CURRICULUM AS SYLLABUS

A. Definition of Curriculum
According to Allen (1984:61) curriculum is a very general concept
which involves consideration of the whole complex of philosophical, social
and administrative factors which contribute to the planning of an educational
program. According to Richards (2001:39) a curriculum in a school context
refers to the whole body of knowledge that children acquire in schools. While
Rodgers (in Richards 2001:39) said that curriculum is all those activities in
which children engage under the auspices of the school. This includes not only
what pupils learn, but how they learn it, how teachers help them learn, using
what supporting materials, styles and methods of assessment, and in what kind
of facilities.
Curriculum development here refers to the range of planning and
implementation processes involved in developing or renewing a curriculum.
These processes focus on needs analysis, situational analysis, planning
learning outcomes, course organization, selecting and preparing teaching
materials, providing for effective teaching, and evaluation (Richards,
2001:41). Curriculum development is considered important and has been
established since 1980s. It was aimed at reviewing and developing national
language teaching curriculum based on a curriculum development perspective.
B. Definition of Syllabus
According to (Richards, 2001:2) syllabus is a specification of the content
of a course of instruction and lists what will be taught and tested. While
syllabus design refers to the process of developing a syllabus. According to
Nunan (in Savitri 2009:30) syllabus defines the goals and objectives, the
linguistic and experiential content, instructional materials can put flesh on the
bones of these specifications.
From the definition of syllabus stated above it can be concluded that
syllabus is not the same with curriculum. It is smaller part of curriculum that
contain the description of what is going to be taught, what goals and
 objectives are going to be reached, what exercises have to be given and what
proficiency is going to be gained. Instructional material is the instrument to
fulfill the goals of the syllabus. The principal purpose of a syllabus is to
inform students in a formal and timely way of the nature and content of the
course, policies and procedures that will apply, and equipments involved in
participating in classes.
C. Relation of Curriculum and Syllabus
Curriculum development is a more comprehensive process than the
syllabus design. It includes the processes that are used to determine the needs
of a group of learners, to develop aims or objectives for a program to address
those needs to determine an appropriate syllabus, course structure, teaching
methods and materials and to carry out an evaluation of the language program
that results from these processes (Richards, 2001: 2).
Thus, syllabus and curriculum are two different terms that closely related
in teaching and learning process. Curriculum is a broader concept that
includes all activities in which students do in school. It includes what students
learn, how they learn it, how teacher help them learn, what supporting
materials are needed, styles and methods used in teaching and learning
process. Syllabus is smaller than curriculum since it only covers the content of
a course and the lists of what materials are going to be taught and how it will
be tested.
Syllabus is can be defined as an outline and summary of topics that has
to be covered in an education or training course. The syllabus sets the onward
responsibilities of teacher to the students. Teachers can develop syllabus based
on the curriculum. Curriculum itself is a broad notion covering the whole
body of knowledge the students shall acquire in the school and general
description of the teaching program. In short, curriculum is the general
statement about the teaching program and syllabus is the about what actually
happens in the classroom. Syllabus began to appear in which content was
specified, not only in terms of the grammatical elements which the learners
 were expected to master, but also in terms of the functional skills they would
need to master in order to communicate successfully.
4. Types of Syllabus
Below is a brief description of some influential types of syllabus:
1. Grammatical syllabus: the underlying assumption behind grammatical
syllabus is that language is a system which consists of a set of grammatical
rules; learning language means learning these rules and then applying them
to practical language use. The syllabus input is selected and graded
according to grammatical notions of simplicity and complexity.
2. Lexical syllabus: lexical syllabus identifies a target vocabulary to be taught
normally arranged according to levels such as the first 500, 1000, 1500,
2000 words. Lexical syllabuses were among the first types of syllabuses to
be developed in language teaching (Richards, 2001:154)
3. Skills syllabus: skills syllabus is organized around different underlying
abilities that are involved in using a language for purposes such as reading,
writing, listening or speaking.
4. Functional-notional syllabus: in functional-notional syllabus, the input is
selected and graded according to the communicative functions (such as
requesting, complaining, suggesting, and agreeing) that language learners
need to perform at the end of the language program.
5. Content syllabus: in content syllabus, the content of language learning might
be defined in terms of situations, topics, themes or other academic or school
subjects.
6. Task based syllabus: Task based syllabus are more concerned with the
classroom processes which stimulate learning than with the language
knowledge or skills that students are supposed to master. This syllabus
consists of a list of specification of the tasks and activities that the learners
will engage in class in the target language (Nunan in Savitri, 2009: 33).
 BIBLIOGRAPHY

Hoesny, Mariana Ulfah. 2013. From Syllabus Design to Curriculum Develop-

Nunan, D., Candlin, C. N., & Widdowson, H. G. (1988). Syllabus Design. Oxford:
Oxford University Press.4