Goals Content Sequencing Anna Avetisyan Nazeli Gevorgyan Arevik Khachatryan

Guidelines for Deciding the Content and Sequencing of a Course I am Jayden Smith I am here because I love to give presentations. You can find me

Goals and Content Plan and evaluate the content according to one or more of the following areas: LANGUAGE TEXTSKILLSIDEAS If poor content is chosen then excellent teaching and learning result in a poor return for learning effort.

Units of progression  The units of progression in a course are items that are used to grade the progress of the course. Objectives?

Units of progression  The units of progression can be divided in two categories: Definite series of progress→ vocabulary A field of knowledge covered in any order→ topics

Units of progression Units of progression can be used to:  set targets and paths to those targets.  check the adequacy of selection and ordering in a course.  monitor and report on learners’ progress and achievement in the course.

The sequencing of vocabulary in a course can be loosely based on frequency levels as it is in series of graded readers.  First words= 75%  Second 1.000words= 5%  570 academic words=10% of academic text Vocabulary major unit of progression very useful items + infrequent items a normal language use Grammar

Functions ❏ Imparting and seeking factual information ❏ Expressing and finding out intellectual attitudes ❏ Expressing and finding out emotional attitude ❏ Expressing and finding out moral attitude ❏ Getting things done ❏ Socialising ❏ Imparting and seeking factual information ❏ Expressing and finding out attitudes ❏ Suasion ❏ Socialising ❏ Structuring discourse ❏ Communication repair

Discourse  Attention to elements of spoken discourse, such as ellipses between speakers and negotiation discourse may occur early in language courses but is rarely the unit of progression for a course.  If a learner is to gain a useful coverage of language feature the genres that occur in the course should match the genres that the learner will need to work with outside the course.

Skills & SubSkills Some courses use skills and subskills as their units of progression. There are 3 ways of defining sub-skills: 1- To look at the range of activities covered by a skill such as speaking. 2- To look at the skill as a process and to divide it into the parts of the process and this is a typical way of approaching writing. 3- To divide up a skill is to use levels of cognitive activity → Bloom’s Taxonomy.

Bloom’s Taxonomy Knowledge Comprehension Application Analysis Synthesis Evaluation

IDEAS Within the classroomOutside the classroom

Task-based syllabuses Using a task Using a language To convey a message Task ? - an activity requiring learners to use language with emphasis on meaning to attain an objective

Sequencing the content Linear approach → beginning with simple items and going to more complex items Disadvantages: 1.Not being able to check absentees 2.Teaching wide variety of Ss with different needs and styles 3.The need of re-using materials of the course 4.No revision of the learned topic

Time for Brainstorming Spiral curriculum Matrix model Revision units Field approach

Let’s Check Spiral curriculum- Decide on the most important topics or contents and teach them several times, going from the simpler to the most complex. It has the main characteristic that it is progressive. Also it lets that students that were left behind can catch up in the next learning session. Matrix model- The main difference with the previous one is that “the change when meeting an old material again is one of diversity rather than complexity” Revision units- They are just an extra part of the linear model. In the linear model, there is a lot of revising of previous knowledge to be done. Field approach- The items that will be taught are selected upon and the students can start and end at any point, as long as they study all the contents.

Linear Approach vs Modular Approach  Breaks a course into independent non-linear units  Each unit is complete by it and usually doesn’t require previous knowledge

Thanks! questions?