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.

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