- The scope of syllabus design

- Curricula are concerned with making generalstatements about language learning,

learning purpose and experience,evaluation, and the role relationships of teachers and
learners.

- A general curriculum model - Definig 'syllabus' - The role of the classroom teacher

- We can look atcurriculum planning, that is at decision making, in relation to

identifyinglearners' needs and purposes; establishing goals and objectives; - Syllabus design is seen as being concerned essentially withthe selection and grading - Bell (1983) claims that teachers are, in the main, consumers of other people's
selectingand grading content; organizing appropriate learning arrangements of content, while methodology is concerned withthe selection of learning tasks and syllabuses; in other words, that their role is to implement the plansof applied linguists,
andlearner groupings; selecting, adapting, or developing appropriate mate-rials, activities government agencies, and so on.
learning tasks, and assessment and evaluation tools.

- We can study the curriculum 'in action' as it were. Thissecond perspective takes us
into the classroom itself

- We would try and find out what students had learned and whatthey had failed to
learn in relation us what had been planned. Additionally,we might want to find out
whether they had learned anything which hadnot been planned

- We might want to study the management of the teachinginstitution, looking at the

resources available and how these are utilized,hose the institution relates to and
responds to the wider community, howconstraints imposed by limited resources and
the decisions of administra-tors affect what happens in the classroom, and so on.

- Points of departure
- Basic orientarions - Learning purpose
- Traditionally, linguistically-oriented syllabuses, along with
many so-calledcommunicative syllabuses, shared one thing
in common: they tended tofocus on the things that
learners should know or be able to do as a result
ofinstruction.
- In evaluating syllabus proposals, we have to decide
whether this view represents a fundamental change in
perspective, or whether thoseadvocating process
syllabuses have made a category error; whether, in
fact,they are really addressing methodological rather than
syllabus issues.
- A given syllabus will specify all or some of the following:
grammaticalstructures, functions, notions, topics, themes,
situations, activities, andtasks.
- Each of these elements is either product or process
oriented, and theinclusion of each will be justified
according to beliefs about the nature oflanguage, the
needs of the learner, or the nature of learning.
- The issue of content selection becomes
particularlypressing if the syllabus is intended to underpin
short courses.
- Learning goals
- Assumptions about the learner's purpose in undertaking a
language course, as well as the syllabus designer's beliefs
- These will provide a rationale for the course or
about the nature of language andlearning can have a
programme.
marked influence on the shape of the syllabus on whichthe
course is based.
- Learners' purposes will vary according to how - Learning goals may be derived from a number of
specificthey are, and how immediately learners wish to sources,including task analysis, learner data, ministry of
employ their developing language skills. education specifications,and so on.
- The nature of the courses to be derived from syllabus
specifications,the length of the courses, and many other
factors will determine what is feasible and appropriate to
- Learner analysis is based on information about the
set as goals, and will also largely dictate the types of
learner.
communicative and pedagogic objectives which are both
appropriate and feasible for the educational system in
question.
- If some form of needs analysis has been carried out to
- It can guide the selection of content. It may also be used establish thepurposes and needs of a given group of
to assign learners to class groupings. learners or of an educationalsystem, a necessary second
step into translate them into instructional goals.
- 'Objective' data is that factual information which does not
require theattitudes and views of the learners to be taken
into account.
- Task analysis is employed to specify andcategorize the
language skills required to carry out real-world
communica-tive tasks, and often follows the learner
analysis which establishes the communicative purposes for
which the learner wishes to learn the target language