Syllabuses
1. Types and Examples
Syllabus is an essential guideline in teaching settings, by which teachers make a pedagogical decision about the focus of teaching and the order of teaching material, and a rationale for how the content is selected and ordered. There are seven types of syllabuses – structural, situational, topical, functional, notional, skills, and task.
Structural syllabuses focus on grammatical forms. The sequence of the material of grammatical features is from easy to difficult or from frequent to less frequent. For example, in terms of tense, syllabuses are organized from the simple tense, progressive tense, perfect tense, and then the perfect progressive tense.
Situational syllabuses are based on contexts, or situations like at a party, at the beach, and at the airport. The content of material moves in terms of likelihood students will encounter them or/and chronology. For instance, the organization of the syllabus is arranged in terms of chronology like in the classroom, in the playground, at the movie theater, at the birthday party, etc.
Topical syllabuses are based on topics or themes such as health, food, clothing, hospital, and so forth. The contents are usually organized on the basis of their perceived importance or the difficulty of the reading passages. For example, for American culture class, the contents are arranged as following: sports, clothes, jobs, politics, language, education.
Functional syllabuses focus on “semantic uses” or meaningful packets, called functions such as seeking information, giving an order, asking advice, introducing a topic, suggesting new idea, opposing to others’ opinion, saying good-bye (Brown,1995). The material is sequenced by chronology or usefulness of each notion. For example, Korean secondary school textbook normally deals with several functions, sequenced by the difficulty of the expression. For example, functions of greeting such as introducing each other, and saying good are first introduced, followed by making an order, and suggesting new idea. Agreeing, or disagreeing, arguing and persuading others are late introduced.
Notional syllabuses are organized in terms of conceptual categories called notions such as duration, quantity, location, and so forth. The material is sequenced by some sense of chronology, frequency, or the utility of the notions involved. For example, let’s say there is book about the kinds of preposition. In terms of semantic notions the book is organized with the unit headings from the table of contents like properties, location, duration, measurement, and so forth.
Skills-based syllabuses organize materials around the language or academic skills that students most need in order to use and continue to learn the language. They are sequenced by chronology or usefulness for each skill. For instance, for reading comprehension, the material introduces lots of activities in the order of skimming, identifying key words, scanning, identifying topic sentences, summarizing.
Task-based syllabuses are based on tasks or activity-based categories such as drawing maps, writing an invitation card, following direction, giving the direction, writing a resume, and so forth. The sequence of material depends on students’ perceived usefulness. For instance, in the writing textbook, there would be many heading lists like writing nostalgia.
Last but not least, mixed or layered syllabuses occur when authors choose to mix two or more types of syllabuses together. For example, in a mixture of situational and topical syllabus, the authors may use topics to organize the regular readings, while situations are used to organize the individual lessons. Or underneath the overall situational syllabus (Introductions, Getting acquainted, At the housing office, and so one) is a structural syllabus used to organize the material.
2. Mini- Example Material for Topical syllabus
A. Rationale
As my students are planning to go to overseas university for studying after graduation high school, they are interested in American or Britain culture in English class, so establishing a course of “Culture of English-speaking World” is being taken into consideration. Though students’ need and expectation about learning culture are relatively high, according to the needs analysis, there are few textbooks available in Korean classroom setting. By developing material introducing American/England culture and comparing it with Korean culture, teachers will be able to provide well-structured syllabus through which they will cover several topics sequenced by the importance or difficulty students perceive in the class.
B. Syllabuse
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The Table of Contents Unit 1. Sports 1. Baseball 2. Football Unit 2 Work Value 1. Employer-Employee Relationship 2. Leisure Unit 3 Language 1. Conversational Styles 2. Non-verbal Communication Unit 4 Food 1. People on a Diet 2. American Food Unit 5. Clothes 1. Unisex 2. Jeans Unit 6 The Arts 1. Movies and Mass Culture 2. Music Unit 7. Education 1. Secondary Education 2. Higher Education |
C. Example Material
1) Subject: Understanding culture of English-speaking World
2) Target Learners: 10th graders in Korean High School in Seoul
3) Topic and Lesson : Unit 3 Communication ( Part 1. Conversational Style)
4) Objectives
- Students will be able to understand the cultural difference in conversational style
- Students will be able to understand culturally diverse verbal/non-verbal behavior in English-speaking countries
5) Approach : Communicative approach in which students will be able to express their opinions and intentions
6) Techniques & Exercises
One unit consists of two parts- two topics related to the topic of the unit. Each part covers two periods of class. Each part focuses on various English skills – listening, speaking, writing and reading with main emphasis. The example unit is about different conversational style according to cultural difference. In the first part, there is a cartoon showing only one person speaks, while the other makes a face without saying anything, which requires students of guessing what happens. In the next part, there are some words and phrases related to communication style and reading part. In the next part, there are paragraphs explaining the cultural difference in conversational style. The reading passage is from the book “Cultural Awareness ( Stempleski & Tomalin, 2003)”. Next page is reading comprehension check-up. The following part is watching the movie clips from “Friends”, American film and a Korean sitcom “Hi-kick over the Roof” to compare the different conversation style. Then followed is discussion. Every part suggests authentic materials such as movie clips, a copy of cartoon, articles, and newspaper. Students will be equipped with abundant of information about cultural difference in many topics.
Ms. Lee
You are skillful organizing your ideas and writing in academic style. I enjoy your insightful writing every week. Thank you.
