Curriculum
Design
Goal
Speaking
of the new English curriculum, first we need to set up a goal for our teaching
and learning process. As we can see in this case, the most critical issue is
that we need to change students from test taking machine to
innovative, independent thinker and learn some practical skills. Therefore,
our English class must emphasize English applying ability rather than theoretical
content. To be more specific, we can add some specialized English course and
focus on students’ oral speaking English, etc.
Culture
When we design the
curriculum, we should never neglect the social background. Hong Kong is an open-minded society with a democratic culture, which means everyone takes part in the learning process
(Beghetto, 2005; Davies, 1999;
Fisher, 2003). In
fact, we only can design the frame and outline for teachers and students. Then,
we propose our plan to representatives from all stakeholders include students,
parents, teachers, school administrators and future employers of our students.
We put our plan straightforward and let them discuss the advantages and
disadvantages from their own perspective. They choose the specific format and
content in every class flexibly. In a democratic culture, listeners will not
keep silence, we look forward they give us some detail suggestions so that we
can continuously improve our design to satisfying our stakeholders.
Content
According
to our goal, we aim to use all the tools we have to cultivate our students to
be more practical and know how to use what they learned into reality. In the
past, they become test-taking machine because students in Hong Kong held heavy
burden of exam pressure, we believe things changes since they enter the
university. Their main pressure becomes to find jobs. So we should provide a
more practical English course to help them in finding jobs. For example, the
situational conversation happened in workplace, the specialized English related
to students major and so on.
Format
1.
Analyzing
needs to adapt change
We can
find tons of teaching and learning formats by reviewing the former references. Considering
the culture background of Hong Kong universities, we choose the following
formats. Firstly, needs analyzing to adjust the teaching format. This format
will never out of fashion since it encourage teachers to teach with advanced
technology. The knowledge keeps changing, so
our teaching format needs to keep pace with it.
When putting
this theory into practice, we come up with some specific methods. An
implementable way is to distribute the survey cards
to students to investigate their interesting topics and let them decide a part
of the teaching content.
2.
Leaner
as a thinker
To change the students from
test taking machine to an independent thinker is our main target in this new
design. In order to achieve this goal, we need to provocative methods to stimulate response and interest (Taylor, 1988). We’d better not treat undergraduates as children.
They need more than fun and exciting experience in classroom. We should never
forget that they are independent adults and have their own opinion towards
social phenomenon. Therefore, in this new curriculum, despite use some attractive
activities to stimulate learning interest, teachers also prepare some heated topic to provoke discussion of students. As
to say the topics, we can choose from news or we can let the students deciding
what to discuss in class. During the discussion or debating, they will learn to
think deeper and also learn to think from different angles. In this situation,
our students not only have learned English, but also have learned to become a thinker,
which means they acquired the ability to learn more extracurricular knowledge
initiatively. At the same time, they can understand why they must learn English
well instead of the school compel them to learn.
3.
Intrinsic
motivation
In this kind of format, we
suppose that everyone has potential interesting in English, or we can say that
no one really hates English at the beginning. What we need to do in the new
curriculum is calling up the intrinsic motivation of our students. Some experts
such as Amabile and Runco believe that inside
motivation of a student can drive him to learning better and more effective (Amabile,
1989; Runco, 2007). That’s
because some words or activities can arouse the students’ interesting at a
certain period but not last for a long time. When students have intrinsic
motivation for learning English, they will continuous focus on this course
permanently.
To help
the students find out their potential motivation on English, we also design
some specific corresponding teaching activities to achieve this goal. For
instance, we can invite some guest speakers to
our classroom. We can invite some famous and successful people in the some areas
where the students ready to enter in. Those guests will talk about how English is useful in the certain areas such as
accounting or engineering. By learning the real experience of the models,
students will have more motivation to learn English. They can figure out how
practical and useful it is by listening the story of speakers. An obvious
advantage of this format is that students not only learn English through the
whole speaking, but also learn some knowledge about their own majority and
career development path. Besides, the most widely used method is letting
students dubbing for English movies. It’s a role-play game to encourage the students playing
as actor or actress. Many teachers have already adopted this method in their
classes and it’s definitely an effective way to catch students’ eyes. They will
recognize the beautiful of English by themselves during dubbing process. While
let the students enjoy the class is also a successful way to call up for students’
intrinsic motivation.
