Applied linguistics and language learning/teaching
INVESTIGATING THE PROBLEMS: THE METHODOLOGY OF APPLIED LINGUISTICS
Curriculum design
Language teaching is not confined to the classroom: if it were then the idea that teaching is and should really be about method would have more force. But language teaching in reality also takes in the necessary education of the teacher, the preparation for the teaching, the follow-up from the teaching, the whole professional activity of the teacher, which means also the continuing education that keeps the teacher in touch with developments in the field (Richards and Rodgers 1986). Language-teaching responsibilities also take in the support systems to the teacher, the training of new teachers, the in-service education of teachers, the textbook writing, the assessment systems, the evaluation projects, the curriculum design and planning, and the research into language teaching. All of these are part of the wider understanding of language teaching and may of course be carried out by those who are also engaged in class teaching or may have been so in the past. What a curriculum provides for the language teacher is a plan, based on a view or philosophy of language and of learning (Ferguson 2006).
According to Richards, Platt and Platt (1985), curriculum design (also curriculum development) refers to: the study and development of the goals, content, implementation, and evaluation of an education system. In language teaching, curriculum development (also called syllabus design) includes:
1. the study of the purposes for which a learner needs a language (needs analysis);
2. the setting of objectives, and the development of a syllabus, teaching methods and materials; and
3. the evaluation of the effects of these procedures on the learner’s language ability.
Nunan quotes Stenhouse with approval (Nunan 1990: 76):
The uniqueness of each classroom setting implies that any proposal – even at school level – needs to be tested and verified and adapted by each teacher in his own classroom. The ideal is that the curricular specification should feed a teacher’s personal research and development program through which he is increasing his understanding of his own work and hence bettering his teaching … It is not enough that teachers’ work should be studied: they need to study it themselves. (Stenhouse 1975: 143)
What Richards and Rodgers (1986) suggest is that while a curriculum often is the plan and the philosophy, a syllabus contains the details of the content to be taught and the methods to be used. Curriculum may of course encompass syllabus: ‘Traditionally the term syllabus has been used to refer to the form in which linguistic content is specified in a course or method. Inevitably the term has been more closely associated with methods that are product centered rather than those that are process’ (Richards and Rodgers 1986: 21).
At its most basic the applied linguistic contribution to curriculum design is to provide a plan which encompasses a sequenced series of teaching stages and goals, ensuring that the basic grammar, vocabulary and pragmatics are included in the time available. A useful (but not essential) addition would be to provide lesson materials that are both interesting and challenging, but this is not primarily the applied linguist’s responsibility, unless he/she is also engaged as a textbook writer (McGrath 2002). This aspect of the applied linguist’s work matches the older formulation of methodics, which made central to the work of the language-teaching methodologist, the three-pronged task of selection, grading and sequencing. While it may be the case that all language features are equally difficult, it is the applied linguist’s professional job to sequence them in such a way that progression (and inclusion of what has preceded) seems appropriate. And while scorn has been heaped on the proposal that such teaching materials should be ‘teacher-proof’, the underlying intention is laudable, given the very broad range of professional teaching ability and skills available in an educational system; given also the range of proficiency in the target language among those teachers.
