them to revise particular points, or decide on thorough review without giving specific details. A fun and effective way is to allow students to design the test themselves. Break them into groups, have each group construct questions, or ask each student to submit questions. As they review topics and construct questions, the topic becomes indelibly printed on their minds.

Testing carries disadvantages, so alternatives such as project work and continuous assessment may be tried. These are less pressurized for most students and remove the problem of having a bad day at test time.

A project in English allows students to express language skills and creativity simultaneously, especially appealing to younger learners on short summer courses. Students choose their own topic and find out what they need to know to achieve the task. Teachers can agree on certain required elements, for example, history/background, current situation, and future plans, pushing students to use a variety of tenses.

Continuous assessment involves recording students' progress, performances, and achievements weekly. Schools should organize sheets for ticking or grading each aspect assessed. Writing reports increases teachers' administration work considerably, but it's easier to produce a final report rather than just a test score.

🔑 Definition — Placement assessment: assessment used to decide what level of a course a learner should enter or what class to join 📌 Example: A placement test given to a group of new students arriving together to determine beginner, intermediate, or advanced level placement

Topic-203: Guidelines for Monitoring and Assessment

Assessment is a major source of information for course evaluation and gradual improvement. Assessment contributes significantly to the teacher's and learners' sense of achievement and is important for motivation. It is often neglected in curriculum design, making courses less effective. Curriculum design should include planning a well-thought-out programme of assessment of various kinds.

The aim is to decide what to test and how to test it. The outer circles of the curriculum design model (environment, needs, and principles) provide data to guide planning of the inner circle processes. Monitoring and assessment must take account of the environment where the course will be used, the needs of learners, and principles of teaching and learning. Monitoring and assessment can provide information about learners' present knowledge and progress, and can be a means of encouraging involvement and participation.

Topic-204: Types of Monitoring and Assessment

The purpose of monitoring and assessment in curriculum design is to ensure learners get the most benefit from the course. This involves carefully observing learners and the course, and suggesting changes to the course and its operation. Assessment may be expected as a normal part of curriculum design.

Major types of monitoring and assessment:

• Placement assessment
• Observation of learning
• Short-term achievement assessment
• Diagnostic assessment
• Achievement assessment
• Proficiency assessment

Topic-205: Placement Assessment

Placement assessment is used to decide what level of a course a learner should enter, what class to join, and whether the learner should join the course at all. Placement assessment usually occurs under environment constraints. It often must be done just before a course begins, results must be available quickly, the learners are largely unknown and may be confused about the course, and they may not perform their best on a placement test because they are unfamiliar with some aspects.

⭐ Key Takeaways

The evaluation of language tasks involves three phases: work plan, process, and outcomes, with teachers playing a vital role in assessing task appropriateness, content helpfulness, and procedural suitability. Stern's "wood and trees" metaphor emphasizes that teachers must look beyond classroom discourse to broader issues, while his theoretical framework offers three independent levels — theoretical concepts, policy directives, and classroom behaviour — as a remedy to limited classroom research. Testing plays a crucial role in curriculum design through placement, progress, and proficiency assessments, with interviews and self-assessment tests offering valuable initial insights into student needs. Progress tests serve multiple purposes including motivation, standard level determination, and gap identification, but alternatives like project work and continuous assessment can reduce student pressure. The six major types of monitoring and assessment — placement, observation of learning, short-term achievement, diagnostic, achievement, and proficiency — must be carefully planned within the curriculum design model considering environment, needs, and principles.

🧠 Quick Revision Questions

1. What are the three phases of task evaluation according to Breen, and what does each phase involve?
2. What does Stern mean by the metaphor "failing to notice the wood for the trees" in classroom research?
3. What are the three independent levels of Stern's theoretical framework for curriculum implementation?
4. What are the advantages and disadvantages of oral interviews compared to written placement tests?
5. What are the six major types of monitoring and assessment that can occur as part of a course?

