CHAPTER 7 APPROACH TO COURSE DESIGN PRESENTATION SLIDE

• ESP EED CHAPTER 7

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CHAPTER 7 APPROACH TO COURSE DESIGN

CHAPTER 7

APPROACHES TO COURSE DESIGN

Course Design is the process by which the raw data about a learning need is interpreted in order to produce an integrated series of teaching-learning experiences. The aim of course design is to lead the learner to a particular state of knowledge. In practical terms this entails the use of the theoretical and empirical information available to produce a syllabus, to select, adapt or write materials in accordance with the syllabus, to develop a methodology for teaching those materials and to establish evaluation procedures by which progress towards the specified goals will be measured.

There are probably many different approaches to ESP course design as there are course designers. However, we can identify three main types of course design: Language-centered course design, Skills-centered course design, and Learning-centered approach.

1.  Language-Centered Course Design

This is the simplest kind of course design and is probably the one most familiar to English teacher. It is particularly prevalent in ESP. The language-centered course design process aims to draw as direct a connection as possible between analysis of the target situation and the content of the ESP course.

It proceeds as follows:

At the first sight, this may seem to be a very logical procedure. It starts with the learner, proceeds through various stage of analysis to a syllabus, thence to materials in use in the classroom and finally to evaluation of mastery of the syllabus items. However, logical and straightforward as it may seem, it has a number of weaknesses:

a.      It starts from the learners and their needs, and thus it might be centered in any meaningful sense of the term. The learner is simply used as a means of identifying the target situation. Instead of taking the whole of English and teaching it to the learner, as happens in General English, only a restricted area of the target language is taught. The learner is used solely as a way of locating the restricted area. Thereafter, the learner plays no further part in the process. As we have seen, when considering need analysis, the learner should be considered at every stage of the process. Yet, in this model the learning needs of the students are not accounted for at all. It is, therefore, not learner-centered, but simply learner-restricted.

b.  The learner-centered process can also be criticized for being a static and inflexible procedure, which can take little account of the conflicts and contradictions that are inherent in any humans endeavour. Once the initial analysis of the target situation is done, the course designer is locked into a relentless process. But what if the initial analysis wrong? What if some crucial element, such as the unexpected motivational attitude of Mead’s students is not taken into account? Any procedures must have flexibility, feedback channels and error tolerance built in so that it can respond to unsuspected or developing influences.

c.    One of the alluring features of this model is that it appears to be systematic. But in so doing it engenders the false believe that learning itself is systematic-that the systematic analysis and presentation of language data will produce systematic learning in the learner. Unfortunately the role of systematization in the learning is not so simple. Certainly, there is a lot of evidence to show that the systematization of knowledge plays a crucial role in the learning process: we learn by fitting individual items of knowledge together to create a meaningful predictive system. But the most important point here is that it must be an internally-generated system not an externally-imposed system. The fact that knowledge has been systematically analyzed and systematically presented does not in any way imply that it will be systematically learnt. Learners have to make the system meaningful to themselves. And unfortunately we have to admit that we do not know enough about the mind actually goes about creating its internal system of knowledge. We must, however, avoid the mistake made by the Audiolingual Approach of believing that because language ha a describable system, describing that system will induce systematic learning.

d.     The language-centered model gives no acknowledgement to factors which must inevitably play a part in the creation of any course. Data such as that produced by a needs analysis, is not important in itself. Data must be interpreted and in interpreting the data we make use of all sorts of knowledge that are not revealed in the analysis itself. What is actually happening in the language-centered approach is that an analytical model is also being used inappropriately as a predictive model. An analysis of what happens in a particular situation is being used to determine the content of pedagogic syllabuses and materials. But there are all manner of other factors which will influence these activities. To make a simple example, one of the primary principles of good pedagogic materials is that they should be interesting. An analysis of language items cannot tell you whether a text or an activity is interesting. Thus, if materials are based on language-centered model, then, either there are other factors being used, which are not acknowledgement in the model, or, and sadly this is what seems so often to be the case, these learning factors are not considered to be important at all. As a teacher once remarked at a seminar on materials writing, ‘It doesn’t if it’s boring. It’s ESP.’

e.    The language-centered analysis of target situation data is only at the surface level. It reveals very little about the competence that underlines the performance.

In summary, then, the logical, straightforward appeal of the language-centered approach is, in effect, its weakness. It fails to recognize the fact that, learners being people, learning is not straightforward, logical process.

2.  Skills-centered course design

       The skills-centered approach to ESP has been widely applied in a number of countries, particularly in Latin America. Students in universities and colleges there have the limited, but important need to read subject texts in English, because they are unavailable in the other tongue. In response to this need, a number of ESP projects have been set up with the specific aim of developing the students’ ability to read in English. The skills-centered approach is founded on two fundamental principles: Theoretical and Pragmatic.

a.   The basic theoretical hypothesis is that underlying any language behavior are certain skills and strategies, which the learner uses in order to produce or comprehend discourse. A skills-centered approach aims to get away from the surface performance data and look at the competence that underlies the performance. A skills-centered course, therefore, will present its learning objectives (though probably not explicitly) in terms of both performance and competence. This example from a Brazilian ESP syllabus for Library Science students is given a Maciel et al. (1983) (our brackets):

General objective (i.e. performance level):

The students will be able to catalogue books written in English.