Assessment
The
assessment component in the curriculum is another essential part for responsive
curriculum. Instead of utilizing the examination, our group takes another three
methods to evaluate the creative curriculum: presentation, blog and social web
sites and interview. We can test students’ abilities of speaking, writing and
listening through three methods.
1.
Presentation
The purpose
of presentation is to test students’ abilities of understanding
and applying the knowledge. Another object is to examine the students’
abilities of speaking and listening.
According to the presentation, the teachers and classmates have the opportunity
to ask the presenter questions, assisting the presenter to clarify unclear
statements. In order to answer the questions from teachers and classmates, the
student presenters are required to utilize their critical
thinking to response the questions. In this way, students learn to think
independently rather than teacher giving the direct answer for them. In terms
of teachers, they are able to grade by students’ performance in their
presentation.
Blog and
social websites like Face Book, QQ zones are distinctive ways of students using technologies to show their
assignments and express their creativity (Anusca F. 2009).The purpose of
blog and social websites is to test students’ writing
ability. Besides, teachers and whole class students can browse blogs and
social websites to give their feedback. Students learn how to write for a
public and how to interact with others through
blog and social websites.
3.
Interview
Teachers can utilize telephone interview or doing a face-to-face talk
to ask students questions and give grades based on students’ answers. The
purpose of interview is to test the students’ abilities of listening and speaking. Moreover, it can also
assist teachers to get better standing of students’ degree of mastering
knowledge. In terms of students, they have to be familiar with knowledge to answer the questions
and think deeply about what they learned. To some extent, it can improve the
students’ thinking abilities through interview.
Positive
Factors
Our
group
Our group
member Liam who gets undergraduate degree of English has more English learning
experiences, so he can offer some practical suggestions during designing the
curriculum. Besides, our group is harmonious and
we often reach an agreement quickly. One thing to be mentioned is that our
group consists of two girls and a boy. Group members of different gender have different thinking patterns which
stimulates innovative ideas.
Stakeholders
1.
Students
To the students as the direct receiver of
the curriculum they are likely to find out that the new teaching method is more attractive than the old one since in the
making process of our new curriculum the preference of our target students is
fully referred. Their enthusiasm will greatly increase their involvement and we
can expect for a better result from our curriculum.
2.
Teachers
As to the teachers, the good news is that
the new teaching method will make their lessons more
attractive and the effect will be enhanced, this will probably be an
important reason why teachers are willing to adopt our curriculum and accept
our method.
The creative and attracting curriculum will
bring about higher reputation and more students which are all related to the revenue
of universities.
4.
Future employer of the students
Actually another person who should be
considered is the future employer of the students. Better educated students are
welcomed by future employer, because they are capable to gain more profit.
5.
Parents
New curriculum aims to cultivate students’
abilities of thinking independently which is good
for their lives and careers, therefore, parents hold out the new
curriculum.
Negative
Factors and Recommendations
Our
group
Our
group members all graduated last year, so we don't have
any working experiences and we cannot take everything into consideration
when we design the curriculum. Besides, all of us are from liberal arts and we
may consider things in one-way.
Recommendations
Although
we don't have any working experiences, we are eager to collect information from
various ways to expand thinking capacity.
Stakeholders
1.
Students
Students who are used to the old cramming
system feel inadaptable to an
ability-oriented curriculum. The new curriculum may be hard to follow since the
structure of the course changed dramatically, and to them the course may fail
to exert influence. Also the language ability varies from student to student;
it is hard for us to design the content and choose the material properly to satisfy
everyone.
Recommendations
To
emphasize the interesting of new curriculum to inspire their motivation and let
the students experience the new curriculum.
2.
Teachers
Adopting the new teaching concept may have conflict with the teachers’ accustomed one.
Besides, teachers have to spend more time and
energy to prepare the new curriculum. In these cases the teachers may
contradict the applying of the new curriculum.
