Designing Type A and Type B syllabuses: Advantages and Disadvantages

Jamel Abdenacer ALIMI e-mail: jamel_alimi@yahoo.com August 2013

In our enthusiasm to reveal to the world the enlightment of our vision, we are apt to forget that this vision is in all likelihood itself culturally induced and that other people in other countries it may appear only as a delusion. Widdowson (1984:24)

Over the last three decades or so, the field of syllabus design has witnessed a plethora of novel, yet competing approaches to syllabus construction, following "dramatic shifts in attitudes towards both language and learning" (Nunan 1989:12). The accompanying claims and counter-claims as to their very rationale, design unit validity, and contextual teaching applicability have to date been unabated, and tended to remain, unfortunately, a shaded area in the minds of a large section of ESL/EFL practitioners worldwide. The present paper is in line with the ongoing efforts meant at discussing and evaluating the set of syllabi recently proposed in the field. It chiefly aims (a) to discuss the merits and limitations of functional as well as procedural syllabuses, and (b) to assess the latter's legitimacy status and classroom effectiveness. To this end, the remainder of the essay will be divided into the following four sections. Section One provides a brief conceptual background which comprises a concise definition of the two syllabuses under study, followed by a contextualization of them both within their respective Type A or Type B strands or orientations (White 1988). Sections Two and Three, in turn, discuss the advantages and disadvantages of functionally- and procedurally-mapped syllabuses. Section Four is to shed further light on two key areas relating to the latter syllabuses namely, their legitimacy status as well as their potential for successful operability within the teaching contexts they happen to be implemented in.

1. BACKGROUND: DEFINITIONS AND SYLLABUS STRANDS

The present Section aims to place the syllabuses under consideration within their overall Type A/Type B traditions in anticipation for a firm grasp of their individual implications, be they positive or negative, in so far as language, learning and teaching

are concerned. Before embarking on this task, though, we promptly suggest to start with a brief definition of each of the syllabi in question.

1.1 Definitions
1.1.1 Functional-Notional Syllabuses:

Functional- notional syllabuses are types of syllabus in which teaching units are organized on the basis of one or two kinds of concepts notions and functions which are thought to help learners "communicate through language" (Wilkins 1976). According to Hutchinson and Waters (1987) Functions are concerned with social behaviour and represent the intention of the speaker or writer, for example, advising, warning, threatening, describing etc. They can be approximately equated with the communicative acts that are carried out through language. Notions, on the other hand, reflect the way in which the human mind thinks. They are the categories into which the mind and thereby language divides reality, for example, time, frequency, duration, gender, number, location, quantity etc, (31). Such syllabuses, originally exemplified in the Council of Europe's (1970s) Threshold Level and Waystage syllabi, have undergone major re-interpretations ever since. Yet, as Johnson (1998:232) assert, they are seldom realized in textbooks which are set up in accordance with their orthodoxy, partly due to the significant shortcomings that have surfaced in the meantime (see Sub-section 2.2 below). 1.1.2 Procedural Syllabuses

Procedural syllabuses are basically identified as those organized around the concept of "task" in lieu of, for instance, lexis or syntax (Richards et al 1992:373-4).They are so called because of their focus on the procedures of both learning and teaching. As such, they do not specify any sort of language products, be they specific structures, functions or skills, beforehand, as is the case with the structural, functional and many versions of skills syllabuses. Their applications are practically initiated via the 1975 Malaysian Syllabus and the 1979-84 Communicational Teaching Project or CTP (Richards 1984). For our purposes, the paper will observe the differentiation between procedural and task-based syllabuses, as they each represent distinct versions of their own right (see Long and Crookes 1992 for further details). Subsequently, the remainder will be exclusively concerned with the CTP or any other versions totally in congruence with it. However, the terms "syllabus" and "curriculum" are to be used interchangeably throughout to avoid any further unnecessary repetition.

1.2 Syllabus Tradition Adherence

Functionally-, and procedurally-constructed curricula adhere to two distinct syllabus traditions, which, respectively, provide "a change of focus from content for leaning towards the process of learning" (Breen 1984:52).

