Curriculum Design

1. English Syllabus and
Classroom Instructional Design
Taught by Dr. Enny Irawati
Six types of Syllabus
Structural Syllabus
Notional/ Functional Syllabus
Presented by:
Atik Sri Rahayu Luki Emiliya Hidayat
Fajar Ningtyas Masrurin Lailiyah
Ida Prasetyaning Jati Nurohman
Jazilatur Rizqiyah Suhandoko

2. Six Types of Syllabus
1.Structural Syllabus
2.Functional/ Notional Syllabus
3.Situational syllabus
4.Skill- based syllabus
5.Task- based syllabus
6.Content based syllabus

3. 1. Structural/ Formal Syllabus
 This type of syllabus contains a collection of the
forms and structures, usually grammatical of the
language.
 It covers nouns, verbs, adjectives, statements,
questions, complex sentences, subordinate clauses,
past tense and other aspects of language form such
as pronunciation or morphology.

4. 2. A notional / functional syllabus
 This type of syllabus contains a collection of the
functions that are performed when language is used.
 It includes: informing, agreeing, apologizing,
requesting, promising, and so on. Examples of
notions include size, age, color, comparison, time,
etc.

5. 3. A Situational Syllabus
 A situational syllabus contains a collection of real or
imaginary situations in which language occurs or is
used.
 It usually involves several participants who are
engaged in some activities in a specific setting. The
primary purpose : to teach the language that occurs
in the situations.
For examples:
Seeing the dentist, buying a book at the book store,
meeting a new student, asking directions in a new
town, etc.

6. 4. A Skill-based Syllabus
 A skill-based syllabus contains a collection of specific
abilities that may play a part in using language. Skills
are things that people must be able to do to be
competent in a language, relatively independently of
the situation or setting in which the language use can
occur.
 The main purpose : to learn the specific language
skills.

7. 5. A Task-based Syllabus
 This type of syllabus is similar with Content-based
Syllabus. Both of these syllabus do not organized the
teaching with the linguistics features of the language
being learned.
 It contains a series of complex and purposeful tasks
that the students want or need to perform with the
language they are learning.

8. 6. A Content-based Syllabus
 Krahnke (1987) stated that this type of syllabus is not
really a language teaching syllabus at all.
 The primary purpose: to teach some extent content
or information using the language that the students
are learning.
 The content teaching is not organized around the
language teaching, but vice versa.
 A content-based language teaching is concerned with
information, while task-based language teaching is
concerned with communicative and cognitive
process.

9. S
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Definition
 Structural syllabus focuses on grammatical forms.
 Structural syllabus is constructed based on the theory that
assumes that the grammatical or structural aspects of
language form are the basic or useful.
 Structural syllabi has most been associated with
Grammar Translation Method, Audiolingualism, Silent Way.
(McKay in Brown, 1995:7)
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Theoretical Base
 Language is a system which consists of a set of grammatical
rules (learning them and apply to practical language use)
 The syllabus input is selected and graded according to
grammatical notions of simplicity and complexity.
 This type of syllabus maintains that it is easier for students
to learn a language if they are exposed to one part of the
grammatical system at a time.

10. S
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Content
Top priority to teaching the grammaror
structure of the target language.
 A list of linguistic structures (noun, verb, pronoun, adjective,
singular, plural, present tense, past tense and so on)
 A list of words, that is, the lexicon to be taught (singular plural
markings, the forms marking the tense system of the
language, and special morphology such as determiners and
articles, prepositions, and so on)
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Cont
Key features
 The key features of structural syllabus is synthetic
(requires analysis of language/ content i.e. word frequency,
grammatical analysis, and discourse analysis.
 In synthetic syllabus, different parts of language are
taught separately and step by step. So
that learners’ acquisition on the language is gradually the
accumulation of parts until the whole structure

11. S
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Consideration for sequencing or
grading the contentS
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Cont
Typically, the consideration for sequencing or grading the content in
structural syllabus is starting with easy structures and gradually
progressing to the difficult ones or from the most frequently used
structures to the less frequently used ones. (J.D. Brown, 1995:8)
Selection and sequencing of vocabulary in a structural syllabus are
done with the help of the criteria mentioned by Michael West (1953):
a) Frequency: The number of times the word appears in our use of
language.
b) Range: The number of texts / areas in which the item is found.
c) Availability: Most appropriate and necessary for certain
situations.
d) Familiarity: Most familiar words.
e) Coverage: The degree to which a word covers other words.
f) Learnability: Easily learnable.
Krahnke (1987) claimed that there is no ultimate way to solve
the sequencing problem. Even if it exists, it is lack of empirical
evidence.

12. Example of Structural Syllabus
The following sample headings are taken from Azar’ Understanding
and Using English Grammar
Chapter 1 Verb Tense
1-1 The simple tenses
1-2 The progressive tenses
1-3 The perfect tense
1-4 The perfect progressive tense
1-5 Summary chart of verb tenses
1-6 Spelling of –ing and –ed forms
Chapter 2 Modal Auxiliaries and similar expressions
…..
Chapter 3 The Passive
…
Chapter 4 Gerunds and Infinitive
…..

13. THE NEGATIVE
CHARACTERISTICS OF
STRUCTURAL SYLLABI

14. The most important of these is
the usability, applicability, or
transferability of structural
knowledge.

15. Studies of the relationship of teaching of language
form to writing ability in the learners' first language,
for example, have shown that it has no measurable
effect on any aspect of their writing ability
(Hartwell,1985).

17. The second major drawback to
structure-based instruction is that it
can mislead learners into thinking
they are learning a language when,
in fact, they are learning facts or
information about a language

18. The third drawback to structural
syllabi is a result of the sequencing or
grading problems referred to earlier.
A strictly structural syllabus
prevents students from
producing structures they have
not been taught.

