From Blueprint to Edifice: An Architectural Approach to Curriculum and Materials Design

Date:

February 2000

Issue:

The Language Teacher - Issue 24.2; February 2000

Page No.:

Writer(s):

Steven Gershon, Obirin University

Approaching the construction process

In the construction of an edifice--a large, split-level home, say--plans
are drawn, the frame is assembled, the structure is built, the interior
is decorated and the rooms are furnished. Many stakeholders give input and,
ideally, collaborate toward a common vision. Architects, zoning officials,
builders, electricians, plumbers, interior designers and occupants are all
involved in the collaborative process. During each phase of the work, their
decisions reflect an interplay of their aesthetic preferences, practical
needs, physical resources, and external constraints. After that, regular
maintenance and occasional large-scale remodeling is undertaken. The result
is a fluid, sometimes spontaneous, often circular, process of decision-making,
problem solving, negotiation, and compromise.

The edifice of a university-based coordinated language program similarly
undergoes a kind of interactive construction process. The organizational
goals, curriculum, content, materials, and mechanisms for maintenance inevitably
reflect the interaction--at times smooth, at times not-- of various philosophical
tensions, pedagogical dichotomies, institutional pressures, and practical
constraints. (For a discussion of the many stakeholders involved in a university-based
language program, see Lindsay, 1997.) The result, as for our home above,
is a fluid, sometimes spontaneous, often circular, process of decision making,
problem solving, negotiation, and, inevitably, compromise.

This article examines some of the competing issues that influence the
builders of a language program to adopt certain perspectives over others
in constructing the curriculum and materials. To illustrate the issues involved,
examples are drawn from the Obirin University English Language Program (OUELP).
Though it's certainly not the only "Model home" on the market,
the Obirin program has proven itself to be a structurally sturdy abode containing
well-appointed, coordinated "rooms" of core and elective courses
to accommodate the 35 teachers and 1000 students who occupy them at any
one time. More importantly, it has for a number of years relied primarily
on its own in-house materials-writing "interior designers" to
furnish and continuously refurbish its core rooms. The "interior designing"
is not only the most time-consuming element of a program's management, but
also, ultimately, the most visible manifestation of its distinctiveness.

Drawing the blueprints ---> Needs: EGP, EAP, GEAC

A large, multi-room home is designed for the needs of its future occupants.
Since the builders may not know precisely who the future occupants will
be or what they will need, however, they design a structure that can accommodate
a variety of occupants over time.

A language program may incline its course offerings toward either English
for General Purposes or English for Specific Purposes (EGP or ESP), or any
of ESP's similarly abbreviated branches, such as EOP, EAP, EGAP, or ESAP--English
for Occupational Purposes, English for Academic Purposes, English for General
Academic Purposes, or English for Specific Academic Purposes aordan, 1997).
The starting point for a university language program's curriculum and materials
planning is an assessment of student needs.

The problem, of course, is determining those students' needs. Far from
the narrowly identifiable needs of a homogenous group of airline pilots
or nurses, unfortunately, university students' needs are often either broadly
varied or essentially undefined. Many, in fact, are the proverbial TENOR
students--Taking English for No Obvious Reason. A large program must attempt
to accommodate them all.

To reflect this "open house" approach, the OUELP targets a
fairly inclusive set of program goals, which incorporate

proficiency goals (extending language skills)
cognitive goals (understanding relevant cultural knowledge)
affective goals (achieving a sense of self-esteem and empowerment)
transfer goals (mastering generic learning skills for further study).

In the context of changing student population and this eclectic mix of
design goals, we have seen the need to position the program midway between
EGP and EAP. Perhaps the more embracing acronym GEAC, General English in
an Academic Context, most aptly describes the OUELP's set of working blueprints---
plans that are realized both in the structural framework (curriculum) and
the interior (materials) design.

Building the framework ---> Integrated skills

The foundation is prepared and the framework is put in place. The blueprints
call for a split-level design. On the first floor is a large central multi-purpose
living space for all. Along the hallway are smaller rooms set aside for
various uses. The second floor shares the same floor plan, with a multi-purpose
living room and separate smaller rooms down the hallway. Just as student
needs determine the functional focus of English (General or Academic) adopted
by a program, they also affect the structural framework within which the
curriculum and materials reside. EAP courses often revolve around a common
core of study skills divided into receptive and productive skills Uordan,
1997). English programs in Japanese universities often segregate the written
and oral skills, offering a collection of skill-based coursesseparate rooms,
each opening on the hallway, but none opening directly on another.

There are good reasons, logistical and pedagogical, for structuring a
program upon a discrete-skill framework, with each of the language skills
timetabled to a specific lesson. Likewise, a program may, for practical
or philosophical reasons, integrate the skills, allowing the various language
skills to flow through a course in an order dictated by the content. As
well as offering the teacher the advantages of flexibility, an integrated
approach offers the students variety, interest and, arguably, a more natural,
authentic framework for the study of any content area (Brinton et al., 1989).

