21 Syllabus Design I (Theoretical Options)

Dr. Sudhir Singh

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Introduction

 

Syllabus design is an important phenomenon in teaching-learning a language. It is apropos to decide what should be taught to the learners and which methodology works effectively. English language teaching is the most prominent teaching area in which teachers and students from all over the world participate. The choice of the syllabus to be taught to the language learners is an important activity that needs a great deal of reflection and analysis .Different theories and approaches produce different syllabi. So, designing a language syllabus, though apparently seems a simple phenomenon, is a complex one. The syllabus designer needs to reflect on the following points :

  • The nature and scope of the course.
  • Pedagogic principles and procedures applied for the program.
  • Needs of the learners.
  • The learning outcome of the course.

Broadly speaking, a language syllabus must work with an objective of producing such skills in a student, which make him/her such productive, and efficient language user who can produce own meaningful and convincing language with verbal and non-verbal communication skills. No language syllabus can be multipurpose as the needs vary from learner to learner in general, business, social, professional and technical contexts . A general course will yield general and ineffective users in special contexts. The linguistic need of a law student differs from the needs of a student of technical education, a management student or a student of creative writing. With a very small shared space, their requirements gradually divert in terms of vocabulary and expression. Looking at this diversity of industrial requirements there is a need to frame specific syllabus for specific purposes with an aim to overcome the linguistic difficulties involved in studying English. Yet, the aim remains the same- to train an efficient language user.

Defining a language syllabus

 

Syllabus is the summary of a discourse, a course of study or of examination requirements .It is an expression of education ideas in practice. It gives direction both to the teachers and the students regarding the goals and objectives which are required to be achieved in language learning. Many theorists have tried to define a language syllabus. Hutchinson and Waters in their book English For Specific Purposes: A Learning Centred Approach (1987:80) give traditional interpretation of syllabus when they call it a statement of what is to be learnt of language and linguistic performance whereas J.Yalden in Principles of Course Design for Language Teaching defines it as a summary of the content to which learners will be exposed (Yalden, 1987: 87). Since syllabus is a platform where the students are introduced to the course i.e. what will be taught to him, the manner of instruction, what to learn and how to learn, course content, methodology, activities, and organization of resources so Nilson opines:

 

“…it is not only the road map for the term’s foray into knowledge but also a travelogue to pique students’ interest in the expedition and its leader”.

Characteristics of a good syllabus:

 

The essential characteristics of a good syllabus are as under:

  • It sets the tone for the course by providing the course details and teaching philosophy.
  • It should be clear, coherent and comprehensive.
  • It should articulate and correspond to the rationale objectives and learning outcomes of the course.
  • Course objectives, course content and sequencing of material should be related to each other.
  • It should acquaint students with the structure of the course.
  • It should communicate what, when, and how students will learn.
  • It should define expectations in terms of student responsibilities for success.
  • It should duly consider the level of the performance of the learners.
  • It should identify the effective assessment models.
  • It should be relative to the available resources.
  • It should clearly mention the classroom requirements.
  • It should necessarily enhance student learning.

Linda B. Nilson talks of fruitful outcome of a good syllabus:

 

“No doubt, you want your students to learn certain things, to master a body of material. But you can’t assess how well you’ve met this goal, or your students’ learning, unless you have them do something with that material that demonstrates their learning.”

 

Barbara Gross Davis in her book Tools for Teaching talks about importance of sound preparation and planning a syllabus:

 

“The act of preparing a syllabus helps you decide what topics will be covered and at what pace. Further, by distributing a written explanation of course procedures, you can minimize misunderstandings about the due dates of assignments, grading criteria, and policies on missed tests. Finally, a well-prepared course syllabus shows students that you take your teaching seriously.”

While planning and designing a syllabus for the language course various types of approaches are available to the course designers . Two major types of syllabuses are product-oriented syllabus ( focusing on the outcomes) and process-oriented syllabus. Any good language syllabus will  cover more or less both the types.

Theoretical options to design a language syllabus:

As mentioned earlier, many approaches of designing a language syllabus have been in practice. Broadly speaking these are: Product-oriented approaches and Process –oriented approaches. Product-oriented approaches include structural approach, situational approach and notional/functional approach. Process oriented approach includes procedural or task-based syllabus, skill-based, content-based, learner-led syllabus & proportional syllabus.

