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This article is close to my heart. Course design needs to be flexible enough, especially in the coursework/portfolio, for students to be encouraged using assessment to do the things that we as teachers want them to do. This study exemplifies the importance of opportunity, instead of things being compulsory, and recursive feedback. Both of these things are needed for academic success in my opinion.

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I was so pleased to come up with this plan of work in collaboration with others. I feel that course design needs some innovation and creativity. I would not go so far to say that it is more of an art than a science, but I feel I was able to understand from the feedback that the students wanted more feedback on their written work. This delivers it and shares the work out equally between the teachers as I did not want one teacher to be the writing teacher and the other the grammar teacher. The longer lessons should allow greater depth to be achieved with greater freedom given to the teachers. I also, tried to think about the practicalities of submission for the students work. A great deal of time and effort went into choosing the names for thins so that they would transmit the right meaning. For example, "Action on teacher feedback" was used to emphasise that something needed to be done. Hopefully, this will help to produce a coherent productive course.

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Because of the emphasis placed on IELTS in university entry requirements, I was interested to read this. The main argument is that there is no real correlation between the IELTS grade and the success at post-graduate level. Obviously there is a need for an EAP equivalent test to do a better job

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The impact of pre-entry English test results on postgraduate success - Kingston University Research Repository

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This research investigates the attainment of international postgraduate students against the four elements (reading, writing, listening and speaking) of their pre-entry International English Language Testing System (IELTS) scores. A significant association was found between test score and degree classification, with reading being the most closely correlated element; but a low correlation between all elements and degree attainment suggests that other factors had a greater impact on success.

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I was drawn to this as it is from 2016 and from Nottingham University concerning a pre-sessional course. So it seemed to tick most of the boxes. Reading this it made me think about the PS14 course. This is because PS14 does not have any assessment requirement. There is a baseline and a summative test, but they do not prevent them from advancing to the PS10 course. Without the pressure of a test the students were able to concentrate on their writing skills, acclimatise to life in Bristol and some visited other areas in the UK. It will be interesting to see how they fare in pre-sessional exams. Initially, it seems that the PS14 course gave the students added confidence. This was shown by the high numbers of them volunteering to be the class representative. Perhaps, there might be room for more of these non-assessed courses.

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This is why course design is so time-consuming. It is vital to have clear and informative teacher's notes for each piece of material. This allows the course designer to get across the rationale and ways to exploit material.These are very important for in-house material and are needed if published material is not being used, but take hours to do. Collaboratively, they can be extended and developed with teacher input. For students, material which highlights the lesson objectives also helps them acquire some of the meta language needed to explain their needs. The material should help students to reflect on the lesson.

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I have chosen this piece of material from the current Pres-sessional course in Bristol to examine how change, an important part of course design, can be managed. The MLR has been devised as one element of the assessment (20%)for this course. It is slightly different from the previous year and aims to be relatively unique. The uniqueness hopes to prevent online plagiarism. After studying the previous year's task, a long 2500 word discursive essay using academic sources, it became apparent that students were only reading the abstract from the sources in their work. Because of this the course designer decided to reduce the scope and length. In the current MLR students are aiming to write 1500 using only 3 sources. These sources need to be linked over time, through bibliography and citation and theme. The final task is for students to decide what has changed in the body of knowledge over the period, using the 3 articles as evidence in the essay. Students and teachers had problems with this. The students were looking for examples on the web, but of course the literature reviews they encountered were very different, therefore they were more comfortable in comparing and contrasting the 3 articles. The teachers, more than 60, on the pre-sessional are a whole range of age and experience in EAP, so there was range of  differing information on the task itself and key aspects.  Many of these occur because of teacher beliefs or misunderstandings .  There is a clear marking criteria, which should have held things together.  However, last minute material like the one above had to be produced to try and  bring some uniformity before submission.
This shows that, especially for high stakes courses such as pre-sessional, changes in assessment, even if they are carefully explained in inductions and supported with relevant tasks, still need to be carefully monitored with meetings between staff and students ( which is what happened in the case of Bristol) so that any misconceptions about the assessments tasks can be addressed. These are currently being marked so it will be interesting to see if a high level of uniformity was reached.

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Reflection on EAP Writing for Chinese Students

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Reflection on EAP Writing for Chinese Students

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Because so many of my students are Chinese,  I like to read articles  concerning their EAP experience.
What I like about this article is their focus on the "constructive socialisation process".  I think this is key, Chinese students particularly can take a long time to internalise aspects of EAP.  Thus, a course needs  to be recursive to help with these and also to develop the necessary skills to adapt to the collaborative work requirements.

