TYPE OF SILLABY

1. A procedural syllabus

The procedural syllabus was proposed by Prabhu (1980). Prabhu’s 'Bangalore Project' was based on the premise that structure can be best learned when attention is concentrated on meaning. The focus shifts from the linguistic aspect to the pedagogical one focusing on learning or the learner. The tasks and activities are designed and planned in advance but not the linguistic content. In this syllabus tasks are graded conceptually and grouped by similarity. Within such a framework the selection, ordering and grading of content is not so much considerable for the syllabus designer. Arranging the course around tasks such as information- and opinion-gap activities helps the learner perceive the language subconsciously while consciously focusing on solving the meaning behind the tasks.

2. A cultural syllabus

Believing in the fact that there is a consensus on the objectives of teaching culture, Stern (1992) indicates that aims should be: 

• A research-minded outlook
• The learner’s own country
• Knowledge about the target culture
• Affective goals; interest, intellectual curiosity, and empathy.
• Awareness of its characteristics and of differences between the target culture
• Emphasis on the understanding socio-cultural implications of language and language use

3. A situational syllabus With this type of syllabus, the essential component of organization is a non-linguistic category, i.e. the situation. The underlying premise is that language is related to the situational contexts in which it occurs. The designer of a situational syllabus tries to predict those situations in which the learner will find him/herself, and applies these situations, for instance; seeing the dentist, going to the cinema and meeting a new student, as a basis for selecting and presenting language content. The content of language teaching is a collection of real or imaginary situations in which language occurs or is used. A situation usually includes several participants who are involved in some activity in a particular setting. In this syllabus, situational needs are important rather than grammatical units. The major organizing feature is a list of situations which reflects the way language and behavior are used everyday outside the classroom. Thus, by connecting structural theory to situations the learner is able to induce the meaning from a relevant context.

4. A skill-based syllabus

In this syllabus, the content of the language teaching involves a collection of particular skills that may play a role in using language. skill-based syllabi merge linguistic competencies (pronunciation, vocabulary, grammar, and discourse) together into generalized types of behavior, such as listening to spoken language for the main idea, writing well-formed paragraphs, delivering effective lectures, and so forth. The chief rationale behind skill-based instruction is to learn the specific language skill. Another less important objective might be to develop more general competence in the language, learning only incidentally any information that may be available while utilizing the language skills.

5. A structural or formal syllabus

This is recognized as the traditional syllabus which is often organized along grammatical lines giving primacy to language form. The focus is on the outcomes or the product. It is, in fact, a grammatical syllabus in which the selection and grading of the content is on the basis of the complexity and simplicity of grammatical items.  In other words, it specifies structural patterns as the basic units of learning and organizes these according to such criteria as structural complexity, difficulty, regularity, utility and frequency. The learner is expected to master each structural step and add it to his/her grammar collection. 

6. A multi-dimensional syllabus

It is possible to design a syllabus involving lessons of varying orientation; for example, some including important functions, others dealing with situations and topics, and yet others with notions and structures. The underlying principle is that there should be flexibility to change the central point of the teaching material as the course unfolds. This will lead to a syllabus design which is flexible, less rigid and more responsive to the various student language needs.

7. A task-based syllabus

A task-based syllabus supports using tasks and activities to encourage learners to utilize the language communicatively so as to achieve a purpose.

8. A process syllabus

The actual syllabus is designed as the teaching and learning proceeds. This type of syllabus was supported by Breen (1984a:1984b) whereby a framework can be provided within which either a pre-designed content syllabus can be publicly analyzed and evaluated by the classroom group, or a developing content syllabus can be designed in an on-going way. It supports a frame for decisions and alternative procedures, activities and tasks for the classroom group. It explicitly attends to teaching and learning and particularly the possible interrelationships between subject matter, learning and the potential contributions of a classroom.

9. A learner-led syllabuses

Breen and Candlin (1984) were the first ones proposed the belief of basing an approach on how learners learn. The emphasis is upon the learner, who it is hoped will be engaged in the implementation of the syllabus design as far as that is practically possible. The learners’ awareness of the course they are studying helps them increase their interest and motivation, attached with the positive effect of developing the skills required to learn.A predetermined and prearranged syllabus provides support and guidance for the instructor and should not be so simply dismissed. The opponents of this view indicate that a learner-led syllabus seems far-reaching, radical and utopian in that it will be complicated to follow as the direction of the syllabus will be mostly the responsibility of the students.

10. A proportional syllabus

This type of syllabus is basically practical and its focus is upon flexibility and spiral technique of language sequencing leading to the recycling of language. The proportional syllabus mainly tries to develop an overall competence. It seems appropriate and applicable for learners who lack exposure to the target language beyond the classroom.

11. A content-based syllabus

This syllabus is intended to design a type of instruction in which the crucial goal is to teach specific information and content using the language that the learners are also learning. Although the subject matter is of primary and vital importance, language learning occurs concurrently with the content learning. The learners are at the same time language students and learners of whatever content and information is being taught. As compared with the task-based approach of language teaching that is connected with communicative and cognitive processes, content-based language teaching deals with information. This syllabus can be exemplified by assuming a chemistry class in which chemistry is taught in the language the learners need or want to learn, possibly with linguistic adjustment to make the chemistry more understandable.

12. A notional/functional syllabus

The chief emphasis of this syllabus is upon the communicative purpose and conceptual meaning of language i.e. notions and functions. In other words, the content of the language teaching is a number of the functions that are performed on using the language, or of the notions that language is utilized to express. Functions can be exemplified by instances such as inviting, requesting, agreeing, apologizing; and notions embrace age, color, size, comparison, time, etc. Besides, grammatical items and situational elements are considered at subsidiary level of importance. As ppposed to the hypothesis of structural and situational syllabuses which lies in the fact that it is most often in search of ‘how’ or ‘when’ and ‘where’ of language (Brumfit and Johnson, 1979:84), the functional/notional syllabus seeks for ‘what is a learner communicates through language’.An important point regarding notional-functional syllabus is that the needs of the students have to be explored and analyzed by different types of interaction and communication a learner may be involved in. Accordingly, needs analysis is central to the design of notional-functional syllabuses.

13. A lexical syllabus

As one of the advocates of the lexical syllabus, Willis (1990, 129-130) asserts that “taking lexis as a starting point enabled us to identify the commonest meanings and patterns in English, and to offer students a picture which is typical of the way English is used”. He continued to claim that they were able to follow through the work of Wilkins and his colleagues in their attempt to establish a notional syllabus. They also were able to suggest to students a way of referencing the language they had experienced. Thus learners were able to use their corpus in the same way as grammarians and lexicographers use a corpus in order to make valid and relevant generalizations about the language under study.