📘 Lecture 30 — Curriculum Design-ENG519 (Lessons 32–38)

📖 Overview: This lecture covers the comprehensive process of testing, monitoring, and assessment in language curriculum design, including placement testing, achievement assessment, and proficiency testing. It then transitions into program evaluation approaches, change management strategies, and planning in-service courses, with the final section critically analyzing the Pakistani National English Language Curriculum (2006).

🗂️ Topics Covered

The lecture begins with observation of learning and short-term achievement assessment, then moves through diagnostic, achievement, and proficiency assessment with reliability, validity, and practicality criteria. It explores program evaluation types (formative, summative, illuminative), change introduction strategies, in-service course planning, and concludes with a critical appraisal of Pakistan's National English Language Curriculum 2006, including reading goals and textbook design issues.

📝 Lecture Summary

Topic-206: Observation of Learning

Monitoring learners' progress occurs at the level of the learning activity, not assessing learners but directed toward tasks. The purpose is to see if changes to learning activities are necessary. Four questions must be asked when observing learning activities: What is the learning goal? What are the learning conditions that would lead to achievement? What are the observable signs these conditions are occurring? What are the design features that set up these conditions?

For example, in a spoken fluency development activity, learning conditions include learners focused on meaning, limited language demands, and pressure to perform at a higher level. Signs include involvement in communicating, reasonably high speed with few hesitations, and listener comprehension. Design features include opportunity for preparation, task repetition, familiar topics, and time pressure.

Topic-207: Short-term Achievement Assessment

Short-term achievement assessment looks at the product of activities to see if learners are making progress daily or weekly. It provides feedback to teacher and learners and can have motivational purposes. In intensive courses, weekly tests are common. For activities like speed reading or dictation, learners can record performance on graphs to show progress.

A performance objective is a statement with five parts (Brown, 1995): (1) who should achieve the objective (subject), (2) what the person should be able to do (performance), (3) under what conditions (conditions), (4) how performance will be tested (measure), and (5) what level must be reached (criterion).

📐 Formula: Performance Objective = Subject + Performance + Conditions + Measure + Criterion

Good short-term achievement assessment should provide a clear, easily interpreted record of progress, motivate learners, not occupy too much class time, and be a regular expected part of class activity.

Topic-208: Diagnostic Assessment

Diagnostic assessment finds gaps and weaknesses in learners' knowledge so something can be done about them, and also finds what learners know well to avoid wasting time. It is a vital part of needs analysis before and during a course. Findings determine what goes into a course.

The Vocabulary Levels Test (Schmitt, 2002) is an example. It helps teachers decide whether learners should focus on high-frequency vocabulary, academic vocabulary, or low-frequency vocabulary. This is crucial because high-frequency and low-frequency vocabulary require different teaching strategies. For high-frequency vocabulary, every word deserves individual attention. For low-frequency vocabulary, focus should be on vocabulary coping and learning strategies (guessing from context, using word parts, mnemonics, decontextualized learning).

Diagnostic assessment can include analysis of language use (written compositions, reading tasks, spoken performance) and learner self-assessment using checklists or scales, though self-assessment can be subjective.

🔑 Definition — Diagnostic Assessment: Assessment used to find gaps and weaknesses in learners' knowledge so something can be done about them.

Topic-209: Achievement Assessment

Achievement assessment measures both learner achievement during a course and the effectiveness of the course. May include final tests and tests part-way through. Achievement tests are based on material taught, learners usually know what will be asked, and they are criterion referenced (assessed against a pre-determined criterion, not each other).

Mastery tests set a high criterion (e.g., 80% or 90%). Learners can have repeated opportunities to study and sit tests until they reach mastery. Thinking behind mastery tests: if something is learned, it should be learned well; every learner is capable of mastery; teacher's responsibility is to assess learning; mastery is rewarding and motivating.

Achievement assessment is not all done by tests. For composition writing, it is better to base assessment on several pieces of class work. The washback effect refers to how tests affect teaching and learning, motivating and guiding learning.

Topic-210: Proficiency Assessment

A proficiency test draws items not from the course but from the language itself, independent of any course, to show how much learners know of the language. TOEFL and IELTS are examples. TOEFL's internet-based test criterion for undergraduate entry is usually 79 or 80 out of 120. IELTS uses a 9-point scale, with 6, 6.5, or 7 typically needed for university entrance.

