esp goals and objectives

Goals and ObjectivesHow can you design a course if you don’t know where you want your students to come out?... Formulating GoalsAwareness  By the end of the course, students will hav

ELT Planning

Formulating

Goals and Objectives

How can you design a

course if you don’t know where you want your

students to come out?

Provide guidelines and should be flexible

enough to change, if they are not.

Two bigger obstacle when formulating Goals

how to formulate them

Key assumptions about GOALS characterizing the curriculum approach to educational planning

 People are generally motivated to pursue

specific goals.

 The use of goals in teaching improve the

effectiveness of teaching and learning.

 A program will be effective to the extent that it

goals are sound and clearly described.

Some thoughts about goals and objectives

 The nature of aims and objectives, however, is not necessarily

straightforward because they refer to knowledge, skills, and

values that educational planners believe learners need to

develop. (Richards 2001:112)

 In developing goals for educational programs, curriculum

planners draw on their understanding both of the present and long-term needs of learners and of society as well as

planners’ beliefs and ideologies about schools, learners, and teachers (Richards 2001:113)

In curriculum discussion:

 Goal and Aim used interchangeably,

referring to a description of the general

purposes of a curriculum.

 Objective refers to a more specific and

concrete description of purposes.

 …are a way of putting into words the main

purposes and intended outcomes of your

course

The Journey analogy.

The destination  The Goal

the journey  the course Objectives are the different points you pass

through on the journey to the destination.

Goal

Objective Objective Objective

 Can help you stay on course, both as you

design the course and as you teach it.

 Help to bring into focus your visions and

priorities for the course.

 State an aim that the course will explicitly

address in some way (ESP).

 Are future oriented.

 Are what the students should be able to do

when they leave the program.

 Are the benchmarks of success for a course.

The purpose of Goal / Aim statements are:

purposes of a program.

learners, and materials writers.

changes in learning.

Making choices about goals

The KASA framework

Skills goals => what Ss can do

with the language.

Attitude goals => those that

address affective and

values-based dimension of learning: Ss

´ feelings toward themselves,

others and the language.

Formulating Goals

Knowledge goals  what Ss

will know and understand.

Awareness goals  what Ss

need to be aware of when

learning a language.

Formulating Goals

Awareness

 By the end of the course, students will

have become more aware of their reading comprehension in general and

be able to identify the specific reading techniques in which improvement is

needed.

Formulating Goals

Knowledge

 By the end of the course students will be able

to understand the elements of a good reading

process.

Skills

 By the end of the course students will be able

to use reading strategies appropriately when reading scientific and technical texts

Some examples:

A Business English Course

 To develop basic communication skills for

use in business contexts.

 To learn how to participate in casual

conversation with other employees in a

workplace.

 to learn how to write effective business

letters.

More examples:

A Course for Hotel Employees

 To develop the communication skills

needed to answer the telephone calls in

Aims statements are generally derived from

info gathered during needs analysis.

The following areas of difficulty were some of those

identified for non-English-background students studying in English medium universities:

 Understanding lectures

 Participating in seminars

 Taking notes during lectures

 Reading at adequate speed to be able to complete reading

assignments

 Presenting ideas and information in an organized way in a

written assignment

More examples of Program Goals

An ESP program for Diplomacy

This program is intended to

enable students of diplomacy

to develop their communicative competence

in their professional filed.

More examples of Program Goals

An ESP program for Hotel and

Tourist Management

To train students to use the

English language in the

tourism field.

More examples of Program Goals

An ESP program for

Students of Law

The program is intended to train students of law to read legal documents written in

English.

Some faulty aim statements:

 Students will learn about business-letter

writing in English.

 Students will study listening skills.

 Students will practice composition skills in

English.

 Students will learn English for Tourism

 Are statements about how the goals

will be achieved.

 Through objectives, a goal is broken

down into learnable and teachable units.

Cause Effect Relationship between

goals and objectives

Obj

Obj

Obj Obj

Goal 1 Goal 2 Goal 3

1 2 3 1 2 3 1 2 3Objectives Objectives Objectives

Objectives can serve more than one goal

Goal 1 Goal 2

1 2 3 4 5 6

Some characteristics:

 They describe what the aim seeks to achieve in

terms of smaller unites or learning

 They provide a basis for the organization of

teaching activities.

 They describe learning in terms of observable

behavior or performance.

Some advantages:

 They facilitate planning: once set up, course

planning, materials preparation, textbook

selection, and related processes can begin.

 They provide measurable outcomes and thus

provide accountability: given a set of objectives, the success or failure of a program to teach the objectives can be measured.

 They are prescriptive: they describe how planning

should proceed and do away with subjective

interpretations and personal opinions.

Let’s see a working example:

Objectives have the following characteristics:

 Objectives describe a learning outcome.

will have, will learn about, will be able to

will study, will learn, will prepare

students are avoided

 Objectives should be consistent with the

curriculum aim

* Aim: Students will learn how to write effective business

letters for use in the hotel and tourism industries.

Objective: The student can understand and respond to simple

questions over the telephone.

Objectives should be precise.

* Students will know how to use useful

conversation expressions.

A more precise objective would be:

• Students will use conversation expressions

for greeting people, opening and closing

conversations.

Objectives should be feasible

* Students should be able to follow conversations

spoken by native speakers.

A more feasible objective:

• Students will be able to get the gist of short

conversations in simple English on topics related to daily life and leisure.

English for Travel and Tourism

Aim:

To prepare students to communicate in English at a

basic level for purposes of travel and tourism.

Objectives:

1 Students will have a reading vocabulary of 300 common words and

abbreviations

2 The students will have a listening vocabulary of 300 common

words plus numbers up to 100

3 The students will be able to understand simple written notices,

signs, and menus

4 The students will be able to understand simple questions,

statements, greetings, and directions

5 The students will be able to get the gist of simple conversations in

spoken English

6 The students can pick out unfamiliar phrases from conversations

and repeat hem for clarifications

7 The students can use in speech 200 common words plus numbers

up to 100 for time, quantity, and price

8 The students can use about 50 useful survival phrases, questions,

requests, greetings, statements, and responses

9 The students can hold a bilingual conversation, speaking English

slowly and clearly in simple words

10 The students can use and understand appropriate gestures

Questions?