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Syllabus Design

This document discusses syllabus design for language teaching. It defines a syllabus as a document that outlines what will be taught in a language course and the order of content. A good syllabus gives students a general idea of how the course will proceed and the expected workload. Key elements of most syllabi include basic information, course description, materials, requirements, policies, and a schedule. Current trends in syllabus design emphasize the learning process, include non-linguistic objectives, and sometimes utilize a multi-syllabus approach that combines elements of different syllabus types.

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Jianqi Chen
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85 views

Syllabus Design

This document discusses syllabus design for language teaching. It defines a syllabus as a document that outlines what will be taught in a language course and the order of content. A good syllabus gives students a general idea of how the course will proceed and the expected workload. Key elements of most syllabi include basic information, course description, materials, requirements, policies, and a schedule. Current trends in syllabus design emphasize the learning process, include non-linguistic objectives, and sometimes utilize a multi-syllabus approach that combines elements of different syllabus types.

Uploaded by

Jianqi Chen
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as PPTX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Language Teaching

Syllabus Design
Members: Xue Han, Zheng Yan, Gao Jingyuan, Zhao Zhengling Group 5
Syllabus

• A document that describes what the contents of a language


course will be and the order in which they will be taught.
 Basic Contract between the instructor and students

Good Syllabus MAP


• Gives the student a general idea of how
the course will go and how much work
it will take.
 Learning-centered
What does a syllabus contain?

The backbone of most syllabuses:

Basic Information
Tools for Teaching
Course Description
Materials
Requirements
Policies
Schedule
Barbara Gross Davis
In addition to those specifics, elements worth including:

Resources
Statement on Accommodation
Evaluation of the course and
assessment of student learning
Rights and Responsibilities
Safety and Emergency Preparedness
Disclaimer
Syllabus & Curriculum
Sometimes used interchangeably
Sometimes differentiated, misused and misunderstood

Reasons:
• Different forms of English
• The concept of curriculum has changed

Three experts:
1. Stern
2. Nunan
3. Rodgers
David Nunan
Stern Curriculum is used in two related senses:
• refers to the substance of a program of studies of an educational
institution or system.
• refers to the course of study or content in a particular subject.
“Curriculum” refers to the entire instructional process nowadays.

Nunan
Curriculum: making general statement about language learning,
learning purpose, and experience, and the relationship
between teachers and learners.
Syllabus: based on the accounts and records of what actually
happens at the classroom level as teachers and students
apply a curriculum to their situation.
Rodgers
Curriculum: all those activities in which children engage under the
auspices of the school.
Syllabus: prescribes the content to be covered by a given course

Key Differences
Syllabus Curriculum
• narrower scope • wider concept
• set by the prof. or exam board • set by the Government
• one year or a semester • continues till the completion
• how the concepts being • what the teacher must teach
delivered
Curriculum Development: a process of improving the curriculum.
Various approaches have been used in developing curricula.
Syllabus Design: a plan which is essentially based on a decision
about the “units” of classroom activity, and the “sequence”
in which they are to be performed.

Syllabus Design
fundamentally important in language teaching
 A bridge

Crucial part: Selecting & Sequencing language items


Syllabus Design
Main Process:
Selecting: Grading:

• Restrict to a certain • Set a reasonable teaching


dialect or register period
• Choose what to be taught • Sequence what to be taught

The whole process of selection must


be applied at all level of language
Contributions linguistics makes to syllabus design:
 Provides basic knowledge of the second/foreign language to
the designer
 As a reference back to linguistics categories

Educational Reform
• Three versions of English Curriculum
Standards for primary and secondary
education
• Two versions of College English
Curriculum Teaching Requirements
Types of Syllabus

1. The structural syllabus


2. The situational syllabus
3. The communicative syllabus
4. The task-based syllabus
Structural Syllabus
Background and Characteristics:

Structural syllabus is also known as


formal syllabus or grammatical
syllabus. According to Wilkins's
(1976) view, it is a synthetic syllabus.
This syllabus originated in the 1920s.
It was deeply influenced by dominant
Wilkin
structuralists’ view of language and
behaviorism
Structuralists mainly represented
by Bloomfield believe that
language is made up of a system
of descriptive language items or
structural items at different levels
from phonemes to sentences.

