Situational Syllabus

Function of a Syllabus
A language teaching syllabus involves the
combination of subject matter (what to teach)
and linguistic matter (how to teach). It
actually performs as a guide for both teacher
and learner by providing some goals to be
accomplished. Syllabus, in fact, deals with
linguistic theory and theories of language
learning and how they are utilized in the
classroom (Mohseni, 2008).

Situational Based Approach

Situational language teaching is an approach

developed by British applied linguists in the

1930s to the 1960s, and which had an impact
on language courses which survive in some
still being used today.

 Language is always used in a social context and cannot be

fully understood without reference to that context.
Our choice of linguistic forms may be restricted according to
certain features of the social situation and, in any case, we
need the language so that we can use it in the situations
that we encounter.
We should predict the situations in which the learner is likely
to need the language and then teach the language that is
necessary to perform linguistically in those situations.
Units in the syllabus will have situational instead of
grammatical labels.

Situational Syllabus
Use situations to guide language
teaching because language is related
to the situational contexts in which it
occurs (Mohseni, 2008).
The main principle of a situational
language teaching syllabus is to teach
the language that occurs in the
situations.

Benefits The benefits of a situational

context are as follows:
It provides for concrete contexts
within which to learn notions,
functions, and structures, thus
making it easier for most learners to
envisage
It may motivate learners to see that
they are learning to meet their most
pressing everyday communication
needs.

 Warning The potential disadvantage of the

situational syllabus is that functions and
notions may be learned in the context of
only one situation, whereas they may be
expressed in a variety of situations.
Also, although some situations have a
predictable script, unforeseen things can
happen in any situation, requiring a change
of script or topic.

Examples of Content

Situational courses do exist. They consist of learning units with

labels like 'At the post office', 'Buying a theatre ticket', 'Asking
the way' and so on.

In all probability they are successful in what they set out to do,
but there are reasons for doubting whether they can be taken
as a model for the general organization of language teaching.

The difficulty centres on just what is meant by 'situation'. With

examples like the ones above there is no great difficulty. They
are situations with fairly evident, objectively describable
physical characteristics.
The language interactions that are taking place are closely
related to the situation itself. There will be grammatical and
lexical forms that have a high probability of occurrence in
these kinds of language event.