Applied Linguistics

Chapter 1

Course and Syllabus Design

1.1 An Overview

     Before one tackles what a course is and how it is designed, introducing what learning is and how it is perceived seems to be worth mentioning. Learning is viewed as a process which takes place in the mind and which is reflected by the students’ performances. Learning is then supposed to make changes in students’ knowledge, beliefs, behaviours, and in the way they think and act. In other words, learning rests heavily on what students do; i.e. it results from the way they act and react through their own experiences (Ambrose et al., 2010, p. 3). The principles of learning are also worth mentioning here. From a holistic perspective, there are seven principles which work together to highlight various issues related to student learning (ibid, pp. 4-6). These principles are:

1. Students’ prior knowledge can help or hinder learning: Students come into new courses with previous knowledge. When they use this knowledge to deal with a different situation, it influences their learning of new items. If students’ prior knowledge is firm and appropriate, it provides facilitates the building new knowledge and vice versa.

2. How students organize knowledge influences how they learn and apply what they know: Naturally, when they learn, students build meaningful and organized structures of knowledge which they use to retrieve and process new information effectively and efficiently. If these structures are accurate or deliberate, students will succeed in the new course or class. However, if these structures are inaccurate or random, they may fail to pursue the new experience.

3. Students’ motivation determines, directs, and sustains what they do to learn: Motivation plays a crucial role in guiding the students’ leaning and in producing the quality of the learned behaviours or performances. If students are motivated by the learning goal or activity and by the environment, they will achieve better. Motivation determines their actions and reactions.

4. To develop mastery, students must acquire component skills, practice integrating them, and know when to apply what they have learned: Students must not only focus on the skills and knowledge which help them to perform the classroom tasks, but they must also benefit from these skills and knowledge to develop greater fluency and automaticity. Then, it is the teachers’ responsibility to raise the students’ awareness about how to learn more effectively.

5. Goal-directed practice coupled with targeted feedback enhances the quality of students’ learning: The practice that focuses on a specific goal or criterion is more beneficial for students. This type of practice is better reinforced by the teacher’s feedback because students may need explicit guidance and explanation which allow them to perform the tasks required.

6. Students’ current level of development interacts with the social, emotional, and intellectual climate of the course to impact learning: While learning, students continue to develop their intellectual, social, and emotional skills. The intervention o teachers here could be at the level of shaping the intellectual, social, emotional, and physical aspects of the classroom climate. The learning climate which teachers may improve or, at least, ameliorate can strengthen students’ learning.

7. To become self-directed learners, students must learn to monitor and adjust their approaches to learning: Despite the fact that they not easy to fulfill, students need to develop the skills which enable them to engage in such processes as monitoring and controlling their learning, employing various strategies, and assessing and evaluating the level of their achievement. If they endeavour to do so, they gain intellectual habits that improve both their performance effectiveness as learners.

     Based on the above principles, teachers can develop a clear picture of how to design a course or syllabus. Simply stated, designing a course should start by designing real learning experiences on the part of teachers. Larry Spence (2001) stated that” We won’t meet the needs for more and better higher education until professors become designers of learning experiences and not teachers” (Cited in Fink, 2013, p. 1). Many studies have shown that the basic problem is that students are required to achieve higher kinds of learning; i.e. officials want to produce students who are able to retain information, develop an ability to transfer knowledge, develop skill in thinking or problem solving, achieve affective outcomes, but teachers are still using traditional and ineffective forms of teaching (ibid, p. 3). Also, it must be perceived that because any act of teaching is preceded by planning, “the most successful teaching begins, therefore, with clarity about desired learning outcomes and about the evidence that will show that learning has occurred”(Wiggins and McTighe,2011p.7). On the other hand, the success of the course is not only determined by the plan and objectives, but by the syllabus which offers more details. According to Slattery and Carlson (2005),

The success of the course is determined by how well the objectives and the outline are designed. A carefully planned, clearly written, comprehensive syllabus is one of the most important and valuable resources which can be provided to the students. It may prevent the misunderstandings in terms of course goals and objectives, assessment and evaluation standards, grading policies, student or faculty behavior, assignments, readings, and activities (Cited in Tokatlı and  Keúli, 2009, p. 1492)

     Course syllabi facilitate communication between the students and their instructors. That is, they are used as a means of contact and a means for learning and teaching between these partners. If these syllabi are prepared based on what students need, they will help to create a lively and inviting atmosphere where students could manage their leaning and successful retrieval of knowledge (ibid, p. 1491). The ultimate goal of a well-prepared, comprehensive, and comprehensible course syllabus is students who understand things or understanding in different situations. “People with an understanding are not limited to “knowing” only what they were taught the way they were taught it; they can use their knowledge and skill to make connections, explore alternative perspectives, and adapt prior learning to new situations” (Wiggins and McTighe,2011, p. 62).

