Yalden (1987, p. 3) refers to course design as combining “what is already known about language teaching and learning” with the new ideas brought up by the students to the language classroom (their needs, wants and knowledge of the world). She further asserts that those designing second language courses are required to gain and understanding of certain theoretical issues, that is, what is available or relevant in the literature as regards language teaching and learning. Moving from Yalden’s (1987) suggestions on the theoretical issues to be considered by the curriculum designers, it is seen that there was a dominance of structure-based courses in the past because of the focus on structural linguistics (Dubin & Olshtain, 1986). However, over the years, socio-cultural views on the nature of language have started to gain importance. In other words, change in the world of linguistics was observed with the inclusion of the sociolinguistic component into the linguistic theory (Yalden, 1987). Though courses centering on structures (knowledge about the language) are still performed, other aspects of language like socio-linguistic knowledge are getting more popular in classroom practices. While the traditional approaches to language teaching defines language proficiency in terms of the degree of the mastery of the structures (phonological, grammatical or lexical structures), today the degree of ability to communicate is treated as an indicator of proficiency. In other words, languages are learnt for communication purposes, and this process encompasses more than the structural knowledge about the language. Moreover, Krashen’s (1981, 1982) hypotheses including acquisition-learning distinction, comprehensible input and affective filter, Chomsky’s (1965) performance-competence distinction and Hymes’s (1972) communicative competence briefly pointed out the need for a communicative curriculum that is based on three major sources, a view of language as viewed by the view of sociolinguistic, a language learning view that is cognitively-based and an educational approach that is humanistic (Dubin & Olshtain, 1986).

     Grounded in this communicative tendency above, this instructional design study was conducted in response to a desire to find more effective ways of teaching language for communication rather than for the mastery of language structures. Being also a case study, the study attempted to design an elective advanced speaking course to be taught to the freshman students who have completed one-year structure-based English preparatory instruction in a state university in Turkey. These students needed an elective English course to develop their speaking and communication skills further of which they had been deprived in the preparatory program. Thus, the purpose of this three part study was first, to identify critical and theoretical characteristics of an advanced communication and speaking course from extensive literature review on the subject; second, to operationalize these critical and theoretical characteristics by designing an English as a foreign language (EFL) language course involving the identified characteristics; and finally, to field test this devised instructional design in an undergraduate English course. 

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