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In the name of God

Chapter 8 Course Design

Chapter aims:

Discuss the steps and criteria for an integrated approach to course design

Suggest an organizational framework for grouping and ordering course items

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Parameters of a course design:

1) Should the course be intensive or extensive2) Should the learners performance be assessed or non-

assessed3) Should the course deal with immediate needs or with delayed

needs?4) Should the role of the teacher be that of the provider of

knowledge and activities , or should it be as a facilitator of activities arising from learners’ expresses wants?

5) Should the course have a broad or narrow focus?6) Should the course be pre-study or pre-experience or run

parallel with that study or experience?7) Should the material be common-core or specific to learners

study or work?

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8) Should the group taking the course be homogeneous or should it be heterogeneous?

9) Should the course design be worked out by the language teacher after consultation with the learners and institution, or should it be subject to a process of negotiation with learners?

Parameters of a course design:

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Intensive or extensive?

Definition:

Intensive:

Extensive:

during an intensive ESP course the learners’ time is totally committed to that ESP course

an extensive ESP course occupies only a small part of a student’s timetable or a professional person’s work schedule

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Advantages of Intensive courses

The students are totally focused on their purpose for learning English.

If the course is residential, they can be immersed in an English-language environment, even outside the actual class session

They have no distraction.

Because of availability of time, a great deal of variety in the activities can be introduced.

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Disadvantages of Intensive courses

❑ Without reinforcement, what is learnt on the intensive course may lie dormant

❑ With longer courses the total concentration on English and the absence of academic or professional activity may become increasingly artificial.

❑ Decline in students’ motivation

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Advantages of extensive courses

❑ The course can run in parallel with the subject course or the professional activity and can relate to it, adopt to it as the learners’ experience or needs change, and generally remain flexible.

❑ Can increase motivation in EAP situations. How?In EAP situations where the ESP course is part of the timetable and the learners are assessed, the profile of ESP as a subject is raised, thereby increasing motivation.

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Disadvantages of extensive courses

❑ The main disadvantage of the extensive course is the potential lack of continuity between classes, particularly if the classes are infrequent(Robinson, 1991).

Each class and the material for it may have to be self contained in terms of both the aims of the class and the material used, which does not allow for carry-over between classes.

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Advantages of assessed course in EAP

Assessed or non-assessed

disadvantages of assessed course in EAP

a) It raises the status of the subject and should ensure that it is taken seriously by both students and the departments

a) Different groups may be taught by different teachers but take the same test validity issues

b) Because of validity issues, the teacher may lost freedom in the choice of topics and materials used on the course

Short intensive EOP courses are not usually concerned with testing learners’ proficiency

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Immediate or delayed needs

Immediate needs:

Refers to those needs that students have at the time of the course

Refers to those needs that will become more significant later

Delayed needs:

The main point is that, any pre-experience course, weather EAP or EOP, is by definition a course that deals with delayed needs.

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Role of the teacher in ESP courses

Teacher as a provider of input

The role of ESP teacher is very important and controversial. In many situations the teacher expects, or expected, to control the class, provide information about skills and language, to control the activities. In these situations the role of the teacher generally matches the expectations of the learners.

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Role of the teacher in ESP courses

Teacher as a facilitator or consultant

In this case, the ESP teacher manages the class rather than control. s/he will often get members of the class to bring material for exploitation in the class. A development of this is where the teacher knows relatively little about the content or the skill that is being taught In the ESP class, and proceeds by pulling together and organizing the information that learners are able to provide about the language or skill. In a sense, the ESP teacher becomes an equal with the students, but uses his or her greater knowledge of the language to help them interpret what is happening in the course. This role is a difficult one to adopt for any teacher, specially an inexperienced one and also in many cultures it is a role that is alien to traditional view of the role of the teacher

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Broad or narrow focus

By a broad focus we refer to a situation where we concentrate on a range of target events, such as study or professional skills, or a variety of genres.

The focus is broad because of the range of target events covered, but this does not imply that the skills are taught in general and superficial manner.

A broad focus has the advantages that it allows us to deal with a number of skills even if the actual need is one skill.

For example, in a specific focus in ESP course, students will welcome some general conversational work, or some presentation of background information about Britain, the USA, or other English speaking countries.Introducing some variety of this kind provides a broad focus for the course.

Broad focus

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Broad or narrow focus

By narrow focus (Williams, 1978) we mean that we concentrate on a few target events, for example just the listening skill, or just one or two genres.

