Syllabus design and materials development With regard to teaching, curricula development was sunken in oblivion and there was a fragmented picture of planning,

Syllabus design and materials development

With regard to teaching, curricula development was sunken in oblivion and there

was a fragmented picture of planning, evaluation, and implementation of language

programs due to the fact that specialists just focused on only parts of the picture.

Syllabus and curriculum

Syllabus is a plan of what is to be achieved through teaching and

learning. It is a part of an overall language curriculum or course which

is made up of four elements:

1.aim 2.content 3.methodology 4.evaluation.

Syllabus may be formally documented, as in the aims and content of a

national or institutional syllabus for particular groups of learners

Curriculum from different perspectives

1. Decision making:

It is in relation to identifying learners’ needs and purposes,

establishing goals and objectives, selecting and grading the content,

organizing appropriate learning arrangements and learners’ groupings,

selecting, adapting, or developing appropriate learning materials,

assessment, and evaluation tools.

2. Curricula in action:

It takes us into classroom. We can observe the teaching-learning

process and see haw intentions of curricula planners are translated.

3. Assessment and evaluation:

we try to find out what students have learned or failed to learn in

relation to what had been planned and whether they could learn

anything which had not been planned.

Also, we try to make judgments why some things succeeded and

others failed and make recommendations about necessary changes

and improvements.

4. Management of the institution:

We look at the resources, how they are used, how we can relate to and

respond to the wider community, and how constrains of limitation and

decisions of administrators affect what happens in the classroom.

Requirements of syllabuses

Any syllabus should ideally provide:

1. A clear framework of knowledge and capabilities selected to be

appropriate to overall aims.

2. Continuity and a sense of direction in classroom work for teachers and

students.

3. A record for other teachers of what has been covered in the course.

4. A basis for evaluating students’ progress.

5. A basis for evaluating the appropriateness of the course in relation

to overall aims and students’ needs identified both before and

during the course

The content should be appropriate to the broader language curriculum

and particular class of learners, and wider variety in which the course

is located.

Principles applied to the organization of the content of syllabuses

The following questions must be asked about a syllabus:

What knowledge and capabilities should be focused on?

Linguistic or broader communicative knowledge?

One or all four skills?

What should be selected as appropriate content?

Which particular structures and vocabulary should be covered?

Which particular uses or tasks selected?

How should the content be subdivided so that it can be dealt with in

arrangeable units for ease of teaching and learning in real time?

How should content be sequenced along the path of development?

Step-by-step or cyclic progression?

An integrated process

Why we need an integrated curriculum?

In the planning, implementation, and evaluation of a given curriculum,

all elements must be integrated so that decisions made at one level are

not in conflict with those made at another.

It must be a bottom-up and cyclic process rather than a top-down and

linear process.

Broad vs. narrow approach

The narrow view draws distinction between S.D. and

methodology.

S.D. is seen as being concerned with the selection and

gradation of the content while methodology is

concerned with selection of learning tasks and activities.

The broader view questions this strict separation and

claims that with the advent of CLT, the distinction

between content and tasks is difficult to sustain.

Syllabus vs. methodology

Some language specialists believe that syllabus and methodology

should be kept apart; others think otherwise.

A syllabus is the statement of content which is used as the basis for

planning courses and the task of a syllabus designer is to select and

grade this content.

S.D. is concerned with WHAT of teaching and language program and

methodology with the HOW.

Role of classroom teachers

It has been claimed that teachers are mainly consumers of other

people’s syllabuses and their role is to implement the plans of applied

linguists. However, the teachers have a free hand in designing their

own syllabuses.

The Conduit metaphor

Content selection criteria

S.D. is about the selection and grading of items to be learned

and this selection should be based on a number of criteria.

Syllabus designer has to balance such competing criteria.

Learn ability: some structural or lexical items are easier to

learn. Easier items come first, e.g. was and were after is and are.

Frequency: specially at the beginning levels, it’s better to

include mere frequent items in the language than those that are

only used occasionally.

