The Design On Instructor Course Syllabus For Intercultural Communication At Institutes Of Distance Education In China

This dissertation is an attempt to make an enquiry into the instructor course syllabus design for Intercultural communication at the institutes for distance education. The syllabus is now viewed as an instrument by which the instructor can achieve a degree of fit between the needs and aims of the learners and the activities which will occur in the classroom. Nowadays the instructors abroad usually have their own syllabi, while the instructors in China generally use the unified evaluation syllabus and most of them haven't their own syllabi. And in distance educational institutes , even more instructors haven't their own syllabi. Here the course syllabus designed by an instructor for the instructor and his own students is called instructor course syllabus. This dissertation applied Hutchinson & Waters'ideas about the syllabus and Brown's theory about syllabus design in an attempt to design my own instructor course syllabus, which is an outline of the course of Intercultural Communication. It includes not only the course information , but also the information about the instructor , support service, network resources, the learning strategy , the learning requirements and the learning environment. The great majority of students in the world learn language through the mediation of a teacher. The teacher can influence the clarity, intensity and frequency of any item, and thereby affect the image that the learners receive.( Hutchinson &Waters ,1987) .The purpose of the study is to design my own instructor course syllabus to help my own teaching and my own students'learning. In comparison with the evaluation syllabi in China, I have proved that the instructor course syllabus has many advantages that are as follows:1 .The instructor course syllabus provides the information about support service. The support service is very important for distance learners. It helps the students have awareness of the service available from the school and the instructor, such as the net service , the instructor's supervision and the learning center staff's supervision, so that they may make full use of them in their learning.2. The instructor course syllabus provides the information about learning strategies, which provide the students with many ways from which they can learn well. It is helpful for the students to improve their learning autonomy.3. The instructor course syllabus equips the information about the network resources, such as online supplementary reading materials, CAI materials , live classes and online self assessment. It may help the students know more about the learning materials and may motivate the students to find more about the course contents.4. The sequence of the teaching contents in the instructor course syllabus is designed week by week and the contents are theme-based, completed by task. It may help the instructor and the students have awareness of what to be learned and how to learn it in each class.5. The instructor course syllabus is designed by the instructor. It is an outline of the course for the instructor and his own students. It includes the instructor's information, such as office phone number, house phone number, QQ number, E-mail and office hours, with which it is convenient for the students to contact the instructor. It may help to establish an early point of contact and connection between student and instructor and help the teaching and learning go well.The instructor knows more about his own students and what he teaches. The course syllabus designed by an instructor will give more help for his own instruction and his own students'learning.The dissertation provides some information about the instructor course syllabus design for intercultural communication. It will be useful for the instructors to improve their instruction and design their own syllabi. It is expected that this dissertation might provide some reference for future syllabus design.