Course Evaluations

Evaluation is an intrinsic part of teaching and learning. It can be used as an impetus for updating the entire curriculum, the planning of future courses, and providing direction for future classroom practices. Course evaluations are often used as a part of the ongoing effort to raise standards and improve the quality of the education that a student at any university receives. In exploring how course evaluations could be applied to EFL this paper first looks at what the components of a language program are, and then on the basis of research on course evaluation in the larger educational context, assesses the applicability to EFL of the common evaluations. Before we can evaluate the course, we need to look at the program as a whole, and we need to have an understanding of what the individual components of the program are. In surveying any language program currently in operation, there are eight basic components of the program to be examined: (1)the curriculum, (2)the course description in the student guidebook or course catalog, (3)the syllabus, (4)the textbooks or other materials used in teaching the class, (5)the teachers, (6)the learners, (7)the resources, and (8)the constraints.departmental bulletin pape