Coverage: some words and structures have greater coverage (going to

as future, ….)

Usefulness: some words are useful in the context of what students are

linguistically able to talk about, e.g. family words.

Three main traditions in curricula theory (Finney 2002)

1. The content model: Classical humanism

The central focus of curriculum is the content of what is to be learned

or transmitted.

Content is valued cultural heritage and its understanding contributes

to learners’ overall intellectual development.

Knowledge is universal, unchanging, and absolute.

The model goes back to Aristotle and Plato and dominated the history

of western instructional system for centuries.

Its premise is that most people have fairly indefinite ideas of what

they consider as essential to a good education. That is why

educational systems are rather similar.

However, according to kely, the model is inadequate because it cannot

cope with wider purposes of education and does not consider abilities or

problems of the individual learner or complexities of the learning

process itself.

It does not count for multiculturalism and the widely differing needs of a

massive student population where the educated are no longer an elite

trained to rule the next generation of workers. This is not to say content

has no role in curricula design.

In the field of language teaching, this model underpins the grammar-

based curriculum which is concerned with grammar and vocabulary.

The purpose is to transmit knowledge of the language system and to

ensure that they master rules and vocabulary.

The content or syllabus is selecting and sequencing of grammar points

and lexis.

Teaching and learning procedures include drilling of grammatically

correct sentences, explanations, and memorization of lists of

vocabulary.

Assessment is based on learners’ ability to produce accurate language.

It ignores factors such as context, appropriateness of use, modes of

discourse and individual learner needs.

2. The objective model: Reconstructionism

The starting point for this model is no longer the content, but the

objectives of teaching-learning program. In reconstructionism, the

main purpose of education is to bring about some kind of social

change.

Its origins lie in the elements for scientific management of education

and work of behavioral psychologists in the first half of the 20th

century, who defined learning as a process of observable changes in

behavior which could be measured.

Behavioral objectives have three essential characteristics:

They must unambiguously describe the behavior to be performed.

They must describe conditions under which performance will be expected to occur.

They must state a standard of acceptable performance.

The attraction of the model is that it provides:

Clarity of goals: objectives are clear to both teachers and learners.

Facilitation of the materials selection.

Ease of evaluation: success of learners and program can easily and

completely be evaluated to the context that objectives have been

fulfilled.

Accountability: in both formal and business sectors. The model

provides clear methods for needs identification, establishing learning

purpose and providing measurable products of educational program.

The most fundamental criticism is that the philosophy reduces people

to the level of automatons which can be trained to behave in particular

ways and precludes such concepts as autonomy, self-fulfillment, and

personal development.

As such, it is too unsophisticated and attempts to impose a linear

process on something that is spiraling and cyclic. This model is more

suitable for areas of vocational training and skills.

There has been a mixed but largely negative reaction to behavioral

objectives from teachers of foreign languages, criticizing the limits such

objectives place on creativity and cognitive-affective aspects of learning.

However, the objective model is the basis of the Council of Europe

Threshold level in 1970s, an important movement in the transition of the

grammar-based approach to a communicative approach which insulted

in notional-functional syllabuses in which the emphasis is on needs

analysis and the eventual ends of language learning other than a narrow

linguistic focus.

3. The process model: Progressivism

The prime concern of the process model in education planning is

the value change.

The purpose of education is to enable the individual to progress

toward self-fulfillment.

It is concerned with development of understanding, not just the

passive reception of knowledge or acquisition of special skills.

The goals are not specified in terms of particular ends or products, but

in terms of the processes and procedures by which the individual

develops understanding and awareness and creates possibilities for

future learning.

Then, content is based on principles derived from research into

learning development and overall purposes of the educational process.

The model rests on the concepts of learners’ needs, interests, and

development process and is thus open to criticism of subjectivity in

definition of these concepts.

In language teaching world, there has been a shift toward the learner-

centered curricula. The move away from structural grammar-systems

approach began in the 1960s and 70s and growing interest in curricula

design than teaching methodology