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I think that this is the way forward. I enjoy bouncing ideas about with others. However, it seems that course design where I work is mainly a solitary occupation, which can lead to problems. Obviously, you should try and get feedback, but the deadlines are usually tight. This article gives good positive reasons for it.

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I suppose it is strange but I never thought of exams and the assessment as playing such a central part of unifying a course. I had been looking at materials, themes, genres, tasks and activities as forming the uniformity needed to maintain course cohesion. Yet, now I can see that, especially with large courses ( In the recent Pre-sessional course at Bristol University there are almost 1,000 students and 60 teachers), they are the lynch pins holding things in place. This article gives a clear explanation of this theory, making the case for its popularity

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I found the diagram Figure 1.1 (Graves as cited in Sklavou 2012) in this article particularly interesting.  It shows the recursive nature of course design and covers the main stages.  I have some issues with this.  The first one is that very rarely in my experience do teachers design courses from scratch.  When I worked at Bilkent University in Turkey a new in-sessional course was developed to support International Relations and Political Science and this involved working with the individual lecturers.  I found this practical experience invaluable, especially when I had responsibility for one course.  Most of the time, as in the example of PS14, it is about redesigning and making changes to existing courses and so may ignore  some key areas.  Also, time is a key area.  This diagram implicitly envisages a certain amount of time is available to complete the process.  In my own experience course design is sometimes a last minute affair completed in haste.  For example, I was drafted into the PS 14 course with about 1 week’s notice and about 1 week’s worth of material for a 4-week course.  I think that it is not uncommon for decisions on courses to be taken quite late.  When I was studying at Manchester University I can still remember my tutor saying, in a private conversation, that they would only begin planning for a course when they had received the payment.  Another important feature missing from the diagram are the teachers the deliverers of the course.  This diagram implies that the course develop is organising everything for the teachers to follow.  Reality is very different from this.  Teachers may have very strong beliefs about teaching and learning which may affect the delivery of the course markedly.  Therefore, the course develop must allow a certain amount of freedom to teachers and design activities which may be exploited in different ways.  Also, the relationship between teachers and the institution is important.  Sometimes for teachers on part-time contracts it may more beneficial to keep quiet and keep valuable feedback to themselves in order to maintain their hours.  That’s why I think the course developer needs to be involved in the teaching and be able to build up meaningful relations with the people delivering the course. For these reasons assessment has become the main organising principle and the assessment plan may be used to keep teachers on track.  So, not all of the elements of this process are equal.

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By Toula Sklavou/@toulasklavou

I recently completed and passed my Delta Module 3 assignment which involved designing a syllabus for a one-to-one exam prep course, so I felt that I would be able to contribute to this #ELTchat in a positive way and share my research findings with other teachers. So here are the comments of Wednesday 25 th ELTchat and a few extra points from my research.

According to Kathleen Graves, the processes of course design are beautifully outlined in the following framework (Designing Language Courses, 2000:3)

The question of whether we need a syllabus or not was raised but I am not foing to analyse it in depth here as it was not the main topic of discussion. However, since a few good points were made on this, I would like to include them.

This was mentioned as a necessary step in defining some types of syllabuses, especially on ESP, EAP courses.

Teachers came up with wonderful and various definitions of syllabus, all of them revealing its practical applications to real life teaching or how real life teaching defines and shapes the nature of syllabuses.

The needs, wants, interests of the students.

The learners' learning styles.

The time available and other stakeholders.

Setting out achievable objectives, which should provide a clear focus for the course and be laid out in achievable steps.

Having a clear idea/statement of global goals, i.e. why the course is being run and what the end goals are.

The physical constraints of the environment you'll be teaching in.

The nature of the course, e.g. if it's a Business English course.

The demands of the institution and maybe government framework.

The order of the syllabus elements.

What you expect students to produce, the subskills needed and the assumptions underpinning them.

Students would like to know the main objectives of a lesson (in terms of skills/language), this is a good motivator.

To know how to balance skills/ systems.

The rules, course descriptors, textbooks used, a calendar, grading policy, your goals, how you plan to achieve them, in what order and how to evaluate them.

Needs, purpose, syllabus type, language to be used, testing, methodology, evaluation, teacher training, recycle stage.

Outcomes or expressive objectives, possible learning objects, expectations, rubrics, key assessment or performance tasks.

The instructor's personal goals of what is to be taught.

A list of what the students could expect from the teacher.

Development of teaching, learning and testing approaches.