Specific objective (i.e. competence level):

The students will be able to:

-       Extract the gist of a text by skimming through it.

-       Extract relevant information from the main parts of a book.

b.   The pragmatics basis for the skills-centered approach derives from a distinction made by Widdowson (1981) between goal-oriented courses and process-oriented courses. Holmes (1982) points out that:

‘In ESP the main problem is usually one of time available and student experience. First, the aims may be defined in terms of what is desirable,- i.e. to be able to read in the literature of the students’ specialism, but there may be nowhere near enough time to reach this time during the period of the course. Secondly, the students may be in their first year of studies with little experience of the literature of their specialism…Accordingly both these factors…may be constraints which say right from the start, “The aims cannot be achieved during the course.”’

Holmes puts his finger on a contradiction that arises from interpreting ‘needs’ in the narrow sense of ‘target situation necessities’. If the ESP course is design in terms of goals, there is in effect a tacit admission that a large number of students will fail the course. Since ESP is by its very nature process that is intended to enable people to achieve a purpose, it is at best a little odd to frame the course in such a way as to almost predict failure. The process-oriented approach tries to avoid this problem by removing the distinction between the ESP course and the target situation. The ESP course is not seen as a self-sufficient unit from which learners emerge as proficient target situation performers, because, as Holmes points out, a number of students are unlikely to achieve this proficiency. Instead, the ESP course and target situation are seen as a continuum of constantly developing degrees of proficiency with no cut-off point of success or failure. The emphasis in the ESP course, then, is not on achieving a particular set of goals, but enabling the learners to achieve what they can within the given constraints:

‘The process-oriented approach…is at least realistic in concentrating on strategies and processes of making students aware of their own abilities and potential, and motivating them to tackle target texts on their own after the end of the course, so that they can continue to improve.’ (ibid.)

The skills-centered model, therefore, is a reaction both to the idea of specific registers of English as a basis for ESP and to the practical constraints on learning imposed by limited time and resources. In essence it sees the ESP course as helping learners to develop skills and strategies which will continue to develop after the ESP course itself. Its aim is not to provide a specified corpus of linguistic knowledge but to make the learners into better processors of information. We might present the skills-centered model as in figure 19.

       The role of need analysis in a skills-centered approach is twofold. Firstly, it provides a basis for discovering the underlying competence that enables people to perform in the target situation. Secondly, it enables the course designer to discover the potential knowledge and abilities that the learners bring to the ESP classroom.

       The skills-centered approach, therefore, can certainly claim to take the learner more into account than the language-centered approach:

1. It views language in terms of how the mind of the learner processes it rather than as an entity in itself.
2. It tries to build on the positive factors that the learners bring to the course, rather than just on the negative idea of ‘lacks’.
3. It frames its objectives in open-ended terms, so enabling learners to achieve at least something.

Yet, in spite of is concern for the learner, the skills-centered approach still approaches the learner as a user of language rather than as the learner of language. The processes it is concerned with are the processes of language use not of language learning. It is with this distinction in mind that we turn to the third approach to course design.

3.      A learning-centered approach

Before describing this approach, we should expand our explanation of why we have chosen the term learning-centered instead of the more common term learner –centered.

       The learner-centered approach is based on the principle that learning is totally determined by the learner. As teaches we can influence what we teach, but what learners learn is determined by the learners alone. Learning is seen as a process in which the learners use what knowledge or skills they have in order to make sense of the flow of new information. Learning, therefore, is an internal process, which is crucially dependent upon the knowledge the learners already have and their ability and motivation to use it. It is difficult to fault this view of learning, if we see learning simply in term of the end product in the learner’s mind. But learning can, and should, be seen in the context in which it takes place. Learning is not just a mental process, it is a process of negotiation between individuals and society. Society sets the target (in the case of ESP, performance in the target situation) and the individuals must do their best to get as close to that target as is possible (or reject it). The learners will certainly determine their own route to the target an the speed at which they travel the route, but that does not make the target unimportant. The target still has a determining influence on the possible routes. In the learning process, then, there is more than just the learner to consider. For this reason we would reject the term a learner –centered approach in favour of a learning-centered approach to indicate that the concern is to maximize learning. The learner is one factor to consider in the learning process, but not the only one. Thus the term: learner-centered would for our purpose be misleading.

       To return to our discussion of approach to course design, we can see that for all its emphasis on the learner, the skill-centered approach does not fully take the learner into account, because it still make the ESP learning situation too dependent on the target situation. The learner is used to identify and to analyze the target situation needs. But then, as with the language-centered approach, the learner is discarded and the target situation analysis with allowed to determine the content of the course with little further reference to the learner.

