How to Design an English Course

Teachers as designers have a lot of jobs. Today in KTSP, our government just gives or makes a curriculum. Then, teacher should design their syllabus, course, and make a lesson plan. A curriculum is the set of courses, and their content, offered at a school or university. As an idea, curriculum stems from the Latin word for race course, referring to the course of deeds and experiences through which children grow to become mature adults. A curriculum is prescriptive, and is based on a more general syllabus which merely specifies what topics must be understood and to what level to achieve a particular grade or standard.

After that, teachers must make the syllabus; basically it means a concise statement or table of the heads of a discourse, the contents of a treatise, and the subjects of a series of lectures. In the form that many of us will have been familiar with it is connected with courses leading to examinations - teachers talk of the syllabus associated with, say, the Cambridge Board French GSCE exam. What we can see in such documents is a series of headings with some additional notes which set out the areas that may be examined.

And then, teachers must be able to design their course. It is a systematic approach to course development that ensures that specific learning goals are accomplished. It is an iterative process that requires ongoing evaluation and feedback.  The teacher must make course design for one semester. In designing the course we must consider about; Students, context, objectives, materials and evaluation. There are some steps of course design; planning, teaching, modifying, and re-teaching.

After designing a course, teachers have to make a lesson plan. It is a teacher's detailed description of the course of instruction for an individual lesson. A daily lesson plan is developed by a teacher to guide class instruction. Planning the material is much more difficult than delivering the lessons. Planning is when you look at the curriculum standards and develop the content that match those standards you also have to take into consideration the needs of the children you are planning for. Luckily, textbooks that are adopted for your subject areas are typically written with this in mind. All details should be written down to assist the smooth delivery of the content. The extent of the detail will vary depending on the number of years of experience that the teacher has and the number of times he/she has taught the lesson. Obviously, an instructor with several years of experience may have plans that are much less detailed than beginning teachers.

A teacher must be able to design his/her course. There are some particular things that teacher should do in designing a course. They are;

Course rationale

Course rationale is a brief explanation or description about general objectives designing the course in one program. The course is called correct if it can answer the questions below:

            Who is this course for?

            What is the course for?

            What is the course about?

            What kind of teaching and learning will take place in the course?

In answering these questions the course rational describes the belief, values and goals that underline the course. A course rationale is usually built-up in two or three paragraphs. So a course rationale has some purposes:

1. Guiding the planning of the various components of the course
2. Emphasizing the kinds of teaching and learning the course should exemplify
3. Providing a check on the consistency of various course components in term of the course values and goals

Describing the entry and exit level

It is necessary to know the level at which the program will start and the level learners may be expected to reach at the end of the course. Teacher as a designer need information about students proficiency level before they begin the process teaching and learning. The information is needed to determine an appropriate program that suitable to the students. 

Choose the course content

The choice of a particular approach to content selection will depend on subject-matter knowledge, the learners’ proficiency levels, current views on foreign language and teaching, conventional wisdom, and convenience. Teacher should develop the initial ideas for course content, where it often take place simultaneously with syllabus planning, because the content of a course will often depend on the type of syllabus framework that will be used as the basis for the course.

Determine the scope and sequence

Decisions about content also need to address the distribution of content throughout the course. This is known as planning the scope and sequence of the course. Scope is concerned with the breadth and depth of coverage of the items in the course, which is with the following questions:

What range of the content will be covered?

What extent should each topic is studied for?

And sequencing of content in the course also needs to be determined. This involves deciding which content is needed early in the course and which provides for things that will be learned later. Sequencing may be base on the following criteria; simple to complex, chronology, need, prerequisite learning, whole to part or part to whole, and spiral sequencing.

Planning the course structure

After determining the scope and sequence of the course, the next stage in course development is planning the course structure that provides a suitable basis for teaching. There are two aspects in planning the course structure, they are:

1.      Select a syllabus basis

A syllabus describes the major elements that will be used in planning a language course and provides the basis for its instructional focus and content. There are some factors that influence planner in choosing a particular syllabus framework, such as; knowledge and belief about the subject area, research and theory, common practice, trends. By considering the situation, topic, function, and task-based, teachers (as planners) can choose the appropriate syllabus frame work, such as; Grammatical syllabus, Lexical syllabus, Functional syllabus, Situational syllabus, Topical or content-based syllabus, Competency based syllabus, Skills syllabus, Task-based syllabus, Text-based syllabus.

2.      Develop the instructional block

A course also needs to be mapped in term of instructional block or sections. An instructional block is a self-contained learning sequence that has its own goals and objectives and that also reflects the overall objectives for the course. Planning the organizational structure in a course involves selecting appropriate block and deciding on the sequence in which this will appear. In organizing a course, we must achieve; the course is made more teachable and learnable,  provides a progression an level of difficulty, create overall coherence and structure for the course.

There are two commonly used instructional in planning; the first is planning by modules and the second is by units. Planning by modules is a self-contained and independent learning sequence with its own objectives. And planning by units is normally longer than a single lesson but shorter than a module and it is commonest way of organizing course and teaching materials.

Preparing the scope and sequence plan

After both planning and organizing a course is finished, we can prepare the scope and sequence by describing it. This might consist of listing of the modules or units and their contents and an indication how much time must be spent to teach each block in the course require