Different Types of Syllabus

Different Types of Syllabuses

 There are numerous ways in which syllabus proposals of
one sort or another might be analyzed.
 Broadly, syllabuses are divided into two major types:
1. Product-oriented syllabus
2. Process-oriented syllabus
 Another dimension of analysis could be –
1. The Synthetic Syllabus
2. The Analytic Syllabus
 Different Types of Syllabuses
 From a narrower point of view, we can have the
following types of syllabuses:
1. Structural or Grammatical Syllabus
2. Situational Syllabus
3. Notional Functional Syllabus
4. Task-Based Syllabus
5. Skilled-Based Syllabus
6. Topical or Content-Based Syllabus
7. Mixed or ‘multi-strand’ Syllabus
8. Procedural Syllabus
9. Lexical Syllabus
 Product-oriented Syllabus
 A product syllabus is concerned with the ends and
objectives, which the learner has to achieve by the end
of the language program.
 The focus is on the knowledge and skills which
learners should gain as a result of instruction.
 Product-oriented syllabuses emphasize the product of
language learning and are prone to intervention from
the authority.
 Process-oriented Syllabuses
 Unlike product-oriented syllabus, process-oriented
syllabuses are not governed by the goals or ends of
instruction.
 They focus on the process of instruction itself, i.e., on
the learning experiences that the learner goes through.
 Shifted the concern of teaching from ‘content’ to
‘process’ of learning and ‘procedures’ of teaching.
 Here the question concerning ‘what’ becomes
subordinate to the question concerning ‘how’.
 The focus shifts from the linguistic elements to the
pedagogical.
 Process-oriented Syllabus
 Example
A process-writing syllabus would focus on the
processes writers use to complete their tasks, such as
collecting information, organizing ideas, drafting and
revising, rather than just the features of the products
of writing, such as letters, compositions, notes, reports
etc.
 Product Vs. Process Oriented Syllabus
Product-oriented
Interventionist
External to the learner
Other directed
Determined by authority
Teacher as decision maker
Content= what the subject is to expert
Content= a gift to the learner from the
teacher or knower
Objectives defined in advance
Subject emphasis
Assessment by achievement or mastery
Doing things to the learner
Process-oriented
Non-interventionist
Internal to the learner
Inner directed or self fulfilling
Negotiated by learners and teacher s
Learner and teacher as joint decision
makers
Content=what the subject is to learner
Content= what the learner brings and
wants
Objectives described afterward
Process emphasis
Assessment in relation to learner’s criteria
of success
Doing things for or with the learner
 Synthetic Syllabus
 Wilkins (1976) first drew attention to the distinction
between synthetic and analytic syllabuses.
“A synthetic language teaching strategy is one in which the
different parts of language are taught separately and step by
step so that acquisition is a process of gradual accumulation
of parts until the whole structure of language has been built
up. (Wilkins 1976)
 Wilkins assumes that grammatical criteria will be used
to break the global language down into discrete units.
 The items are graded according to the grammatical
complexity of the items, their frequency of occurrence,
their contrastive difficulty in relation to the learner’s L1,
situational need, and pedagogical convenience.
 Synthetic Syllabus
 Is grammar the only criterion for selecting and grading
content in a synthetic syllabus?
 Initially, people tended to equate synthetic approaches with
grammatical syllabuses.
 But some applied linguists feel its application to any syllabus
in which the content is product-oriented.
 The content is a discrete list of grammatical items and in
which the classroom focus is on the teaching of these items
as separate and discrete.
 Long and Crookes, “synthetic syllabuses rely on learner’s
(assumed) ability to learn a language in parts (e.g. structures
and functions) independently of one another, and also to
integrate, or synthesise, the pieces when the time comes to
use them for communicative purposes.
 Synthetic Syllabus
 The language learning process is seen as the steady
accumulation of linguistic rules and items, in the
ultimate direction of command of the second language.
 It is assumed that the learner is able to learn language
in parts, and to integrate them when the time comes to
use them for communicative purposes.
 Wilkins (1976) indicated that the learner’s role is “to re-
synthesise the language that has been broken down
into a large number of small pieces with the aim of
making his learning task easier”.
 Synthetic approaches to syllabus design characterize
many traditional or conventional language courses and
textbooks.
 Example of a Synthetic Syllabus
 Present simple and position of time adverbs
 Present continuous
 Simple past tense Regular and irregular verbs
 Mass and unit
 Some, any, a few, a little
 Past tense with ‘ago’ and questions with ‘how long ago?’
 Adjectives and adverbs
 Comparison of adverbs
 Going to do
 Requests and offers and take/get/bring/show someone
something
 Present perfect with ‘for’ and ‘since’
 Have been doing/have just done/haven’t done yet/had better do
 Past continuous and past simple
 Synthetic Syllabus
 Synthetic syllabuses have been criticized for major
problems, which include:
(a) absence of needs analysis;
(b) linguistic grading;
(c) lack of support from language learning theory;
(d) ignorance of learners' role in language development;
(e) tendency to produce boring lessons, despite the best
efforts of highly skilled teachers and textbook writers;
(f) production of many more false beginners than
finishers
 Analytic Syllabus
 Wilkins defines analytic syllabus as:
“Analytic syllabuses are organized in terms of the
purposes for which people are learning language and the
kinds of language performance that are necessary to meet
those purposes”. (Wilkins 1975)
 Here a chunk of language is presented to the learner in
the context of a meaning oriented lesson.
 The starting point for syllabus design is not the
grammatical system, rather the communicative
purposes for which language is used.
 Analytic Syllabus
 The language and content are drawn from the input and
are selected and graded primarily according to what the
learners need to do the real world communicative task.
 The content in the analytic syllabus is defined in terms of
situation, topics, items and other academic or school
subjects.
 Analytic syllabi present the L2 in chunks, without
linguistic interference or control, and rely on the learner’s
ability to induce and infer language rules, as well as on
innate knowledge of linguistic universals.
 Procedural, process and task syllabi are examples of the
analytic syllabus
 Example of Analytic Syllabus
 Unit 1:
 Set 1 Identification