The OUELP framework, with its GEAC blueprint, supports both integrated
skills and discrete skill areas. The integrated-skills first-year and second-year
"multipurpose rooms" form the structural center of each floor,
with students spending more of their time in this "core" area.
The separate-skill elective course "studios" down the hallway
provide students both the space and the opportunity to use other areas of
the "house" to their own advantage.

The decision to erect an integrated-skills framework for its core courses
has also led the OUELP naturally to a content focus. Although "content-based"
methodology often implies extensive use of authentic materials (Brinton
1989), the program's GEAC bias has led it to adopt a "soft" version,
with some authentic material and some adapted or simplified. Rather than
attempting to produce subject-specific content for each department, the
core courses offer a mix of vocabulary-rich materials appropriate for a
range of student interests and general academic needs.

Designing the interior ---> Do-It-Yourself materials

With the framework and structure in place, electricity and plumbing are
installed. It's then time to consider the interior design scheme. It's a
big job and one must consider whether to tackle it oneself, as a major Do-It-Yourself
(DIY) project, or to bring in interior design professionals. Why would the
planners of a program choose to design its materials "in-house"
over the far easier course of adopting commercially published material?
Swales (1980) suggests two varieties of reasons: (a) The existing published
textbooks are lacking in some way, either in designated level, cultural
appropriacy, or match-up with program goals; (b) language teaching professionals'
hubris or self-imposed need for status demands rejecting off-the-shelf books
in favor of material displaying their own homegrown expertise. We may also
add an equally relevant third reason: the market-driven demands on the institution
to promote a "designer-label" course to attract more applicants.
As Nunan (1998) points out, the teaching materials are "the tangible
manifestation of the curriculum in action." Just as it's the interior
design that gives a room its distinctiveness and usefulness, it's generally
the materials that provide a language program's most direct effect on the
students' learning.

Whatever the reasons for choosing DIY materials, once that decision is
made at the program level, the in-house interior design team has committed
itself to a very time-consuming, labor-intensive undertaking. Decisions
at each level affect those of each level below, from syllabus down to unit,
lesson and activity.

Decorating the space ---> Theme selection

Floor plans are rendered and the rooms, fitted with carpets, wallpaper,
and curtains, take on distinctive styles in keeping with their intended
uses.

For an integrated-skills content-based syllabus such as that of the OUELP
core course, a useful organizing unit is the theme. Within each theme, the
topics themselves can then be allowed to dictate a variety of language input
and tasks (Brinton et al., 1989). However, questions of scope and sequence
must follow: What criteria should guide the selection of themes? What principles
should guide the order of themes?

In the OUELP we opt for first-year themes such as People, Education,
Countries, and Global Issues. In the second year they are Film
Culture, The Sixties, Youth Culture, and The Information Age.
Within this selection, the order is guided by a loose, though consciously
built-in, conceptual and linguistic grading. In the first year, the earlier
themes focus on personal experience and the physical world around the students,
and have a relatively low conceptual load, then progress toward more abstract
and issues-based materials which require more linguistically-challenging
responses. In this way, the students move to "higher-levels of language
processing (e.g., comparison, distinguishing fact from opinion) through
the variety of text types, formats, and activities to which they are exposed"
(Brinton et al., 1989, p. 15), sharpening both their linguistic and cognitive
processes.

Furnishing the rooms ---> Theme organization

With the floor, walls, and windows appropriately covered, one begins
to visualize the central living space fully furnished. In deciding what
will go where, maintaining a sense of unity and practicality become crucial
issues which demand attention.

With appropriate themes in place, the question arises as to what principles
will guide each theme's construction and organization. One considers theme
length, the balance of skills, the flow of material, the internal cohesion
of the material within the unit, and the desired balance of built-in consistency
and variety.

Balance of skills: Maintaining an appropriate balance of skills
within a theme demands vigilance, particularly within an integrated-skills
framework. How much classroom time spent on a theme will be devoted to oral
skills, to writing and reading? Should the tasks in a theme be sequenced
from the least to the most challenging? Should the unit template incorporate
a pre-determined mix of fluency and accuracy tasks? How varied or uniform
should the theme's activities be in terms of pace and mode of interaction
(group, pair, individual)? These are all decisions dependent on a program's
goals and the pedagogical leanings of its materials design team.

Theme cohesion: Equally significant is the question of how much
internal cohesion a theme should have. In terms of language processing,
vocabulary, and content load, to what extent are the activities arranged
so as to build on each other?

