APPROACHES TO CONSTRUCTING THE CONTENT OF FOREIGN LANGUAGE CURRICULUM FOR SECONDARY SCHOOL IN UKRAINE (1991 – MID 2020S)

Abstract

School curriculum is a reference document that represents the result in the development of methodology and showcases the generally accepted view on the content of a particular subject, its intermediate and general goals, and how it should be taught. Thus, curriculum is as a “framework” which determines the content of school textbooks as well as organization of the whole educational process.

The author examines approaches to elaborating the content of foreign language curricula for secondary school in Ukraine in a historical retrospective. The chronological boundaries of the study cover the 1990s till the middle of the 2020s. The results of the study are based on a thorough analysis of relevant normative documents, methodological literature and curricula prepared in Ukraine during the specified period.

The research helped to establish four distinct stages in elaborating the content of foreign language curricula. The first stage encompasses the period of 1991 till 2000. In this period the curriculum contained a formalistic and quantitative description of linguistic skills in reading, writing, speaking and listening whereas communicative and pragmatic aspects of language learning were not stated.

The new phase that started in 2001 marked the beginning of communicative era in language learning. The content of the new curriculum was heavily influenced by CEFR. It clearly defined shaping communicative competence as a primary goal of language learning and specified its components. Shaping of intercultural awareness was regarded as an indispensable component of the new paradigm. With the help of new descriptors borrowed from CEFR the new curriculum provided the educators with clear and comprehensive tools to evaluate students’ learning outcomes.

The following curricula versions mainly preserved the fundamental features of the communicative-based curriculum, although some aspects were expanded. For example, in 2017 there was an effort to remodel the foreign language curriculum to concept-based learning (CBL) approach. Due to the fact that learning outcomes are to be described in terms of competences, in 2021 the authors shifted from CBL to competence-based approach where communicative competence is one but not the only competence which should be shaped while learning a foreign language at school.

The obtained results shed light on how foreign language curricula in Ukraine evolved; the findings are properly structured so that researchers can use them as a platform for further research in the domain of elaborating approaches to curriculum design for learning foreign languages in secondary school of Ukraine.