Summary of "The Origins of Language Curicculum Devolopment"

Created by 10th group:
1. Priangga Rizki P     (153221248)
2. Pepi Permatasari     (153221250)
3. Sarah. Muktiati       (153221251)

Historical Background of Curriculum development

Language curriculum development is an aspect of a broader field of educational activity known as curriculum development. It means that the curriculum development and educational activities have relation each other. Curriculum development starts with the notion of syllabus design. A syllabus contains the instruction and list that will be taught and tested. Then, the syllabus design is the process in developing the syllabus. The issues of syllabus design as the major factor in language teaching have discussed much earlier than the curriculum development. It is because the curriculum development really began in the 1960s.

           In this book explained that the changing of approaches in language teaching is affected by the changing of teaching methods. The method concept in teaching is the notion of a systematic set of teaching practices based on particular theory of language and language learning. And it is a powerful one or the quest for better method has been a preoccupation of many teachers. Teaching method has some kinds, according to the sequences there are: Grammar translation method, direct method, structural method, reading method, audiolingual method, situational method, and the last is communicative approach. Although the methods has different times, but the methods have same form. The methods give the specifications for the processes of instruction in language teaching. It is also give the assumption about the materials that need to be taught.

          Because in any language program has limited time for teaching, it cause some problems appear. The first problem is deciding what should be selected from the total corpus of the language and incorporated in textbooks and teaching material. It is known as selection, and it is the part that the methods intend to teach. Two aspects of selection that appear in the first few decades of the twentieth century are vocabulary selection and grammar selection. The approaches to these two aspects of selection laid to the foundations for syllabus design in language teaching.

          Vocabulary selection

          Vocabulary is a components of language and linguists applied that become attention. What words should be taught in second language? This depends on the objective of the course and the amount of time available for teaching. Actually, not all the words that native speakers know are necessarily useful especially for they that have limited time. Only words that occurred in three or more of the texts could reasonably be described as being important vocabulary. The conclusion that can be drawn is that a student studying from any of the books in this study would spend a large amount of time trying understand and use vocabulary. It was to avoid the issue of vocabulary selection that happened at twentieth century. Word frequencies are important in planning word lists for language teaching. But frequency is not necessarily the same thing as usefulness because it depends on the type of language sample that are analyzed. Words such as book, pen, desk, dictionary are not frequent words yet might be needed early on in a language course. These included: Teach ability, concrete vocabulary can easily be illustrated through pictures or by demonstration. Similarity, some items may be selected because they are similar in different language. Availability, some words may not be frequent but they come quickly when we thought about certain topics. Coverage, words that cover the meaning of other words. Defining power, not a frequent words but selected because they are useful. Basic vocabulary or a lexical syllabus is a group or a grade of a target vocabulary that divided into levels that lead to the compilation for procedures in a vocabulary.

             Grammar Selection and Gradation

             The need for a systematic approach to selecting grammar for teaching pur­poses was also a priority for applied linguists from the 1920s. The number of syntactic structures in a language is large. The example for grammatical selection can be seen in the speech act of "asking permission." There are many different ways to perform speech act of "asking permission." How can one determine which of the structures would be useful to teach? Traditionally the grammar items included in a course were determined by the teaching method in use and there was consequently a great deal of vari­ation in what items were taught and when. The majority of courses is started with finites of be and statements of identification (This is a pen, etc.). Courses that gave prominence to reading presented the Simple Tenses (essential for narrative) early, but "those that claimed to use a 'Direct-Oral Method' presented the Progressive (or Continuous) Tense first and postponed the Simple tenses.

              In regard to the teaching of English, from the 1930s applied linguists be­gan applying principles of selection to the design of grammatical syl­labuses. But in die case of grammar, selection is closely linked to the issue of gradation. Gradation is concerned with the grouping and sequencing of teaching items in a syllabus. A grammatical syllabus specifies both the set of grammatical structures to be taught and the order in which they' should be taught Palmer, a pioneer in work on vocabulary and grammar selection; explains die principle of gradation in this way. Certain moods and tenses are used more than others because their degree of importance so the grammatical material must be graded.

              The following principles have been used or suggested as a basis for developing grammatical syllabuses. Simplicity and centrality: This recommends choosing structures that are simple and more central to the basic structure that are complex and peripheral. Frequency: Frequency of occurrence also proposed in developing grammatical syllabuses, but relatively little progress was made in this area for some time because of the difficulty, of deciding on appropriate grammatical units to count and the difficulty of coding grammatical structures for analysis. Learnability: It has sometimes been argued that grammatical syllabuses should take into account the order in which grammatical items are acquired in second language learning. In addition to decisions about which grammatical items to include in a syllabus, the sequencing or gradation of grammatical items has to be deter­mined. The beginning should be slow and accurate, righty understood and immediately tested. The following approaches to gradation are possible: Linguistic distance: Simi­lar structures to the native language are easier to learn than those that are different. Intrinsic difficulty: The simpler structures should be taught before complex ones. Communicative need: Some structures will be needed early on and cannot be postponed, despite their difficulty. Frequency: The frequency of occurrence of structures and grammatical items in the target language.

              In designing a course one is also faced with a choice between. Two approaches to the sequencing of items in the course, namely, a linear or a cyclical or spiral gradation. With a linear gradation, the items are introduced one at a time and practiced intensively before the next items appears. With a cyclical gradation, items are reintroduced throughout the course.

In the 1940s, beginners' courses in English began to appear in which principles of vocabulary and grammatical control were evident and in which grammatical structures were organized into graded sequences. The meth­ods in use at the time placed a major emphasis on the learning of "struc­tures." The U.S. linguist Fries formed the grammar component for courses and materials developed with their focus on the core grammatical structures of English that influenced all materials developed and became the dominant methodology in the United States for more than 20 years. Although both lexical and grammatical syllabuses have provided impor­tant guidelines for the development of language teaching textbooks and materials since the first such syllabuses appeared in the 1920s, it is grammar syllabuses that have been regarded as the core of a language course or pro­gram.

              Assumptions underlying early approaches to syllabus design

               'We can now examine the assumptions behind the approaches to syllabus de­sign that emerged in the first part of the twentieth century and in the process reveal the limitations that subsequent directions in syllabus design sought to address.

The basic units of language are vocabulary and grammar, those working in the traditions discussed the teaching of English largely through the priority in planning of vocabulary and grammar and these were seen as the main building blocks of language development.

Learners everywhere have the same needs, the focus in language teaching was on "general" English, hence the title of West's word list. It was believed that the core vocabulary of the General Service List together with a grammatical syllabus of the type Hornby elab­orated would serve as the basis for almost all language courses.

Learners' needs are identified, exclusively in terms of language needs, the goal of English teaching is to teach them English and not to teach them how to solve their problems through English.

The process of learning a language is largely determined by the textbook, the primary input learners received to the language learning process was the textbook, hence the importance of the principles of selection and gradation as ways of controlling the content of the textbook and facilitating lan­guage learning.

The context of teaching is English as a foreign language, students studied English as a formal subject in school but had no immediate need for it outside of the classroom. The classroom and the textbook provided the primary input to the language learning process, hence the goal of syllabus developers was to simplify and rationalize this input as far as possible through the processes of selection and gradation.