Syllabus

Syllabus

Name: Parmar Dipali K.

Roll No.: 24

Assignment Sem. 3

Email ID: dipaliparmar247@gmail.com

Submitted to: Department of English, MKBU.

  Syllabus Design

Introduction:

Any syllabus is a plan by which the goal or aim can be achieved throughout the year by teaching and learning. It is a part of language curriculum which is made up for four elements:

• Aims
• Content
• Methodology
• Evaluation

Here, Aims and Methodology is related to teacher and Content and Evaluation with student.

Any syllabus should provide:

• A clear framework of knowledge and capabilities selected to be appropriate to overall aims
• Continuity and a sense of direction in classroom work for teacher and students
• A record for other teachers of what has been covered in the course
• A basis for evaluating students’ progress
• A basis for evaluating the appropriateness of the course in relation to overall aims and student needs identified both before and during the course
• Content appropriate to the broader language curriculum, the particular class of learners, and the educational situation and wider society in which the course is located.

To meet these requirements, syllabus designers- including teachers who develop their own syllabuses – apply principles to the organization of the content which they intend the syllabus to cover. These principles can be expressed as questions:

• What knowledge and capabilities should be focused upon?
• What should be selected as appropriate content?
• How should the content be subdivided so that it can be dealt with in manageable units?
• How should the content be sequenced along a path of development?

These four principles of organization define a syllabus. In the history of language teaching, the last 20 years in particular have revealed significant developments in syllabus design that have led to the application of each of these principles in alternative ways.

Background: 

Before going further, let’s have a look on brief history of syllabus and their types’ emergences to illustrate their differences.

Before the beginning of Communicative Language Teaching in the late 1970s, it was widely accepted that the syllabus should focus upon linguistic knowledge and the skills of listening, reading, speaking and writing, usually in that order. In 1970s research it was found that the learner fails to use the linguistic knowledge outside the classroom which they had gained within it. That made a major change in syllabus design.

In the early 1980s this movement in syllabus design became challenged from two directions:

1. The teaching of the special purpose language was limiting the learner’s potential to certain fixed communicative situations.
2. The second challenge echoed earlier doubts expressed about formal syllabuses.

During 1980s the wider development of CLT evolved in two directions: Formal and Functional syllabuses. The two new directions for syllabus design were oriented towards psycholinguistic and educational accounts of how language learning is actually undertaken by the learner.

Types of Syllabuses:

There are four types of syllabus:

1. Language syllabus
2. Culture syllabus
3. Communicative activities syllabus
4. General language teaching syllabus

Let’s have a look on these types one by one.

1. Language Syllabus:

Language syllabus includes the systematic study of language in terms of its formal and functional characteristics. There are main three divisions in Language Syllabus. 

 

I) Content Based:

Content based syllabus focuses on forms, information, context and function of the language. 

II) Skill Based:

Skill based syllabus focuses on language productivity and learning skill acquisition.

III) Method Based:

Method based syllabus focuses on learning process and task-based cognitive procedural.

Main Goal of Language Syllabus: Proficiency

2. Culture Syllabus:

Culture syllabus mainly includes the systematic study of people who uses the language in terms of their society, history, values and culture of particular region. It changes country or state wise. If we talk about Indian Culture syllabus then it includes three parts from the beginning of civilization.

I) Ancient:

Ancient culture syllabus includes the form of art, architecture and literature. In which Sanskrit, Vedic literature, Buddhist architecture, urban civilization. Indus valley etc. can be included.

II) Medieval:

In Medieval culture syllabus we can include Urdu, Persian and other regional literature, Temple art, miniatures, wall paintings, sculptures etc.

III) Modern:

In Modern culture syllabus schools of paintings, Mughal style of paintings, Rajput arts, Mughal and British architectures, Dravidian and English literature etc.

Main Goal of Culture Syllabus: Knowledge

3. Communicative Activities Syllabus:

Communicative activities syllabus focuses on the usage of language in socio-cultural context, both inside and outside the classrooms.

In this syllabus so many activities can be includes like;

• Use of foreign language during travelling or business
• Talking on the topics like self-identification, education, shopping
• Describing something, requesting information, expressing agreement or disagreement
• To describe notions like time, frequency, duration
• Vocabulary and grammar

Communicative activities can be divided into two topics:

There are numerous text-books are designed to support communicative language teaching. In the Task-based a teacher can give various games, role-plays, simulations and other activities to improve language skills.

Main Goal of Communicative Activities Syllabus: Proficiency

4. General Language Education Syllabus: 

General language education syllabus focuses upon knowledge of language, cross cultural awareness and learning strategies.

This education syllabus mainly stresses on the four basic skills of language learning which are:

• Listening
• Speaking
• Reading
• Writing

It includes all the type of methods, content and extra activities related to study. According to the curriculum, teaching methods should be decided. Evaluation is also needed here. After evaluation, who needs more attention and which topic needs revision that can be finalized. Teacher should give feed-back regularly for the betterment of the class.

Main Goal of General Language Education Syllabus: Transfer of Knowledge and Experience

Conclusion:

Overall there are five goals of language syllabus:

• Communication
• Sociocultural
• Learning-how-to-learn
• Language and cultural awareness
• General knowledge

In general, there are four trends in current syllabus design;

• Outcome based or competency based planning
• The organization of the syllabus presented through tasks and subdivide and sequenced as tasks
• Shared decision-making through negotiation between teacher and learners
• The recent identification of different syllabuses which may serve a range of appropriate language-learning aims, this implies a weakening of the distinctions between the types of syllabus that typified the end of the twentieth century.

These trends suggests that according to form, function, task and process plans will multiply. Syllabus design is not identified as separate element but it’s the part of whole curriculum.

Reference

• Breen, Michael P., Syllabus Design.

 

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