What is syllabus? Differentiate syllabus from curriculum. Describe the types, purpose, and construction of syllabus.

Syllabus, a widely discussed issue in the domain of English Language Teaching, plays a very significant role for both the learners and the instructors. It guides the teachers what to teach and informs the learners what to be learnt. So its types, purpose and design are very important.   

Definition of syllabus:

A syllabus, in ELT, is a description of the contents of a course of instruction and the order in which they are to be taught. It actually performs as a guide for both teachers and learners by providing some goals to be accomplished.According to Breen, (1984) a syllabus can be seen as:

“…a plan of what is to be achieved through our teaching and our students' learning”

Yalden (1987) also refers to syllabus as:

“…a summary of the content to which learners will be exposed”

Hutchinson and Waters (1987) define syllabus as at its simplest level

“…as a statement of what is to be learnt”

They further add that it reflects of language and linguistic performance.

In simple words, a language teaching syllabus involves the combination of subject matter (what to teach) and linguistic matter (how to teach). 

Difference between syllabus and curriculum: 

Syllabus and Curriculum are two words that are often confused as words that have same sense. Butlinguists like Widdowson and Brumfit (1984),Dubin and Olshtain (1996), Richards, A M Shaw (1977)   affirm themas two different words that give different meanings. 

Syllabus usually refers to the program or outline of a course of study. Curriculum, on the other hand, is a word that refers to the subjects that are studied or prescribed for study in a school or in a college. This is the main difference between syllabus and curriculum.

As a matter syllabus is prescribed once in a year and the particular syllabus that is prescribed for the year should be completed both by the teacher and the student during the year. Examinations will be conducted at the end of the year only from the particular syllabus of the year in the particular subject. This shows that the student will follow another syllabus in the next year of a given three or four -year undergraduate course.

A curriculum, on the other hand,refers to the entire period of study in a college or a school. For example, the curriculum of a certain course of study such as B.Sc Chemistry includes all the subjects, including the allied subjects to be studied as part of the entire course of study. Hence it can be said that syllabus is contained in the curriculum as Syllabi make a curriculum. A curriculum gets completed once the syllabi get completed. 

The types of syllabus:

Jeremy Harmer classified syllabus into seven different types. Now we are going to discuss them in details in our following discussion. 

1.  The grammar syllabus/structural syllabus:Historically, the most prevalent syllabus type is perhaps the grammar syllabus in which the selection and grading of the content is on the basis of the complexity and simplicity of grammatical items.Longman Dictionary of ….suggests structural syllabus as:

“…a syllabus for the teaching of a language which is based on a selection of the grammatical items and structures e.g. Tenses, grammatical rules, sentence patterns”

….Although grammar syllabuses have been used with success over a long period of time, many methodologists have come to see grammar as the wrong organizing principle for a syllabus and have proposed a number of alternatives as frameworks to hang a language programme on.

2. Lexical syllabus: it is a vocabulary syllabus that is organized in terms of the most important, frequent, or useful vocabulary items in a language. Jeremy Harmer in his “The Practice of English Language Teaching” suggests Lexical syllabus as:

                “…a syllabus on the basis of vocabulary and lexis”

Lexical syllabuses are often organized according to levels such as the first 1000 words, the second 1000 words, etc.

3.The notional-functional syllabus:It is an approach to develop a communicative syllabus and widely discussed in the 1970s. According to Jack C. Richards  and Richard Schmidt  it is:

“…a syllabus in which the language content is arranged according to the meanings which a learner needs to express through language and the functions that the learner will use the language for”

Functions can be exemplified by instances such as inviting, requesting, agreeing, apologizing; and notions include age, colour, size, comparison, time, etc.

4.The situational syllabus:a situational syllabus is based on different real-life situations rather than different grammatical items.Longman Dictionary of Language Teaching and Applied Linguisticsdefines it as:

“…a teaching programme or method in which the selection, organization, and presentation of language items is based on situations”

Different types of real life situation may include the situation at the bank, at the supermarket, at home,at the supermarket, at the travel agent, at the restaurant etc. 

5. The topic-based syllabus: it is a language teaching syllabus in which content and teaching and learning activities are centered around topics or themes, such as “the family”, “leisure”, “music” “weather”, etc.in the topic-based syllabus, the weather topic is subdivided into items such as ‘the way weather changes’, ‘weather forecasting’, ‘weather and mood’, and ‘the damage that weather can cause’.

6. The task-based syllabus/procedural syllabus:It is a syllabus which is organized around tasks, rather than in terms of grammar, vocabulary or functions. For example the syllabus may suggest a variety of different kinds of tasks which the learners are expected to carry out in the language, such as using the telephone to obtain information; drawing maps based on oral instructions etc. 

7. The multi-syllabus syllabus/integrated syllabus /multi-skilled syllabus:It is a syllabus based upon a close relationship between different units of language such asLexis, grammar, functions, skills etc.  It seeks to provide for mutual reinforcement between the different components of the syllabus.

Purpose of syllabus: 

A syllabus represents “a formal academic agreement” ‘between instructors and students’. So the syllabus has a dual purpose, serving as both the students and the instructors such as:

The syllabus provides a basis upon which to resolve academic misunderstanding. Students should be encouraged to consult the syllabus throughout the course and to ask question about the syllabus.

It is the official document of record regarding all classroom activities. Without such a record, misunderstandings between students and faculty may occur. 

Construction of syllabus:

Syllabus design concerns the selection of items to be learnt and the grading of those items into an appropriate sequence.Every syllabus needs to be developed on the basis of certain criteria, such as 'learnability' and 'frequency', which can inform decisions about selection and ordering, as described below.

Learnability: some structural or lexical items are easier for students to learn than others. Thus easier things should be taught first and then the level of difficultyshould be increased as the students' language level rises. Learnability might tell us that, at beginner levels, it is easier to teach uses of was and were immediately after teaching uses of is and are, rather than follow is and are with the third conditional. 

Frequency: it is, at beginning levels, to includeitems which are more frequent in the language, than ones that are only used occasionally by native speakers. For example, “see” is used more often to mean understand (e.g. Oh, I see) than it is to denote vision. 

Coverage: some words and structures have greater coverage or scope for use than others. Thus we might decide to introduce the “going to” as future before the present continuous with future reference, if we could show that going to could be used in more situations than the present continuous. 

Usefulness: words like book and pen figure so highly in classrooms because they are useful words in that situation. In the same way, words for family members occur early on in a student's learning life because they are useful in the context of what students are linguistically able to talk about.

Last of all, from our above discussion, we can say that syllabus, for its enormous importance, becomes a crucial factor in the realm of ELT. All of its types are more or less equally important. So a pleasant syllabus demands a keen concentration in its design.  

Works Cieted

Nunan, D. Syllabus Design. Oxford: OUP, 1988.

Harmer, Jeremy. The Practice of English Language Teaching. New York: Longman

Richards, Jack C. and Schmidt, Richard. Longman Dictionary of Language Teaching and Applied Linguistics. New York: Longman, 1985.

This paper is prepared for you by Talim Enam, BA (Hons), MA in English.

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