Teaching methodology and micro planning.

The phrase 'By the end of the {...}the students will have learnt...'

During the #ELTchat, the following two types prevailed in the discussion, however, these are only two of the types mentioned in the relevant bibliography. It seems to me the reality of the classroom imposes its own way or ways.

A good class is a blend of prescriptive-prefabricated syllabus assuring learning engagement but teachers object to pre-specified syllabuses because they include the notion of accountability and they do not want to do what the institution may say.

It can be tiring.

It requires a degree of maturity from students.

It is difficult to involve new or quiet students.

Students may say 'you're the teacher'.

Students are not used to this kind of freedom.

Students have no ideas what to do and when.

Students expect a syllabus and to follow a book.

Of course, the retrospective syllabus was also mentioned in the tweets, since it could work in some contexts and seemed to be more appealing to dogme supporters.

I always leave the last day of the week open.

Many adult learners might see it as unprofessional, needs a lot of explanations.

Is this a syllabus or a plan?

If you have students collaborate on the syllabus on Google Docs with a layout is a great way to do this.

Syllabus for ESP is necessary, GE classes can negotiate each week.

Work on a particular need and then change, makes sense for individual students.

In some schools, a general syllabus is designed by the academic department for each class at the start of the year. This is considered to be THE syllabus.

Test designers were also mentioned as people who tend to be good syllabus writers.

It is difficult for new teachers to design a syllabus before they have the experience of writing achievable aims.

Not all teachers are required to be syllabus designers, that's why it's a special skill and paid well.

Not always according to the teacher's opinions.

A coursebook may not address learner needs very effectively, could be very top down, it's like one size fits all.

They may not take into account all preferences and needs.

Not all units would interest students.

a link to the Common European Framewk of Reference for Languages: Learning, Teaching, Assessment (CEFR) http://t.co/CFBG36r8

Text-based Syllabus Design http://t.co/fT9cKIpK - Australian textbook - aging now, but good for beginning teachers

@sandymillin: An example of one of my work plans (closest thing to syl). The codes (G12, W1) based on CEF statements #eltchat http://t.co/SnoWWKsY

@ShellTerrell Here's a syllabus tutorial by the Univ of Minnesota. Not language based but still some good tips http://t.co/kv4Zw7RV

The following books I'm suggesting gave me insights regarding Syllabus design for my module 3.

Graves, K. (Ed.) (1996). Teachers as Course Developers. New York: CUP

Graves, K. (2000). Designing Language Courses. A Guide for Teachers. Boston: HEINLE CENGAGE Learning

Nunan, D. (1988). Syllabus Design. Oxford: OUP

Richards, J.C. (1990). The Language Teaching Matrix. Cambridge: CUP

My personal experience of working for my Delta Module 3: It was really hard work but at the same time highly rewarding and I am very happy to have acquired some skills as a syllabus designer.

But syllabus design is a subject that can't be exhausted in one hour so since 'designing a language course is a work in progress' (ibid:7), teaching experience and more #ELTchats will certainly unfold other aspects or even raise more questions for discussion.

Ideas to think about and maybe raise on another #ELTchat, if not covered so far, or a blog challenge:

Should homework be more than an afterthought or be included in the syllabus?

Should a teacher allow students to do homework if they wish?

Is the syllabus a link in a chain of learning, political, social context?

Since expectations to what a syllabus is can vary among teachers, what about the student's expectations?

Should there be order in the material presented or just go with the flow?

Is a syllabus a useless list of can do statements?

Is CEF more an assessment tool rather than a planning too?

Do we have to focus on CEF statements when adapting the syllabus?

How do we decide between synthetic and analytic syllabi?

As you have noticed, I haven't mentioned any names and the reason is that all of the teachers equally contributed to the discussion - I wouldn't like to discriminate, even unintentionally.

Toula Sklavou has been a teacher of English since 2002. She studied basic methodology at CELT Athens where she also recently also completed her Cambridge DELTA Diploma, but she has also studied translation and holds an MA in Translation from the University of Surrey, UK. She has worked mainly in Greece but more recently has also been teaching summer school in the UK.

She is @toulasklavou on Twitter.

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What steps are part of the process of designing a syllabus? What knowledge & skills do teachers need?

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Summary of #ELTchat on January 25th 2012, 21.00 P.M. GMT By Toula Sklavou/@toulasklavou I recently completed and passed my Delta Module 3 assignment which involved designing a syllabus for a one-to-one exam prep course, so I felt that I would be able to contribute to this #ELTchat in a positive way and share my research...