Syllabus Design

Syllabus Design

1. Product-oriented syllabuses

   • Synthetic syllabus
     • The different parts of language are taught separately and step by step so that acquisition is a process of gradual accumulation of parts until the whole structure of language has been built up.
     • Grammatical syllabus
       • One in which syllabus input is selected and graded according to grammatical notions of simplicity and complexity. One item is introduced at a time and requires mastery of that item before moving on to the next.
       • Criticisms
         • Misrepresents the nature of language
         • Sometimes learners fail to learn
       • More similar than expected
   • Analytic syllabus
     • Organized in terms of the purposes for which people are learning language and the kinds of language performance that are necessary to meet those purposes.
     • Functional-notional syllabus
       • Function
         • The communicative purposes for which we use language
       • Notion
         • The conceptual meanings expressed through language.
       • Criticisms
         • Misrepresents the nature of language
         • Selection and grading of items become more complex.
         • Designers need to look beyond linguistic notions of simplicity and difficulty when grading items.
         • Inventories of functions and notions do not necessarily reflect the way languages are learned any more than do inventories of grammatical points and lexical items.

2. Process-oriented syllabuses

   • Content Syllabus
     • Experiential content is usually derived from some fairly well-defined subject area.
       • Other subjects in school curriculum
         • eg. sciencie or social studies
       • Specialist subject matter
         • eg. mechanical engineering, medicire, or computing
     • Advantages
       • the syllabus is given logic and coherence
       • the logic of the subject may provide a non-linguistic rationale for selecting and grading content
   • Procedural syllabus
     • the same
   • Task-based syllabus
     • A syllabus which is organized around tasks, rather than in terms of grammar or vocabulary
     • Types of tasks
       • Information-gap activity
         • Transfer of given information from one person to another
       • Reasoning-gap activity
         • Deriving some new information from given information through processes of inference, deduction, practical reasoning, or a perception of relationships or patterns.
       • Opinion-gap activity
         • Identifying and articulating I a personal preference, feeling, or attitude in response to a given situation.
   • Natural approach
     • Goal
       • Communication skills
     • Comprehension precedes production, production emerges