A curriculum framework for corporate language programs

After reading this article, I realized how hard it is to make a good curriculum. It seems that it requires conscious effort. When I worked for summer camp at Yonsei university, the coordinator, whose name is Christine, had designed curriculum by burning midnight oil for more than 3monthes before beginning the camp. Before reading this article, Actually, I couldn't understand why it took such a long time to develop curriculum. Now, I can see how complicating it is. Especially, it seems very difficult to consider learners' style in that individuals have different styles. According to the article, it's effective to consider their learning style and organize the curriculum based on their preference to lead the program successfully in given time. I agree to it in some degrees, but I think it's also important to give opportunities to turn learners' weakness to their strength. For example, if some students are field independent, because their left brains function better, it 's good to introduce activities which facilitate the right brain to to balance so that they can improve their skills to deal with any given tasks. Likeswise, this article made me come up with variety of ideas which can be applied in EFL environment and found it very instructional for my future career.

Course planning and syllabus design

Even though notional functional syllabus has been cricticized for some reasons, Still I think it is very useful approach in CLT in that its strengh outweighs the weakness, comparing to structural syllabus which are sequenced according to grammatical structures. Of course, depending on the purpose of learning of target language, different approaches and syllabuses should be applied. However, basically as we are living in the age of globalizaion, we learn English as a communication tool. Therefore, learners should develop their skills in the context by understanding how the target language is used in real world. When they encounter instructed point in communicative usage like it tis used in the real world, learners can stimulate their interest and it meets the goal of the instruction. So, it makes a contribution to develop learner's fluency for funtional purpose in real world. For example, some of my students whose age is not more than 11 years old can introduce themselves in English without thinking any grammatical difficulty. Of course, although they didn't take any grammar lesson for the usage of "TO INFINITIVE", they say "Nice to meet you"to native speakers in Enlgish for greeting naturally. The more they obsess with accurate use of insturcted grmmar point, the more they monitor their lnaguage, so it seems to deter their fluency. Accordingly, I like functional syllabus that satisfies pragmatic purpose and I will design the curriculum based on this syllabus.

Planning goals and learning outcomes

This reading touches different approach to the role of language in the curriculum. Among five curriculum perspectives, I found "cultural pluralism" the most interesting, because I believe culture is deeply interrelated with language. This issues might not be considered important elements to be examined, because Korea is not multicultural or cosmopolitan countury like America which is cosisted of different races. However, as we are living in the age of globalization, this issuse should be examined very carefully to prevent liguistic imperialism. When we devalue the native culture and worship dominant culture, it threatens even the exsitence of country. Especially younger the learners are, the weaker their language ego becomes. Therefore it might result in the loss of identity when they are exposed to only American culture. When I taught English at the camp of Yonsei University, there was a Korean American teacher. She seems to think Korean culture is inferior to American culture and she didn't even eat Kim-chi. Her attitude was not confined to her taste in food, and it was reflected in her teaching. In cuture classs, she assigned a few states in united states and asked her students to investigate features and culture of each state. Of course, I know the importance of leaning cultures of countury which target language is used. However, teaching of Korean culture is also important part to help them have balanced perspective toward diffent culture. I think it would be good idea to teach culture with using culture capsule, because it helpt them understand the difference between native culture and target culture. To implement culture instruction effectively, consideration how we can help learners to have balanced viewpoint toward variety of cultures should take into account in the beginning of planning curriculum. I thinkk it's essential.

Situation analysis

This chapter was about situation analysis and covered various factors : societal factors, project factors, institutional factors, teacher factors, learner factors, and adoption factors
I think all these factors have tremendous effect on implementing a curriculum successfully. Therfore, lack of appropriate sistuation analysis at initial stage resuts in the fail of curriculum. I think the introduction of elective program in 7th national curriculum is a good example to show its importnace. The ultimate goal of elective curriclum was to give the opportunities high school 2nd and 3rd graders to choose a number of electives. The intention was great enough to attract people's attention, but it caused so many issues to be examined. First of all, there was a problem in institutional factors, because school couldn't afford to open diverse electives that reflect the different abilities, aptitude, need, and interest of students. Secondly, another problem was in the societal factors. Students and their parents considered main subject such as Korean, math and English the most important, because those subjects are necessary and required subjets in Korean SAT. Therefore, most of them didn't apply for the eletives based on their interests and career development needs.
This gives us important implication. Although elective curriclum was introduced, following western country's successful practice, it couldn't be successful in Korean situation, because situation analysis was not tanken into account carefully.

Need analysis

After reading this article, I looked back on my teaching experience at elementary school. Although I was aware of importance of need analysis, there was no necessity of conducting it. Ministry of Education organized curriculum in advance, so teachers had determined syllabus and made it rule to follow that syllabus. However, teaching field is so dynamic and leaners' development stages are variable that differntiated instruction and curriculum should be given according to learner's need. Otherwise, lesson will end with fail, although the curriculum is well organized and satisfies the objective of instruction. One of the journal I read explains the importance of need analysis very well. It deals with vocabulary teaching and the research was conducted to show the effectiveness of using monolingual dictionary. However, the results turned out the learners who used bilingual dictionary showed better achievement in the test. This result implies how important the learners' preference and need is in language acquisition. Therefore, I would like learn how to conduct need analysis with triangular approach such as questionnaire, interview, meeting, etc in detail so that I can be a considerate teacher who satisfies the learners' needs and wants.

START^^