Лемяскина Наталья Васильевна

старший преподаватель кафедры cоциально – культурных технологий Алматинского филиала Санкт-Петербургского Гуманитарного университета профсоюзов

Different types of language syllabus

The syllabus is a "contract between faculty members and their students, designed to answer students' questions about a course''.

According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the word syllabus derives from modern Latin syllabus "list’’.

The syllabus ensures a fair and impartial understanding between the instructor and students such that there is minimal confusion on policies relating to the course, setting clear expectations of material to be learned, behavior in the classroom, and effort on student's behalf to be put into the course, providing a roadmap of course organization/direction relaying the instructor's teaching philosophy to the students, and providing a marketing angle of the course such that students may choose early in the course whether the subject material is attractive.

The courses you teach are very likely to be based on some kind of written syllabus. What should, or may, a syllabus contain? It may consist of an independent publication – a book or booklet – if it is intended to cover all the courses in a particular context regardless of the actual materials used: a country’s national syllabus for schools, for example, or the syllabus of a group of language colleges.

A syllabus is a document which consists, essentially, of a list. This list specifies all the things that are to be taught in the course for which the syllabus was designed (a beginner’s course, for example, or a six-year secondary-school programme): it is therefore comprehensive. The actual components of the list may be either content items (words, structures, topics), or process ones (tasks, methods).

The syllabus generally has explicit objectives, usually declared at the beginning of the document, on the basis of which the components of the list are selected and ordered.

A number of different kinds of syllabuses are used in foreign language teaching.

1.Grammatical

A list of grammatical structures, such as the present tense, comparison of adjectives, relative clauses, usually divided into sections graded according to difficulty and\or importance.

2. Lexical

A list of lexical items (girl, boy, go away…) with associated collocations and idioms, usually divided into graded sections.

3. Grammatical-lexical

A very common kind of syllabus: both structures and lexis are specified: either together, in sections that correspond to the units of a course, or in two separate lists.

4. Situational

These syllabuses take the real-life contexts of language uses as their basis: sections would be headed by names of situations or locations such as “Eating a meal” or “In the street”.

5. Topic-based

This is rather like the situational syllabus , expect that the headings are broadly topic- based, including things like “Food” or “The family; these usually indicate a fairly clear set of vocabulary items, which may be specified.

6. Notional

“Notions” are concepts that language can express. General notions may include “number”, for example or “time”, “place”, “colour”; specific notions look more like vocabulary items: “man”, ”woman”, ”afternoon”.

7.Funcional-notional

Functions are things you can do with language, as distinct from notions you can express: examples are “identifying”, “denying”, “promising”. Purely functional syllabuses are rare, usually both functions and notions are combined.

8. Mixed or “multi-strand”

Increasingly, modern syllabuses are combining different aspects in order to be maximally comprehensive and helpful to teachers and learners; in these you may find specification of topics, tasks, functions and notions, as well as grammar and vocabulary.

9. Procedural

These syllabuses specify the learning tasks to be done rather than the language itself or even its meanings. Examples of tasks might be: map reading, doing scientific experiments, story-writing.

10. Process

This is the only syllabus which is not pre-set. The content of the course is negotiated with the learners at the beginning of the course and during it, and actually listed only retrospectively.

How teachers use the syllabus varies very widely between different countries and institutions, and depends on financial resources as well as on teaching approach.

Where there is no lack of resources to invest in the drawing-up of very detailed syllabuses and the purchase of a wide variety of teaching materials teachers may find it most effective to work mainly from the syllabus as the basis of their programme.

Here are some opinions about using syllabus:

Anna: The syllabus of the language school where I teach is very comprehensive; it includes grammar, vocabulary, functions, notions, situations; and gives references to material I can use. I use it all the time and could not do without it. When preparing a teaching session or series of sessions I go first to the syllabus, decide what it will be appropriate to teach next according to its programme, plan how to combine and schedule the components I have selected, and take the relevant books or materials from the library as I need them.

Joseph: There is a syllabus, but we don’t have to use it; nor is there any fixed course book, although the college recommends certain ones. Personally, I simply ignore the syllabus, since I prefer to do my own thing, based on the needs of my students. I use materials and activities from different sources (teachers handbooks, textbooks, enrichment materials, literature) which are available in my institution’s library in order to create a rich and varied programme that is flexible enough to be altered and adapted to student needs during the course.

In other settings there may be a policy of allowing teachers complete freedom in designing the teaching programme; in such a case the syllabus may be non-existent or ignored, and teachers may develop new, independent programmes, based mainly on the teacher’s preferences and learners’ needs. Sometimes the syllabus has an extra role to play: as a source of information and reassurance for teachers who are not confident of their own knowledge of the target language.

1. A Course in Language Teaching. Practice and theory. Penny Ur. Cambridge University Press.1996.

2. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syllabus