A narrow focus does not necessarily mean that we only use specific carrier content for teaching material. We may focus narrowly on one or two skills, but use a wide range of general and specific carrier content to teach those skills and related language.

A narrow focus is appropriate where the needs are limited and the learners are convinced of the importance of concentrating just on those needs

Narrow focus

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Pre-experience or parallel with experience

By pre-experience we mean that the learners do not have experience of the target situation at the time of the ESP course.

Pre-experience ESP course

By parallel with experience we mean that the English course runs concurrently with the study course or professional activity.

Parallel with experience ESP course

The main point is that, we have to bear in mind we can not assume too much subject knowledge in the materials and need to focus on more common-core study or professional skills, because institutions or companies often send groups for English training before they have had too much professional or academic experience. Second point is that, there is always an advantage in teaching ESP to learners who already have some subject or professional knowledge. Why?

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Common-core or specific material

By common-core material we mean material that uses career content which is either of a general academic nature or of a general professional nature.

Common-core materials

By specific material we mean that the material uses carrier content that is drawn directly from the learners’ academic or professional area, such as topics that EAP students are following in their subject course.

Specific materials

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Homogeneous or heterogeneous groups

A Homogeneous group is a group which it’s members are from one discipline or profession.

Homogeneous group

A Heterogeneous group is a group which it’s members are from different discipline or profession.

Heterogeneous group

Difficult to introduce much specific work. Appropriate to look for topics and activities that are common to the various interests in the group.

If we have the option, it is better to set up homogeneous groups for ESP classes. If it is not possible for all sessions, then we should push for the opportunity to break groups down into homogeneous groups for at least some of the time.

Some points with regard Heterogeneous/homogeneous groups:

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Where groups are homogeneous, the ESP teacher has much more flexibility and choice about whether to use more specific materials, or to incorporate some specific materials into an essentially common-core course.

there should be a balance between specific and common-core materials. In situations where it is possible to use specific materials it may be desirable to use some common-core materials.

Some points with regard Heterogeneous/homogeneous groups:

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Fixed course design or flexible negotiated course design

A fixed course design is laid down in advance of the course and is rarely deviated from.

Fixed course design:

A flexible and negotiated course design allows room for change based on feedback from learners.

Flexible and negotiated course design:

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Fixed course design or flexible negotiated course design

Some key points:Where an EAP course is part of the subject’s timetable, and is assessed, it is important to ensure that all students have covered the same material and this will lead to a need for a more or less fixed course design.

Retrospective syllabus:In flexible negotiated course design, it is often the policy that a record is kept of the decisions made by the group about what should be taught and what skills and language this entails, and how much time was spent on each aspect of the course. Such records have been referred to as ‘retrospective’ syllabus.

A middle position on the continuum may well be used with a course following a more or less fixed design that also allows for some time to be spent on topics and issues that learners raise themselves.

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Developing a course outline

As we saw in previous slides, there are many factors to consider and a variety of situations in which courses are designed. Course design should be about what and why.

A first stage in course design is to fill in whatever information we have, without attempting to order it. Some of the items are the result of the needs analysis, other items stem from existing courses and available materials.

when we believe we have all the key items we should go through 4 steps:

Ordering target eventsThe role of the materialsTimetablingThe role of assessment and evaluation

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Ordering: criteria for prioritizing For the purpose of ordering, we should begin with target events and

rhetorical awareness

Target events: events in which the learners want to operate successfully. For example, writing laboratory reports

Target events need to be ordered. One criterion is according to when the target events are needed by the learners

The second key criterion is that using or learning certain language or skill is dependent on others. The linguistic building blocks must therefore come before or at the same time as they are needed.

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Now that we have ordered target events, we should go to skill areas

For example, we can break down writing assignments into four skill areas:

1.Writing a good introduction2.Citing sources and attributing ideas 3.Writing in an academic style4.Discussing data

Within those the students needed to develop an awareness of how to handle other’s ideas, what is acceptable to use, what should be quoted, what should be termed plagiarism.

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The role of materials

The material has two key roles in ESP course design:

The final choice of some features to be taught and the order they are taught in will come from the materials we select.

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Timetabling

Through timetabling, a final order for the course outline and a time allocation are reached.

In this step, we think about how to teach materials and how long different activities would require. That gives us a feel for whether everything could be included and which items had to have less time allocated to them.

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The role of assessment and evaluation

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THE END