Product-oriented approaches

Structural syllabus: Traditionally, structural approach has been the most prevalent approach where the content of the syllabus depends on the complexity level of the grammatical items . In this grammatical syllabus approach the learners are exposed to various grammatical structures step by step and they are supposed to master them by internalizing the rules. It is considered that the grammatical concepts like nouns , plurals etc can be better defined than the functional ones, so grammar becomes the most familiar learning content. The teacher chooses structures appropriate to the level of the learners and plans exercises to test the learners’ knowledge. Semantically defined sentence types such as statements, questions, interrogatives and grammatically defined types such as simple, compound and complex sentences are seen to be the focus. The entire focus is on the learning outcome. This approach is based on a theory of language learning that the functional ability arises from the structural ability. That is, the grammar or structural aspects of language are the most significant parts in language learning. Noam Chomsky also gave prominence to grammar in language learning . While elaborating the concept of ‘generative grammar’ he introduced the concept of linguistic competence which focuses on a set of finite language rules to produce the infinite utterances or sentences.

But this approach was seen to be limited because of its low transferability of structural knowledge to actual language behaviour . The ultimate aim of a language course should be the learner’s ability to function in language. So this approach was criticized by functionalists and sociolinguists for its dealing only with one aspect of language and ignoring the other important aspects.

Situational syllabus: To address the limitations and gaps of structural approach, situational approach (pragmatics) evolved. In this approach, the organizing principle of the content is based on everyday situations rather than grammatical content. Since language is always used in a context so the transmission of meaning depends not only on structural and linguistic knowledge of the speaker and listener, but also on the context of the utterance, so the learner is given a situation and s/he uses ‘fit for action’ language with reference to this context. Situational syllabus outlines such situations in which the learner is to perform linguistically. They get concrete contexts within which they learn notions, functions and structures. Examples for such contexts are ‘ At a cinema’ ‘ Buying a dress’ ‘ Attending a phone call’ ‘ At a Restaurant’ etc. In this way, the motivational level of the learners is also enhanced because they learn language to meet their most pressing everyday needs. This approach is more suitable to teach specific language for specific situations. For instance, if one has to visit a place where the this language  is spoken , the learner will require situational kind of teaching to cope with the language challenges of new environment.

Though Wilkins feels that with this approach motivation and involvement of the learner will be heightened because it is “learner- rather than subject-centered” (Wilkins,1976: 16) but this approach was also criticized for its limitations, for its divorce from grammar and that it would not be suitable for such learners whose needs are not covered by the situations prescribed. The functions and notions will be learnt in context of one situation only but whereas the requirements of the world outside are varied and this learning seems limited and narrow.That is why a new approach took place.

Both the structural and situational approaches were criticized on the ground that these answer only the ‘how’ ‘when’ ‘where’ of the language but lack in defining the communicative purpose and the conceptual meaning of language( notions and functions) .

Notional-Functional syllabus: It is a more inclusive notion based on the communicative competence theory as proposed by Dell Hymes who felt that the linguistic forms should be studied along with the ways in which these are used. Notion is a specific context in which we communicate and function in a specific purpose in that context. For instance, ‘ shopping’ can be a notion and various language requirements like asking price, discussing the product and bargaining etc. are the functions of language. Communicative Competence includes four areas- linguistic, sociolinguistic, discourse and strategic . In this approach the emphasis is on the semantic and communicative aspects without losing sight of grammatical and situational factors. The syllabus designer makes a list of communicative functions ( agreement, greeting etc.) for which the learners will be using the language s/he makes a list of notions based on their culture and context ( e.g. values) . Then the functions and notions are used together to perform the learning tasks. To design this syllabus need analysis of the communication requirements becomes a pre-requisite.

Process-oriented approach :

Opposed to the product-oriented approach evolved another approach that is called process- oriented approach with a shift from linguistic element of the product-oriented approach to the educational element with an emphasis on learning . The syllabus designer does not need to bother with the ordering of the content, rather it is organized around tasks and activities so that while consciously solving the tasks language is perceived sub-consciously.

Procedural or task-based syllabus: Task-based language teaching (TBLT) , which falls within the communicative approach, has become a widely used  term  in  second/foreign language  pedagogy . Here the  language learning  which takes place as a process of doing a set of communicative tasks in the classroom results in language activation outside the classroom. Emphasis is laid both on the language and language learning process through interaction in the target language by using authentic materials. The real impetus for the TBLT came from the Banglore project in which Prabhu and his colleagues designed a procedural syllabus as a  reaction against structural-oral-situational (S-O-S) approach followed in their country in 1960s and 1970s. Here language acquisition occurs when learners focus their attention on meaning rather than on language forms. When learners are engrossed in doing meaning-focused  activities, they are benefitted in natural communication in the classroom. The learning takes place when the target language is taught through communication and not simply for communication. Here each lesson is divided into pre-task, a task, and a quick marking component. The pre-task, however, is a teacher-guided, whole-class and preparatory activity which orients the learners to overcome the difficulties they might face while doing the task. It is viewed as a confidence building activity. The second stage is individually performing the task which should be reasonably challenging, neither too difficult nor too easy. It is followed by the marking stage when the teacher evaluates the accuracy in performance of the task , not the accuracy of the sentences. Finally incidental error correction is  done instead of a systematic one.