       A language-centered approach says: this is the nature of the target situation performance and that will determine the ESP course.

       A skill-centered approach says: that’s not enough. We must look behind the target performance data to discover what processes enable someone to perform. Those processes will determine the ESP course.

       A learning-centered approach says: that’s not enough either. We must look beyond the competence that enables someone to perform, because someone acquires that competence.

We might see the relationship in this diagram:

Figure 20 : A comparison of approaches to course design

Figure 20 shows that a learning-centred approach to course design takes account of the learner at every stage of the design process. This has two implications:

a.       Course design is a negotiated process. There is no single factor which has an outright determining influence on the content of the course. The ESP learning situation and the target situation will both influence the nature of the syllabus, materials, methodology and evaluation procedures. Similarly, each of these components will influence and be influenced by the others.

b.       Course design is a dynamic process. It does not move in a linear fashion from initial analysis to completed course. Need and resources vary with time. The course design, therefore, needs to have built-in feedback channels to enable the course to respond to developments.

The learning-centred course design process is shown in this diagram:

What does is mean in practical terms to take a learning-centred approach to ESP? we will look in more detail at this questions in materials design (chapter 10). For the moment let us look at a fairly common example at the level of course design.

A need analysis reveals that the ESP learners need English in order to be able to read texts in their subject specialism. They have no need to write, speak or listen to English. Their sole need is to read English texts. If we followed a language-centred or skill-centred approach to course design, we might conclude that ESP lessons would concern themselves only with the activity of reading texts. There would be no listening work; all discussion would be in the native language and writing tasks would be minimal. This would be a logical application of the models for course design above (figure 18 and 19). But if we took a learning-centred approach, we wold need to ask further question and consider other factor, before determining the content and methodology of the course.

1. Can we only learn to read effectively by reading or can the other skills help the learners to become better readers? For example, is it possible that learners might grasp the structure of text more easily by writing text themselves? Can a knowledge of the sound or rhythm of a language help in reading? Stevick (1982) stresses the importance for memory of creating rich images in a way which closely parallels our own model of learning as a network-building process (see chapter 4) :

‘the higher the quality of the image-that is, the richer and better integrated it is-the more easily will be able to get back one part of it when we encounter another part’.

We can apply this argument to the question of skills. If an image gets into the brain through a number of different pathways-by hearing, reading, writing and speaking-that image is likely to be a richer image than if it gets in trough only one pathway. The image will thereby be much stronger and much more easily accessible, since it will have more connections into the network. The fact that the learner will eventually use the knowledge gained only for reading is largely irrelevant. What is of most concern is how the learner can learn that knowledge most effectively. If the effectiveness of the process can be enriched by the use of other skills, then that is would should be done.

2. What are the implications for methodology of having a mono-skill focus? Will it lead to a lack of variety in lessons or a limited range of exercise types, which will soon induce boredom in the learners? Could others skills be used to increase variety? These are not trivial questions. One of the basic paradoxes of language teaching is that we need to repeat things in order to learn them, but frequent repetition creates boredom: our minds switch off and learning is minimal. Variety is, therefore, not just a nice thing to have for its own sake: it is a vital element in keeping the learners mind alert and focused on the task in hand. Processing the same information through a variety of skills is one way of achieving reinforcement while still maintaining concentration. It is much more difficult to get variety if we have to operate to target situation imposed constraints, such as a restriction to one skill (see chapter II, methodology).
3. How will the student react to doing tasks involving other skills? Will they appreciate the greater variety and interest of the activities or will they say ‘I don’t need to understand spoken English, so why are you asking me to listen to something in English? I need to read’.
4. Do the resources in the classroom allow the use of other skills? Is it quit enough to do listening or speaking work? Can the teacher handle and integrated skills approach?
5. How will the learners react to discussing things in the mothers tongue? Will it help them to feel more secure? Will it enable them to express their views more easily and freely. Or will they feel that it isn’t really helping them to learn English?
6. How will the learners' attitudes vary through the course? At first they may prefer a reading only approach, because it is novel and may give them a good sense of achievement. Will this motivation carry on through the whole course, however? Will the learners get bored with the same kinds of activities and start to want a more varied methodology?
7. How do the learners feel about reading as an activity? Is it something they like doing, or is it an activity that they avoid where possible, even in the mother tongue? If the latter is the case, will a reading only approach help to remove some of their aversion to reading or will it reinforce existing antipathies.

        The answers to the questions we have been considering might reinforce the idea of doing reading only or they might indicate that an integrated skills approach is required. The answers will vary depending on the learners and the learning context. The example, however, serves, to show how factors concerned with learning may affect the design of a course, sometimes in total contradiction to the apparent needs of the target situation. The framework for analyzing learning needs (see above p.62) provides more questions that could be asked. The answers, as we have said, will vary according to the individual situation and may vary within the timespan of the course. The important point is that these questions must be asked and the result allowed to influence the course design.

• ESP EED CHAPTER 7

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