1.2 Definitions

* Programme of study: A set of courses undertaken by a student towards a qualification and the requirements a student must comply with to gain that qualification. 

                                                      (Centre for Academic Development and Academic Office, 2015, p. 1)

* Course: An individual unit of study towards a qualification, identified by a course code and title carrying a specified points value. (ibid)

* A curriculum defines the learning that is expected to take place during a course or programme of study in terms of knowledge, skills and attitudes. It specifies teaching, learning and assessment methods and indicates the learning resources required to support effective delivery. One of the primary functions of a curriculum is to provide a framework or design which enables learning to take place. A syllabus is the part of a curriculum that describes the content of a program.

                                                                                          (Mckimm, J. and Barrow, J. M, 2009, p. 714)

* At the lowest level, the syllabus may simply be a reminder or a list of things to do for the busy teacher who has little classroom planning time. However, a good syllabus does much more than that. A well-written syllabus could provide a doorway into the pedagogical beliefs of the teacher (or the course writer).                                                                                  (Murphy, S. R, 2018, p. 1)

* A course presentation or syllabus is written by an instructor and given to students at the beginning of a course. It contains information from the course outline and information specific to that particular section of the course. Typically it lists texts and materials, the precise evaluation scheme to be used, the instructor’s policy on late assignments, the tentative schedule of topics, the instructor’s office hours and ….                               (Kwantlen Course Outline Manual, 2009, p.3)

* Allen (1984) defines ‘Curriculum’ is a very general concept, considering philosophical, social and administrative factors in view of planning of an educational programme. Then ‘Syllabus’ is referring to the subpart of a curriculum, concerned with the specification of what units will be taught. According to Noss and Rodgers (1976), a language syllabus is a set of justifiable, educational objectives specified in terms of linguistic content. Here the specification of objectives must have something to do with language form or substance, such as the use of language in situations, or language as a means of communication.                                         (Cited in Sekhar and Swathi, 2019, p. 4)

10.3 Main Principles of Syllabus Design

 

     One of the most important definitions of ‘SYLLABUS’ in which there is a clear distinction between curriculum and syllabus, and between the “what to teach” (content) and the “how to teach it “(methodology) was given by Allen (1984, p. 61). It says:

. . . curriculum is a very general concept which involves consideration of the whole complex of philosophical, social and administrative factors which contribute to the planning of an educational program. Syllabus, on the other hand, refers to that subpart of curriculum which is concerned with a specification of what units will be taught (as distinct from how they will be taught, which is a matter for methodology)(Cited in Nunan, 1988,p. 6).

     This definition undoubtedly gives the idea that there are many conflicting definitions of syllabus and that there is sometimes confusion between syllabus and curriculum. Equally important, it indicates that some scholars consider the syllabus to be only the content to be taught; while, other scholars see that the syllabus involves the content to be taught and the way it is going to be taught. The former has been known as the narrow view about syllabus design and the latter as the broad one. One example of the elements which constitute the syllabus (van Ek, 1975, pp. 8-9) was presented by Nunan (1988, p. 7) as follows:

 

1. The situations in which the foreign language will be used, including the topics which will be dealt with;

2. The language activities in which the learner will engage;

3. The language functions which the learner will fulfill;

4. What the learner will be able to do with respect to each topic;

5. The general notions which the learner will be able to handle;

6. The specific (topic-related) notions which the learner will be able to handle;

7. The language forms which the learner will be able to use;

8. The degree of skill with which the learner will be able to perform.

     According to Nunan (ibid), some of the above components may go beyond the scope of syllabus design, because seem to be derived from both the narrow and the broad view about syllabus design. He concludes (ibid, p. 12) this point by saying:

A given syllabus will specify all or some of the following: grammatical structures, functions, notions, topics, themes, situations, activities, and tasks. Each of these elements is either product or process oriented, and the inclusion of each will be justified according to beliefs about the nature of language, the needs of the learner, or the nature of learning

1.3. 1 Main Types of Syllabi

     Sabbah (2018, p. 129) mentions that according to Long and Crookes (1992) and Long and Robinson (1998) there are two major types of syllabi: Product-Oriented Syllabi and Process-Oriented Syllabi. The former relies on a selection of graded items to be learned and focuses on the students’ knowledge as an ultimate objective (reaching a product); whereas, the latter focuses on the pedagogical processes of the outcomes of both teaching and learning (experiencing things). Thakur (2013) explains that “The grammatical, lexical, situational, and notional-functional are the example of synthetic/product-oriented syllabus…..Procedural, process and task syllabuses are examples of analytic/process-oriented syllabi” (p. 207). Below are a few examples of syllabi as described by Thakur (ibid, pp. 209-212)

* Structural/formal Syllabus: The structural syllabus is, doubtless, the most familiar of syllabus types (Krahnke, 1987). The underlying assumption behind grammatical syllabus is that language is system which consists of a set of grammatical rules; learning language means learning these rules and applying them to practical language use. The learner is expected to master each structural step and add it to his/her grammar collection….

* The Lexical Syllabus: Wills et al, 1990 pleads that “taking lexis as a starting point enabled us to identify the commonest meanings and patterns in English and to offer students a picture which is typical of the way English is used”. The emergence of lexical syllabus was a reaction against traditional structural syllabus. The basic principle on which the syllabus is based is that students must be able to understand and use lexical phrases….

* Situational Syllabus: The situational syllabus appeared as an alternative to the grammatical syllabus. Palmer and Hornby believed that a grammatical or structural syllabus was neither efficient, nor effective for language learning since this model offers language sample outside their social and cultural contexts which makes transfer of learning from the classroom to the real world quite difficult…. It is based on the view that language always occurs in a social context and the teaching of language should not be isolated from its context. With this type of syllabus, the essential component of organization is a non-linguistic category i.e. the situation….

* The Procedural Syllabus: The procedural syllabus is based on a “learning centered” approach to language teaching. The syllabus was proposed by Prabhu (1980) in the ‘Bangalore Project’ in India. His work is based on the principles that the learning is best carried out when attention is concentrated on meaning. The focus shifts from the linguistic aspect to the pedagogical one focusing learning or the learner….The learners are expected to do is to solve problems and complete their tasks by using English. In due course, it is supposed that the grammatical system of the language will be covered through a meaningful interaction between the teacher and the learners. ……

* The Process Syllabus: The design of this syllabus is based on how learners approach learning. It provides a bridge between content and method. This syllabus is designed for classroom work. It explicitly attends to teaching and learning and particularly the interrelationship between subject matter, learning and the potential contributions of a classroom. It gives the participants opportunity to do these things by themselves and create their own syllabus in the classroom (Breen, 1987).

1.4 Course Design

     One of the aspects that ensure quality in education is curriculum or course design. Many models, in fact, have so far been proposed to help teachers to teach better and students to reach the institution’s or faculty’s goals. A good example of these models which attempts to meet the needs of students and expectations of teachers was put forward by Narcisa (2014). It involves nine (9) steps as follows:

 

1. Identification of determinant factors for a successful design of a course (learning outcomes, course content and structure, teaching-learning processes and evaluation);

2. Establishing fundamental teaching-learning philosophy (student centered approach and/ teacher centered approach);

3. Establishing course goals and objectives according to general outcomes of the study program (Which are the outputs of the study program? Why should students take this course? What should students be able to do at the end of the course?) ;

4. Establishing content and course sequences (arrangement of the topics/subjects of the course in a natural and logical progression);

5. Developing the evaluation strategy of learning outcomes;

6. Designing the teaching and learning process;

7. Identification of possible configurations of the course;

8. Establishing final configuration;

9. Course evaluation (Criúan, 2012).

     Following this aim of designing a syllabus or a curriculum, Diamond (2008, p. 6) calls for keeping in mind the important relationship between goals, outcomes, and assessment. This relation is always true and valid, be it in a curriculum, a course, or a unit or element within a course (ibid):

1. The outcome statements that are produced for the curriculum will be the basis on which the primary goals of each course within that curriculum are determined.