 Set 2 Invitations

 Set 3 Likes and dislikes (1)

 Unit 2:
 Set 1 Description: People

 Set 2 Description: Places

 Unit 3:
 Set 1 Impatience

 Set 2 Not knowing

 Set 3 The past (1)

 Set 4 Surprise and disbelief

 Examples …
 Sequencing
 Instructions
 Processes
 Past Events
 Classification
 Lists
 Diagrams
 Texts
 Definitions
 Comparison & Contrast
 Similarities
 Differences
 Concession
 Analogies
 Cause & Effect
 Consequences
 Explanations
 References
 Elaboration
 Synthetic Vs. Analytic Syllabus
 The distinction between the synthetic and analytic
syllabus is that the former views that nature of
learning is additive while later views that the nature of
learning is holistic (having regard to the whole of
something rather than just to parts of it.)
 Solely synthetic or solely analytic language courses are
possible only theoretically.
 In practice, courses will be typified as more-or-less
synthetic or more-or-less analytic according to the
prominence given to discrete elements in the selection
and grading of input.
 Types of Syllabus
 From a narrower point of view, we can have the
following types of syllabuses:
1. Structural or Grammatical Syllabus
2. Situational Syllabus
3. Notional Functional Syllabus
4. Task-Based Syllabus
5. Skilled-Based Syllabus
6. Topical or Content-Based Syllabus
7. Lexical Syllabus
8. Mixed or ‘multi-strand’ Syllabus
9. Lexical Syllabus
 Grammatical or Structural Syllabus
 The most common and traditional syllabus type.
 It is a product oriented, content based syllabus
 The focus is on the knowledge and skills which
learners should gain as a result of instruction, not on
how they can attain them.
 The syllabus is usually conducted through the
grammar-translation or audio-lingual method.
 Introduces one item at a time and required mastery of
that item before moving on to the next.
 Selection and grading is done according to the
grammatical simplicity and complexity.
 Grammatical or Structural Syllabus
 Language consists of a finite set of rules and these
rules can be learned one by one in an additive fashion.
 Once learners have internalized the formal aspects of a
given language, they will automatically be able to use it
in genuine communication outside the classroom.
 The learning process entails exposing to the learner
several discrete units of the global language by turns.
 The sample is carefully controlled by the teaching
situation.
 The learner’s job is to synthesize language that has
been taken apart and presented to him in small pieces.
 Grammatical or Structural Syllabus
 This synthesis generally takes place only in the final
stages of learning, at the so-called ‘advanced’ level.
 McDonough (1981) says, “the transition from lesson to
lesson is intended to enable material in one lesson to
prepare the ground for the next; and conversely for
material in the next to appear to grow out of the
previous one”.
 Grammatical or Structural Syllabus
 Content
 The structural/grammatical syllabus generally consists
of two components:
1. A list o linguistic structures (the grammar to be taught)
2. A list of words (the lexicon to be taught)
 Grammatical or Structural Syllabus
 Selection and Sequencing
 With the rise of scientific procedures and researches in
linguistics different principles are adopted.
 Selection and sequencing are carried out according to
criteria of
 Simplicity

 Regularity

 Frequency

 contrastive difficulty
 social utility.
 Grammatical or Structural Syllabus
 Structures are not selected, but are merely ordered,
since all of the target-language structures must be
taught sooner or later.
 Syllabus input is graded according to grammatical
notions of simplicity and complexity.
 Grammatical or Structural Syllabus
 Selection and sequencing of vocabulary in a structural
syllabus are done with the help of the following criteria
mentioned by Michael West (1953):
1. Frequency: the number of times the word appears in our use
of language.
2. Range: the number of texts/areas in which the item is found.
3. Availability: most appropriate and necessary for certain
situations.
4. Familiarity: most familiar words (family relationship,
household items, study words, etc.)
5. Coverage: the degree to which a word covers other words.
6. Learnability: easily learnable , contrastive difficulty.
 Advantages of Grammatical Syllabus
 Structures and vocabulary are the two most important
elements of a language.
 There is teaching facility as there are available
materials, text books, etc.
 Criticism against Grammatical or Structural Syllabus
 Structurally-graded syllabuses misrepresented the nature
of that complex phenomenon, language.
 Focus on only one aspect of language, i.e., formal grammar
and vocabulary.
 In reality, there is more than one aspect and many other
things to regard to describe the dynamic term ‘language’.
 SLA researchers state that grammatical grading of content
interferes with language acquisition which is more a global
than a linear process.
 It is seen that in natural acquisition, different aspects of
grammar develop simultaneously rather than one aspect
being mastered at a time.
 Criticism against Grammatical or Structural Syllabus
 Form and meaning are assumed to be in one to one
relation and, therefore, functional aspect of meaning
is ignored.
 Meaning of words and sentences is taught in isolation,
within a particular grammatical form, and not within
stretches of discourse.
 No learner is in passive possession of language; it is
rather an extension of his personality, a facilitating set
of abilities which is used for a whole range of
unpredictable purposes.
Thank You !