Resilient-Whole: A New Framework for Content-Based Language Curriculum Design and Teaching

Proceedings of The 6th International Conference on Advanced Research in Education

Year: 2023

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Resilient-Whole: A New Framework for Content-Based Language Curriculum Design and Teaching

Dr. Meng Zhang

 

 

 

ABSTRACT: 

The landscape of education has been negatively affected by the impact of COVID-19 along with the economic crisis as well as the geopolitical tensions arising at places across the globe. In the midst of changes, language researchers and educators are exploring different ways to engage students in offline and mostly online and mixed-modes instructional spaces. To address the changes with our current (and also future) educational needs, I, as a TESOL and applied linguistics researcher and practitioner, propose a resilient-whole framework, from a course design and delivery perspective, with the aim of getting all of us more ready and more able to create and implement a sustainable language teaching curriculum, a curriculum that is reactive and adaptive to change, and is capable of cultivating language learners’ mind-body-world alignment which is highly demanded for living and being in today’s academic and nonacademic environments. The framework will be explained in detail with discussion on my own experiences embedded in the college-level, content-based English for Academic Purposes (EAP) teaching context. Specifically, the article discusses resiliency from the perspectives of content-language unit design, tasks and projects for online teaching and learning, internal and external collaborations, assessment rubrics, and student advising. It is through tightening these aspects together with a resilient mind permeating into everyday practice that a language classroom is enriched and strengthened with a more diverse, equitable, and inclusive class ecology being observed in the age of change.

keywords: resilient curriculum, curriculum design, teaching and learning, mind-body-world alignment, English for Academic Purposes