Recommendations
The
first way is to consult teachers in the
English Department and modify some details of curriculum on account of their
opinions. The second way is to persuade teachers that changing the curriculum
is related to their long-term interests. The
new curriculum will attract more students, so universities can obtain better
economical benefits because of recruiting more students and salaries of teacher
will increase. The third way is build
a small teacher group to experience the new curriculum and compare it with traditional curriculum to discover the benefits of new
curriculum.
3.
College
administrators
The changing procedure needs cost, for
example training teachers, if the advantage of the new teaching method is not
so obvious, it will not appear to be so convincing that the new method will be
a better choice, more cost means more risk, do college administrators are will
to take risk to have a change is totally unpredictable to us.
Recommendations
The
first way is formulating the budget to
control the cost and train the teachers who support the new curriculum. The
second way is to consult teachers and apply
new curriculum step by step to avoid the
direct confrontation. The third way is build a
small teacher group to experience the new curriculum to lower the risk
of taking new curriculum.
4.
Future employer
of students
The employer don’t truly understand the
relationship between teaching method and better employees but they have to pay
for the education cost, to them the absence of a measurable evaluation system
to the result of the course will be a defect, they may doubt
that will student receiving new teaching method be able to perform
better in using English to deal with their daily work than the student through
cramming system? Do they have more competitiveness? All these questions will
make the employers hesitate when facing a candidate who learn English with a
brand new teaching method; they may even be conservative to avoid risk.
Recommendations
The
first way is to explain the needs of market. The companies demand comprehensive talents who is not only armed with
the abilities of listening, writing, and speaking, but also armed with teamwork
spirit, leadership and so on. The new curriculum is able to foster new type
talents which are suitable for the needs of market and help the companies
improve the competitive power. The second way is to communicate
with employer to get better understanding of what kinds of talents they really
need so that making sure the goals and direction of new curriculum. The third
way is to get feedback from the future employer
to raise the quality of new curriculum.
5.
Parents
Parents
also doubt that children receiving the new
curriculum can really improve their English abilities, so they wouldn't like
children to receive the new curriculum.
Recommendations
The
first way is emphasize the benefits of
curriculum and invite parents to experience it.
The second way is persuading the parents by their children. The third way is to
show the successful examples of taking the
new curriculum.
Conclusion
Our new
curriculum emphasizes English applying ability rather than theoretical content.
The purpose of new curriculum is to change students from test taking machine to
innovative, independent thinker and learn some practical skills. We utilize
survey cards to do the needs analysis and prepare some heated topic to provoke
discussion of students. In order to call up the intrinsic motivation of our
students, we invite some guest speakers to talk about how English is useful in
their career path and let students dub for English movies. Moreover, we also
adopt creative assessments: presentation,
blog and social web sites and interview to replace the examinations. In
summary, the new curriculum will assist students to have a bright future.
References
References
[1] Anusca FerrariCachia and Yves PunieRomina. (2009). Innovation and creativity in education and
training in the EU member states: fostering creative learning and supporting
innovative teaching. Europe.
[2]Harvard Business Review. (September, 2008). How Picar Fosters Collective Creativity.
SuttonHargadon and Robert I.Andrew. (May-June, 2000). Building an innovation factory. Harvard
Business Review.
[3]Taylor, C.
W. (1988). Various Approaches to and
Definitions of Creativity. In R. Sternberg (Ed.), The Nature of Creativity:
Contemporary Psychological Perspectives (pp. 99-121). New York: Cambridge
University Press.
[4]Beghetto, R.
A. (2005). Does Assessment Kill Student
Creativity? The Educational Forum, 69, 254–263.
[5]Davies, T.
(1999). Taking risks as a failure of
creativity in the teaching and learning of design and
technology. The Journal of Design and Technology, 4(2), 101-108.
[6]Fisher, R.
(2003). Thinking skills, creative
thinking. Junior Education, May.
[7]Amabile, T.
M. (1989). Growing Up Creative. New
York: Crown Publishing Group, Inc.
[8]Runco, M. A.
(2007). Creativity: theories and themes:
research, development, and practice. Amsterdam; London: Elsevier Academic
Press.
you have done a work of beauty in simplicity, a real good work indeed.
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