Module #6: Blog reflection of Chapter 5, Formulating Goals and Objectives.

When teachers prepare lesson plans for class, we are thinking what is going to be an objectives and what kind of goals are needed to be planned. Studies on teacher’s planning processes in the 1970s and early 1980s showed that teachers are primarily focused on the concretes of the classroom: What they will teach, how they will teach it, the students in the classroom.

Aspects of planning which were not immediately tied to the here and now of the classroom, such as goals and objectives or how the class fit into the curriculum as a whole were not in the foreground of their thinking (Graves, 2000, p.73). When I read this sentence, I was confused as I have thought goals and objectives are very important. However, it does not mean that teachers don’t have goals and objectives but rather that these are implicit in what they do rather than explicitly stated, or that they are a later part in the planning process (p.73). This chapter is explaining what goals and objectives are and the relationship between them as well as a variety of ways to formulate and articulate them.

What are goals and objectives and what is their relationship?

Goals
The author is describing the goals are a way of putting into words the main purposes and intended outcomes of your course (p.75). This is easily explained if we use the comparison of a journey, the destination is the goal; the journey is the course.

Objectives
Objectives are statements about how the goals will be achieved. Through objectives, a goal is broken down into learnable and teachable units. By achieving the objectives, the goal will be reached. Another aspect of the relationship between goals and objectives is that of cause and effect. If students achieve A B, C objectives, then they will reach Y goal (p.77). When I read this statement, I was not very clear about the relationship between the goal and objective but Figure 5.2 helped me to understand the relationship clearly.



Objectives are in a hierarchical relationship to goals. Goals are more general and objectives more specific. Some teachers have found it helpful to have three layers of goals and objectives. The important point is that each layer is more and more specific. One objective may serve more than one goal (p. 78). Formulating goals and objectives helps to build a clear vision of what you will teach. A clear set of goals and objectives can provide the basis for your assessment plan (p.79)

This chapter introduced four kinds of skills how to set the goals. Among them I am interested in two kinds of goal organizations. One is KASA and the other one is Stern’s organization. David has used a framework which he calls “A TASK,” which is derived from the KASA( knowledge, awareness, skill, attitude) framework (p.83).
*Knowledge goals address what students will know and understand. These goals include knowledge about language and about culture and society.
*Awareness goals address what students need to be aware of when learning a language. These include areas of self-knowledge, understanding of how the language works, and understanding of others’ use of language.
*Skills goals address what students can do with the language. This is perhaps the broadest area, encompassing the four skills of speaking, listening, reading, and writing, as well as the functions and tasks one accomplishes through language.
*Attitude goals are those that address the affective and values-based dimension of learning.

On the other hand, Denise uses Stern’s 1992 framework ( p.83)
*Cognitive goals includes explicit knowledge, information and conceptual learning about language and about culture.
*Proficiency goals includes what students will be able to do with the language.
Affective goals include achieving positive attitudes toward the target language and culture as well as to one’s own learning of them.
*Transfer goals include learning how what one does or learns in the classroom canbe transferred outside of the classroom in order to continue learning.

This is the time to see how to formulate goals.
*The first step is to list all the possible goals you could have for your particular course, based on your conceptualization of content, your beliefs, and/or your assessment of students’ needs.
*Next step is to look for redundancies, and to identify priorities based on your beliefs and your context. One way to organize your goals is to use the categories you have used for conceptualizing content. These categories might include communicative functions, topics, grammar, tasks, reading, writing, interpersonal skills, etc. For example, if your course integrates the four skills of speaking, listening, reading, and writing, then you can have four major goals, each one related to a skill (p.83).

This time, let’s study how to formulate objectives. Mager suggests that for an objective to be useful, it should contain three components: performance, condition, and criterion.
Performance describes what the learners will be able to do, condition describes the circumstances in which the learners are able to something, and criterion, the degree to which they are able to do something (p. 86). Brown (1995) added subject, who will be able to do something, and measure, “how the performance will be observed or tested.”

From now on, let’s review the summary of guidelines to consider when formulating goals and objectives (p.94,95):
1. Goals should be general, but not vague.
2. Goals should be transparent.
3. A course is successful and effective if the goals have been reached.
4. Goals should be realistic.
5. Goal should be relatively simple.
6. Goals should be about something the course will explicitly address in some way.
7. Objectives should be more specific than goals.
8. Objectives should directly relate to the goals.
9. Objectives and goals should be in a cause-effect relationship.
10. Objectives should focus on what students will learn and/or processes associated with it.
11. Objectives are relatively short term. Goals are relatively long term.
12. There should be more objectives than goals.
13. Don’t try to pack too much into one objective.
14. The goals and objectives give a sense of the syllabus or the course.
15. A clear set of goals and objectives provides the basis for evaluation of the course and assessment of student learning.
16. Both goals and objectives should be stated in terms of the learner.
17. Your course may have two or three layers of goals and objectives.

During reading of this chapter, I could have more clear picture on making goals and objectives. I hope this could be applied when I make my own curriculum.