Educaciön

MEMORIAS DEL III FORO NACIONAL DE ESTUDIOS EN LENGUAS (FONAEL 2007)
ISBN 978-968-9308-13-3
Universidad de Quintana Roo – Departamento de Lengua y Educación
http://www.fonael.org - fonael@fonael.org
275
From curriculum to syllabus design: The different stages to
design a programme
Irma Dolores Núñez y Bodegas
Universidad Autónoma de Chiapas
Escuela de Lenguas-TapachulaAbstract
Designing your own programme as an in-service teacher might be really time
consuming and also difficult to teach how to do it to pre-service teachers. But in
the long run it might be rewarding when knowing that we are giving the students
what they want and need and not just what has been decided by the authorities.
In this paper the following will be considered:
ƒ What iscurriculum, course and syllabus and possible
approaches to course design?
ƒ What is meant by articulating your beliefs?
ƒ What is defining the context?
ƒ What are goals, objectives and needs analysis?
ƒ What stages are followed in designing a course?
Curriculum includes the philosophy, purposes, design and implementation of a
whole programme. A course according to Hutchinson and Waters (1996)is an
integrated series of teaching learning experiences, whose ultimate aim is to
lead the learners to a particular state of knowledge. And syllabus is the
specification and ordering of content of a course or courses.
When reflecting on our own teaching we know that most of the time, we have
used a commercial textbook as our syllabus for the different levels of English
we havetaught along our in-service years. Sometimes we modify something or
add what we consider is missing in the current book used. But we do not take
into consideration that most of the books have not been designed specifically
for our different contexts. It is not the same to teach to students from a capital
city than it is to teach students in a Secondary School up in the mountains
where theydo not have any kind of access to computers and less to the
internet.
The factors to consider in defining the context such as: people, physical setting,
stakeholders, teaching resources and time are crucial if we design the
programme instead of just following the textbook. Graves (2000) mentions that
defining the context and articulating your beliefs serve as the foundation for theprocess to follow when designing your own programme. Assessing needs,
formulating goals and objectives, developing materials, designing an
assessment plan, organizing the course and conceptualizing content is
described as a framework of course development process. Although there is no
one way of organizing a course; the factors mentioned can help you choose
how to do it. The results haveto make sense to you, to the students, and to the
authorities. (Graves op. cit)
MEMORIAS DEL III FORO NACIONAL DE ESTUDIOS EN LENGUAS (FONAEL 2007)
ISBN 978-968-9308-13-3
Universidad de Quintana Roo – Departamento de Lengua y Educación
http://www.fonael.org - fonael@fonael.org
276
1. Introduction
The different definitions given to curriculum as well aspossible approaches
to course design will be given first. Articulating your beliefs and defining the context
are going to be exposed, together with assessing needs, formulating goals and
objectives. Next, we shall be focussing on the different ways of organizing courses
and specification and ordering of the content i.e. the syllabus. Last, a short
explanation about materials, designing anassessment plan and how to evaluate
courses.
2. Curriculum, course, syllabus and approaches to course design
2.1 Curriculum
The definition of curriculum is complex because there are as many
definitions as there are writers in the field. It can go anywhere along the range from
a list of subjects for a course to the perception of the ultimate goal of education as
a whole. What is...