COMPARISON / CONTRAST ESSAY

GRAMMATICAL AND FUNCTIONAL SYLLABUS

A syllabus is a document that describes what the contents of a language course

will be and the order in which they will be taught. The content of a syllabus normally

reflects certain beliefs about language and language learning. A syllabus might be

designed around the order in which grammatical items are introduced. There are many

different types of syllabus include grammatical and functional syllabus, which focus on

the building blocks of language, and task-based and learner-centered, which focus on

process of communication and learning. Every type of syllabus certainly has

differences. The differences can include the theory, the content, and the presentation.

The first point of differences between grammatical and functional syllabus is

about the theory of language and language learning. The grammatical syllabus though

that grammar is very essential in language learning meanwhile the functional syllabus is

closely related to communicative language teaching. In grammatical syllabus the ability

is resulted from structural knowledge but functional syllabus derives from functionally

oriented linguistic that does not examine language in isolation from its uses and social

context. In the function of grammatical syllabus language are best learned by through

conscious knowledge of the language and the rules for their combination its differ with

the function in functional syllabus that language is primary; forms of language is

secondary.

Content is being second point differences. In the grammatical syllabus content

become the major teaching items are language forms and the content will be

grammatical forms. Contrast with functional syllabus that the content focused of the
COMPARISON / CONTRAST ESSAY

uses of language forms, “function” the topic covers communicative purposes of

language.

The last point differences is the presentation. The presentation in grammatical

syllabus placed the learning is presented to elicit students’ descriptive ability (describe

the rules or explain why an utterance is right or wrong) but in functional syllabus the

presentation focus on the use of language presented primarily, and forms are presented

as necessary. For addition in grammatical syllabus language is presented so that the

students can recognize if a form is acceptable, it is contrast with functional syllabus that

the presentation is from function-to-form (structure).

In a final, grammatical and functional syllabus is different. If the grammatical is

the types that focus on language learning but functional more focus on communicative

language teaching, that means the grammatical more concern to learner and the

functional take concern to the teacher. Furthermore their differences probably keep

bring contributes toward the teaching learning process.