ACE TESOL Diploma Program – London Language Institute OBJECTIVES You will understand: 1. The difference between a course, curriculum, and syllabus. 2. A framework for curriculum design. 3. The difference between course rationale and course objectives. You will be able to: 1. Quickly evaluate the completeness and effectiveness of an existing curriculum; 2. Follow the curriculum design framework.

ACE TESOL Diploma Program – London Language Institute A COURSE, CURRICULUM AND SYLLABUS A course is a description of a prescribed set of things to learn. A curriculum is the description of how that prescribed set of things will be taught and learned. In other words, the curriculum is the complete structure of the course, including needs analysis, syllabus, materials, assessments, and course evaluation. Although the term “syllabus” is often interchanged with “curriculum”, the word is usually used to signify only course content and how it is ordered, not all of the other pieces that go around the content. Throughout the curriculum design modules, we will keep this distinction clear and will use curriculum when talking about the whole course structure and syllabus when talking about the course content piece.

ACE TESOL Diploma Program – London Language Institute COURSE, CURRICULUM AND SYLLABUS Visually, the relationship among these three concepts looks like this:

ACE TESOL Diploma Program – London Language Institute CURRICULUM DESIGN FRAMEWORK Many different sets of principles, processes and frameworks of curriculum design have been proposed over the years for language courses. Perhaps the simplest way to consider a curriculum design framework is to look at the questions that a curriculum must answer, in order to have enough information to be able to implement the course effectively. From those questions, we can determine the components that make up the curriculum framework. Note that in the curriculum design process, not all components of the curriculum will be completed by the same person, or in the case of larger institutions, the same department. In some organizations, responsibilities for different aspects of the curriculum framework are allocated to different people or different departments. However, it is important for everyone involved in curriculum design and delivery to understand all components of the framework and all stages of the design process. *See p. 577 of this module’s lecture notes for a sample list of questions that each curriculum component answers.

ACE TESOL Diploma Program – London Language Institute A PROCESS CHART FOR CURRICULUM DESIGN The questions and curriculum components from the curriculum design framework can also be put into a process chart. The components are generally (but not always) completed in the order in which they are listed above. *A visual representation is shown on p. 578 of this module’s lecture notes.

ACE TESOL Diploma Program – London Language Institute COURSE RATIONALE The course rationale is a general statement of what the overall purpose of the course is, and should be a paragraph in length. It should answer specific questions such as:  What is the profile of a typical student that is expected in the course?  Why is it important for these students to take the course?  Why is it important for the school or organization to offer the course?  Why should money be spent on developing and delivering this course and not another course? Having a strong course rationale allows you to justify the existence of the course to administrators. Without a strong course rationale, you are left thinking, “Great course, interesting material, but so what?” In other words, a course rationale lets you stave off the “so what?” *See p. 579 of this module’s lecture notes for three samples of course rationales.

ACE TESOL Diploma Program – London Language Institute COURSE OBJECTIVES The words aim, goal, and objective are often interchanged. To differentiate among the words, a goal or aim as the general purpose of the course and the objectives are the specific purposes. However, for the curriculum design framework presented in this course, the three words are considered interchangeable. Another term that curriculum designers use for objective is Intended Learning Outcome (ILO). In the grammar-translation days of English language teaching, when language was treated as an academic subject, course objectives focused primarily on knowledge about the language that students were supposed to learn. Audio-lingual instruction started a shift towards the performance aspect of language, by focusing teachers and students on language for communication. Objectives started to look at what students should be able to do with the language, rather than on what knowledge they should learn. Communicative language continued to shift course objectives towards performance, or as they were now called, competencies. Competencies are measurable behaviour changes in language use that are required for success in the real world. A useful abbreviation for competencies, that was introduced in the ACE TESOL course, is “SWBAT”: “Students will be able to”.

ACE TESOL Diploma Program – London Language Institute COGNITIVE AND BEHAVIOURAL OBJECTIVES Most recent variations on communicative language teaching have combined cognitive objectives (what students will learn about the language) with behavioural objectives (what students will be able to do with the language). An effective course objective, therefore, has both of these pieces in it. In addition to what students will learn and be able to do, the course objectives also specify the general topic area of the course. Objectives should therefore have three components: the topic area, the language to be learned, and the skill which students will be able to complete as a result of learning the language. Other key characteristics of effective course objectives include:  Detailed  Specific  Achievable  Relevant Objectives for a course can also include non-language outcomes, which may include:  Increase student confidence when communicating in specific situations  Enhance student motivation  Improve student understanding of the target culture  Introduce students to culturally appropriate behaviours for a specific situation *See pp of this module’s lecture notes for three samples of course objectives.

ACE TESOL Diploma Program – London Language Institute Complete Task Journal questions 2 and 3 and submit via to (preferred) or print and hand in.