TEE unit design for authentic communication based on UbD

The National English Language Curricula in Korea aim at the cultivation of learners' basic communicative competence for using English in their daily routines. For this goal the Ministry of Education embarked on the Teaching English in English (TEE) policy where English classes must be conducted in English. The existing unit designs for TEE, however, have been blamed for failing to achieve the primary goal of TEE policy, and accordingly new unit designs have been required to cultivate students' communicative competence. This paper identified an Understanding by Design (UbD) approach as one of the most appropriate curriculum planning tools and tried to integrate it into the TEE unit design for authentic communication. For investigating teachers' ideas and attitudes toward existing TEE unit design and UbD-based TEE unit design, a total of 210 English teachers were asked to respond to questionnaires and have interviews. The findings of this study suggest TEE units should be redesigned based on UbD for the improvement of students' authentic communicative competence.