Goals and aims

² “Goal / aim” are used interchangeably to refer to a description of the general purposes of a curriculum.

² “Objective” refers to a more specific and concrete description of purposes.

² An aim refers to a statement of a general change that a program seeks to bring about in learners.

² The purposes of making aim statements are:

            ú provide a clear definition of the purposes of a program

            ú provide guidelines for teachers, learners, and materials writers

            ú help provide a focus for instruction/teaching

            ú describe important and realizable changes in learning    

² Aim statements reflect the principles of the curriculum and show how the curriculum will seek to realize them. (see examples of aim statements – slide B2&3)

² Aim statements are generally derived from information gathered during a needs analysis (see slide A1). When developing course aims and objectives from this information, each area of difficulty will have to be examined in order to understand what is involved in understanding lectures, participating in seminars, etc. What knowledge and skills does each activity imply?

² In developing aim statements, it is important to describe more than, simply, the activities that students will take part in (see 2.4 - 2.7 / S B4).  

Objectives

² Aims are very general statements of the goals of a program.

² Aims may be interpreted in many different ways (see. e.g. 2.8 / S B5).

² Although 2.8 provides a clear description of the focus of the program, it does not describe (1) the kinds of business letters the students will learn or (2) clarify what is meant by effective business letters.

² To give a more precise focus to program goals, aims are often accompanied by statements of more specific purposes, i.e. objectives.

² An objective refers to a statement of specific changes a program seeks to bring about and results from an analysis of the aim into its different components.

² It is a statement describing what learners will be able to do as a result of instruction. Formal objectives have three parts:

            ú an activity (what learners will do),

            ú conditions (under what circumstances),

            ú and standards (how well they will perform). [See slide A 2] + [3. handout / S B6]

² Statements of objectives have the following characteristics:

ú Objectives describe a learning outcome. Expressions which describe what students will do during a course, e.g. will study, will learn about, will prepare students for, are avoided because they do not describe the result of learning. Rather one should use expressions like will have, will learn how to, will be able to.

ú Objectives should be consistent with the curriculum aim. (3.7 unrelated to 2.8 / S B7)

ú Objectives should be precise. Objectives that are vague and ambiguous are not useful. (see 3.8 as an objective for a conversation course / S B7)

ú Objectives should be feasible. They should describe outcomes that are attainable in the time available during a course. (see 3.9 / S B8)

² Objectives are normally produced by a group of teachers or planners based on their knowledge and experience and revise and refine them over time.

² Objectives derive from a variety of sources: information about students’ learning difficulties, info about different language levels, info about the characterizations of skills involved in different domains of language use.

² Objectives are not fixed. As teaching proceeds, some may have to be revised, some dropped because they are unrealistic, and others added to address gaps.