In a practical move for classifying syllabuses, White (Op.Cit.44) proposes "Type A" and "Type B" as viable terms for describing, and distinguishing between, the various language teaching curricula. By and large, syllabuses of Type A category are fundamentally preoccupied with the question "What is to be learnt?" whereas their Type B counterparts with that of "How is it to be learnt?" (ibid: 44-5). The resulting demarcation between the What and the How may, perhaps, be best perceived in its immediate, comprehensive implications in the Summary Table below.

Type A
a- Syllabus orientation to learning process b- Attitude towards the learner Interventionist; giving priority to the pre-selection of linguistic or other content or skill objectives . external to the learner . other-directed . determined by authority c- Teacher/student roles . teacher as a decisionmaker . teacher doing things to the learner . content = what the subject is to the expert . content = a gift from the teacher or knower

Type B
Non-interventionist; experiential;"natural growth" approach to the learning process . internal to the learner . inner directed or selffulfilling . negotiated between teachers and learners . learner and teacher as joint decision-makers . teacher doing things for or with the learner . content = what the subject is to the learner . content = what the learner brings and wants . content is subordinate to learning processes and pedagogical procedures described afterwards
(Adapted from White 1988:44-5)

d- Language content

e- syllabus objectives

defined in advance

As could obviously be inferred, Type A syllabuses tend to betray a fundamental preoccupation with product while their counterparts appear primarily concerned with process. This has inevitably yielded a significantly positive as well as negative bearing on their individual approaches to language and classroom learning and teaching (Richards and Rodgers Op.Cit.:18-35). Some of the most pertinent advantages and disadvantages of designing both types of curricula are to be spelled out in the two sections below with sole reference to functional and procedural syllabuses.

2. FUNCTIONALLY-DESIGNED SYLLABUSES: MERITS AND LIMITATIONS

As hinted at Introduction Section above, the field of syllabus design and methodology has experienced a radical paradigm shift from curriculums compatible with the tenets of the Audio-lingual Method (Nunan 1988; Wilkins Op.Cit.; Richards and Rodgers Op.Cit). The long-held endorsement of the "structure" as a unit of analysis has 3

ultimately come under fierce attack. Its viability is henceforth questioned by Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) proponents, methodologists, and Second Language Acquisition (SLA) researchers at a variety of levels. These mainly concern its failings in issues in connection with learnability, sequencing, and inadequacy to address students' real communicative needs in and for learning a target language (e.g., Wilkins Op.Cit; Ellis 1997:135; Hutchinson and Waters Op.cit:31-2; Richards and Rodgers Op.cit.). Two alternative units labeled, in Wilkins' (1976) terms, as "notions" and "functions", are brought centre-stage. This newly introduced analytic conception to syllabus design offers, arguably, neat superiority to the synthetic, form-focused one on grounds of the merits discussed below.

2.1. Merits
Wilkins (Op.cit), in his review of drawing up a notional syllabus, attributes the latter's superiority to hitherto dominant grammatical and situational curriculums to its paramount account for what he calls the "communicative facts of language" from the very outset without pour autant losing sight the structural or situational factors involved therein. As he puts it, the notional syllabus he proposes is potentially superior to the grammatical syllabus because it will produce a communicative competence and because its evident concern with the use of language will sustain the motivation of the learners. It is superior to the situational syllabus because it can ensure that the most important grammatical forms are included and because it can cover all kinds of language functions, not only those that typically occur in certain situations (ibid: my emphasis). The two phrases, italicized in the quotation above, are closely associated with functional-notionalism, and constitute two of the most acclaimed benefits of designing a functionally-oriented syllabus (Finocchiaro and Brumfit 1983:17; cited in Nunan 1988:36). Others advanced in its favour include its preoccupation with the notion of "surrender value" (Johnson 1998:232), its root in Reconstructionism (White Op.cit.:25), and its interest in catering for learners' specific linguistic and communicative needs and wants (Munby 1978), to name but a few. Their intended effects, initially brought about in Phase One/Wilkins Period and profusely detailed in Phase Two/Munby Period, are not only still being felt in the current Phase Three/ Prabhu Period but are also reactivating an interest in functionally-based approaches to language teaching in conjunction with "new leads in discourse and genre analysis, schema theory, pragmatics, and systemic/functional grammar" (Rodgers 2001:5). However important these merits might be, the design of functional syllabi has attracted, in its turn, a variety of criticism because of arguably crucial drawbacks, the most salient of which are to be briefly discussed in the following sub-section.

