PRINCIPALES ESPECIES EN DIFERENTES SUBSECTORES (%) EN 2020

The aim of this part of the curriculum design process is to make a list of the items to teach in the order in which they will be taught.

Content and sequencing must take account of the environment in which the course will be used, the needs of the learners, and principles of teaching and learning. Table 5.1 lists some of the factors to consider.

Guidelines for Deciding or Checking the Content and Sequencing of a Course

Table 5.1 Content and sequencing guidelines

ENVIRONMENT Learners The ideas in the course should help learning in the classroom.

The ideas in the course should suit the age of the learners.

The content should take account of what learners expect to see in an English course.

The sequencing of the content should allow for some learners being absent for some classes.

Teachers The language in the course should be able to be modelled and comprehended by the teacher.

Situation The number of lessons in the course should suit the school term or year.

The ideas in the course should increase the

acceptability and usefulness of the course outside the classroom.

NEEDS Lacks The content should suit the proficiency level of the learners.

Wants The content should take account of what learners want.

Necessities The content should be what learners need.

PRINCIPLES See Chapter 4 for the relevant principles.

Chapter 5

Goals and Content

The goals of a language lesson can focus on one or more of the following:

Language, Ideas, Skills or Text (Discourse). It is possible to plan or evaluate the content of courses by looking at each of these four areas. Within each of these four areas, choices have to be made regarding the units for planning and checking the course. For example, in the area of language, the units may be based on vocabulary (as in Advanced English Vocabulary by Helen Barnard), verb forms and verb patterns (as in 101 Substitution Tables by H.V. George), sentence patterns (as in English 901 by P. Strevens), or language functions (as in Orbit by J. Harrison and P. Menzies). Often a combination of language units is used. The Longman Structural Readers Series combines vocabulary control with control of verb and sentence patterns. Some courses cover language items through organising lessons around topics.

Even if the selection of content for a course is based on topics, themes or situations, it is useful to check to see that the language items that are covered are the most useful ones.

Making sensible, well-justified decisions about content is one of the most important parts of curriculum design. If poor content is chosen, then excellent teaching and learning result in a poor return for learning effort.

Some curriculum designers break goals down into smaller well-specified performance objectives (Brown, 1995). As we will see in Chapter 7, this is especially useful for monitoring and assessing learners’ progress. Even if a course designer does not want to go to this level of detail, there is value in setting smaller goals for the various strands or skill subdivisions of a course.

The way these smaller goals are detailed will depend partly on the unit of progression for the course.

The Units of Progression in the Course

The units of progression in a course are the items that are used to grade the progress of the course. For example, if the starting point of a course was language items, and, in particular, vocabulary, the units of progression would be words, and at a broader level, word frequency levels which are similar to those used in grading the levels of simplified readers. Similarly the academic word list is presented in ten sub-lists ranging from the most frequent to the least frequent (Coxhead, 2000). If the starting point of a course was topics, then the units of progression would also be topics with progress through the course being marked by an increasing number of topics covered. Long and Crookes (1993: 9–19) call units of progression “units of analysis” and argue that the choice of the unit of analysis should be one of the starting points of curriculum design. Harden and Witte (2006) explore the different kinds of progression from a historical perspective, noting that “the notion of Goals, Content and Sequencing 71

progression has undergone remarkable changes throughout the history of foreign language teaching methodologies” (p. 11).

The units of progression can be classified into two types – those that progress in a definite series, such as vocabulary levels, and those that represent a field of knowledge that could be covered in any order, such as topics.

Table 5.2 shows units of progression for a range of starting points. The order of items within a field is determined by pedagogical considerations and constraints such as keeping the learners’ interest, making use of available resources, and allowing for recycling of material. Harden notes (2006: 29) that there is a big difference between progress (learning) and progression (how the course moves forward) – “there seems to exist an enormous gap between the structure underlying a course and the one that individuals subjectively create for themselves.”

Although certain units of progression may be used to select and sequence the material in a course, it is useful to check that other units are covered in the course and that other units are at an appropriate level. For example, a course that uses topics as its units of progression should also be checked to see that vocabulary is at the appropriate level for the learners and that there is reasonable coverage of useful vocabulary. It is not easy to check all these things in a course, so teachers must decide which are most important for the goals of the course and check on those.

