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. We will know more about the importance of goals in designing a curriculum and where we can achieve these goals. Moreover, what we 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. let’s see together about goals, content and sequencing!

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.

1- EnvironmentLearners Teachers Situation 2- NeedsLacks Wants Necessities 3- Principles

The goals of a language lesson can focus on one or more of the following: Languages Ideas Skills Or Text Making sensible, well-justified decisions about content is one of the most important parts of curriculum design.

What do you want them to know and be able to do at the end of the semester? How will the course build on where students started and help them move through the rest of the curriculum?

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. Curriculum content 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 detail of the content descriptions. Curriculum content is to be presented as detailed content descriptions only.

The units of progression in a course are items that are used to grade the progress of the course. They are what the curriculum designer sees as being important for learning. This means that it has an effect on the kinds of activities used which is a part of the format and presentation part of curriculum design.

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 mentor and report on learners’ progress and achievement in the course.

Articulating your beliefs and defining the context might be considered as the foundation for the processes to follow when organizing your syllabus. Needs analysis and specifying the aims and objectives could go next. What follows is what you must plan, organize and the decisions to take about what should be taught first, second, third, and so on. Structural Situational Topical Functional Notional Skills Task

The sequencing of vocabulary in a course can be loosely based on frequency levels as it is in series of graded readers.

Many courses use grammar as the major unit of progression. Infrequent items can be usefully introduced in courses where they are needed to be learned as memorized phrases rather than as structure to focus on. Grammatical and phonological structures are the organizing principles-sequenced from easy to difficult or frequent to less frequent Situations (such as at the bank, at the supermarket, at a restaurant, and so forth) form the organizing principle- sequenced by the likelihood students will encounter them (structural sequence may be in background)

There in no standard list of language functions that accompanied by frequency data. Some courses use functions as their units of progression with each lesson focusing on a different function or set of functions. Functions (such as identifying, reporting, correcting, describing & so forth) are the organizing principle-sequenced by some sense of chronology or usefulness of each function.

Discourse as the basis for units of progression is more likely to be used in pre-university courses where learners systematically cover a range of relevant genres such as recounts, information report and arguments.

Some courses use skills and sub-skills as their units of progression. There are 3 ways of defining sub-skills: 1- One is to look at the range of activities covered by a skill such as speaking. 2- To look at the skill as a process and to divide it into the parts of the process and this is a typical way of approaching writing. 3- To divide up a skill is to use levels of cognitive activity.

A good language puts the learners in contact with ides that help the learning of language and are useful to the learners. The ideas of a course can be about: 1- Imaginary happenings. 2- An academic subject. 3- Learner survival needs. 4- Interesting facts. 5- Culture.

A- The ideas content of the course helps learning in the classroom because: 1- It makes the learners interested and motivated. 2- It encourages normal language use. 3- It makes learning easier.

B- The ideas content of the courses increases the acceptability and usefulness of the course outside the classroom because: 1-It helps learners' job study or living. 2- It develops awareness of another culture or cultures. 3- It maintains and supports the learners’ own culture. 4- It helps learners develop emotionally and socially. 5- It meets the expectations of the learners and their parents.

Topics or Themes (Such as health, food, clothing, and so forth) form the organizing principle-sequenced by the likelihood that students will encounter them (structural sequence may be in background) Conceptual Categories (Such as duration, quantity, location, and so forth) are the basis of organization- sequenced by some sense of chronology or usefulness of each notion (structural and situational sequences may be in background)

Skills (Such as listening for main ideas, listening for inferences, scanning a reading passage for specific information, and so forth) serve as the basis for organization sequenced by some sense of chronology or usefulness for each skill (structural and situational sequences may be in background) Task or Activity-based Categories (Such as drawing maps, following directions, following instruction, and so forth) serve as the basis for organization-sequenced by some sense of chronology or usefulness of notions (structural and structural and situational sequence may be in background).

The realization that many 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. Questions to help teacher and curriculum designer determine the extent to which an activity is task-like : 1- Does the activity engage learners’ interest? 3- Is there an outcome? 4- Is success is judged in terms of outcome? 5- Does the activity relate to the real world activities? If a task based syllabus is used, it is very particularly important that there are other ways of checking the coverage of content, vocabulary, grammatical items and types of discourse. Good curriculum design involves the checking of courses against a range of types of content.

The lessons or units of a course can fit together in a variety of ways. The two major divisions are weather the material in one lesson depends on the learning that has occurred in previous lessons. Let’s see two related approaches together!

Most language courses involve linear development, beginning with simple frequent items that prepare for later more complex items. 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.

1- Spiral Curriculum: It involves deciding on the major items to cover, and then covering them several times over a period of time at increasing levels of detail.

Spiral Curriculum

The unit of progression is systematically varied against another, so that the same items are met with different contexts. For example the same grammatical items are focused on across a variety of topics.

3- Revision Units: They are simply an addition to a linear model. At certain points in linear progression, time is spent revising previously met materials. Logically, the relative amount of time is given to revision should increase as the course progress.

Revision Units

4- Field Approach: The items to be covered are decided upon and then the learners can start anywhere with the material and end anywhere as long as it is all covered.

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 itself and does not usually assume knowledge of previous modules. -In language courses the language could be divided into modules in several ways. -The module could be skill-based with different modules for listening, speaking, reading and writing and sub-skills of these larger skills. -The module could be based on language functions, or more broadly situations dealing with the language needed for shopping, emergency services, travel….etc.

After reviewing goals, content and sequencing, we became more aware of the operation of designing a curriculum. We discussed the goals, how to include them within the curriculum. Moreover, the content and the important skills to be included. At last, two approaches in designing a curriculum and the advantages and disadvantages for each one have been mentioned.

The goals of English courses can relate to (1) language, (2) ideas or content, (3) skills and (4) text or discourse types. Look at statements of goals in course books and then write no more than 50 words describing the general goals of your course. You may find it useful to begin your statement with “the main objective of this course is... ”.

Design_Paper_.pdf _Mem_FONAEL_III/Nunez_y_Bodegas_Irma_Dolores. pdf