2. The outcome statements that are produced at the course level will be the basis on which the primary goals of each unit or element within that course are determined.

3. As you move from the curriculum to the courses within it, and to the individual units or elements within each course, the goal and outcome statements become more specific.

4. The success of your effort will be determined by how well your students meet the criteria for success as defined in the outcome statements at the course and unit or course element level.

     What could be noticed and understood from the above remarks is that teachers or experts need to identify goals before they tackle the aspects of content and assessment in curriculum or course design. In addition, these goals are characterized by a gradual move from general to specific, which goes hand in hand with the move from curriculum to course to units and elements. It could also be noticed that all efforts should be jointly made to facilitate effective learning in today’s classrooms. This can also be ensured, besides the aforementioned elements, by the choice of the teaching methods. Taylor (n. d, p. 6) stated that:

 

Essentially the curriculum is an interaction between aims and objectives, methods of assessment, teaching methods and content. With respect to the teaching methods to be incorporated into the programme, it is worth noting that the way in which students are taught affects the student experience. Choice, and varying teaching methods and assessment, may even be of greater significance to what students learn than the content that is being taught.

     Another model of course and curriculum design was proposed by Stefani (2009, p. 50). It includes these steps:

1. Consider your general aims for the course/programme.

2. Write specific learning outcomes (objectives): what do you want the students to learn?•Plan the assessment framework to match your objectives.

3. Plan the content, i.e. sequence of topics/readings.

4. Plan the teaching/learning design – what kinds of activities will you and your students engage in together?

5. Compile a list of resources.

6. Write the course outline including readings.

7. Consider evaluation of the course (formative and summative) and how best evaluation can be carried out.

     Here, the author insists on the idea that the models of curriculum design described in this way “indicate that assessment strategies should be considered once the intended learning outcomes have been agreed upon and articulated. Designing the curriculum in this manner may be considered to be a ‘logical’ model of curriculum development as opposed to a chronological model.” In the ‘logical’ model approach, assessment is integrated or included in the students’ learning; while, in the ‘chronological’ approach, assessment is placed at the end; it is a fundamental part of the students’ learning.

1.4.1 Elements of Course Design

     Felder and Brent (2003) told us that course design requires efforts at three levels. First, course content and learning objectives must be identified. Next, the methods of content delivery must be selected and implemented. Finally, assessment and evaluation methods must be selected and employed to check whether the course objectives have been achieved (p. 8-9). The figure below explains the three levels and shows clearly (as it is) that Felder and Brent model could be an example of both the ‘chronological’ and the ‘logical’ approaches to course design.

 

Figure 2: Elements of course design (Felder and Brent, 2003, p. 8)

 

     As it is shown in Figure 2, the sequence or order of the three stages may change. This is due to the fact that information collected in each stage is supposed to feed back to each of the others in a cycle leading to continuous improvement. For instance, if an element of assessment proves to be weak or ineffective, there will be a suggestion to reframe the objective or modify the type of the instruction used. Likewise, if the quality of instruction improves, new objectives may be formulated and the course instruction and assessment may be modified (ibid, p. 9)

     In a study entitled “Designing an EAP Course”, Klimova advocated the idea that English for Academic Purposes (EAP) can play an important role in helping learners to acquire EAP skills. These teachers may start with analyzing their students’ needs to select the appropriate content and to decide on the tasks and teaching methods which facilitate for them to achieve the desired goals. This model design of the course is based on several EAP methodological principles and is typically exemplified by Figure 3 (2014, p. 634). This figure gives clear details about the three levels and indicates (as it is) that the model proposed is a good example of the ‘chronological’ approach to course design.

 

Figure 3: Course Design Model (Klimova, 2014, p. 634)

 

 

     To help teachers to design this course, the author suggests the procedure below:

 

1. Conduct needs analysis and set course objectives (data on students’ specific needs must be collected);

2.  Create syllabus design (a syllabus for an EAP blended writing course is recommended);

3. Develop course materials and tasks (no textbook or workbook are used and the materials and tasks strive to be as authentic as possible);

4. Deliver the course (Blended courses are undoubtedly suitable for the development of writing skills);

5.  Set methods of assessment (In writing classes formative and summative assessments are used);

6. Perform the evaluation of the course (ibid, p. 635-636)