A proficiency test can have profound washback effect on a language course, making course content resemble the test format and items. Courses that copy the format of the test are trying to make the proficiency test like an achievement test. Alderson and Hamp-Lyons (1996) show that washback effects are complex, affecting different teachers differently.

💡 Why this matters: Understanding washback helps teachers design courses that prepare students for proficiency tests without sacrificing sound pedagogical principles.

Topic-211: Good Assessment: Reliability, Validity and Practicality

Three criteria for examining assessment tools: reliability, validity, and practicality.

Reliability: A reliable test gives results not greatly upset by conditions not intended to measure. If the same person sat the test twice, they should get nearly the same result. A test is more reliable if: always given under same conditions, consistently marked, has large number of assessment points, and has clear, unambiguous questions and instructions.

Validity: A valid test measures what it is supposed to measure. Face validity means the test looks like what it claims to be (e.g., a reading test looks like a reading test). Content validity involves checking if the test covers the appropriate content. Validity exists when a test is used for the purpose for which it was designed.

Practicality: Examined by looking at cost, time to administer, time to mark, number of people needed, and ease of interpreting results. Tests can be made more practical by reusable papers, careful formatting, and objectively scored items (true/false, multiple choice). Requirements of practicality, reliability, and validity don't always agree — short tests are practical but not very reliable or valid. Possible reliability and validity should be preferred over practicality.

🔑 Definition — Reliability: A test gives results that are not greatly upset by conditions that the test is not intended to measure.

Topic-212: What is an Evaluation?

The broadest kind of evaluation looks at all aspects of curriculum design to see if the course is the best possible course to implement. Evaluation requires looking at both results and the planning/running of the course. Most evaluations are more narrowly focused, answering questions about standards, preparation, satisfaction, or cost-effectiveness. Carrying out an evaluation is like carrying out research — the evaluator must be clear about what question is being asked.

Topic-213: Purpose and Audience of the Evaluation

Weir and Roberts (1994) distinguish two major purposes: program accountability (extent to which those involved are answerable for quality, usually at end points for external audiences) and program development (designed to improve quality during implementation, may involve staff). These are referred to as formative, illuminative, and summative evaluation.

Kiely and Rea-Dickens (2006) make a three-way scope distinction: large-scale evaluations, teacher-led evaluations, and management-led evaluations.

The first critical step in evaluation is finding out whom the evaluation is for and what kind of information they value. This determines confidentiality, what information to gather, and whether data will be provided willingly. The evaluator must also determine if there is a hidden purpose. At the end of the preparatory stage, the evaluator should be able to tell whether the evaluation is worth doing, possible, how long it might take, how much it might cost, whether they are willing to do it, and what evidence will be gathered.

Topic-214: The Type and the Focus of the Evaluation

Formative evaluation has the purpose of forming or shaping the course to improve it. Summative evaluation makes a summary or judgement on quality or adequacy for comparison. These different purposes affect data type, presentation, and timing.

Other distinctions: short term vs long term, process vs product (process focuses on learning and teaching; product focuses on results), and whether evaluation includes cognitive, affective, and resource factors.

It is better to have a small amount of relevant data than a large amount that doesn't address main concerns.

Topic-215: Gaining Support for the Evaluation

Finding weaknesses carries the idea that someone is to blame, which is threatening. For honest data, those involved must feel the evaluation is worthwhile and not personally threatening. This requires meeting with those involved and involving them in planning. Some evaluations involve a respected outsider who makes gaining cooperation a prerequisite.

Generally, assumptions behind evaluation are: this course is worth improving, people running it are capable, they have freedom to make changes, and improvements will make a better course for all.

Topic-216: Gathering the Information

Tools of needs analysis and evaluation are similar but used for different purposes. Evaluation gathers a wider range of data, including performance of teachers and learners, lesson observations, and examination of achievement. It can also look at the environment including administrative procedures, resources, and how outsiders view the course.

