John Macalister
John Macalister has worked in ELT as a teacher, teacher educator, and research-active academic in many parts of the world, including Thailand, Cambodia, Kiribati, Namibia, and New Zealand. His chief interests are in language teaching methodology and language curriculum design, and he has published (with Professor Paul Nation) two books in this field: Language Curriculum Design and Case Studies in Language Curriculum Design, both with Routledge.
In my own language learning, I have often experienced a sense of frustration. This has arisen from a sense that the course has not been focusing on the language that I feel I want and need. As a language teaching professional, this concerns me. It concerns me even more because I know my experience is more universal than unique. It is important, therefore, that we consider how best a course can respond to learners’ needs and wants. This is a question at the heart of language curriculum design. If we cannot answer it, we may be guilty of doing what Richard West (1994) memorably described as Teaching English for No Obvious Reason. In a related vein, proponents of English as a Lingua Franca (ELF) and English as an International Language (EIL) argue that courses too often teach native-speaker norms, based on the idea that learners will be interacting with native-speakers in native-speaker settings. Such courses – and the course books that support them – do not do enough to prepare learners for interaction with other non-native-speakers, which is likely to be the actual context of language use. These courses, it could be said, are Teaching English for the Wrong Reason. These situations suggest issues that should exercise the minds of everyone involved in language teaching – teachers, course designers, material writers, and government officials. In this presentation, I will address these issues of appropriate curriculum design and suggest that, in language learning as in life, we should be focusing on what unites us rather than what divides us.
Reference
West, R. (1994). Needs analysis in language learning. Language Teaching, 27(1), 1 - 19.