The focus of this book is the processes involved in developing, implementing, and evaluating language programs. By a language program I refer to any organized course of language instruction. Second and foreign language teaching is one of the world's largest educational enterprises and millions of children and adults worldwide devote large amounts of time and effort to the task of mastering a new language. Teachers too invest a great deal of their energies into planning language courses, preparing teaching materials, and teaching their classes. What educational principles are these activities based on? What values do these principles reflect? Whose interests do they serve? And can our practices be improved through reviewing the principles we operate from and critically examining the practices that result from them? The goal of this book is to provide some of the tools for this process of review and reflection through surveying approaches to language curriculum development and examining ways of addressing the issues that arise in developing and evaluating language programs and language teaching materials. Language curriculum development deals with the following questions, which provide the framework for this book:

• What procedures can be used to determine the content of a language program?

• What are learners' needs?

• How can learners' needs be determined?

• What contextual factors need to be considered in planning a language program?

• What is the nature of aims and objectives in teaching and how can these be developed?