Practice Activities – FP015 CCD

PRACTICE ACTIVITIES:
CURRICULUM AND COURSE DESIGN

GENERAL INFORMATION:

The subject practice activities consist of doing individually four short exercises. The
submitted document must fulfil the following conditions:

- Length: 2-3 pages (without including cover, activities’ statements, index or

Besides, the activities have to be presented in this Word document: keep the questions
and provide an answer below them. In order to make the correction process easier,
please, do not write the answers in bold, as it helps distinguishing between questions
and answers. Also, the document must still fulfil the rules of presentation and format,
and follow the rubric for citations and bibliographical references as detailed in the Study
Guide.

The final activitiy has to be submitted following the procedure specified in the “Subject
Evaluation” document. Sending it to the teacher’s e-mail is not permitted.

In addition to this, it is very important to read the assessment criteria, which can be
found in the “Subject Evaluation” document.

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 Practice Activities – FP015 CCD

Full name: MARÍA VICTORIA DE LERA ALONSO

Practice Activities

Task 1.
Define the following words so the differences between them are clear:
a) Curriculum and syllabus
Ralph Tyler (1949) defines curriculum as all the learning experiences planned
and directed by the school to attain its educational goals; he explains that curriculum
planning is a continuous process that needs to be fine-tuned. Not in vain his Basic
Principles of Curriculum have been quite effective for educators to outline curriculums
that integrate national objectives with their students´needs. On the other hand, syllabus
refers to “… a summary of the content to which learners will be exposed”, according to
Yalden (1987). As a summary, whereas Curriculum is prescriptive, Syllabus is
descriptive.
b) Approach and method.

Following Richard and Rodger´s terminology (1986), Approach is “those

Task 2
Unit 2 argues that most curriculums are either knowledge-centered or
person-centered. Find the book you learn English with, or a book you like using
in your class and argue whether it is a knowledge-centered curriculum or
person-centered curriculum. Illustrate your argument with captures from the
book. Do not forget to include the full reference, as well.
Despite being a teacher for some years now and consequently having used
multifarious coursebooks with their corresponding workbooks, videos, dvds and
teachers´material, the first image of an English book that comes to my mind when
reading this task was the one with which I started learning English, back in the 20 th
century, that is Coles, M. & Lord, B. (19. ) Access to English: Starting Out. Oxford:
Oxford University Press. This is a snapshot of its cover:

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I must confess myself that I love this book because of its endearing characters:
who wouldn´t sympathize with poor Arthur, and his adventures in the search of the love
of his life, Mary, who is in turn dazzled by the attractive and rich Bruce?? Such good
memories!!! But what is of interest for my purpose is to analyze the book to credit for
one of the both paradigms explained in unit 2, that is, the knowledge-centred or the
person-centred paradigms. First of all, I will provide some snapshots of a unit in the
book to arrive at an understanding about the choice of one over the other, grounded on
sound bases.

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A clear focus on the knowledge centred paradigm has superseded the person-
centred paradigm since the very moment that activities based on repetition of the same
structure are readily observable despite the fact there is little to no explicit grammar
explanation; however, these activities have only one correct and targeted answer and
they do not allow students for some freedom of expression. The role of the learners
becomes passive, with no opportunity to be involved in their learning process.
Task 3
Are some verb tenses more teachable than other items? List five different verb
tense in English in order of “teachability” according to your criteria. Give them a
score from 1 (very easy to teach) to 5 (very difficult to teach) and justify the
score. You might want to consider the students’ L1, previous experiences, or
activities you have tried (either as a teacher or as a student) that worked well.
To the first question, about the “teachability” of some items over others and
speaking from my own experience, I should say that all the syntactic structures that are
very similar to the L2 are easier to teach since students build the new knowledge on a
previous foundation. Obviously enough, vocabulary notions are usually easier to teach
than grammar too.
Concerning the “teachability” of verbal tenses, for the scope of our purpose five
verbal tenses have been selected: Past Simple, Future, Present Perfect, Continuous
Future and Present Perfect Continuous. The results are based on these premises:
Does a similar tense exist in L2 (Spanish in this case)? Is it a Simple or Perfect Tense?
Has it got irregular forms? Is an auxiliary verb required to form negative and questions
statements? Have they got the same uses as in L1?
Similar Simple Irregular Operator Same Uses
Tense in L1? Tense? forms required? as in L1?
Simple Future NO
(1) YES YES NO NO
Present NO YES
Perfect (3) YES NO YES
Present NO NO YES NO
Perfect NO

Continuous(5)
Continuous NO
Future (2) YES NO NO YES
Simple Past
(4) YES YES YES YES NO

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The above scenario concludes that the Future is the most teachable tense
despite some of its uses do not match with those in L1 and the Present Perfect
Continuous is the tense the students strive for an overall comprehension.
As a teacher it is a challenge to try my students to use The Present Perfect
Continuous in real situations; as far as the Past Simple is concerned, no matter the
mistakes they make (the mismatch between regular and irregular forms, or the lack of
auxiliary in negative or in questions) but they normally know how to use in
communicative situations. When working with the Present Perfect Continuous vs
Present Perfect I try to put the emphasis on the completion of the action.

Task 4
4. The following is an advert for a two-week immersion course that
combines English and sports: http://www.ipcexeter.co.uk/courses/school-
language-projects/the-projects/englishsports/
Considering a course like this, explain what peculiaritieswould the syllabus
design need to consider in terms of setting goals, choosing/designing materials,
teaching methodology and evaluation.
-Richards, J. & Rodgers, T. (1986): Approaches and Methods in Language Teaching.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Chapter 2.
-Tyler, R. (1949): Basic Principles of Curriculum and Instruction. Chicago: The
University of Chicago Press.