A situational syllabus teaches language through real or imaginary situations involving participants engaged in an activity in a specific setting. The purpose is to teach language relevant to learners' present or future needs. Situations can be classified based on information type, linguistic focus, static/dynamic nature, or type. While situations provide context for form and meaning, overreliance on predetermined situations can hinder transfer to real language use. Situational syllabi are best used to supplement other methods by presenting new material or practicing in realistic ways.

1. Situational Syllabi
Kranka, 1987
Mahsa Farahanynia
2016

2. What is a situational syllabus?
 A situational syllabus is one in which the content of language
teaching is a collection of real or imaginary situations in which
language occurs or is used. A situation usually involves several
participants who are engaged in some activity in a specific setting.

3. What is the purpose of situational syllabi?
 The primary purpose of a situational language teaching syllabus
is to teach the language that occurs in the situations. Sometimes
the situations are purposely relevant to the present or future needs
of the language learners, preparing them to use the new language
in the kinds of situations that make up the syllabus.

4. Different typologies of situations
A) Based on the type of information:
 The limbo situation is one in which the specific setting of the
situation is of little or no importance, and what is important is the
particular language focus involved.
Example: Introductions at a party.
 The concrete situation is one in which the situations are enacted
against specific settings; and what is important is the setting and
the language associated with it.
Example: Ordering a meal in a restaurant and going through
customs
 The mythical situation is one that depends on some sort of
fictional story line, frequently with a fictional cast of characters
in a fictional place.

5. Different typologies of situations (cont.)
B) Based on linguistic focuses: Situations are presented in such a
way that there are
 Grammatical focus
 Pronunciation focus
 Lexical focus
 Functional/notional focus
 Discoursal/ interactional focus

6. Different typologies of situations (cont.)
C) Based on static/dynamic nature of situation
 Situations are presented to students in the form of completed discourse
 The students are expected to modify parts or all of it. Many situations are
presented in full, and students are then asked to play out the same situation
using their own language and, possibly, settings.
 The students are expected to create parts or all of it situations. For example,
role plays.

7. Different typologies of situations (cont.)
D) Based on the type of situation
 Dialogue as the most familiar way of presenting a situation which
include passive listening, active listening, and memorization.
 Role plays in which learners act out or perform roles in defined
situations.
 DiPietro't scenarios as a more sophisticated version of situation
in which learners are required to play out roles in a particular
dramatic situation, usually a complex problem-solving setting
with elements that the participants do not anticipate. The situation
is provided to the learner without dialogue or language, and the
learners, usually in a group, write or prepare the language and
perform the scenario.

8.  With any language instructional content that attempts to
incorporate some sort of language use, the important
distinction between “real” and “realistic” must be kept in
mind.
 Realistic language use: Language that is created for the
classroom but intended to mirror actual occasions of
language use.
 Real language use: Language that actually occurs outside of
the classroom, with few artificial constraints
Most classroom dialogues semirealistic.

9.  Because of the wide variety of types and applications of situational
content, it is not associated with any specific theory of learning.
Situational content has been used with audio-lingual (behaviorist),
cognitive, and experiential (acquisition-based) instruction.
 Situational syllabi are also associated with various theories of
language. For example, a syllabus that relied almost exclusively on
realistic situations is broadly communicative view of language and
an experiential theory of learning.

10. Examples of Situational Syllabi
 Examples of situations include: seeing the dentist, complaining to the
landlord, buying a book at the bookstore, meeting a new student, asking
directions in a new town, and so on.
A representative list of the situations used
in the continuing story is as follows:
Another representative list of situations is
taken from a supplementary conversation
text:

11. Positive Characteristics of Situational Syllabi
 Situational syllabi can lead more directly than others to learners' ability to
communicate in specific settings, especially for highly specific and predictable
settings.
 Situations provide contexts of discourse in which form and meaning coincide,
and the form-meaning relationship can be reinforced. (going beyond sentence
level to discourse level)
 The use of situations in language teaching can help to provide some social and
cultural information about the language and its users in a nondidactic way; well-
prepared situations can show how native speakers act and what they talk about
and are concerned about.

12. Negative Characteristics of Situational Syllabi
1. Too great a use of predetermined and artificial situations can lead
to lack of transfer to real language use, as students are led to
overreliance on pre-learned routines and patterns or language use
which can interfere with productive language learning.
2. Situational syllabi present sequencing problems. Few criteria are
available for determining the difficulty of situations and
sequencing them in instructional syllabi. Sequencing can reflect
some natural chain of events (buying the ticket, getting on the
train) but it is difficult to control language that might occur in such
sequences without, again, resorting to artificiality.

13. Negative Characteristics of Situational Syllabi
3. A reliance on situational content can cause problems where the
learners or the instructional setting do not want cultural values to
accompany the language.
4. It is extremely difficult to create authentic language for
instructional purposes.
a) The actual patterns of use of native speakers in many
situations are still unknown, an intuition is not a reliable guide.
b) Even when accurate native speaker norms are available, a
special type of talent is required to write focused-and natural
dialogue, rarely found in published texts.
c) The tendency of authenticity in situational content become
outdate & the more specific and accurate the language
associated with a situation, the more likely it will become
inappropriate quickly.

14. Applications
 Situational syllabi rarely carry the entire content weight of an
instructional program. Many "methods" from grammar-translation
to Berlitz to modern integrated textbooks, have used examples of
the language being learned in situations and settings. Many
collections of conversation or communication activities are
organized in terms of situations.
 Another case is the conversational course whose objective is
limited conversational ability with specific topics.
 Another one is the instruction intended for learners with specific
situations, where the language that will occur is highly predictable
(e.g., with waiters in restaurants).
 Another case is as a corrective tool for learners who have already
received a great deal of formal instruction but who have weak
functional ability in the language.

15. Applications
 Situational content is usable with learners of all ages, though it is
especially useful for children who neither want nor are ready for
formal analysis.
 Situational material in many forms may be used simply
1. To present new material, providing examples of the
phenomena being taught,
2. To practice material that has been presented in more isolated
form in realistic ways
3. To provide comprehensible input and a continuous story line
through some set of materials or a course
4. To provide opportunities for learners to create their own
discourse in defined situations