BOOK REVIEW:

CURRICULUM DEVELOPMENT IN LANGUAGE TEACHING

Jack C. Richards. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001. xiv + 321 pp.
By: Saidna Zulfiqar bin Tahir

Curriculum Development in Language Teaching is part of the Cambridge Language

Education series edited by Richards. In this book, Richards has set out to provide in service
teachers with a resource and teachers in training with a review of language program planning,
implementation, and evaluation approaches. Overall, he has achieved this goal and has
accomplished the difficult task of writing a text that is informative and balanced in terms of
scope and utility.
This book seeks to describe and examine the processes of curriculum development in
language teaching in order to acquaint language teachers and teachers-in-training with fundamental
issues and practices in language curriculum development. Curriculum development is an essentially
practical activity since it seeks to improve the quality of language teaching through the use of
systematic planning, development, and review practices in all aspects of a language program. The
book tries to provide as many examples as possible of how some of the practical problems in
language program development have been addressed by practitioners in many parts of the world.
The book was organized into nine chapters covering language teaching history, methods,
needs analysis, situation analysis, goals and outcomes, course design, the teaching and learning
process, materials design, and evaluation. Each chapter ends with discussion questions and
activities, an appendix, and chapter references. The chapters follow a chronological sequence
that matches the development of a typical curriculum, which progresses from an initial needs
analysis ultimately to program evaluation. Aspects that receive the most attention are needs
analysis, learning outcomes, and syllabus frameworks.

Chapte I: deals with the origins of language curriculum development relating to its brief
and precise historical background specifically on changes in teaching methods and
approaches. With respect to the authors notions of curriculum development and syllabus
design, he explains that curriculum development is a more comprehensive process than
syllabus design. It includes the processes that are used to determine the needs of a group

of learners, to develop aims or objectives for a program to address those needs, to

determine an appropriate syllabus, course structure, teaching methods, and materials, and
to carry out an evaluation of the language program those results from these processes (p.
2). On the other hand, syllabus design is one aspect of curriculum development but is
not identical with it. A syllabus is a specification of the content of a course of instruction
and lists to what will be taught and tested (p. 2). This chapter also focuses on vocabulary
and grammatical selections and gradation that can be accomplished through different
approaches to support language teaching formerly used until the 1950s, and leads to the
development of the language curriculum development in the next phase as presented and
discussed in Chapter Two.

Chapter II: refers to changes and approaches from syllabus design to curriculum
development in relation to the quest for new methods in order to meet the changing
needs of the learners (p. 24), developing from the Structural-Situational Approach to
Communicative Language Teaching (CLT). In addition, the needs and goals of Englishlanguage teaching in terms of English for Specific Purposes (ESP) implemented through
the ESP approach are also presented.

Chapter III: provides a basic assumption of curriculum development based on an

analysis of learners needs, specifically in terms of communicative needs. This chapter
discusses the important aspects of needs analysis, the purposes, the definition, the
courses, and the target population, administrating needs analysis, different procedures for
conducting needs analysis, and designs and examples of needs analysis.

Chapter IV: relates to situation analysis that provides several key factors to be
essentially considered: social factors, project factors, institutional factors, teacher factors,
learner factors, and adoption factors. The goal of the situation analysis is to identify key
factors that might positively or negatively effect the implementation of a curriculum
plan (p. 105).

Chapter V: focuses on the procedures for using the information collected during the
needs analysis and situation analysis to develop program/ planning goals and objectives
that result in the learning objectives. The author proposes the key assumptions about the
goals in curriculum planning namely: People are generally motivated to pursue specific
goals; the use of goals in teaching improves the effectiveness of teaching and learning;
and a program will be effective to the extent that its goals are sound and clearly
described (p. 112).

Chapter VI: deals with "course planning and syllabus design including developing a
course rationale, describing entry and exit levels, choosing course content, determining
the scope and sequence, planning the course structure, and preparing the scope and
sequence plan. The syllabus including major elements used in planning a language course
and providing the basis for its instructional focus and the content could thereby be based
on several options: situational syllabus, topical or content-based syllabus, functional
syllabus, task based syllabus, and grammatical or structural syllabus.

Chapter VII: involves in creating conditions for effective teaching of a course by

considering from four main factors: the institution, the teachers, the teaching process, and
the learning process. Additionally, each factor is discussed as to its influence as well as
implementation to effective teaching and learning in a language program.

Chapter VIII: deals with the role and design of institutional materials as a key
component in most language program. Several topics regarding teaching materials that
normally play a role in the current curriculum planning are delineated and discussed in
relation to authentic versus created materials, textbooks, evaluating textbooks, adapting
textbooks, preparing materials for a program, managing a materials writing project, and
monitoring the use of materials.

Chapter IX: provides approaches to evaluation dealing with purposes of evaluation:

formative, illuminative, and summative evaluations; issues in program evaluation; and
procedures used in conducting evaluation.

Regarding the discussion questions and activities included as the final topics of each
chapter, they seem likely to stimulate further discussions and can be incorporated as part of
cooperative learning in pairs, in groups, or within the whole language classroom for teachers intraining. Also, at the end of each chapter are Appendices that seem to provide functional and
excellent tools as guidelines or for applications in language curriculum development.
Furthermore, the advantages and disadvantages provided for different modes under several topics
(such As. procedures for conducting needs analysis in Chapter Three) are obviously helpful for
appropriate selections of the key elements for a language-teaching curriculum. On the whole, this
book under review seems to offer a great deal to language teachers, practitioners and program
administrators with regard to planning and implementation processes for developing or
reviewing a curriculum.
Most of the book is easy to understand and only rarely becomes overly simplistic, as in
the description on p. 161 of a task-based syllabus: Tasks are activities that drive the second
language acquisition process. While axiomatic definitions such as this are present, they are
infrequent and do little to detract from Richards efforts to acquaint language teachers and
teachers-in-training with fundamental issues (p. xi). Curriculum Development in Language
Teaching presents lists, forms, and brief descriptions that provide an understandable, albeit
limited, background to the issues involved in course design, as well as offering some related
resources.

References

Richards, J. C. (2001). Curriculum development in language teaching. New York: Cambridge

University Press.
Richards, J., & Rodgers, T. (2001). Approaches and methods in language teaching: A
description and analysis (2nd ed.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.