Usually a procedural syllabus is confused with task-based syllabus but both are different. Sasan Baleghizadeh in his article The Procedural Syllabus and the Task Syllabus: How Similar, How Different? has compared the essential differences of both the syllabuses.

Task syllabus: A task syllabus aims at holistic approach to language learning opposed to the synthetic syllabuses (grammatical, functional, notional, topical etc.) where the language is broken in parts and then learnt in parts. Advocated by Long & Crookes, a pedagogic task is the departure point and the focus is on the meaning in this syllabus which is seen as a facilitating tool in language teaching. The tasks are identified through a needs analysis process. For instance, students are made to watch or listen to some disaster management stories as a pre-task and are then required to create a similar story in a different but specific context. Long & Crookes give some more examples:

For example, in a course for trainee flight attendants, the serving of breakfast, lunch, dinner, and snacks and refreshments might be classified as serving food and beverages. Pedagogic tasks are then derived from the task types and sequenced to form the task-based syllabus.

Though the procedural and task syllabuses share a lot of similarities yet they differ from each other in task selection, task gradation, task implementation and input characteristics. In task syllabus the pedagogic tasks are planned on the basis of need analysis with reference to the real- world targets whereas in procedural syllabus this was done on the basis of intrinsic pedagogic merits of the tasks. Another difference is about the challenge level of the task. Ellis (2003) provides us the criteria of gradation of tasks (a) input factors, including medium, code , complexity, cognitive complexity, context dependency, and familiarity of information; (b) task conditions, including conditions relating to the negotiation of meaning, task demands, and the discourse mode required by the task; (c) factors related to the process of performing a task, including the type of reasoning needed; and (d) factors relating to task outcomes, including the medium, the scope, the discourse domain, and the complexity of outcome ( as quoted in Baleghizadeh ,109) Another difference is in terms of task implementation .As per Will’s framework (1996) it has three components: Pre-task in which the teacher brainstorms the idea with the class and prepares them to think how to do the task unlike Prabhu’s  concept  of pre-task ;Task cycle in which students would do the task in pairs or groups being monitored by the teacher. They would share their experience of task implementation with the rest of the class; In

  • Syllabus
  • Procedural
  • Task

language focus phase the students would do some language or form –focused activities. The final difference is input characteristics. In this syllabus the negative evidence also contributes to language learning. Focus on form makes the students conscious of linguistic code features in the context of a communicative classroom.

 

Table of differences between Procedural and Task Syllabuses.

Skill-based syllabus: In this syllabus some specific language skills are taught to the learners and gradually their confidence is enhanced. Linguistic competencies like pronunciation grammar  etc. are grouped together and learners are required to do general activities like listening, writing etc based on these components. Students can develop their communicative competencies, listening, speaking, writing and reading using various resources.

 

Content-based syllabus: Here the language learning occurs along with content learning. The focus is on a specific content or information rather than language. This means that content of any subject in English medium can be the text to study language drill. For example, a piece of information from rural farming is taken and in addition to the accumulation of information on various technical aspects of farming, challenges and remedies of rural farming language drill regarding vocabulary, tense used and sentence structures can also be carried on.

Learner-led syllabus : Proposed by Breen and Candlin (1984), this syllabus focuses on the learners who are hoped to be involved in the implementation of the syllabus design. By being fully aware of the course they are studying, it is believed that their interest and motivation will increase, coupled with the positive effect of nurturing the skills required to learn. Critics label it as radical and utopian in the sense that it will be difficult to follow as the direction of the  syllabus will be largely the responsibility of the learners.

 

Proportional syllabus: This kind of syllabus which focuses on overall competence was proposed by Yalden. It consists of a number of elements within the main theme playing a linking role through the units. Initially it is expected that form will be of central value, but later, the focus turns towards interactional components. Here shift from form to interaction is not limited rather it can occur at any time. As Yalden (1987) observes, it is important for a syllabus to indicate explicitly what will be taught, not what will be learnt.It is a dynamic syllabus with a focus on flexibility and feedback.

