CHAPTER 6: CURRICULUM DESIGN (Continued)
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6.2.3 An adaptation: CMI
Van Lier's curriculum model (figure B-19), along with socio-cultural and affective aspects of Gardner & MacIntyre's model (figure B-20) was adapted for the programme at Andong, by substituting a "CMI" triad (Confidence, Motivation, Independence, cf. Chapter 4) for Lier's "AAA".  As with Van Lier's model, this version addressed Legutke & Thomas' (1991) questions about curriculum content and "person-centred" curriculum design (section 6.2.1) and the criteria of Williams & Burden (1997) (section 6.2.1), by: i) following a process approach to learning; ii) being based upon a humanistic view of language learning as education; iii) emphasising interaction; and iv) being founded in theory as well as practice:

1.    it is based on foundational principles which articulate and clarify knowledge and values;

2.    it treats the language curriculum as a theory of practice;

3.    it integrates insights from three sources:

·       theory of learning;

·       theory of pedagogical interaction;

·       theory of instruction;

4.    it critically examines resources and constraints in the learning environment;

5.    it regards learning as jointly constructed by all participants in the process, i.e. as a collaborative achievement;

6.    it regards contingent interaction as crucial in achieving the transformations which characterise all true learning. (Adapted from Van Lier 1996:214)

6.2.4 A secondary triad
In addition to his primary "AAA" triad, Van Lier (1996) also proposes a secondary or subsidiary "AAA" triad: achievement, assessment, accountability (knowledge of success, demonstration of success, and justification of pedagogical action). Where the primary triad acts on the "global level" of basic programme principles, this subsidiary triad is concerned with the "local" learning environment (i.e. what happens in the classroom) and with short-term learning issues. This "subsidiary" concept was also relevant to the ANU programme, and a corresponding subsidiary triad, appropriate for ANU students (cf. the needs profile of section 5.3.2, page 184), was derived. This triad consisted of: consciousness, meaning and interaction.[4] Since these concepts have not been mentioned in the literature reviews so far, a brief explanation of the rationale behind this subsidiary triad follows in sections 6.2.4.1-3.

6.2.4.1 Consciousness
In the early part of the 20^th century, grammar-translation methodologies associated conscious learning with meta-linguistic awareness (explicit formal knowledge of linguistic features). This association was then largely ignored by the behaviourist view (cf. Skinner 1953) of language learning (e.g. audio-lingualism), which rejected the higher mental activities (Brooks 1964; Lado 1964; Rivers 1964; Stack 1971), and by Idealists (cf. "Universal grammar", innatism), who saw language development as the gradual unfolding of inborn qualities (cf. Carroll 1975; Cook 1994). Since then consciousness (and its perceptual component - awareness) has become recognised as an important part of language learning, without which "it is simply not possible to realise the conditions (receptivity, access/participation, investment/practice, and commitment) that make progress towards proficiency possible" (Van Lier 1996:74).

Vygotsky sees consciousness and its two sub-components (intellect and affect) as being the highest level of mental activity, responsible for the organisation of learning (Van Lier 1996:73), and being a socio-cultural construct as well as a cognitive one (cf. Lee 1988), occurring in the zone of proximal development. Van Lier (1996:71) also sees it as an "interpersonal construct", closely linked to socio-cultural development, in which the teacher acts as the student's "vicarious consciousness" (Bruner 1986:72), gradually handing over increasing responsibility and autonomy to the student by a process of scaffolding, and remaining "forever on the growing edge of [the student's] competence" (Bruner 1986:77) (cf. chaos/complexity theory and "life at the edge of chaos" – section 6.6). Csikszentmihalyi (1990) describes the function of consciousness as representing information about internal and external events in such a way that they can be evaluated and acted upon:

With consciousness, we can deliberately weigh what the senses tell us, and respond accordingly. And we can also invent information that did not exist before: it is because we have consciousness that we can daydream, make up lies, and write beautiful poems and scientific theories. (Csikszentmihalyi 1990:24)