Topic-217: Formative Evaluation as Part of a Course

If curriculum design is seen as a continual process, evaluation should be built into a course. This can be done through: negotiation between teacher and learners, periodic peer observation, regular staff meetings, self-evaluation forms, learner course evaluation forms, class time for learner discussion and feedback, and occasional outside evaluators.

Topic-218: Illuminative Evaluation

Illuminative evaluation seeks to find out how different aspects of the program work or are implemented, providing deeper understanding of teaching and learning processes without necessarily seeking to change the course. Questions might include: How do students carry out group-work tasks? What error-correction strategies do teachers use? What reading strategies do students use with different texts?

Example: A teacher teaching a reading skills course finds through student questionnaires that learners perceive the purpose of activities differently than intended. The teacher comes to understand that learners' perceptions reflect what they are most interested in or feel they need most help with.

Topic-219: Summative Evaluation

Summative evaluation seeks to make decisions about the worth or value of different aspects of the curriculum. It is concerned with determining program effectiveness, efficiency, and acceptability. Questions include: How effective was the course? What did students learn? Were the objectives adequate? Were teaching methods appropriate?

Effectiveness can be measured through mastery of objectives (examining each objective and choosing criteria for successful achievement) and performance on tests (unit tests, class tests, formal exit tests). However, mastery of objectives doesn't provide a full picture — objectives can be achieved despite defects in a course.

Topic-220: Issues in Program Evaluation

Weir and Roberts (1994) propose evaluation characterized by: need for both inside and outside commitment, central interest in improvement and product value, commitment to deeper professional understanding of educational change, systematic documentation, and willingness to embrace both qualitative and quantitative methodology.

Topic-221: The Results of an Evaluation

Results presentation involves ethical issues of confidentiality and consideration for others' feelings. The written report is usually accompanied by an oral report to ensure clear understanding and to say things that couldn't be put tactfully in writing. The report needs to be acted on, with later follow-up to monitor effects and implementation. Surprisingly, evaluation often results in very little change.

Topic-222: Language Program Evaluation: Significance

According to Richards (2001), evaluation is "systematic gathering of information for the purpose of making decisions." Significance includes improving language curriculum design, looking at program worth/procedures/product, assessing effectiveness and efficacy, and conducting a continuous needs analysis for improvement.

Topic-223: Language Program Evaluation: Approaches

Brown's (1995) definition: evaluation is "the systematic collection and analysis of all relevant information necessary to promote the importance of the curriculum and to assess its effectiveness within the context of the particular institutions involved."

Approaches include: Product oriented (focuses on goals and objectives matching instruction), Process oriented (deals with change, innovation, and improvement in implementation), Static characteristic (external agency perspective on overall standing and ranking), and Decision facilitation (cyclic process gathering information about needs, environment, and situation analysis).

Topic-224: Language Program Evaluation: Dimensions

Three dimensions: Formative vs summative (throughout learning vs end of year/unit), Process vs product (how goals achieved vs goals achieved), and Quantitative vs qualitative (descriptive data via questionnaires/textual analysis vs general observation).

Topic-225: Mastery Decisions in Program Evaluation: Student Performance

Program success or failure can be measured through students' performance and achievement. Mastery decisions are based on whether students have reached required competence level, failed, or are underperforming. Thom Hudson (2007) discusses "mastery testing" which helps teachers analyze how to know and what to know, and how to view and what to teach.

Topic-226: Epistemological, Ethical and Technical Issues

Epistemological issues: What students have achieved, how to assess their cognition level and knowledge about language and language learning processes. Ethical issues: How results will be used, ensuring confidentiality. Technical issues: Cut-off points for mastery, test score usefulness for informing whether course is running smoothly.

Topic-227: Implications

Thom Hudson (2007) discusses practical implications of mastery decisions — making decisions about student success/failure helps analyze overall program evaluation, diagnose weaknesses in course structure, and bring objectivity and neutrality to the program, validity and reliability to the whole course.

Topic-228: Tailoring the Evaluation to Fit the Context: Significance

Warwick B. Elley (1981) discusses molding evaluation process to fit contextual needs. Evaluation is a controlled experiment done systematically. Program evaluation involves variables like assisted principles, trained teachers, and student samples. Ethnographic studies involve external agents observing classroom dynamics to determine program efficiency. This provides firsthand information but involves subjectivity.

