APPROACHES TO COURSE DESIGN

201212500919 LEA WELHELMINA

201212501013 HERYANI QISTHI
201212501058 SHINTA NINDITA

PROGRAM STUDI PENDIDIKAN BAHASA INGGRIS

FAKULTAS BAHASA DAN SENI
 UNIVERSITAS INDRAPRASTA PGRI
2015

Approaches to course design

Course design is the process by which the raw data about a learning need is
interpreted in order to produce an integrated series of teaching-learning
experiences, whose ultimate aim is to lead the learners to a particular state of
knowledge. In practical terms this entails the use of the theoretical and empirical
information available to produce a syllabus, to select, adapt or write material in
accordance with the syllabus, to develop a methodology for teaching those
materials and to establish evaluation procedures by which progress towards the
specified goals will be measured.
There are probably as many different approaches to ESP course design as
there are course designers. We can, however, identify three main types :
language-centred, skills-centred, and learning-centred.

1. Language-centred course design

This is the simplest kind of course design process and is probably the one
most familiar to English teachers. It particularly prevalent in ESP.
The language-centred course design process aims to draw as direct a
connection as possible between the analysis of the target situation and the content
of the ESP course. It proceeds as follows :
 Identify learners’ Select theoretical
Target situation Views of language

Identify linguistic features of target situation

Create Syllabus

Design materials to
exemplify syllabus
items

Establish evaluation procedures to test

acquisition o f syllabus items

*A language-centred approach to course design

This may seem to be a very logical procedure. It starts with the learner,
proceeds through various stages of analysis to a syllabus, thence to materials in
use in the classroom and finally to evaluation of mastery of the syllabus items.
However, logical and straightforward as it may seem, it has a number of
weaknesses :

a) It starts from the learners and their needs, and thus it might be considered a
learner-centred approach, but it is, in fact, not learner-centred in any
meaningful sense of term. In the learner-restricted syllabus, when
considering needs analysis , the learner should e considered at every stage of
the process. Yet, in this model the learning needs of the students are not
accounted for at all. It is, therefore, not learner-centred, but simply learner-
restricted.
b) The learner-centred process can also be criticized for being a static and
inflexible procedure, which can take a little account of the conflicts and
contradictions that are inherent in any human endeavor. Any procedure must
have flexibility, feedback channels and error tolerance built in so that it can
respond to unsuspected or developing influences.

c) One of the alluring features of this model is that appears to be systematic.

Unfortunately the role of systematization in learning is not so simple.
Certainly, there is a lot of evidence to show that the systematization of
knowledge plays a crucial role in the learning process : we learn by fitting
individual items of knowledge together to create a meaningful predictive
system. But the most important point here is that it must be an internally-
generated system not an externally-imposed system.

d) The language-centred model gives no acknowledgment to factors which must

inevitably play a part in the creation of any course. To take a simple example,
one of the primary principles of good pedagogic materials is that they should
be interesting. An analysis of language items cannot tell you whether a text
or an activity is interesting. Thus, it materials are based on the language-
centred model, then either there are other factors being used, which are not
acknowledged in the model, or, sadly this is what seems so often to be the
case, these learning factors are not considered to be important at all. As a
teacher once remarked at a seminar on materials writing, ‘It doesn’t matter if
it’s boring.It’s ESP.’

e) The language-centred analysis of target situation data is only at the surface

level. It reveals very little about the competence that underlines the
performance.
In summary, then, the logical, straightforward appeal of the language-centred
approach is, in effect, its weakness. It fails to recognize the fact that, learners
being people, learning is not a straightforward, logical process.
2. Skills-centred course design

The skills-centred approach to ESP has been widely applied in a number of

countries, particularly in Latin America. Students in universities and colleges
there have the limited, but important need to read subject texts in English,
because they are unavailable in the mother tongue. The skills-centred approach is
founded on two fundamental principles, one theoretical, the other pragmatic :
a) The basic theoretical hypothesis is that underlying any language behavior are
certain skills and strategies, which the learner uses in order to produce or
comprehend discourse. This approach aims to get away from the surface
performance data and look at the competence that underlies the performance.
This example from a Brazilian ESP syllabus for Library Science students is
given in Maciel et al. (1983) (our brackets) :
General Objective (i.e. Performance level) :
The student will be able to catalog books written in English.
Specific Objective (i.e. Competence level) :
The student will be able to :
-extract the gist of a text by skimming through it.
-extract relevant information from the main parts of a book.

b) The pragmatic basis for the skills-centred approach derives from a distinction
made by Widdowson (1981) between goal-oriented courses and process-
oriented courses.

