Curriculum (1)

Language curriculum design has played a very crucial role in the success of a language teaching learning process. A number of efforts have been conducted to establish a good curriculum. Notions, functions and the best methods were discussed then selected to be implemented in language curriculum. Lots of language course just adapt one curriculum without investigating further whether it fits the laerners’ needs. This can become an issue since there is no language curriculum fitting all language learners’ needs.

There is a growing body of evidence which suggests that English for specific purpose course may not use general English curriculum (Bosher and Smalkoski, 2002; Brecht and Rivers, 2005; Guntermann, 1987; Long, 2005; Wang, 2006). How to develop a language curriculum for specific purposes has become a concern for years.

In designing a language curriculum, there are various points should be kept in mind. As the first point of departure is a need analysis. Long (2005) mentioned in analysing needs, a curriculum designer had to put three analysis on his mind, namely target situation analysis, means analysis and deficiency analysis. These measurements could serve to inform the aims, decide what available to teach, and also narrow the gaps between what the learners know and do not know and what they need in their target course or in their real life situation. The choices of instructors, materials and methods which can optimize the achievement of the course aims should be decided carefully. Long (1983) mentioned the theory of comprehensible input which is based on the belief that it is beneficial for the students to be exposed to the language input which is just a little beyond their current level of competence (Krashen 1981,1982) and it is important to involve learners in the meaningful negotiation of meaning to develop their communicative competence. And the task-based sylabus which mostly was suggested as the most suitable one for specific puposes curriculum should be designed with careful consideration (Ellis, 2003).

In addition, the involvement of a subject matter expert along with language teachers, learners or materials writers in designing a curriculum is also crucial (Long, 2005). Someone who has good knowledge of English does not guarantee he can teach any subjects in English. For this reason, a subject matter expert plays an important role owing to the fact he knows what terminologies and rules used in the real life situation.

Furthermore, to find whether the curriculum still have some weaknesses, an evaluation should be conducted. The evaluation can be in the form of a continuous discussion with the domain experts or the students’ point of views investigation. Towell and Tomlinson (1999) suggested the course could be evaluated largely by means of questionnaires to be completed by students. The students could inform to what extent the explicit and detailed objectives of the course had been attained.

Have we tried to investigate the needs? Have we taken the measurements suggested by the researchers above? Hopefully the answers are positive.

In a language curriculum design, we have to include some items needed in the teaching learning process. Here I will devide the items into 6 sections:

 

Section	Items should be described
Section 1	Training Specification ·      Description of the course ·      The aim of the course ·      Time allocation in general §  When is the course conducted §  How many weeks §  How many hours ·      Students §  Who are eligible to attend the course §  The minimum and maximum number of students ·      What the students should be able to achieve at the end of the course
Section 2	Course Management Include some basic details such as: ·      Where the course will be held ·      Who will teach the course ·      How will the hour be divided ·      What sort of thing will be done in the time allocation ·      What the sequence of instruction will be used §  How the training will be started, proceeded, and ended ·      Why the schedules were offered ·      The example of the twelve week time table ·      How the assessment will be done
Section 3	Course Resources Requirement ·      Instructors §  How many language expert and subject matter expert are needed §  What training needed by the instructors to be able to teach the course ·      Textbooks §  Books will be given to the students §  Books will be lent to the students ·      Other learning materials such as CD, cassettes ·      Classroom setting ·      Equipment needed in class room §   Tables, chairs, board, markers, etc.
Section 4	Training Modules ·      Course training outcomes (general and very broad) ·      Then specific about: §  What the learning outcomes are §  What the assessment criteria are ·      In addition, also mention the separated modules used in §  Classroom activities §  Language Laboratory activities §  Field trip
Section 5	Assessment The information include: ·      Assessment plan ·      Marking guide ·      How many percentage to pass ·      Policies §  What action will be taken to any students who failed. If there will be a retest, how many times. §  What action will be taken if the student still failed after administering the retest.
Section 6	Instructors’ Guide ·      What the instructors should do ·      The lesson plan for each teaching learning session

 

The process of designing curriculum is neither simple nor straightforward. Many factors should be taken into consideration and lots of evaluation should be done in determining whether the curriculum has satisfied the learners’ needs. Further research could be conducted such as by interviewing the instructors, administering questionnaires from the learners and discussing what further measurements could be taken to be implemented for the sake of improving the quality of the curriculum with the experts.