Topic-229: Tailoring the Evaluation to Fit the Context: Principles

Principles include deciding about tools (questionnaire, interview sample, textual analysis), knowing about the evaluator (teacher, administrator, or external agent), analyzing sample size, who gathered information, how sample was chosen, design type (qualitative or quantitative), and program aims.

Topic-230: Tailoring the Evaluation to Fit the Context: Selecting and Developing Instruments

Warwick B. Elley (1981) emphasizes selecting and developing instruments (questionnaires, ethnographic studies, structured/semi-structured interviews, textual data) to reshape evaluation. This includes notions of pre-test (testing knowledge before formal evaluation begins), administering tests when students are prepared, marking according to contextual needs, and monitoring instructions.

Topic-231: Introduction to Introducing Change

Curriculum design usually involves change when a new course replaces an existing one. Change or innovation needs consideration so planning work is rewarded by acceptance and appropriate use. An effective way is involving users closely in design and development. Types of change include introducing new course books, changing approaches, new techniques, changing national tests, introducing computer-assisted learning, and moving to standards-based assessment.

Attempts to introduce change are not always successful due to cultural inappropriateness or flawed introduction processes. The cascade model of diffusion (training a few teachers to train others) often doesn't succeed. Two important aspects: change in curriculum and change in minds of people affected. Innovation theory is relevant to curriculum change.

Topic-232: Steps in Introducing Change

Steps to increase likelihood of successful change:

1. Make sure change is really needed
2. Plan type of change so it's not too great or too small
3. Make sure enough people see change is possible
4. Use wide range of change strategies
5. Be prepared for change to take a long time

Topic-233: Seeing the Need for Change and Deciding on the Size of the Change

Change occurs most easily if people are dissatisfied with the present situation. Stoller's research suggests the size of change should not be too great or too small. Six scales for describing size: explicitness, visibility, originality, compatibility with past practices, difficulty/complexity, and flexibility. The best size is in the middle area of each scale — the Goldilocks syndrome (not too big, not too small, but just right).

Example: Book Flood experiment (Elley and Mangubhai, 1981): Spending ¾ of class time on extensive reading was a big change from normal teacher-fronted courses. However, ¼ of time remained the same, little training was needed, attractive resources available, and teachers read quietly when learners did, reducing work. One teacher couldn't accept the change and his class's achievement was at control group level.

Topic-234: Realistic Change

Change must be obvious that it's possible and will be an improvement with more gains than losses. Useful to view from several viewpoints: resources to support change, people involved, and people who will receive ultimate benefit (learners). Learners may be directly involved through negotiated syllabus.

Topic-235: Teacher Beliefs

What teachers do in the classroom is determined by what they believe. The notion of teacher as transmitter has been replaced by recognition of teachers' complex mental lives — teacher cognition — "the hidden side of teaching" (Freeman, 2002). Introducing change means addressing teacher beliefs. However, teacher beliefs and behavior are not necessarily the same — contextual factors can facilitate or constrain practice.

Professional development contributes to teacher cognition. Both pre-service and in-service training participants arrive with pre-existing beliefs based on their experiences as learners and teachers.

Topic-236: Using a Variety of Change Strategies

Kennedy (1987) describes three major approaches to change:

1. Power–coercive: Change through authority, rules, top-down pressure
2. Rational–empirical: Change through explaining, justifying, showing reasons
3. Normative–re-educative: Change through discussion, involvement, negotiation

These should support each other rather than be alternatives. Change is more likely if people see authority support (power–coercive), good reasons (rational–empirical), and feel they participate and "own" the change (normative–re-educative).

Topic-237: Innovation, Management and Long-Term Support

White (1987) sees innovation as involving management of stages: defining aims, defining end results, gathering information, defining what has to be done, action, and reviewing/evaluating. Markee (1997) provides principles for curricular innovation: innovation is complex, change agents must effect desired changes, good communication is key, strategic approach to managing change is needed, innovation is messy and unpredictable, it takes longer than anticipated, proposals will be misunderstood, implementers need a stake, and change agents should work through opinion leaders.