2.2. Limitations
Despite the tone of promise recognizable in the quotation just above, functionallybased syllabus design has been subject to many aspects of criticism. These especially regard The verisimilitude which notionally-mapped curriculums show with grammatical counterparts in presenting language as an "inventory of units, of items for accumulation and storage. They are notional rather than structural, 4

but they are isolates all the same" (Widdowson 1979:248; quoted in Yalden 1983:77), Functional syllabus and textbook writers' problematic tendency to rely on intuition when "selecting exponents and structures for the functions they have chosen" (White Op.cit:82), The realization that Wilkins' (1976) approach is "quite atheoretical; it says nothing about how languages are learned" (Paulston in Wilkins et al 1981:93; quoted in Johnson 1998:232), The seemingly fundamental flaw as to viewing language acquisition as a "planned process of input-assimilation", whereby "what is taught = what is (or ought to) be learnt" (Prabhu 1984:273;quoted in Long and Crookes Op.cit), The danger that F/N syllabuses merely provide learners with useful, readymade phrases which are suitable to well-established contexts but with no "real generative capacity of a communication" (Johnson Op.cit).

In parallel to the set of criticisms mentioned above, Long and Crookes (1992) draw attention to the fact that the syllabuses in question, being fundamentally to Type A category, simply focus on what is to be learnt (that is, the target language) and not on how that particular language is to be learnt. As such, they could but share the inherent, negative characteristics of their fellow product-oriented counterparts (see the Summary Table in Section One above). As could obviously be expected, the various aspects of dissatisfaction discussed earlier have ultimately triggered different types of responses on the part of other syllabus proponents. Some of the most drastic ones are from the procedural syllabus, as could be easily felt in the excerpt in Prabhu (1980; quoted in Long and Crookes op.cit) here below Communicative teaching in most Western thinking has been training for communication, which I claim involves one in some way or other in preselection; it is a kind of matching of notion and form. Whereas the Bangalore Project is teaching through communication; and therefore the very notion of communication is different (164). The following Section will deal with some of the advantages and disadvantages of designing procedural curriculums.

3- PROCEDURAL SYLLABUSES: MERITS AND CAVEATS 3.1 Merits:

The design of procedural curriculums, as exemplified by the seminal 1979-1984 Bangalore CTP, offers many advantages, which are in close connection with the overall Type B strands (Section 1.3). More specifically, though, the positive aspects associated with such syllabi are conspicuous in two key areas of focus their views of language and of language learning. In so far as the former is concerned, the syllabuses in question provide new avenues for interpreting more accurately the essence and functions of language. Accordingly, language is no more to be viewed as a series of discrete items, with a primary concern over accuracy, forms and communication, as is largely held by product-oriented syllabuses. Instead, it is henceforth approached from a holistic perspective, with a chief focus on meaning, on communicative competence, and on the premise that 5