What Will the Progression be Used For?

So far we have looked at designing a course as the aim for deciding on the units of progression in a course. However, units of progression can be used for a variety of purposes:

1 Units of progression can be used to set targets and paths to those targets.

2 Units of progression can be used to check the adequacy of selection and ordering in a course.

3 Units of progression can be used to monitor and report on learners’

progress and achievement in the course.

Although a course may seem to have several units of progression, there is usually one on which the others are dependent. Thus a course may seem to have both a grammar and function progression, but a careful study of what changes in each lesson and what reoccurs may show that it is, for example, the grammar points that determine what functions will occur.

Let us now look briefly at units of progression to see what information is available to guide in the choice and sequencing of the items.

72 Goals, Content and Sequencing

Vocabulary

There is considerable frequency-based research that provides clear indica-tions of what vocabulary learners would gain most benefit from knowing.

This research shows strikingly the value of ensuring that learners have good control of the high-frequency vocabulary of the language. Typically,

•

^the first 1,000 words account for 75 per cent of the successive words in a text

•

the second 1,000 words account for 5 per cent of the successive words in a text

•

570 academic words account for 10 per cent of the successive words in an academic text.

Nation (2001) argues that the low-frequency vocabulary of the language (vocabulary not in the most frequent 2,000 words or in the academic word list) does not deserve teaching effort. Rather, strategies for dealing with and learning this vocabulary should receive the teacher’s attention. A list of the 2,000 most frequent words in English can be found in West (1953), and in the rank list of frequency counts, such as Kucˇera and Francis (1967). As mentioned earlier, a list of the most frequent wide-range academic vocabu-lary can be found in Coxhead (2000).

Table 5.2 Units of progression

Starting point Type Units of progression Determinants of progression

Vocabulary Series Words Frequency levels

Occurrence in tasks

Grammar Series Grammatical

constructions

Frequency Acquisition stages Complexity

Language use Field Functions

Ideas Field Topics

Themes

Discourse Field Topic types

Genre Situations and roles Field Situations

Roles

Component skills Series Subskills Order of complexity

Strategies Field Strategies

Outcomes Field Real life outcomes

Task outcomes

Goals, Content and Sequencing 73

The sequencing of vocabulary in a course can be loosely based on frequency levels as it is in series of graded readers such as the Longman Structural Readers or the Oxford Bookworms Library. The COBUILD course (Willis and Willis, 1989), as another example, consists of three books covering 700, 850, and 950 words apiece, making a total of 2,500 words.

The sequencing of vocabulary should not be based on lexical sets or the grouping together of opposites or near synonyms (Higa, 1963; Tinkham, 1993) (see Chapter 4 of this book for discussion of this). There should also be the opportunity for learners to meet the same vocabulary in a variety of contexts and across the four strands of a course.

Grammar

There are several frequency counts of verb form usage in English which can act as the basis for the selection and sequencing of items in a course (George, 1963b; Joos, 1964; Dusˇková and Urbanová, 1967). Appendix 1 contains a list from H.V. George’s Verb Form Frequency Count.

George (1963b) suggests that a reasonable basis for Stage 1 of a course (1,500 to 2,000 words over roughly two years of five periods of English per week) would consist of the following verbs.

•

^Imperative

•

Don’t + stem (Imperative)

•

Simple Present Actual and Neutral

•

Verb + to + stem

•

Simple Past Narrative and Actual

•

Past Participle

This group of items accounts for 575 of every 1,000 successive verb forms in written English.

Stage 2 of a course could add the following items.

