Issues in English Language Teaching (ELT) Affecting Decision Making in Curriculum Development Process in Tanzania

Curriculum development is an essential process that involves the selection of objectives, content, learning experiences as well as organising and evaluating these experiences to determine the extent to which they are effective in achieving stated objectives. It further involves implementation in which the structured set of learning experiences is disseminated and the resources are provided to effectively execute the plan and the actual execution of the plan in the classroom setting, where the teacher – learner interaction takes place. Nevertheless, it involves putting into practice the officially prescribed curriculum content in which various stakeholders become engaged in the process by making their contribution to operationalise the curriculum. Based on literature review, this paper seeks to discuss five issues that could affect decision making in curriculum development process particularly during the stage of implementation. In discussing these issues, teaching and learning of English subject is taken as the reference point, that is, the examples for substantiation of the contention are drawn mainly from the key issues in English language teaching (ELT) in Tanzanian education system by looking at teacher quality, limited authentic teaching and learning materials, class size, limited exposure towards using English language and assessment and evaluation procedures.