Schmidt (1994) discusses four types of consciousness ("the objectively observable organisation of behaviour that is imposed on humans through participation in socio-cultural practices" [Vygotsky, cited in Wertsch 1985:187]): i) consciousness as intention: contrast between intentional and incidental learning; ii) consciousness as attention: focusing; iii) consciousness as awareness: knowing and noticing rules; and iv) consciousness as control: automaticity. The second of these refers to the ability to "notice" learning (Schmidt 1990a), which Gass (1988) sees as necessary for input to be processed, and which Van Lier (1996:59) identifies as vital for acquisition. Schmidt (1990a) suggests six influences which operate on "noticing": i) frequency; ii) perceptual salience (how prominent is the form?); iii) instruction; iv) individual differences in processing ability; v) current state of the interlanguage system (readiness); and vi) task demands. This "consciousness assumption" that "awareness of working memory operations adds to their efficiency" (Schmidt 1990) reflects an input-output view of language learning, in which conscious awareness helps in the focus on matching, feedback appreciation, and recombination, "with each of these predisposing the learner towards a rule-based perspective which is more likely to lead to longer-term change" (Skehan 1998:57). In this learning model input processing and the input features interact (via noticing), within a current interlanguage system (figure B-21, below):

FIGURE B-21: INFLUENCES ON NOTICING AND COMPONENTS OF WORKING MEMORY AND LONG-TERM MEMORY (SKEHAN 1998:57).

Definitions of consciousness as a sociocultural, cognitive, and interpersonal construct, affecting acquisition but not limited to attention to form, have implications for the teacher:

1. It is important to find the appropriate social interaction to allow learning to take place.
2. We should seek, be prepared to stimulate, and guide natural attention-focusing tendencies in the students, since they are likely to be in the ZPD.
3. We must educate the students to make their own decisions increasingly, and in order to do that we must make sure that they know what they are doing. Eventually they are best served by being able to regulate their own language learning. (Van Lier 1996:72)

6.2.4.2 Meaning
Williams & Burden (1997) see education as "helping people to make their own meaning", and offer "Ten basic propositions" that they see as crucial for language teachers, the second and third of which state that "learners learn what is meaningful to them", and that "learners learn in ways that are meaningful to them" (Williams & Burden 1997:204). Contemporary studies and SLA theories also suggest that a learner's language system develops "through communicating meaningfully in the target language ... through the process of interacting, negotiating and conveying meanings in the language in purposeful situations" (Williams & Burden 1997:16). The learning task provides a framework for such meaningful interaction to take place, using "purposeful" (or meaningful) situations which refine cognition, perception and affect (Breen & Candlin 1980:91):

... creative production is possible only when preceded by learning which is rooted deep in learners' personalities. Teachers, then, have to establish a non-threatening environment in the classroom which encourages meaningful learning and the creative use of English. (Sano et al 1984:171)

Meaning has thus become a "primary" part (Skehan 1996a:38) of communicative (and task-based) language teaching and learning, and has been incorporated into "communicative" syllabi on the assumptions that:

i)   meaning drives learning;

ii)  previous language-learning methods ignored this by:

1.        focusing on forms, but not on what they meant or how to use them;

2.        teaching grammatical, but not communicative meaning;

3.        failing to teach students how to express or do certain things with language;

4.        considering meaning untidily and inefficiently (cf. the audiovisual method [Stern 1983:458]). (Adapted from Swan 1985b:77)

Skehan (1996a; 1998) draws attention to the limited processing resources of the brain, and suggests that too much attention to meaning can divert these away from other language-processing activities, leading to "proceduralization" and "lexicalization" (Skehan 1996a:50). He therefore proposes a "focus on form" (rather than "forms") as well as on meaning, in order to achieve a balance of attention allocation (cf. Tarone 1985; Van Patten 1990; 1994; Samuda et al. 1996).

6.2.4.3 Interaction
Since Breen & Candlin (1980:95) first defined language learning as "a process which grows out of the interaction between learners, teachers, texts and activities", and Allwright (1984b), in his "interaction hypothesis", suggested that interaction might even be the learning process, interaction has taken a defining role in language learning, a situation supported by Van Lier (1996), for whom learning–awareness, investment, practice, and commitment:

... are engaged, sustained, and augmented by learners' work of interacting with others ... social interaction ... (inter+action) ... means being ‘busy with' the language in one's dealings with the world, with other people and human artefacts, and with everything, real or imagined, that links self and world. (Van Lier 1996:147)