•

Simple Past Neutral and Habitual

•

Past Perfect from Simple Past Narrative

•

Stem+ing in Free Adjuncts

•

Noun + to + Stem

•

Simple Present Iterative and Future

•

Verb + to + Stem (Stem dominant)

•

Verb + Noun + to + Stem

•

Noun + Preposition + Stem+ing

•

Stem+ed = Adjective in a Noun Group

•

Stem+ing = Adjective in a Noun Group

•

Stem+ing = Noun

•

Can + Stem (immediately and characteristically able)

•

May + Stem (possibility and uncertainty) 74 Goals, Content and Sequencing

•

^{’ll + Stem}

•

Must + Stem (necessity from circumstances)

Stage 1 and Stage 2 items together account for 756 of every 1,000 successive verb forms. Stage 2 verb forms occur more often than once in two pages of text and less often than once per page (George, 1963a).

Items for Stage 3 of a course do not occur frequently and their frequency depends on the type of material the learner is going to read. Many would be learned only for receptive use. Items like verb + to + stem occur early in the sequence because they allow learners to fulfil language needs (I like to sing;

I want to go).

Many courses use grammar as the major unit of progression. Unfortunately the selection and sequencing of the items is at the best opportunistic and gives no consideration of the value of learning particular items. Courses thus include a strange mixture of very useful items and items that occur relatively infrequently in normal language use. Infrequent items can be usefully introduced in courses where they are needed to be learned as memorised phrases (lexicalised sentence stems) rather than as structures to focus on.

Functions

There is no standard list of language functions that is accompanied by frequency data. The most widely available list of functions can be found in Van Ek and Alexander (1980) and is organised under the six headings of:

1 Imparting and seeking factual information 2 Expressing and finding out intellectual attitudes 3 Expressing and finding out emotional attitudes 4 Expressing and finding out moral attitudes 5 Getting things done (suasion)

6 Socialising.

Dobson (1979) presents a similar brief list. Council of Europe (2001) builds on the earlier list, adding new emphases.

1 Imparting and seeking factual information 2 Expressing and finding out attitudes 3 Suasion

4 Socialising

5 Structuring discourse 6 Communication repair.

Some courses use functions as their unit of progression with each lesson focusing on a different function or set of functions. Often however courses are called “functional” but really have grammatical structures as their units of Goals, Content and Sequencing 75

progression. Each new structure is described in functional terms but it is the sequence of structures determining the sequence of the lessons.

The danger with functionally based courses is that curriculum designers sometimes feel the need to present several different ways of expressing the same function, for example, several ways of refusing something. This can result in interference between these somewhat similar expressions, making them more difficult to learn because they keep getting mixed up in the learner’s mind. In addition, learners usually feel little motivation for learning to say the same thing in several ways. This interference trap is easily avoided by initially presenting only the most useful way of expressing a function.

Discourse

Discourse as the basis for units of progression is more likely to be used in pre-university courses where learners systematically cover a range of relevant genres such as recounts, information reports and arguments. Attention to elements of spoken discourse, such as ellipsis between speakers and negoti-ation of discourse, may occur early in language courses but is rarely the unit of progression for a course.

Biber’s (1990) work on the co-occurrence of language features in differ-ent types of texts indicates that curriculum designers should check the genres that are covered in their courses to make sure that learners are not getting a distorted view of language features. Biber found that certain text types are rich in certain language features, but contain few instances of others. If a learner is to gain a useful coverage of language features, the genres that occur in the course should match the genres that the learner will need to work with outside the course. For example, are learners getting plenty of narrative but very little of information report even though they will need to work with information report texts a lot in their academic study? Table 5.3 contains Biber’s text types and these may serve as a simple checklist for a course. Biber (1990) also describes the grammatical features that cluster in these various groups.

Skills, Subskills and Strategies

Some courses use skills and subskills as their units of progression. Reading courses for example may focus on skills such as finding the main idea, reading for detail, notetaking, skimming, reading faster, and reading for inferences.

There are three major ways of defining subskills. One is to look at the range of activities covered by a skill such as speaking and to use these as a starting point for defining subskills (see Munby, 1978: 176–184; Alderson, 1990;

Weir et al., 1990). For example, speaking can be divided into interactional speaking and transactional speaking (Brown, 1978). Transactional speaking can be divided into monologue, dialogue etc.

