1

Unit 2
From Syllabus design to Curriculum Development.
English was taught through its structure and vocabulary .
Darian ( 1972,94), commenting on the influential Michigan materials produced at the
University of Michigan , complains:
There is little in the way of “ contextual material .” Sentences chosen for
exercises are perfectly normal utterances, but they seldom have any relation to one
another. In addition, almost all responses are complexly controlled, and there is little
provision for students to generate any utterances different from the controlled
responses being practiced.

The quest for new methods

The teaching of English as a second or foreign language become an
increasingly important activity after W W II. The role of English as a
language of international communication had expanded rapidly by the
1950s. English was increasingly important in international trade and
commerce. The role of English was supported by the growth of radio ,
film, and television.
The initial response of the English-language teaching profession was
to explore new directions in methodology. Linguistics was a source of
theories about the organization and structure of language and these were
eagerly applied in the cause of new “ scientifically based ” teaching
methods. In Britain , applied linguists developed a methodology that drew
on the oral approach that had been developed in the twenties and thirties
linked to a carefully graded grammatical and lexical syllabus. The
methodology had the following characteristics:
• A structure syllabus with graded vocabulary levels
• Meaningful presentation of structures in contexts through the use of
situations to contextualize new teaching points
• A sequence of classroom activities that was from Presentation, to
controlled Practice , to freer Production ( The P P P Method )
This became know as the situational approach or the Structural –
Situational approach or Situational Language Teaching and was the
mainstream teaching method in British language teaching circles from the
1950s. In countries and territories such as Singapore, under colonial
administration “the curriculum of English –medium schools in the early
 2

1950s followed the tradition of English teaching in British school ,with

the integration of language and literature.” The same applied in other
colonies such as Malaysia, India, and Hong Kong.
Later this was replaced by a “TESL/TEFL” approach based on a
structural syllabus and a situational drill-based methodology. In the
United States in the 1960s, language teaching was also under the sway of
a powerful method- the Audiolingual Method. Language learning was
thought to depend on habits that could be established by repetition.
Teaching techniques made use of repetition of dialogue and pattern
practice as a basis for automatization followed by exercises that involved
transferring learned patterns to new situations.
• Habits are strengthened by reinforcement.
• Foreign language habits are formed most effectively by giving the
right response, not by making mistakes.
• Language is behavior and behavior can be learned only by inducing
the student to behave.
Lado’s Lado English series ( Lado 1978 ) is based on this
approach . A similar method was developed in Europe and became
known as the Audiovisual Method because of its visual means for
presenting and practicing new language items.

Changing needs for foreign languages In Europe

In 1969, the Council of Europe ( a regional organization of
European countries designed to promote cultural and educational
cooperation) , in order to promote the more effective learning of
foreign languages within the community , decided that:
• If full understanding is to be achieved among the countries of
Europe ,the language barriers between them must be removed;
• Linguistic diversity is part of the European cultural heritage and that
it should ,through the study of modern languages , provide a source
of intellectual enrichment rather than an obstacle to unity;
• Only if the study of modern Europe languages becomes general will
full mutual understanding and cooperation be possible in Europe.
In order to response to these concerns it became apparent that
policies could only be based on information about societies’ needs.
 3

• Does the community consider it important that all its members know
a foreign language , or is this considered necessary only for certain
professional domain?
• How many languages , and which languages , are felt to be
necessary?
• How great is the demand for each individual language? Does
everyone need the same skills , or the same level of command per
skill?
• Is this a stable needs pattern?
It was during this period that Communicative Language
Teaching ( CLT ) emerged as a new direction for language teaching,
and it attracted widespread interest and enthusiasm as a way of
moving language teaching beyond an obsession with the latest
teaching methods and to reexamination of basic assumptions about
the goals , nature, and processes of language teaching.

English for Specific Purposes.

