Abstract

The present paper takes as its point of departure methodological aspects of the curriculum, and specifically, it attempts at a comparative study of activity preferences of teachers and learners, and wishes to invest tentative thoughts and efforts in College English (CE) curriculum design. It conducts an empirical study on divergent views of 132 students and 30 CE teachers in University of Science and Technology Beijing (USTB) by means of questionnaire on 50 learning activities derived through interviews with a group of teachers and learners. Major findings indicate that there is a considerable lack of correspondence between learners’ and teachers’ opinions on various learning activities, and teachers respond more favorably to communicative activities while learners express stronger liking attitudes towards non-communicative activities. To provide a comprehensive picture, learners’ attitudes towards various learning activities are also examined carefully, which reveals that they embrace both communicative and traditional activities. Tentative implications of the study for curriculum design are:

1) it sets up an empirical basis for methodology design in curriculum development by providing a detailed picture of learners’ preferences;

2) it establishes a useful operating model for prompting a learner-centered curriculum by suggesting several mechanisms such as negotiation and consultation, incorporation of learners’ feedback and flexibility and adaptation;

3) it supplies the rationale for specifying and optimizing CE classroom teaching by impressing teachers with the divergences of learner teacher views on learning activities.

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