[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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
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) turning ideas into written text, (6) reviewing 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
78 Goals, Content and Sequencing
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, eating, 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.
Goals, Content and Sequencing 79
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
weakness.
B The ideas content of the course increases the acceptability and useful-
ness of the course outside the classroom because:
1 the ideas content helps in the learner s job, study or living. ESP, study
skills and language survival courses aim to do this.
2 the ideas content develops awareness of another culture or cultures.
It may promote international understanding and it may encourage
learners to accept the norms and values of other cultures.
3 the ideas content maintains and supports the learners own culture. This
criterion and the preceding one (awareness of other cultures) are some-
times seen to be in conflict (see Adaskou et al., 1990; Alptekin and
Alptekin, 1984), particularly where parents and teachers see the norms
and behaviour of native speakers of English as a threat to the local
culture.
4 the ideas content helps learners develop intellectually by making them
aware of important and challenging ideas. Courses which focus on issues
like conservation or on important discoveries try to do this.
5 the ideas content helps learners develop emotionally and socially.
Courses which use a humanistic approach or make use of values clarifi-
cation activities have this goal.
6 the ideas content of the course meets the expectations of the learners
and their parents.
The justifications listed above can be reclassified according to the parts of the
curriculum design model. For example, the last justification listed above
regarding learners and teachers expectations relates to constraints. The
second to last justification regarding emotional and social development
relates to needs.
The choice of the ideas content of a course will have a major effect on the
marketability and acceptability of the course. It needs very careful consider-
ation and application of the findings of needs analysis and environment
analysis.
80 Goals, Content and Sequencing
Task-based Syllabuses
With the shift to communicative language teaching in the 1970s there was an [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]