language is communication. As Prabhu (1987), such a view can operate effectively via a procedurally-principled teaching, which should be concerned with creating conditions for coping with meaning in the classroom, to the exclusion of any deliberate regulation of the development of grammatical competence or a mere simulation of language behaviour (2). As for their views of language learning, procedurally-conceived syllabuses tend to demonstrate a preference to developmental process, where different area of linguistic knowledge grow at different rates, with no slightest attempt ever made at specifying or ordering linguistic items to be learnt whatsoever. An otherwise approach is to be dismissed for failing to foster learners' grammatical competence and to enhance a much-needed preoccupation with meaning in the classroom (Op.cit). The resulting advantage, it is argued, is that learners, while focusing on task outcomes, will not only sustain a parallel focus on meaning but also set up an "internal system" or interlanguage, which is mainly developed at a subconscious level (Op.cit.69-70). The central stances outlined above largely have the merits of demarcating procedurally-based syllabi from many of the tenets and techniques of their functionalnotional counterparts. By the same token, they help establish them in clear distinction from the premises and practices so much valued in structural curriculums, including, most importantly, drilling, over-concern over error correction, and the presentationpractice-production continuum (Johnson 1998:2312; Skehan 1996:20). In contrast, the now proposed types of syllabus seek to t promote teaching circumstances, whereby students are cognitively engaged in completing tasks rather than learning the target language. As Prabhu (Op.cit) argues, this will have the additional advantage of developing pedagogic procedures which would (1) bring about in the classroom a preoccupation with meaning and an effort to cope with communication and (2) avoid planned progression and pre-selection in terms of language structure as well as form-focused activity (or planned language practice) in the classroom (17). One of the tasks and activities, which has been exploited in the Project, is reproduced here below for illustration:
Madras Arkonam Bangalore Dep.2140 Arr. 2250 Mail Dep.2305 Katpadi Jolarpet Kolar Bangalore Arr.0005 Arr.0155 Arr.0340 Arr.0550 Dep.0015 Dep.0210 Dep.0350

1 When does the Bangalore Mail leave Madras? 2 When does it arrive in Bangalore? 3 For how long does it stop at Arkonam? 4 At what time does it reach Katpadi? 5 At what time does it leave Jolarpet? 6 How long does it take to go from Madras to Arkonam? 7 How long does it take to go from Kolar to Bangalore?

As it were, it is the very concept of "task", as conceived of by procedural syllabus designers, which tends to attract a variety of cautious and, more often than not, harsh reservations. The subsequent part will identify some of them in further detail.

3.2 Limitations:
In spite of its reportedly wide merits (Long and Crookes 1992; Nunan 1998:42; Johnson 1982, 1998), a procedurally-mapped syllabus does seem prone to suffer, at least, two disadvantages. In so far as its conception of "task" is concerned, the foundational definition proposed by Prabhu (1987), whereby An activity which required learners to arrive at an outcome from given information through some process of thought, and which allowed teachers to control and regulate that process, was regarded as a "task" (24). tends to provide a task-based designer with little or no help when selecting, grading and sequencing tasks are at issue (Long and Crookes Op.cit.). Secondly, with respect to students' variables, the syllabus in question appears not to account much for securing a robust fit between task-based instruction and students' learning strategies and skills. For, as Skehan rightly points out, Some learners are drawn to language-as-pattern, while others are more concerned with achieving the expression of meaning. Some learners, other things being equal, are likely to focus their attention on form, on "cracking the code" because they enjoy analising verbal material and finding patterns. Others are more inclined to treat the task of language learning as one of memory, with the need to assimilate a wide repertoire of functional expressions which can then be used as ready-made chunks (29). It should be noted at this point that a task a la Prabhu does not expect each and every single student to arrive to the task's desired outcomes. As Prabhu (Op.cit) himself reports, Teachers on the project used the working rule that the challenge of a task was reasonable if approximately half the learners in the class were successful on approximately half the task (as shown by a marking of their work) (56). While this may sound intuitively realistic in ordinary, daily classroom interactions, one would, nonetheless, find the percentage pre-set for success in a given task utterly unrealistic and hard to sustain on empirically verified SLA research findings. It will not have escaped the reader that the two Sections above dealt with the advantages and disadvantages of the functional and procedural syllabuses almost totally in their design phase. It should be borne in mind that other additional features and caveats do actually emerge at post-construction, implementational stages, as is extensively reported on by curriculum specialists and classroom practitioners worldwide. The debate on such matters is far from being conclusive, given among other things the divergences between syllabus design schools and the numerous, 7

controversial issues constantly being raised (see the collection of papers in Brumfit (ed) (1984) for further details). In the following Section, two issues of much controversy relating to procedurally-set up syllabuses will be addressed namely, their status as legitimate approaches to curriculum design, and their degree of operability in relation to the teaching contexts they may be implemented in.

