UES/syllabus design

“In any case, teachers of English as a second language are on the whole more used to thinking about methodology than about syllabus design.”(Yalden, as cited in Krahnke, 1987)

On Syllabus Design

By Miguel Angel Carranza

Reflect on and discuss with peers the various types of syllabus currently and previously in use in your own language learning and teaching situations.

How many different ways of syllabi approaches have you already experienced? As a student? Teacher?How many exist/have existed in your context? How did you learn the language?

UES/syllabus design

Schema Activation

What principles/ practices have shaped your philosophy of teaching/ learning?

Which authors have influenced your way of teaching?

What is curriculum? Literally, curriculum refers to a course or a set of courses. Its origins are deep in the chariot tracks of ancient Greece…

Curriculum vitae? Your CV? "course of life”

UES/syllabus design

Defining Curriculum When teachers and students talk in the

classroom about the rules of good conduct on the playground, that is part of the curriculum.

When teachers plan their year´s work, decide what their goals for the year will be, what content they will cover, how much they will emphasize different topics, and the sequence , they are designing curriculum.

UES/syllabus design

What is curriculum?

Curriculum refers not only to the official list

of courses offered by the school – we call

That the “official curriculum”- but also to the

purposes, content, activities, and

Organization of the educational program

actually created in schools by teachers,

students, and administrators

(Walker & Soltis, 1997)

UES/syllabus design

More Curriculum Definitions

The term curriculum can refer to the educational plan of an institution, school, college or a department, or to a program course. (Stark, 1997).

Elements that an academic plan should have: Purpose Content Sequence Learners Instructional Processes Instructional resources Evaluation Adjustment

UES/syllabus design

Key questions to Curriculum Design

1. What is to be accomplished? 2. What learning experiences will help accomplish the

purpose? 3. How can these learning experiences be effectively

organized? 4. How can the effectiveness of the learning be

evaluated?

(Tyler’s model, the most widely used approach forcurriculum design)

UES/syllabus design

On Syllabus

Syllabus design has been seen as a subsidiary component of curriculum design.

A syllabus is more specific and more concrete than a curriculum, and a curriculum may contain a number of syllabi.

Syllabus focuses more narrowly on the selection and grading of content.

Content, or what is taught is only element of some actual teaching syllabi that include behavioral or learning objectives for students, specifications of how the content will be taught and how it will be evaluated.

To design a syllabus is to decide what gets taught and in what order. For this reason, the theory of language explicitly or implicitly underlying the language teaching method will play a major role in determining what syllabus is adopted.

UES/syllabus design

UES/syllabus design

Method

Approach Syllabus Design Procedure

UES/syllabus design

A method and..Method is the cover term for all of language teaching, from theory to practice.

It is divided into the three levels:a) Approach : the theoretical components of the method… divided into theories of language and theories of learning.b) Design is divided into syllabus design and content; roles of materials; roles of learners; and roles of teachers.c) Procedure specifies the activities that are actually used in the classroom.

UES/syllabus design

Language Teaching Syllabi

1. The structural/ grammar 2. The notional/ functional: greetings 3. The situational/ at the store/ at a bank 4. The skill-based/ listening/ speaking 5. The task-based 6. The content-based (ESL teaching) 7. The lexical based (lexical units) 8. Multi-syllabus