3. Content Sequencing : Meaning and Importance ?

Ans: Designing a curriculum is a long and complicated process. In designing a curriculum,

there are many important elements the designer must consider. Some of them are goals,
content and sequencing. the importance of goals in designing a curriculum and where it can
achieve these goals. Moreover, it can include in a content and how to deal with the
progression in the curriculum are mentioned. Some approaches in designing a curriculum
will be mentioned with their advantages and disadvantages as well.

Content and sequencing must take account of the environment in which the course will be
used, the needs of the learners, and principles of teaching and learning.

Curriculum content identifies what teachers are expected to teach and students are
expected to learn. Curriculum content includes knowledge, skills and understanding that
students are expected to learn and will be described for a particular learning area at a
particular year level.

It is to be presented as ‘content descriptions’ outlining what students are expected to learn

and teachers are expected to teach at each year level. Content descriptions is to be
accompanied by ‘content elaborations’ which will illustrate and/or clarify the detailof the
content descriptions
.

Curriculum content is to be presented as detailed content descriptions only.

Units of progression in the course-

They are the items that are used to grade the progress of the course. If the starting point of
a course was topics, then the units of progression would also be topics with progress
through the course being marked by an increasing number of topics covered. The units of
progression can be classified into two types – those that progress in a definite series, such as
vocabulary levels, and those that represent a field of knowledge that could be covered in
any order, such as topics. Although certain units of progression may be used to select and
sequence the material in a course, it is useful to check that other units are covered in the
course and that other units are at an appropriate level.

The progression using form –

The units of progression can be used for a variety of purposes:

1. Units of progression can be used to set targets and paths to those targets.

2. Units of progression can be used to check the adequacy of selection and ordering in a
course.
3. Units of progression can be used to monitor and report on learners’ progress and
achievement in the course.

Vocabulary: There is considerable frequency-based research that provides clear indications

of what vocabulary learners would gain most benefit from knowing. The low-frequency
vocabulary of the language (vocabulary not in the most frequent 2,000 words or in the
academic wordlist) does not deserve teaching effort. Rather, strategies for dealing with and
learning this vocabulary should receive the teacher’s attention.

Grammar: Many courses use grammar as the major unit of progression. Unfortunately the
selection and sequencing of the items is at the best opportunistic and gives no consideration
of the value of learning particular items. Courses thus include a strange mixture of very
useful items and items that occur relatively infrequently in normal language use. Infrequent
items can be usefully introduced in courses where they are needed to be learned as
memorized phrases (lexicalized sentence stems) rather than as structures to focus on.

Functions: There is no standard list of language functions that is accompanied by frequency

data. The most widely available list of functions can be found in Van Ek and Alexander
(1980) and is organized under the six headings of:

1. Imparting and seeking factual information

2. Expressing and finding out intellectual attitudes

3. Expressing and finding out emotional attitudes

4. Expressing and finding out moral attitudes

5. Getting things done (suasion)

6. Socializing. Discourse: Attention to elements of spoken discourse, such as ellipsis

between speakers and negotiation of discourse, may occur early in language courses but is
rarely the unit of progression for a course.

Skills, subskills, and strategies: Some courses use skills and subskills as their units of
progression. Reading courses for example may focus on skills such as finding the main idea,
reading for detail, notetaking, skimming, reading faster, and reading for inferences. There
are three major ways of defining subskills. One is to look at the range of activities covered
by a skill such as speaking and to use these as a starting point for defining subskills. Another
way is to look at the skill as a process and to divide it into the parts of the process.
This is a typical way of approaching writing, dividing the writing process into parts. One
possible division of the process is:

(1) having a model of the reader, (2) having writing goals, (3) gathering ideas, (4)
organizing ideas, (5) turning ideas into written text, (6) reviewing what has just been
written, and (7) editing the written text. Process divisions can be applied in other
skills. A third way of dividing up a skill is to use levels of cognitive activity. The most
well-known approach of this kind can be found in what is popularly known as
Bloom’s taxonomy (Bloom, 1956). Bloom divides cognitive activity into six levels of
increasing complexity: (1) knowledge, (2) comprehension, (3) application, (4)
analysis, (5) synthesis, (6) evaluation. These levels have often been applied to the
construction of reading comprehension activities.

Ideas : A good language course not only develops the learners’ control of the
language but also puts the learners in contact with ideas that help the learning of
language and are useful to the learners. The choice of the ideas content of a course
will have a major effect on the marketability and acceptability of the course. It needs
very careful consideration and application of the findings of needs analysis and
environment analysis.

Task - based syllabuses - With the shift to communicative language teaching in the
1970s there was an increasing emphasis on using language to convey a message, and
as a result increasing attention was given to the use of tasks in the classroom. The
realization that many so-called communicative language courses were still largely
based upon a sequence of language forms in turn generated interest in task-based,
rather than task-supported, syllabuses. task-based syllabus, particularly Long and
Crookes (1992), argue that pedagogic tasks provide a vehicle for presentation of
appropriate language samples to learners and allow negotiation of difficulty. They
suggest that the most appropriate tasks are those that a needs analysis determines
are most useful for the learners.

Sequencing the content in a course - The lessons or units of a course can fit
together in a variety of ways. The two major divisions are whether the material in
one lesson depends on the learning that has occurred in previous lessons (a linear
development) or whether each lesson is separate from the others so that the lessons
can be done in any order and need not all be done (a modular arrangement).

Linear approaches to sequencing- Most language courses involve linear

development, beginning with simple frequent items that prepare for later more
complex items. Such a development has the disadvantages of not easily taking
account of absenteeism, learners with different styles and speeds of learning, and
the need for recycling material. The worst kind of linear development assumes that
once an item has been presented in a lesson, it has been learned and does not need
focused revision. This view does not agree with the findings of research on memory
(Baddeley, 1990) and there are variations of linear progressions which try to take
account of the need for repetition. Developing a spiral curriculum involves deciding
on the major items to cover, and then covering them several times over a period of
time at increasing levels of detail.

A modular approach to sequencing -n We have been looking at linear approaches to

sequencing and ways of ensuring repetition within a linear approach. The second
major type of approach, a modular approach, breaks a course into independent non-
linear units. These units may be parts of lessons, lessons or groups of lessons. Each
unit or module is complete in it and does not usually assume knowledge of previous
modules. It is not unusual for a modular approach to be accompanied by criterion-
referenced testing with a high level of mastery set as the criterion. In language
courses the language could be divided into modules in several ways. The modules
could be skill-based with different modules for listening, speaking, reading and
writing, and sub-skills of these larger skills. The modules could be based on language
functions, or more broadly situations, dealing with the language needed for
shopping, emergency services, travel, the post office and the bank.

Modular courses often have some kind of division into obligatory or core modules,
and optional or elective modules, or a division into level 1 modules and level 2
modules and so on.