4. PROCEDURALLY-DESIGNED SYLLABUSES: A BIEF ASSESSMENT

Since the inception of the exemplar Bangalore/Madras Project (Prabhu 1987), procedurally-mapped curriculums have attracted unremitting reassessments and evaluations at many a level. Of more immediacy, perhaps, are the ones where the legitimacy and efficacy of the said proposals are found fault with or, even, harshly questioned. Here below are some of the arguments and counter-arguments that have been advanced in this regard.

4.1. Favourable arguments:

A considerable number of critics emphatically ascertain the legitimacy status of procedural syllabuses within the domain of syllabus design as a whole (e.g. Beretta and Davies 1985; Richards and Rodgers 2001:164; Brumfit 1984 a; Long and Crookes 1992).This favourable stance can largely be traced to the set of merits discussed in Sub-section 3.1 above. Of even more impact, perhaps, is the one advanced inn favour of the use of "tasks" not only in organizing language syllabuses but also in putting into practice communicationally-oriented classroom instruction. From an insider somewhat zealous perspective, Prabhu (1983; quoted in Richards and Rodgers 2001:164) strongly stresses that The only form of syllabus which is compatible with and can support communicational teaching seems to be a purely procedural one which lists, in more or less detail, the types of tasks to be attempted in the classroom and suggests an order of complexity for tasks of the same kind (4). From a quite recent angle, pro-procedural syllabus assertions such as the one above have gained more momentum thanks to the ever-expanding importance assigned to the notion of "task" by, most notably, task-based learning and teaching proponents and SLA research (Richards and Rodgers 2001:223-4).

4.2. Counter-arguments:
Though they may not be fully satisfied with the CTP or, indeed, any other CTPinspired proposals, critics on the whole tend not to totally discard the curriculum in question. Nor do they appear inclined to push the argument far enough to undermine its representativeness as a legitimate, acceptable approach in the field. As yet, a variety of criticisms has been put forward regarding the issues below, in particular: the vagueness largely sensed in the term "task" as defined in Prabhu (1987) (Long and Crookes 1992; Greenwood 1985), 8

the provision, and reliance upon, tasks which tend to seem rather ordinary in content and partly reminiscent of the ones already proposed in CLT materials hence, their flouting of "task-based" principles in the strictly analytic sense of the term (Op.cit), the tendency to expose students to tasks with no sustained, explicit negative evidence on the part of the teachers, as would a considerable portion of the studends community expect and need (Cece-Murcia 1991), the ungrounded assumption that the tasks to be performed within the classroom confinements are necessarily what the students will do or need to do once out of the classroom, which heavily overlooks the diversity of students' needs and their susceptibility to change during a course (Brindley 1989; cited in Long and Crookes Op.cit), the realization that the sort of tasks here proposed are of purely pedagogic nature and do not originally emanate from field needs analysis (Nunan 1988:44), the lack of a rigorous field evaluation of the proposals in question so far (Long and Crookes Op.cit). the somewhat longish "period of incubation", which the procedural syllabus dearly requires for the effective, fruitful implementation of its classroom techniques, and which may frustrate the needs and agendas of the institutions it is to be carried out in.

4.3. Personal view:

Following the arguments and counter-arguments detailed above, a balanced position, in my view, seems most needed so as to assimilate the underlying theory of the CTP and other related syllabuses in its totality. It would be a gross error to downgrade the importance of these proposals or to push the argument up to the point where they should be denied their legitimate status as a syllabus approach in its own right. Such positions, according to which " it could be argued that any proposal failing to offer criteria for grading and sequencing can hardly claim to be a syllabus at all" (Nunan (Op.cit.: 47), appear to be quite extremist and unfair. Unrestrained standpoints, as those taken up by Brumfit (1984a), in favour of the said curriculums could prove unnecessary and, even, dangerous. For as Skehan (1994), in his comment on the Bangalore Project, warns Requiring learners to engage in task-based learning, if not balanced by other activities, may well lead to the use of comprehension and communication strategies, and encourage a performance-oriented approach to learning, with the result that fluency and synthesis are developed at the expense of accuracy and restructuring (190). A similar note of caution, in my view, concerns

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