APPLIED LINGUISTICS for BA Students in English
COURSE-BOOK EVALUATION
Basic principles for organizing the content
Cunningsworth also takes grading into consideration for course materials evaluation. He defines grading as ‘the way in which the content is organized in the syllabus or course-book, involving the ordering of items and the speed with which the students progress through the course’ (Cunningsworth 1995:59). There are three important notions to be discussed within grading, namely sequencing, staging, and recycling. These notions have to by all means be kept in mind since they can help us estimate the progress students make by the end of a given course.
”Sequencing refers to the order in which new items are taught, how the components fit with one another and how the range of language taught develops as learners progress through the course” (Cunningsworth 1995:59).
Recycling means that language items are best exploited if they are presented to learners on several occasions and in different contexts. Students learning about sports, for example, at a higher level meeting the word ’sabre’ might not remember it in a week's time, however, providing them with pictures of sabre-tooth tigers will probably help them store the word in their long-term memory. ”Staging refers to the way a course is divided into units, how much material each unit contains, the speed of progression and the size of the learning load” (Cunningsworth 1995:59-60).
Cunningsworth (1995) also advises to check whether the course has been designed for students to take a linear or a cyclical route of progression. Linear progression involves a thorough presentation of a language item before moving on to the next, while cyclical progression means a regular and progressive returning to each item on several occasions later in the course.
The basic documents for planning and organizing the content and skills of the teaching and learning process are the curricula and syllabuses.
A curriculum makes general statements about language learning, learning purpose and experience, evaluation, and the role relationships of teachers and learners. It specifies learning items and contains suggestions about how these might be used in classes (Nunan, 1988).
The curriculum is a tool of decision making. It identifies learners’ needs and purposes; establishes goals and objectives; selects and grades content; organizes appropriate learning arrangements and learner groupings; selects, adapts, or develops appropriate materials, learning tasks, assessment and evaluation tools. A curriculum has its classroom perspectives, i.e. the way how the intentions of curriculum planners have been translated into action in the form of teaching and learning processes. The assessment and evaluation perspective of the curriculum shows what students have learnt and failed to learn in relation to what had been planned and in addition, one can see what has been learnt but not planned though (Nunan 1988.).
A syllabus is based on the account and records of what actually happens at the classroom level as teachers and learners apply a given curriculum to their own situation. These accounts can be used to make subsequent modifications to the curriculum, so that the developmental process is ongoing and cyclical (Nunan, 1988).
One can distinguish product- and process-oriented syllabuses. Product-oriented syllabuses are those in which the focus is on the knowledge and skills which learners should gain as a result of education. Process-oriented syllabuses focus on the learning experience itself (Nunan, 1988).
Product oriented syllabuses can be classified as synthetic or analytic and grammatical or functional notional.
A synthetic syllabus suggests that different parts of language are taught separately and step by step, so that acquisition is a process of gradual accumulation of parts until the whole structure of language has been built up (Wilkins, 1976).
In analytic syllabuses learners are presented with chunks of language consisting of structures of varying degrees of difficulty. The (communicative) purpose of learning the language is in the focus (Nunan, 1988; Wilkins, 1976).
In a grammatical syllabus the input is selected and graded according to grammatical notions of simplicity and complexity. It suggests a rigid way of linear progression by introducing and mastering one item at a time before moving to the next one (McDonough, 1981).
A functional-notional syllabus take the functional and situational aspects of language use into consideration. Students and their communicative purposes are in the center of attention. It sets realistic learning tasks, provides real-world language and leads to receptive activities before putting a pressure on students to perform (Finocchiaro and Brumfit, 1983).
Process-oriented syllabuses can be identified as procedural syllabus, task-based syllabus, content syllabus and natural approach.
Both procedural and task-based syllabuses share a concern with the classroom processes which stimulate learning. Both provide the specification of tasks and activities that learners will engage in class (Nunan, 1988).
In content syllabuses the language- and non-language-specific content which provides the point of departure for the syllabus is derived from various subject areas of the school curriculum. There is a non-linguistic rationale for selecting and grading the content (Nunan, 1988).
The goal of natural approach is communication skills. Comprehension precedes production. Subconscious acquisition is in focus. Production is not forced but facilitated to emerge (Krashen and Teller, 1983).
The nature of syllabuses is expressed in course materials that are all designed to meet the requirements of the National Core Curriculum and Frame Curricula which are both closely related to the Common European Framework of Reference.