Topic-238: Introduction and Significance of In-Service Courses

In-service courses involve teacher development after initial training and teaching experience. They may be long-term (Diplomas, Masters) or short-term (hours or days). Planning a short in-service course involves similar decisions to planning a language course, and they are a major way of bringing about innovative curriculum change.

Topic-239: Features of an Effective Workshop

Goals: Workshops can have five goals — understanding and remembering new ideas, experiencing and evaluating exercises, producing material or exercises, planning units of work, and problem solving.

Content: New information sources include pre-reading, prepared talks, model activities, spontaneous discussion, and feedback.

Presentation: Participants need to be interested and active. Over a two-hour period, there should be about four changes in activity type, group size, focus of attention, or medium. Arrangements for tea/coffee and food are almost obligatory.

Topic-240: Procedures and Activities for Reaching Goals

Ellis (1986) distinguishes experiential practices (actual teaching, real or simulated) and awareness-raising practices (conscious understanding of principles, techniques, issues). Awareness-raising involves choosing from three ranges: input data (videos, transcripts, readings, textbooks, lesson plans, case studies, student work), tasks or operations (comparing, preparing), and workshop procedures (lectures, group discussion, individual work, demonstrations).

Topic-241: Understanding and Remembering Ideas

Understanding enables better-informed experiencing, making, planning, or problem solving. Lamb (1995) found a range of effects one year after a workshop: no uptake, confusion, mislabelling, appropriation, assimilation, adaptation and rejection, and engagement. Lamb's main point: the main focus of short in-service workshops should be teachers' beliefs themselves. Workshops should involve other goals besides understanding, provide written records, and set modest, realistic aims.

Topic-242: Experiencing and Evaluating

An important way of making a technique part of teaching is experiencing it as learner and teacher and reflecting. An interesting principle: "If you want teachers to use the activities you demonstrate, do a poor demonstration" — a good demonstration makes them think "I couldn't do it that well," while a poor one makes them think "I can do better."

Topic-243: Making Material

Two major approaches: Perfection through gradual approximation (quickly make first attempt, receive feedback, revise) — advantages include several opportunities and speed as aim. Perfection through preparation (analyze model, study steps, plan, then make) — advantages include reasonably good first attempt and closer theory-practice relationship.

Topic-244: Planning Lessons and Units of Work

This goal is particularly useful when participants have been introduced to a new activity and must decide how to use it in their own teaching. Harmer (1984) describes an activity using blank timetables and cards with activity names and times.

Topic-245: Sequencing the Components of a Workshop

Palmer found experiencing, problem solving, and making activities were more likely to lead to adoption than understanding. Effective sequencing: experience innovation first, reflect on impact (planning), adapt to own circumstances (making), then evaluate. A major decision is whether speaker input comes at the beginning or after exploring needs.

Topic-246: Evaluating Workshops

Workshops can be assessed using parts of the curriculum design diagram — looking at needs and whether they were met, whether environmental constraints were considered, whether sensible principles were followed.

Topic-247: Introduction to Integrating Internet-Based Materials

This lesson provides guidance on three approaches to integrating internet-based reading materials. Design is determined by teacher's pedagogical approach, technological expertise, and students' language proficiency. Lesson designs distinguish themselves in: learning resources, scope of learning environment, learning tasks, and degree of teacher/learner involvement.

Topic-248: Developing Internet-Based Lessons: Sound Pedagogical Rationale and Design

Chun and Plass (2000) mention WWW capabilities: universal availability of authentic materials, communication through networking, multimedia capabilities, and nonlinear hypermedia structure. However, there are challenges: limitations on interactivity and bandwidth, students getting lost in hyperlinked structure, no control over quality/accuracy, and little theoretical/empirical research demonstrating how to use materials.

Topic-249: Strengths and Challenges in Integrating Internet-Based Materials

Five key questions for evaluating internet-based reading lessons: Does the design justify use of the medium? Are materials and tasks appropriate for proficiency level? Do activities engage learners in real-world meaningful tasks? How do students demonstrate learning? Are all instructions clearly stated? Are all hyperlinks functional?

