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Litreature Review On Situational Syllabus
Litreature Review On Situational Syllabus
1) Aims/Goal
2) Objectives
3) Non-language outcomes
4) Learning contents
• Cultural differences
--Topics: A list of topics that the students are expected to be able to talk
about.
--Language items: language items should be bear in mind when ordering
the communicative situations
5) Implementation
6) Evaluation
3.1. Content
3.2. Process
Unit 7 At Home
Dialogues
Notes
Exercises
Supplementary Reading: The British Bobby
Unit 8 Receiving Friends
Dialogues
Notes
Exercises
3.3. Product
Product in syllabus design is mainly concerned with what students are
expected to learn; or in other words, the objectives of the syllabus. It has
been commonly acknowledged that under a situational syllabus, the
communicative competence is given first priorities. Of course, this has
much to do with and shares a lot in common with functional syllabus. By
and large, students’ communicative competence will be improved in
terms of learning and understanding language more thoroughly and
comprehensively by knowing language in use, and to be exact, the
language will be more smoothly transformed into procedural knowledge
that would be stored into the long- term memory, and according to the
connectinalist view, the procedural knowledge could be activated in real
life situations with no signs of transfer. As a result, students’
communicative competence will be naturally enhanced.
Despite the merits mentioned above, we think the situational syllabus has
the following four major drawbacks.
First of all, the situational syllabus may not satisfy the learner’s needs.
There are different types of learners with various learning purposes and
learning needs. Although the exact contents of the situational syllabus are
the result of a careful behavioral prediction, consisting of an inventory of
language situations and a description of the linguistic content of each of
these situations, the situational syllabus may not include all the situations
in real life. For example, if a situational syllabus were to be used for any
learner whose needs could not be identified in these situational terms,
including the general language learner, the course might not provide him
with the means to handle significant language needs. As claimed by
Rabbini (2002), the situational syllabus is limited for students whose
needs were not encompassed by the situations in the syllabus.
Secondly, the situational syllabus may not predict and include the
language necessary to handle the language situation. It may be true that
the situations in which the learner is likely to need the language may be
predicted, and the language necessary to perform linguistically in those
situations are then taught, language used for the same situations may be
unpredictable. Learners’ response to the same situations may be quite
different due to their life experience, intentions, as well as their views of
the world. The limited aims of a tourist, a waiter or a telephone
switchboard operator might be achieved adequately under the control
situations. However, they would be unprepared for anything 'out of the
ordinary' (Robbini, 2002). Wilkins (1976) argues that situational syllabus
only includes language functions that occur in specific situations (p.19).
Brumfit and Johnson (1979) also address the problems with the situational
syllabus such as the limited horizons of language in specific situations and
difficulty in defining what the situation is in the first place (p.83-84).
5. Summary
New Headway
Bibliography
Brumfit, C. J., & Johnson, K., (Eds). 1979. The communicative approach to
language teaching.
Oxford: OUP.
Richards, J., Platt, J., & Weber, H. 1985. Longman Dictionary of Applied
Linguistics. London : Longman.
Liu, R. & Feng, Z. 2002. Theories and schools of linguistics (In Chinese).
Nanjing: Nanjing Normal University Press.
Schulz, R. A. 2005. Language acquisition and syllabus design: the need for
a broad perspective