Differentiates curriculum and syllabus, types of syllabus

1. THE SEPARATE PURPOSE OF
A CURRICULUM
AND SYLLABUS
Jovy D. Elimanao – Mihm, MAEd
Language Curriculum for Secondary Schools

2. The course designers’ full
responsibility
The course designers’ full responsibility
is that of setting not only broad,
general goals but also specifying
objectives which are made
accessible to all those involved with
the program.

3. The course designers’ full
responsibility
1. A curriculum contains a broad description
of general goals by indicating an overall
educational-cultural philosophy which
applies across subjects together with a
theoretical orientation to language and
language learning with respect to the
subject matter at hand. A curriculum is
often reflective of national and political
trends as well.

4. Diagram 1: The relationship of a curriculum to the syllabus which
draw from it

5. 2. A syllabus is more detailed and
operational statement of teaching
and learning elements which
translate the philosophy of the
curriculum into a series of planned
steps leading towards more narrowly
defined objectives at each level.

6. 2. Cont….
An important reason for
differentiating between the two is to
stress that a single curriculum can be
the basis for developing a variety of
specific syllabuses which are
concerned with logically defined
audiences, particular needs, and
intermediate objectives. (Dubin and
Olshtain 1986)

7. Components of a Curriculum

8. Components of a Curriculum
• Since the curriculum is concerned with
a general rationale for formulating
policy decisions, it combines
educational-cultural goals with
language goals.
• For example, an overall educational
approach could focus on one of the
following major goals:

9. Components of a Curriculum
• 1. A behavioristic orientation considers
the human species to be passive
organism, reacting to external,
environmental stimuli;
• 2. A rational-cognitive orientation
considers the human species to be the
source and initiator of all acts;
• 3. A humanistic orientation is concerned
with each individual’s growth and
development, while emphasizing
affective factors as well.

10. Components of a Curriculum
• The behavioristic view is an
educational-psychological
philosophy which is compatible with a
structuralist view of language and a
stimulus response view about human
language learning.

11. Diagram 2. The components of an
audiolingual curriculum

12. Components of a Curriculum
• The rational-cognitive orientation
became strongly reflected in the
views of human language proposed
by transformational-generative
linguistic in the 1960s and was
associated with the cognitive-code
approach to language learning.

13. Components of a Curriculum
• Contemporary approaches which link
a rational-cognitive view with a
communicative orientation towards
language use:
• a. Silent Way Approach. Developed
by Gattegno (1972) have distinct
affinities with a rational-cognitive
orientation in the way in which both
emphasize the learning of language
forms.

14. Components of a Curriculum
• b. Natural Approach. Developed by
Krashen and Terrel (1983). This
approach has much in common with
other contemporary views which
emphasize the importance of listening
and comprehension at the onset of
learning – among them Silent way.

15. Components of a Curriculum
• The humanistic orientation has
been closely associated with
the communicative view of
language.

16. Types of Syllabus
(Reilley)

17. Types of Syllabus (Reilley)
• Although six different types of
language teaching syllabi are treated
here as though each occurred
“purely,” in practice, these types rarely
occur independently of each other.
• Almost all actual language teaching
syllabi are combination of two or more
of the types. The characteristics,
differences, strengths, and weaknesses
of individual syllabi are defined as
follows:

18. Types of Syllabus (Reilley)
Structural (formal) Syllabus

19. Types of Syllabus (Reilley)
Notional / Functional
Syllabus

20. Types of Syllabus (Reilley)
Situational Syllabus

21. Types of Syllabus (Reilley)
Skill-based Syllabus

22. Types of Syllabus (Reilley)
Task- based Syllabus

23. Types of Syllabus (Reilley)
Content- based Syllabus

24. Structural (formal)
Syllabus

25. • The content of language
teaching is a collection of the
forms and structures, usually
grammatical, of the language
being taught.
• Examples include nouns, verb,
adjectives, statements,
question, subordinate clauses,
and so on

26. Notional / Functional
Syllabus

27. • The content of the language
teaching is a collection of the
functions that are performed
when language is used, or of the
notions that a language is used
to express.
• Examples of the functions
includes: informing, agreeing,
apologizing, requesting;
examples of notions includes
age, size, color, comparison, time
and so on.

28. Situational Syllabus

29. • The content of the language
teaching is a real and imaginary
situations which language occurs
or is used. A situation usually
involves several participants who
are engaged in some activity in
a specific meeting.
• The language occurring in the
situation involves number of
functions, combined into
plausible segment of discourse.

30. • The primary purpose of a
situational language teaching
syllabi is to teach the language
that occurs in the situation.
• Examples of the situations
includes: seeing the dentist,
complaining to the landlord,
buying a book at the
bookstore, meeting a new
student, and so on.

31. Skill-based Syllabus

32. • The content of the language
teaching is a collection of
specific abilities that may play
a part using language.
• Skills are the 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.

33. • While the situational syllabi group
functions together into specific
settings of the language use,
skill-based syllabi group
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-informed
paragraphs, giving effective oral
presentations and so on.

34. • The primary purpose of the
skill-based instruction is to learn
the specific language skill.
• A possible secondary purpose
is to develop more general
competence in the language,
learning only incidentally any
information that may be
available while applying the
language skills.

35. Task-based Syllabus

36. • The content of the teaching is a
series of complex and purposeful
tasks that the student wants or
need to perform with the
language they are learning.
• The tasks are defined as activities
with a purpose other than
language learning, but, as in the
content- based syllabus, the
performance of the tasks is
approached in a way intended
to develop second language
ability.

37. • Tasks integrate language (and
other) skills in specific settings of the
language.
• Task-based teaching differs from
situation-based teaching in that
while situational teaching has the
goal of teaching the specific
language content that occurs in the
situation (pre-defined products),
task-based teaching has the goal of
teaching students to draw on
resources to complete some piece
of work (a process).

38. • The students draw on a variety of
language forms, functions, and skills
often in an individual and
unpredictable way on completing
the tasks.
• Tasks can be used for language
learning are, generally, tasks that
the learners actually have to
perform in any case.
• Examples include: applying for a
job, talking with a social worker,
getting housing information over the
telephone, and so on.

39. Content-based
Syllabus

40. • The primary purpose of the
instruction is to teach some content
or information using the language
that the students are also learning.
• The students are simultaneously
language students and students of
whatever content is being taught.
• The subject matter is primary, and
the language learning occurs
incidentally to the content learning.
The content teaching is not
organized around the language
teaching, but vice versa.

41. • Content-based language
teaching is concerned with
information, while task-based
language teaching is concerned
with communicative and
cognitive processes.
• An example of content-based
language teaching is a science
class taught in the language the
students need or want to learn,
possibly with linguistic adjustment
to make the science more
comprehensible.