The role of needs analysis in a skills-centred approach is twofold. Firstly, it

provides a basis for discovering the underlying competence that enables people to
perform in the target situation. Secondly, it enables the course designer to
discover the potential knowledge and abilities that the learners bring to the ESP
classroom.

The skills-centred approach, therefore, can certainly claim to take the learner
more into account than the language-centred approach :
a. It views language in terms of how the mind of the learners processes it rather
than as an entire in itself.
b. It tries to build on the positive factors that the learners bring to the course,
rather than just on the negative idea of ‘lacks’.
c. It frames its objectives in open-ended terms, so enabling learners to achieve
at least something.

Yet, in spite of its concern for the learner, the skills-centred approach still
approaches the learner as a user of language rather than as a learner of language.
The process it is concerned with are the processes of language use not of
language learning. It is which this distinction in mind that we turn to the third
approach to course design.

Theoretical
views of
language

Identify Analyse Write Select text Establish

target skills/ syllabus and write evaluation
situation strategies exercises to procedures
required to focus on which
cope in skills/strateg require the
target ies in use of skills/
situation syllabus strategies in
syllabus

Theoretical
views of
learning
*A skills-centred approach to course design
3. A learning-centred course design

Before describing this approach , we should expand our explanation of why

we have chosen the term learning-centred instead of the more common term
learner-centred.
The learner-centred approach is based on the principle that learning is totally
determined by the learner. As teachers we can influence what we teach, but what
learners learn is determined by the learners alone. Learning is not just a mental
process, it is a process of negotiation between individuals and society. Society
sets the target situation and the individuals must do their best to get as close to
that target as is possible.
To return to our discussion of approaches to course design, we can see that
for all its emphasis on the learner, the skills-centred approach doesn’t fully take
the learner into account, because it still makes the ESP learning situation too
dependent on the target situation. The learner is used to identify and to analyze
the target situation needs. But then, as with the language -centred approach, the
learner discarded and the target situation analysis is allowed to determine the
content of the course with little further reference to the learner :
A language-centred approach says : This is the nature of the target situation
performance and that will determine the ESP course.
A skills-centred approach says : That’s not enough. We must look behind the
target performance data to discover what processes enable someone to perform.
Those processes will determine the ESP course.
A learning-centred approach says : That’s not enough either. We must look
beyond the competence that enables someone to perform, because what we really
want to discover is not the competence itself, but how someone acquires that
competence.
 We might see the relationship in this diagram :

Identify target situation

A language centred approach

Considers the learner to here

Analyse target situation

Analyse learning situation A skills-centred approach

Considers the learner to here

Write syllabus

Write materials

Teach materials

Evaluate learner achievement

A learning-centred approach

Must consider the learner at

every stage

*Comparison of approaches to course design

That diagram shows that a learning-centred approach to course design takes
account of the learner at every stage of the design process. This has two
implications :
a. Course design is a negotiable process. There is no single factor which has an
outright determining influence on the content of the course.The ESP learning
situation and target situation will both influence the nature of syllabus,
materials, methodology and evaluations procedures.
b. Course design is a dynamic process. It does not move in a linear fashion
from initial analysis to completed course.

But, if we took a learning-centred approach, we would need to ask further

questions and consider other factors, before determining the content and
methodology of the course.
a) How the learner can learn that knowledge most effectively
b) What are the implications for methodology of having a mono-skill focus ?
c) How will the students react doing tasks involving other skills, and they
appreciate the greater variety and interest of the activities.
d) Do the resources in the classroom allow the use of other skills . The teacher
handle an integrated skills approach.
e) How will the learners react to discussing things in mother tongue
f) How will the learners' attitudes vary through the course?
g) How do the learners feel about reading as an activity?

Conclusion
In this chapter we have looked at the question of how the data of a needs analysis
can be used to design an effective ESP course. We have argued that the course
design process should be much more dynamic and interactive. In particular,
factors concerned with the learning must be brought into play all stages of design
process. We have called this learning-centred approach-an approach with the
avowed aim of maximising the potential of the learning situation.