skanowanie0039 (9)

The planning stage consists of all those decisions taken before the development and implementation of the programme begins. Ends specification relates to objectives, and means specification to method. Programme implementation involves teacher training and materials/resources development. Decision-making at the classroom implementation stage has as its products the acts of the teacher and the learner.

7.2.2. Curriculum planning

Policy makers are responding to the needs of leamers and an entire society. They determine the overall aims of the curriculum and are influenced in varying degrees by special interest groups who are able to bring pressure on them.

In different educational contexts, different people will play the ról# of policy maker and the policy will be stated morę or less formally. A language learner who hires a tutor is the policy maker. However, the teacher may influence the learner to modify that policy, or may implement an inappropriate curriculum, for example the one that happens to be available, without mentioning the fact to the learner.

A commercial language school makes its own policy and sets this out in a prospectus. Students decide whether the aims stated coincide with their own. Policy in this case may be determined primarily by market forces.

Commercially produced materials are generally piloted in schools before they are released for generał use. It is done at least by the morę reputable publishers. The materials are often significantly modified as a result.

There have also been situations when materials were developed through curriculum projects involving materials writers, publishers, ministries of education and other consumers.

If the materials writer provides the body of the curriculum, teacher training should provide the spirit. In a coherent curriculum, teacher training would clarify policy aims as expressed in the syllabus, would show how ends and means relate. The teacher trainer forms the bridge between the syllabus committee and the classroom.

7.2.3. Classroom implementation

Classroom implementation is the finał stage in the curriculum development process. It is also the most important because specific leaming acts determine curriculum outcomes. When implementing a language programme in the classroom, a major cause of difficulty is a difference between the actual proficiency levels of leamers and the level assumed by the materials writer. Writers are obliged to accept the ends specification in the syllabus as their target; otherwise their materials will not be used. If these aims are unrealistic, writers must either assume a higher level of proficiency than actually exists, or must push leamers forward morę rapidly than most of them can manage.

As a generał tendency for policy makers is to be over-optimistic about what can be achieved, this discrepancy is a freąuent cause of curriculum failure.

7.3. A functionally based syllabus

In the current practice of fóreign language teaching, the latest language-teaching materials are often referred to as „functional”, „notional”, or „communicative”. This terminology is often misunderstood as the end of grammatical mastery. The functional approach (and likewise functional/notional syllabus) does not deny the importance of mastering the grammatical system of the language. Grammatical form is taught not as an end in itself but as a means of carrying out communicative intent. This change in emphasis has sometimes obscured the concem for grammatical aspects of the language. It is because traditional concepts of grammatical progression no longer apply. Structural pattems that are normally considered „advanced” are often presented at the beginning of functional courses. The reason is that they are frequently used to

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