Topic-250: Instructional Guidelines

Are students prepared for project-oriented work? Provide clear guidelines on process and nature, allow topic/materials selection, but teacher plays role of guide. Are students familiar with research process? Introduce models like McKenzie's "Iterative Research Cycle" (questioning, planning, gathering, sifting, synthesizing, evaluating). Do students know how to search the Internet? Additional training in search engines and information-seeking skills may be needed.

Topic-251: What Can WWW Offer ESL Teachers? -I

Models and guidelines based on theoretical/empirical research are rare. Focus is on exploration of authentic materials in visual and verbal/textual modes, concentrating on reading skills. Three different approaches to using internet-based resources will be presented.

Topic-252: What Can WWW Offer ESL Teachers? -II

Example: Li and Hart introduced "Exchange" magazine offering platform for teachers and students to exchange views through discussion board. Students wrote for the magazine, developed e-writing skills, and gained cultural awareness by exchanging writings. This incorporated students with diverse demographic backgrounds.

Topic-253: Advantages of Electronic Medium Over Print

Internet-based language learning (IBLL) engages students through emails and blogs, promotes learner autonomy, transforms passive into active learning, helps students engage in collaborative work, provides retrievable feedback mode, and is a positive forum for shy/passive students.

Topic-254: Templates for Interactive Exercises

Templates vary and depend on teacher discretion. Video conferencing exposes learners to native speaking style. Digital text (digital version of printed books) can be listened to, improving listening and reading skills. Talking texts enhance listening proficiency and allow attention to intonation patterns.

Topic-255: Background to English Language Curriculum Policies in Pakistan

In Pakistan, public schools follow the national curriculum while private schools can adopt or devise their own. Textbooks are presumed to be based on the relevant curriculum/syllabus. This lesson critically discusses the 2002 and 2006 versions of the national English language curriculum.

Topic-256: Evaluation of NCEL 2006: Grades I-XII -I

The 2006 curriculum is more comprehensive than 2002. It discusses English's importance in Pakistan and introduces English as a language from grade one, to be used as medium of instruction. However, no attempt examines patterns of English use in the country — general phrases like "higher learning" and "better career options" indicate an ad-hoc approach.

Topic-257: Evaluation of NCEL 2006 -II

The curriculum has a "product dimension" approach using both "knowledge based" and "skills based" objectives organized as competencies, further classified into standards, composed of benchmarks for different developmental levels (I-II, III-V, VI-VIII, IX-X, XI-XII), specified into student learning objectives grade-wise.

It follows both "language use" and "language analysis" approaches, emphasizing reading and writing skills while dealing with all four skills. It stresses both accuracy and fluency.

Topic-258: Evaluation of NCEL 2006 -III

Textbooks remain one of the most extensively used resources. The curriculum proposes textbooks will not be the only resource for assessment but a "contributing resource." Teachers should "adapt and supplement" material. The curriculum provides guidelines for textbook writers to base each unit on relevant student learning outcomes.

Topic-259: Evaluation of NCEL 2006 -IV

Strengths: focuses on all language aspects (structure, phonology, lexis, discourse, four skills), suggests variety of activities and texts, introduces purposeful reading and writing, deals with functional oral interaction.

Weaknesses: no mention of listening comprehension activities, covert emphasis on reading/writing despite oral skills being necessary in Pakistani job market, 50% of suggested themes are didactic, stress on Pakistani cultural content at lower grades.

Topic-260: Review of Reading Goals in NCEL

Standard 1: All students will search for, discover, and understand a variety of text types through tasks requiring multiple reading and thinking strategies for comprehension, fluency, and enjoyment.

Standard 2: All students will read and analyze literary text to seek information, ideas, enjoyment, and relate experiences to common humanity.

Asghar (2013) notes that due to classroom situations and curriculum development issues, teachers and learners couldn't achieve NCEL goals. Texts don't relate to learners' immediate situations, and language/themes may be above or below learners' level.

Topic-261: Critical Analysis of English Language Curriculum, Text