76 Goals, Content and Sequencing

Another way is to look at the skill as a process and to divide it into the parts of the process. This is a typical way of approaching writing, dividing the writing process into parts. One possible division of the process is: (1) having a model of the reader, (2) having writing goals, (3) gathering ideas, (4) organis-ing ideas, (5) turnorganis-ing ideas into written text, (6) revieworganis-ing what has just been written, and (7) editing the written text. Process divisions can be applied in other skills.

A third way of dividing up a skill is to use levels of cognitive activity.

The most well-known approach of this kind can be found in what is popularly known as Bloom’s taxonomy (Bloom, 1956). Bloom divides cog-nitive activity into six levels of increasing complexity: (1) knowledge, (2) comprehension, (3) application, (4) analysis, (5) synthesis, (6) evaluation.

These levels have often been applied to the construction of reading Table 5.3 Text types and texts from Biber (1990)

Text type Texts

Intimate interpersonal interaction

Telephone with friends Face-to-face conversation Informational interaction Telephone about business Face-to-face conversation Telephone with less close friends Spontaneous speeches

Interviews Personal letters Scientific exposition Academic prose

Official documents Learned exposition Official documents

Press reviews Popular magazines Academic prose

Imaginative narrative Fiction – romance, mystery, adventure, general Prepared speeches

General narrative exposition Humour Press editorials Press reportage Non-sports broadcasts Religion

Biographies Science fiction Situated reportage Sports broadcasts

Involved persuasion Spontaneous speeches, interviews, professional letters Popular magazines

Goals, Content and Sequencing 77

comprehension activities (see Kraus-Srebic et al., 1981; Chikalanga, 1992;

Day and Park, 2005).

There are now comprehensive lists of strategies for language learning and language use (Oxford, 1990; Brown, 2006: Chapter 5).

Ideas

A good language course not only develops the learners’ control of the lan-guage but also puts the learners in contact with ideas that help the learning of language and are useful to the learners. The ideas content of a course can take many forms. The following list is adapted from Cook (1983). The ideas content of a course can be about:

1 imaginary happenings. The course could follow the typical activities or adventures of a group of learners or native speakers.

2 an academic subject. Examples would be linguistics or the special purpose of the learners such as agriculture, tourism, commerce or computing.

3 learner survival needs. These can arise from suggestions by the learners or investigation by the teacher. They may include topics like shopping, going to the doctor, getting a driver’s licence, and making friends. Van Ek and Alexander (1980) provide a detailed list of topics under 14 main headings covering daily use of language.

4 interesting facts. These might include topics like the discovery of penicil-lin, whales and solar power.

5 culture. Adaskou, Britten and Fahsi (1990) divide culture into aesthetic which includes the study of literature, sociological which looks at norms of behaviour and cultural values, semantic which looks at word meaning and the classification and organisation of experience, and sociolinguistic which involves the appropriate use of language. Adaskou et al. see the greatest threat to the local culture coming from the sociological focus.

However, all four aspects of culture could contradict and threaten the local culture. See Witte (2006) for a description of seven stages of “cul-tural progression” (sociological) moving from explicit knowledge of inter-related aspects of the native and non-native cultures (such as hous-ing, eathous-ing, school) to markedly different conceptualisations between the cultures (such as notions of cleanliness and politeness) to understanding the culture from an insider’s view and gaining a distanced view of one’s own culture.

The following list of criteria can be used to guide and evaluate the choice of ideas in a language course. The criteria are in two groups, those that help the learning within the classroom, and those that make the language course acceptable and useful outside the classroom.

78 Goals, Content and Sequencing

A The ideas content of the course helps learning in the classroom because:

1 the ideas content makes the learners interested and motivated in their study of the language.

2 the ideas content encourages normal language use. That is, it involves ideas that can be talked about in a natural way in the classroom.

3 it makes learning easier because the ideas are already familiar to the learners and they can thus give full attention to language items.

4 the ideas content is familiar to the teacher and thus allows the teacher to work from a position of strength. For example, teachers of ESP courses in agriculture who are not trained in agriculture work from a position of

4 the ideas content is familiar to the teacher and thus allows the teacher to work from a position of strength. For example, teachers of ESP courses in agriculture who are not trained in agriculture work from a position of

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