UTS Curriculum and Material Development

Curriculum and Material Development 

1. What do you know about curriculum? Expalain briefly, supported by some definitions 

Curriculum is the document or the plan for quality of education who have to students’ ability wich have to write or plan write. The word curriculum comes from the Latin word meaning "a course for racing." It's interesting how closely this metaphor fits the way in which educators perceive the curriculum in schools. Teachers often speak about "covering" concepts as one would speak about "covering" ground. And that coverage is often a race against the testing clock. A curriculum may also refer to a defined and prescribed course of studies, which students must fulfill in order to pass a certain level of education. For example, an elementary school might discuss how its curriculum, or its entire sum of lessons and teachings, is designed to improve national testing scores or help students learn the basics. An individual teacher might also refer to his or her curriculum, meaning all the subjects that will be taught during a school year.


2. Why is curriculum very important in education?

A Curriculum has a very importan role in education, since it concern with

determining the purpose, content and process of educations which at last it will determine sort and qualification of graduate of an educational institution.

3. What is Competency Based Curriculum or KBK?

The curriculum based is competency that is in the planning stages, especially in the development phase will be influenced by the idea of ​​the possibilities of the approach, the competence to respond to the challenges that arise. That is, the time to develop or adopt a competency-based curriculum ideas that curriculum developers should know the true foundation of philosophy, strengths and weaknesses of the approach to the challenge of competence, as well as the range of validity of this approach to the future. It must be remembered that competence is constantly evolving in accordance with the demands of the workplace or the professional world and the world of science.

4. Mention the six types of syllabus! Explain them!

a. "A structural (formal) syllabus." The content of language teaching is a collection of the forms and structures, usually grammatical, of the language being taught. Examples include nouns, verbs, adjectives, statements, questions, subordinate clauses, and so on.

b. "A notional/functional syllabus." The content of the language teaching is a collection of the functions that are performed when language is used, or of the notions that language is used to express. Examples of functions include: informing, agreeing, apologizing, requesting; examples of notions include size, age, color, comparison, time, and so on.

c. "A situational syllabus." The content of language teaching is a collection of real or imaginary situations in which language occurs or is used. A situation usually involves several participants who are engaged in some activity in a specific setting. The language occurring in the situation involves a number of functions, combined into a plausible segment of discourse. The primary purpose of a situational language teaching syllabus is to teach the language that occurs in the situations. Examples of situations include: seeing the dentist, complaining to the landlord, buying a book at the book store, meeting a new student, and so on.

d. "A skill-based syllabus." The content of the language teaching is a collection of specific abilities that may play a part in using language. Skills are things that people must be able to do to be competent in a language, relatively independently of the situation or setting in which the language use can occur. While situational syllabi group functions together into specific settings of language use, skill-based syllabi group linguistic competencies (pronunciation, vocabulary, grammar, and discourse) together into generalized types of behavior, such as listening to spoken language for the main idea, writing well-formed paragraphs, giving effective oral presentations, and so on. The primary purpose of skill-based instruction is to learn the specific language skill. A possible secondary purpose is to develop more general competence in the language, learning only incidentally any information that may be available while applying the language skills.

e. "A task-based syllabus." The content of the teaching is a series of complex and purposeful tasks that the students want or need to perform with the language they are learning. The tasks are defined as activities with a purpose other than language learning, but, as in a content-based syllabus, the performance of the tasks is approached in a way that is intended to develop second language ability. Language learning is subordinate to task performance, and language teaching occurs only as the need arises during the performance of a given task. Tasks integrate language (and other) skills in specific settings of language use. Task-based teaching differs from situation-based teaching in that while situational teaching has the goal of teaching the specific language content that occurs in the situation (a predefined product), task-based teaching has the goal of teaching students to draw on resources to complete some piece of work (a process). The students draw on a variety of language forms, functions, and skills, often in an individual and unpredictable way, in completing the tasks. Tasks that can be used for language learning are, generally, tasks that the learners actually have to perform in any case. Examples include: applying for a job, talking with a social worker, getting housing information over the telephone, and so on.

f. "A content-based-syllabus." The primary purpose of instruction is to teach some content or information using the language that the students are also learning. The students are simultaneously language students and students of whatever content is being taught. The subject matter is primary, and language learning occurs incidentally to the content learning. The content teaching is not organized around the language teaching, but vice-versa. Content-based language teaching is concerned with information, while task-based language teaching is concerned with communicative and cognitive processes.

5. What the difference between curriculum and syllabus? Explain them !

a) Curriculum is set of educational program.

b) Syllabus is a operasional program of teaching and learning procces.

6. There are three components of curriculum: Language Views, Language Learning Views, Educational Views. Explain the three of them!

a) Language view:descriptive/structural linguistics

an approach to language and language study based on a concept of language as a system of signs that has such clearly defined structural elements as linguistic units and their classes. Structural linguistics seeks to describe language with a precision approaching that of the exact sciences.

b) Language Learning view:stimulus respone theory

Stimulus Response Theory is a concept in psychology that refers to the belief that behavior manifests as a result of the interplay between stimulus and response. In particular, the belief is that a subject is presented with a stimulus, and then responds to that stimulus, producing "behavior" (the object of psychology's study, as a field). In other words, behavior cannot exist without a stimulus of some sort, at least from this perspective

c) Educational view:behaviorism

Behaviorism focuses only on the objectively observable aspects of learning. Cognitive theories look beyond behavior to explain brain-based learning. And constructivism views learning as a process in which the learner actively constructs or builds new ideas or concepts.

7. Who Must Develop syllabus

a) A group of teachers in one school

b) National Council of Teachers of English (MGMP)

c) Experts in related subjects and resource group

d) Supervisor

How It developed

a) Ideally, syllabus is developed based on needs analysis conducted by a group of teachers in collaboration with needs analysts/experts and program director of the related institution.

b) Approaches used in developing syllabus can be analytic or synthetic approach.

8. There are three general components of syllabus. Mention them!

Answer :

In general, the components of syllabus consist of :

a) Objectives (or competencies in competency-based syllabus)

b) Instructional contents

c) Learning experiences

d) Evaluation

9. What is KTSP and who should arrange and develop it?

Answer :

KTSP is an operational education curriculum which developed and implemented in each educational unit in this case refers to the content standars and competency standards primary and secondary education.

10. Celce-Murcia et al formulated 5 components of communicative competence. Write and explain each components!

Answer :

Celce-Murcia et al.’s pedagogically motivated model includes five components: (1) discourse competence, (2) linguistic competence, (3) actional competence, (4) sociocultural competence, and (5) strategic competence.



The discourse competence is an ability to use language oral or written to communicate with the other. However, the four competences become the strong basic in creating the discourse competence. All of them have relation and supported each other. Then the main goal of the discourse competence is optimize the ability to express own self by declarative knowledge in real communication context to create the appropriate meaning with its communication context. As the result, any meaning which is obtained and created in communications always related to cultural context and situation context namely use language as according to situation that and culture covered.