The ESP approach to language teaching began as a response to
number of practical concerns:
• The need to prepare growing numbers of non-English background
students for study at American and British universities from the
1950s.
• The need to prepare materials to teach students who had already
mastered general English, but now needed English for use in
employment, such as non-English background doctor , nurses ,
engineers, and scientists.
• The need for materials for people needing English for business
purposes.
• The need to teach immigrants the language needed to deal with jobs
situations.
In contrast to student learning English for general purposes for
whom mastery of the language for its own sake or in order to pass a
general examination is the primary goal, the ESP student is usually
studying English in order to carry out a particular role, such as that of
foreign student in an English –medium university , flight attendant,
mechanic ,or doctor.
 4

The 1960s therefore saw a number of books applying the

principles of selection and graduation to English of science , business ,
medicine ,engineering . or manufacturing, the same principles that had
been used until then in designing general English courses. It was
assumed that there were specialized varieties of English , such as
“ scientific English” , “business English ”or “ technical English”
Throughout the 1970s the ESP approach in language teaching
drew on register analysis and discourse analysis to determine the
linguistic characteristics of different disciplines as medicine ,
engineering, or science . A register is a variety of language determined
according to its use:
Register analysis studies the language of such fields as
journalism , medicine, or law for distinctive patterns of occurrence of
vocabulary , verb forms ,noun phrases , and tense usage.
Discourse analysis .In order to identify the linguistic structure of
longer samples of speech or text, an approach called discourse
analysis was introduced in the 1970s. It is based on the analysis of
units of organization within texts or speech events and examines
patterns of rhetorical organization such as definition , identification and
comparison.
Although one of the main directions of the ESP approach through
the 1960s and 1970s was the development of language courses and
materials that taught the registers and discourse features of science ,
business , or medicine , the focus in ESP on the purpose for which
learners need a language prompted the development of approaches to
needs analysis , one of the basic processes of curriculum and syllabus
design.

Communicative language teaching.

Communicative language teaching ( CLT ) is a broad approach to
teaching that resulted from a focus on communication as the organization
principle for teaching rather than a focus on mastery of the grammatical
system of the language. The 1970s was a period when everyone was
“going communicative ,” although precisely what was meant by that
varied considerably.
 5

CLT was a response to changes in the field of linguistics in the 1970s

,as well as a response to the need for new approach to language teaching
in Europe as a result of initiative , by groups such ass the core component
of language abilities to a consideration of how language is used by
speakers in different contexts o communication.

Emergence of a curriculum approach

in language teaching.
The term curriculum studies refers to a very broad field of inquiry that
deals with what happens in schools and other educational institutions , the
planning of instruction , and the study of how curriculum plans are
implemented. A curriculum in a school context refers to the whole body of
knowledge that children acquire in school.
One of the most important statements on the nature and process of
curriculum development was made by Tyler in 1949 in a book that brought
about a revival in curriculum studies throughout the 1950s.
Four fundamental questions must be answered in developing any
curriculum and plan of instruction are :
1. What educational purpose should the school seek to attain?
2. What educational experiences can be provided that are likely to attain
these purposes?
3. How can these educational experiences be effectively organized?
4. How can we determines whether these purpose are being attained?

This was sometimes reduced to an even simpler model:

Aims and objectives

↓
Content
↓
Organization
↓
Evaluation

Critics of the Tyler model ( of which there were many ) raised a number
of objections, some arguing that the notion of objectives represents a
limited view of knowledge and some criticizing the technical and
 6

rationalist approach of the model, which seemed better suited to business

or industry than education.
This view of curriculum development processes has been widely
adopted in language teaching from the 1980s. It has been described as an
Endsmeans Model because it starts with a determination of the kinds of
language skills the learner needs in order to accomplish specific roles and
tasks and then sets out to teach the language needed to get there.
The systems model belong to an approach to educational planning
that sees curriculum development as a rational and somewhat technical
process. Its practitioners believed that this was the key to the design of
successful educational programs. In 1980s , funding for large-scale
curriculum projects in many parts of the world was often dependent on
their being couched in this framework.
However , since the 1980s the view that curriculum development
processes are central elements in language program design has become
more widely accepted in language teaching, though not in the narrow
prescriptive form of the systems model.
“ Curriculum development ” is used in this book to refer to the range
of planning and implementation processes involved in developing or
renewing a curriculum. These processes focus on needs analysis ,
situational analysis, planning learning outcomes , course organization ,
selecting and preparing teaching materials, providing for effective
teaching, and evaluation. These elements are viewed as forming a network
of interacting system , The notion of system suggests that change in one
part of the system has effects on other parts of the system.

BY
Mr.Kamolpan Jammapat
 7
No.12 Student Id. 49051513014
Muang Surat thani School
Graduate Diploma In English Teaching Program
Graduate School
Surat thani Rajabhat University