The recent use of group-work in language teaching has resulted in the growth of two factors seen by Seliger (1983a) as important prerequisites for successful interaction: i) a more amenable social environment within the classroom situation; and ii) a framework for the instrumental use of the foreign language in communicative, well-structured language tasks. Group-work has also been supported by classroom research (Seliger 1977; 1983; Bialystock 1978; Long 1981a; Allwright 1984a; Long & Porter 1985; Pica & Doughty 1985b; Bejarano 1987; Deen 1988; Steiner 1988), highlighting the linguistic and social benefits learners derive from conversing with one another within a well-designed group task. Bejarano et al. (1997:205) categorise interaction strategies into two sub-types: i) Modified-Interaction Strategies (checking for comprehension and clarification, appealing for assistance, giving assistance, repairing); and ii) Social-Interaction Strategies (elaborating, facilitating flow of conversation, responding, seeking information of an opinion, paraphrasing), citing studies by Long (1981a; 1983b; 1985c) which show that Modified-Interaction Strategies need to be learned before work in small groups can enable students to truly modify their interaction, and that such training will able them to negotiate meaning more successfully, even when language proficiency is limited (cf. Sharan et al. 1978; Krashen 1980;1982; Long 1980; 1983b; Swain 1985; Johnson & Johnson 1987; Schmuck & Schmuck 1988; Brubacher et al. 1990).

Seedhouse (1999) agrees on the value of interaction in language learning, and sees tasks as "particularly good at training learners to use the L2 for practical purposes" (1999:155). He warns, however, that task-based interaction is a "particularly narrow and restricted variety of communication" (1999:155), and points to a lack of studies providing evidence that the theoretical benefits of task-based instruction are in fact realised in the classroom (though cf. Mohamed's conclusion that learners were "more likely to learn the target language more effectively" [1998:251] as a result of TBL), or that "task-based interaction is more effective than other varieties of classroom interaction" (Seedhouse 1999:155).

6.2.5 An extension
Van Lier's model (figure B-19) can now be redrawn, with the acronym "CMI" replacing "AAA" at the primary and subsidiary level (figure B-22, below). However, it will be noticed that appendix B-22 is different from B-19 in other ways: i) the "strategy" of "contingent interaction" (figure B-19) has become a subsidiary "principle" (appendix B-22); ii) "assessment" (figure B-19 – "principles) has been removed, and "self-assessment" added to the "strategies" section (appendix B-22); and iii) "field work" and "portfolios" (not part of the initial curriculum design for the ANU programme) have been replaced by "projects". An explanation of the rationale behind these changes can be found in sections 6.4 ("assessment" ) and 3.4.4.3.5 ("project syllabus"). 

FIGURE B-22: CMI CURRICULUM DESIGN: AN ADAPTATION OF VAN LIER'S (1996) MODEL.

The CMI curriculum is not a sequenced and pre-selected collection of linguistic goals, but a process (cf. White 1988:34), in which pedagogic decisions are referred to the first CMI triad on the Global level, and to the second CMI triad at the Local level. It is an infrastructure in which teachers and students have freedom (and responsibility) to negotiate the syllabus nd to decide how to implement it, assessing educational decisions for their potential to encourage and facilitate confidence, motivation and independence, and measuring learning activities by whether they promote consciousness, meaning and interaction. Elements in each triad interact with others at both levels, variously becoming input, process and outcome. On the long-term "global level" of the primary CMI triad, a general direction (learning awareness, goal-setting, using of learning strategies, communicative competence, self-direction - "Where am I going?") emerges, but at the "local" subsidiary CMI level of immediate language learning issues ("How am I getting there?"), changes and developments are unpredictable and are far from linear, as hypothesis-testing or assimilation of new language can result in (for example) an increase in errors. Figure B-23, below) therefore represents the CMI/CMI learning infrastructure as a collection of interacting processes, each of which can influence and be influenced by all (or any combination of) the others. Further discussion of the importance of the interactions of the constituents in figure 23 can be found in the section on complexity theory (section 6.6).  

*dotted lines represent various interactions between levels.

FIGURE B-23: THE CMI CURRICULUM

Another way to represent this CMI curriculum is in terms of the learning functions it promotes and the associated student perceptions it encourages (cf. table A-43, below):

TABLE A-43: THE CMI CURRICULUM (ADAPTED FROM VAN LIER 1996:11). 

Continue reading Chapter 6: "The Syllabus"