ORGANIZING THE

COURSE
KARTIKA QIYARA WANGI/18202244020/PBI-C 2018
What Does It Mean to Organize a
Course?
 Organizing a course means deciding what the underlying systems will be that pull together the
content and material in accordance with the goals and objectives and that give the course a shape
and structure.
 Organizing a course occurs on different levels:
1. The level of the course as a whole;
2. The level of subsets of the whole: units, modules, or stands within the course;
3. Individual lessons.
 The product of organizing and sequencing a course is a syllabus.
 Organizing a course involves five overlapping processes:
1. Determining the organizing principle(s) that drive(s) the course;
2. Identifying units, modules, or strands based on principle(s)
 3. Sequencing the units;
4. Determining the language and skills content of the units;
5. Organizing the content within each unit.

 The term “unit” and “module” give a sense of complete whole within the larger course.
 The term “strand” applies to course that are not organized around units, but around strands that are
carried through the whole course.
WHY ORGANIZE A COURSE?
1. Because it is a way to bridge the goals and objectives with the actual lessons;
2. Because most students expect it;
3. Because it provides the arena or “options” within which to make decisions together.
WHAT ARE DIFFERENT WAYS TO
ORGANIZE AND SEQUENCE A COURSE?
1. Organizing the course
There is no one way or “best way” to organize a course. You may organize a course one way
the first time you teach it and recognize it because of what you learned about what worked and
what didn’t next time you teach.
Denise Maksail Fine’s Spanish course is
organized around topics. Thus topics
are the organizing principle of the
course.
In Brooke Palmer’s course:
1. The organizing principle is not topics, but texts, specifically scientific texts, which she calls
“technical writing products.”
2. These include amplified definitions, describing, a mechanism, describing a process, and so on.
3. The main focus is on being able to write each of those kinds of texts.
4. The course culminates in a “mini conference” in which the students present their final paper, a
research report, to each other.
 Toby has called it an integrated skills course
because it integrates work on the four skills of
speaking, listening, reading, and writing.
 Toby choose newspaper because:
1. A genre that students are familiar with,
since newspapers exist in every culture.
2. Newspapers report current events and
reactions to the events as they occur and
so are a means to connect students to the
larger world.
3. The newspaper also reports on sports, the
arts, business, and local news, and the
community.
4. Newspapers are cultural products and so
provide insight into the target culture.
 The supporting components she has labelled
tasks, linguistic focus and cultural focus.
 Within a unit, each sequence of tasks
develops the language skills needed to be able
to master the focus skills.
 Valarie Barner’s course is organized
around theme-related field trips.
 Each module is a week long and
follows something of a predictable
sequence or cycle of activities:
1. Prepare for the field trip;
2. Take the field trip;
3. Learn from the field trip.
 The preparation for the field trip
waves together work on the
vocabulary and the communicative
and cultural skills the students will
need.
 During the field trip they each have
language- and cultural-based tasks
to perform.
  The four syllabuses each have different organizing principles: topics, writing texts or tasks, academic skills,
and theme-based field trips.
 Organizing principles provide the basis for identifying the units.
 The content of a unit brings together the language and skills that will enable students to achieve the focus
of the unit. It is because organizing principles must be capable of bringing together a variety of language
and skills elements to support it in achieving the objectives.

2. Sequencing
 Sequencing involves deciding the order in which you will teach.
 At the course level, sequencing involves deciding the order in which you will teach the units and, to some
extent, the order within each unit.
 Denise Maksail-Fine choose for her course: from individual to the home to the community to the larger
world.
 For Valarie Barnes, sequencing is manifest on a weekly basis in the way the week is structured, with
activities leading up to the field trip, and then the field trip itself as a prerequisite for the follow-up activities,
and over the course whole, with types of field trips each week.
 For Toby Brody, sequencing is manifest in the weekly organization, where each tasks builds on the one
before in order to culminate in the skill focus of the week, and in the course as a whole, where each focus is
increasingly more complex and uses the skills learned or deepened the previous week.
 Toby refers to spiralling, also called recycling which means something learned is
reintroduced in connection with something else, so that it is both “reused” and learned in
more depth.
 The something may be knowledge or language-related skills or a classroom skill.
 Ways to spiral and recycle include recycling something using a different skill, recycling
something in different context, and recycling something using a different learning
technique.
3. Unit content and organisation
 Determining unit content (particular tasks, skills, function, grammar, etc)
 Determining how to organize the content within a unit.
4. Unit content
 If the organizing principle is topic or theme-based, the content of a unit will depend on the way you have
conceptualized the course content and the goals and objectives for the course.
 If the organizing principle of a course is a process or skill, rather than a topic or theme, then the unit
content will be somewhat predictable because it will include the language, skills, and strategies needed to
carry out the process or master the skill.
 Unit content is derived from the way you have conceptualized content and articulate goals and objectives,
which in turn are based on what you know about your context and your students’ need.
5. Unit organization
 There are three complementary ways to organize the modules, units or strands
in a course: a cycle, a matrix, or a combination of the two.
 A cycle means that some elements occur in a predictable sequence and, once
the sequence is completed, it starts all over again.
 A matrix means that elements are selected form certain categories of content
but not in a predictable order. The matrix is drawn from the way the teacher
conceptualizes the content of the course, and may include skills, tasks,
functions, grammatical items, vocabulary, and so on which she or he draws
from during each unit.
 A combination of a cycle and a matrix means that within a given unit, the
course might follow a predictable sequence of learning activities, such as
beginning each with a survey of what students know about a topic, ending each
unit with students surveying others outside of class, and some learning
activities that are drawn from a matrix.
The diagram provides a clear visual
of a matrix approach to organizing
unit content and shows how the
unit content is chosen in order to
achieve the unit objectives.
 A code is a way of illustrating an issue so that it can be understood form a number
perspective.
 Once a code and its language have been presented, it needs to be analysed by addressing
critical questions:
1. Describe the issue
2. Ask students to define the issue
3. Personalize the issue
4. Look at the larger context
5. Address strategies for solutions
 Denise Maksail-Fine has conceptualized the content in terms of topics, grammar, and culture, and
objectives in terms of development of the four skills, cultural awareness, and cooperative learning, using
the topics as a vehicle.
 Toby Brody has conceptualized content based on what is found in the newspaper and in terms of specific
skills such as proposing solutions that require the use of the four skills of speaking, listening, reading, and
writing.
 The way the teacher has conceptualized content and determined goals and objectives depends in turn on
the teacher’s experience and students’ needs, or what the teachers knows about their needs.
 In Valarie Barner’s case, her knowledge of young adults on holiday or vacation led her to develop a course
organized around theme-based field trips.
 Brooke Palmer’s case knowing that being able to write and deliver a scientific research paper was a priority
for her students influenced her choices.
 A teacher beliefs also play an important role. Chris Conley believes that adult students should make
decisions for themselves about their needs and has organized his course accordingly.
1. Organizing your course is not like putting a jigsaw puzzle together so that every
piece falls neatly into place.
There are two arguments against going about course design in that way:
a. It is an exercise in abstraction that will end in frustration.
b. You leave out the students. When the course does not work, the tendency is
to blame the students for not “getting it” rather than adjusting the course to
their needs.
2. The need to make choices and justify them.