At one extreme, the activities may relate to one another in such a way
that, to complete a given task, the students must have successfully completed
the preceding ones, forming a kind of task dependency or task
chain. The advantages of a unit that is cohesive in this way is that
the students retain a sense of direction, being able to clearly see their
competencies being built up along the way. However, one obvious disadvantage
is that it is generally necessary to do the activities in the fixed order
that they appear. More problematic is that a student having trouble with
one activity may become further and further lost as the theme proceeds through
more challenging activities.

An alternative approach might be called the activity bank model.
Here the activities are independent and autonomous; each one can stand alone
and be taken on its own terms, without assuming the content, vocabulary
or grammatical structures of the previous activity. Though the disadvantage
of this task independence may be a lack of clear direction through a unit,
the great advantage is flexibility. One can skip around the activities in
a theme more easily, altering the order to better suit the needs and interests
of the learners. Perhaps a more significant advantage is that the students
are offered a fresh start each time they face a new activityan important
consideration with mixed-level classes. It may also be a good model for
highly coordinated programs in which classes proceed through the same material
at equal speed, as it is one way to give teachers a degree of latitude to
follow their own instincts and interests, if not in the material's content,
then at least in its order.

In fact, one rarely sees a multiple-lesson unit in which the activities
are either wholly chained or wholly autonomous. This is certainly true of
the OUELP core course: A three-week, multi-lesson unit on the theme of Countries,
for example, will feature chained activities, offering a clear, logical
flow, and stand-alone activities as well.

Assembling the furniture ---> Activity construction

Pieces of furniture are assembled and arranged to fit in with the overall
interior style. In considering the design features of each piece, attractiveness
is weighed against purpose, simplicity, functionality, and sturdiness.

Just as each piece of furniture in a well-appointed room serves a purpose
and fits in with the general interior scheme, each activity in a unit benefits
from certain design features that give it both aesthetic and functional
value. In keeping with these principles, the materials designers then craft
their tasks. In the OUELP, the design team aims for tasks which display
the features of transparency, do-ability, surrender value, and robustness.

Transparency: The task type, whether dialogue, information-gap,
role-play, or vocabulary exercise, should have an intended outcome that
is transparent. Both the learners and the teacher need to know why they
are doing the activity and where it is leading. In OUELP materials, this
often means stating on the page the objectives for the activity. Transparency
also guides the rubric, heading the activity toward concise, bulleted instructions,
clear contexts, as in role-plays, and explicit, numbered procedural steps
for longer, more complex tasks.

Do-ability: All of these concerns make an activity more doable
for the students. More importantly though, is the assurance that they will
have the necessary language to complete the task as requiredin English.
This can only happen when the designers build into the task the language
support the students will need, both for the topic and for the necessary
task language to negotiate meanings, spellings, requests for repetition,
turn-taking, and group-formation.

Surrender value: Do-ability also involves logistical simplicity,
especially in relation to the surrender value of an activity, i.e. the functional
skills the learner will acquire from an activity in relation to the time
it takes. In other words, does it produce enough solid language practice
to make it worth the time and energy involved? Building into the core activities
a variety of interactive groupings is essential. However, our in-house designers
are also encouraged to anticipate realistically both the time investment
and the possible logistical complications that may affect the surrender
value of an activity.

Robustness: Just as a shoddy or flimsy piece of furniture will
before long fall apart or be left unused, an activity without a certain
well-proportioned robustness will soon leave students uninterested and demotivated.
This robust quality comes from various features the design team builds into
the activity's structure. A well-conceived pre-task lead-in, for example,
serves the dual purpose of introducing necessary vocabulary and pricking
the students' interest and expectations. To this end, quizzes, interviews,
and surveys feature prominently in OUELP materials. Likewise, task follow-ups
prompting personalization of the topic afford the students a real sense
of completion. Accountability for information gained about a topic or a
partner in the form of reporting back also puts students in the authentic
position of being able to relay their findings to an interested group. Whatever
the task, its strength, then, comes from the clear sense of its being a
well-proportioned whole that allows students to say they know or can do
something meaningful that they didn't know or couldn't do before.

Maintenance and Renovation

The house (program) has been fully occupied for some time, providing
the occupants (students) an attractive, productive space for their needs.
Some areas, however, have begun to show signs of wear and tear. Perhaps
an additional room (course) is needed. The new room needs furnishing. Blueprints,
hammers, saws, paintbrushes, and wallpaper come out once again. The work
continues . . .

References

Brinton, D., Snow, M., Wesche, M. (1989). Content-based second language
instruction. Boston: Heinle and Heinle.

Jordan, R. (1997). English for academic purposes: A guide and resource
book for teachers. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Lindsay, A. (1997). Designing and riding a camel: Some questions of balance
in a co-ordinated language program, Obirin Review of International Studies
9, 35-102.

Nunan, D. (1988). The leaner-centered curriculum. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press

Swales, J. (1980). ESP: The textbook problem. The ESP Journal,
1(1), 11-23.