L. Bloomfield
Features:
• A grammar oriented syllabus based on a selection of
language items and structures.
• Vocabulary and grammatical rules are carefully
ordered according to frequency, complexity and
usefulness.

Disadvantage:
 Only concentrates on the
grammatical forms and the meaning
of individual words.
Situational Syllabus

Features:
• The selection and organization of language items are
based on situation.
• In class an AURALORAL TEACHING METHOD is
adopted.
Advantage:
• More participation on the learner’s part compared to
the structural syllabus
Communicative Syllabus

Features:
• Aiming at the learner's
communicative competence.
• Summarizing the previous theories
on communicative approach to
syllabus design, Yalden(1983) lists
ten components of a
communicative syllabus. (P261)
Task-based Syllabus
Features:
• It consists of a list of specification of the tasks and activities
that the leaners will engage in in class in the target language.

According to Skehan, a task is an activity in which


-meaning is primary,
-learners are not given other people's meaning to regurgitate,
-there is some sort of relationship to comparable real-world activities,
-task completion has some priority, and
-the assessment of the task is in terms of outcomes.
Six Principles teachers can follow when design tasks

1. a task should have a clear purpose

When teachers design a task, they must make it very clear


to the students what is the purpose of doing the task,
namely, They have to identify the purpose.
• Repeat after the recording––Practice speaking
• Fill in the blanks with appropriate forms of the given
verbs––Review grammatical knowledge
2. a task should have some degree of resemblance
to real-world events
Students are required to do is close similar to something we do in
life or work in the real world by teachers.
• Reading comprehension questions by choosing the right answer
• Rewrite a paragraph in a passive voice

3. A task should involve information seeking,


processing and conveying
When students perform the task, they need to obtain information,
reorganize information and convey information one way or another.
• Find out useful information from sentences, paragraphs and
articles, then, students use brief words to tell others
4. A task should involve the students in some modes
of doing things
Teachers should envisage what the students actually do when
carrying out the task, namely, a task should involve the students
in a mode of doing things.
• Discuss
• Take notes
• Complete tables or figures
• Draw pictures and graphs

5. Tasks should involve the meaning-focused use of


language
Students are required to focus on meaning rather than form.
• Be asked to work out students' own plan
6. A task should end with a tangible product
When a task is finished, there should be a final product, such as a
report or a graph based on a mini survey.
• Indicate the task has been completed
• Indicates how successfully the students have completed the
tasks
• Be shared with other groups of students
• Learning achievement

Pay more attention to how students learn than what they learn
Advocate experiential learning by asking students to experience
and explore language in the process of using language.
Current Syllabus Design Trends:

Co-existence of the new & the old


Emphasis on the learning process
Inclusion of non-linguistics objectives in syllabus
Emergence of the multi-syllabus

Influencing factors:
Language Theories & Language Teaching Theories
Co-existence of the new & the old
• Traditional types: haven’t been completely abandoned
• New types: haven’t been universally accepted

Grammatical syllabus is still used in many parts of the world;


Task-based syllabus is not suitable for many educational context.
(not on the explicit teaching of grammatical rules)

Emphasis on the learning process


• Traditional types: focus on the product of language learning
• New types: focus on the process of acquiring
Process-oriented syllabus
Inclusion of non-linguistics objectives in syllabus
• Traditional types: only contains linguistic objectives
• New types: contains various elements
The later models includes non-linguistic objectives: learning
strategies, affective cultivation (confidence, motivation and interest)
etc.

Underlying assumption of the new types syllabus:


 Language education should not merely aim at helping students
to master language knowledge and skills, instead it has
responsibility in fostering students’ whole-person development
Emergence of the multi-syllabus
None of the existing types of syllabus is any better than others. In
most cases, there will be a number of different syllabus strands:

 Grammar + Skills & Texts


 Tasks +Topics & Functions Multi-Syllabus
 Skills + Topic & Texts

Syllabus designers tend to resort to multi-syllabus


Two approaches:
• Incorporate features of currently popular syllabuses
• Choose to adopt a different type for different stages
Language Teaching - Syllabus Design

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