19. Criticism
During the 1970s, the use of structural syllabuses came under
increasing criticism. Let us look at some of the criticisms:
1. One early criticism was that structurally graded syllabuses
misrepresented the nature of that complex phenomenon
of language.
2. SLA researchers state that grammatical grading of content
interferes with language acquisition which is more a
global than a linear process.
3. Form and meaning are emphasized and therefore, functional
aspect of meaning is ignored.
4. Meaning of words and sentences is taught in isolation
within a particular grammatical form.
5. What is taught within this view is items present in a structure.
6. The attack on grammatical syllabus is in part an attack on the view
that language must be taught as a body of knowledge, a
package that the teacher passes to the learner.

20. Functional/ Notional Syllabus
Notional/ functionalism defines them in two ways.
1. Notions (categories of meaning)
Semanticogrammatical categories which are usually charac
terized by interaction between categories of meaning
and grammatical forms in most languages (Wilkins:1978)
(time, duration, quantity, agent, instrument, place, and many
others
2. Functions
The uses to which language forms are put on commu
nicative purposes. (agreement, greeting, approval, predict
ion, requesting, directions, apologizing, and so on).

21. Differing relationships between form and function

22. Functional/ Notional Syllabus
Cont.
• The determination of what notions, functions, and forms to in
clude in a teaching syllabus is often regarded as part of
notional/ functionalism.
• Actually, notional/ functionalism is a procedure for desig
ning a syllabus or choosing content for a specific syllabus, but
it is not a part of the content of the syllabus itself.
• Determining specific syllabus content involves
1. examining the type of discourse the learners are going to
need to engage in,
2. noting the notions and functions and the specific forms that
are used to express them in the types of discourse involved,
3. putting them together into a language-teaching syllabus

23. Sequencing and grading
Sequencing and grading of language material do
not seem to be of major concern to
notional/functional syllabus designers. Little in the
literature discusses principles for sequencing
material, and the question is raised.
The notional syllabus, it is claimed, develops
students' ability to do this [become
communicatively competent] by
accounting for communicative competence within
the actual design of the syllabus itself.
(Widdowson, 1979)

25. POSITIVE CHARACTERISTICS
• Including information about how language is used in the
teaching syllabus potentially increases the usefulness
of language instruction (Finocchiaro & Brumfit, 1983)
• Students will be better able to function in written and
spoken interaction
• Students will have more experience with.
• Students will have more knowledge about which language f
orms do what in new language
• Students will have had exposure to at least some
real or simulated interaction in the language
• Students may view the language more as a communica
tive system

26. Example
Function: Giving order
Can be done by, for example:
• Shut the door
• Let the AC on
• I’m having dinner at home (means: prepare
for it)
• I need to go to the airport (means: tell the
driver to take me there)
• I will join the party tonight (means: give
me my tuxedo)

27. Keyword: Function, experience,
interaction, exposure
This school needs better
trash management and I
dedicate myself to be pa
rt of it. Let’s collect the t
rash after school and th
en classify them into thr
ee categories.
Seriously?
Hm... Inter
esting!
Exclude me. I have
many tasks to do.

28. NEGATIVE CHARACTERISTICS
• It will do little to develop interactional and
communicative ability if the isolated-
functions are not synthesized into discourse.
• The instruction is less generalizable than
Structural syllabus
• If it is presented entirely in short utterances/exchanges
and units of discourse, students may be unable to
handle the new language in longer, connected discourse
• It can become primarily a vehicle for teaching ‘routines’
and ‘patterns’
• Role of ‘routines’ and ‘pattern’ is open to dispute

29. Routines
Short formulaic utterances generally used to perform specific function
E.g.: No, thank you --- polite refusal
A: Hello, how are you?
B: Hi, I’m fine, and you?
A: I’m fine too. Thanks.
A week later in different occasion:
C: Hi, how are you doing?
B: ??? (don’t know what to say)
Patterns
Utterances with open slots into which various lexical items can be
inserted
E.g.:
Would you like to ___________? Have you ever _________?
I learn English because _______ I don’t like _______
What do you think of _______?

30. Solution
• Avoid teaching relatively frozen phrases
• Avoid unanalyzed ‘routines’
• Use productive structures
• Use appropriate instructional techniques

31. APPLICATION
• In the development of specific teaching programs for specific purposes,
notional/functional syllabus may be appropriately used to define the
content of such courses
• Littlewood (1981) claimed that it will lead to more ‘communicative ability’
---- > (but it is not empirically validated)
• Learners have to synthesize pieces of information about the new
language by their own
• When combined with a more interactional methodolology and an
acquisition-based theory of language, notional/functional instructional
content may lead to more functional ability
• For instructional programs whose goals are structural knowledge, it is
still a possible choice
• It may be an excellent way to impart conscious knowledge of the
structure and function of a language

32. Mini Curriculum with Function as
Organizing Principle
Title or Function Apologizing
Situation Department store (returning
something)
Communicative expressions or formula I’m sorry. Would it possible if___?
Structures Simple past; present perfect
Nouns Shirt
Verbs Buy; wear
Adjectives Small
Adverbs Too
Structure words You
Miscellaneous Dates
Activities Aural comprehension; Indirect speech;
Changing register

33. That’s it...

34. References
Brown, James Dean. 1995. The Elements of Language
Curriculum: A Systematic to Program Development.
Heinle & Heinle Publishers: USA
Krahnke, Karl. 1987. Approaches to Syllabus Design For
Foreign Language Teaching. Language and Education:
Theory and Practice. Prentice Hall. NY
West, Michael. 1953. The General Service List. Cambridge
University Press.