 

 

Designing a languagesyllabus:

  • While designing a syllabus for the course, the teacher must consider all the points discussed above as criteria of a good syllabus. Although many types of language teaching syllabi can be developed based on various approaches but none of them occur independently. Almost each language teaching syllabus draws from the valuable insights of two or more approaches defined above. In a course, one type of syllabus usually dominates, while other types of content may be combined with it. A language teaching syllabus involves the integration of subject matter and linguistic matter.
  • Need analysis assumes the prime significance in the process of planning an English language syllabus. A consideration of the target students’ requirements, taking stock of their linguistic strengths and weaknesses and an investigation of how the syllabus shall address their needs to produce sufficiently good language become a pre-requisite. In his book Communicative Syllabus Design in 1978 Munby introduced ‘communication needs processor’ which became launching pad for many related terms like Target Situation Analysis, Pedagogic Needs Analysis, Strategy Analysis or Learning Needs Analysis, Discourse analysis, Deficiency Analysis, Means Analysis, Present Situation Analysis , Register analysis and Genre Analysis .
  • A good language syllabus establishes a connection between the students and the teacher and sets the tone for the course. On the very first day of the class the students are excited to know about the topics to be covered in their syllabus, assignments, grading system, texts etc. Many education theorists agree that a detailed syllabus is important learning tool for the students which lessens their initial anxieties about the course. Students’ queries and questions should be anticipated and addressed while planning a language syllabus . Davis advises to keep the syllabus flexible so that the classes that get sidetracked can also cover up. A language syllabus should also clearly define the pre- requisites of that course.(Davis, 1993:14-15)
  • Logical arrangement of the content is another precaution that a language syllabus designer must observe. It can be arranged either chronologically or according to topics  or themes , from theoretical perspectives to the application of the concepts etc. It should move gradually in terms of complexity. If the content has no backward –forward linkages or continuity , it may lead to the confusion in teaching –learning of the language. The logic behind this arrangement must be clear to the students . It should also delineate not only the tasks of the teacher but also what the students are going to do during the course.
  • Another aspect of designing a language course syllabus is selection of a textbook and resource material. Textbooks are the staple in a curriculum . As the ESL teachers spend a great deal of time with textbooks ,so the text/texts decided to be prescribed in this  course should be the most accurate and authentic one. A language textbook should be up to date, have relevant content, culturally sensitive visuals and graphics, should incorporate higher level thinking skills, cater to the literacy need of the learners, and its material must address the diversity of learning styles. If the number of texts is more , working on an anthology or a compiled text can be a good way out. Students might find it difficult to find and purchase more number of books. Expensive and heavy texts should be avoided, if possible.
  • Evaluation and grading procedures including the weights assigned to various components must also be made clear in a language syllabus.

Example: While applying ESP approach to design an EAP( English for Academic Purposes) syllabus , the stages of development shall be as:

 

1.      Assess students’ competence level

2.      Need analysis

3.      Analysis of skills

4.      Syllabus design

 

Needs analysis : It assumes a prominent role in deciding a syllabus. Gillet suggests that Munby’s Communicative Needs Processor is best suited for need analysis in this context. The information in the following parameters is processed .

  • Purpose: It can be academic. Let us take social science for instance.
  • Setting : Physical setting: e.g. office, lecture theater or library.
  • Human context: alone, meetings or on telephone.
  • Linguistic context: in own place or a strange one.
  • Interaction: Learner’s interlocutors and relationship between them. E.g. The role of a student in student-teacher interaction.
  • Instrumentality: Medium ( Written, spoken or both), mode( monologue or dialogue)and channel ( face to face or radio or print) of communication .
  • Dialect: A dialect that a learner will have to understand and produce . E.g. Standard British dialect.
  • Communicative event : An activity that the learner will have to do with English. E.g. attending , a class, group discussion etc.
  • Communicative key: Manner required to do the communicative event e.g. politely or confidently or any attitude .

Target level : Level of linguistic proficiency at the end of a course. This level might be different for different skills . E.g. any term-end exam or test .

With this kind of exercise, the syllabus would define specific content as per the needs of the learners and will clearly define what will the students be doing after the completion of the course. So the focus is the end product.

 Summary

Syllabus is a summary, a concise statement of a course of study. A language syllabus can be of many types based on many approaches – Structural, functional, communicative, task-based, skill-based etc. The designer of a language syllabus decides which approach/approaches is/are appropriate to our teaching goals and conditions.

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Reference

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