3.6.2. Vocabulary

One way of organising a syllabus would be in terms of vocabulary rather than grammatical structures or functions. This would certainly have the advantage of giving students words in an organised and sequenced way. And indeed, with the advent of the computer based vocabulary studies such a syllabus has become a real possibility.

Vocabulary based syllabuses obviously need to mesh in with grammatical syllabuses. But the way in which such connection could be made is not yet clearly established, although attempts have been made. The authors of the Oxford-Duden Pictorial English Dictionary made one of the most successful attempts in 1981.

The idea of vocabulary as an organising feature of a syllabus is closely connected with situation and topic-based syllabuses, for it is with situations and topic that lexical items cluster together.

3.6.3. Situation, topic and task

Language may not be the only way to organise a syllabus. The syllabus can be situation-based, topic-based and task-based.

1. Situation-based syllabuses

We could organise our teaching based round a number of situations, e.g. At the bank, At the railway station, At the newsagent’s, etc. This certainly looks like a good idea, especially if students are likely to be in those situations. But for the general language student we may find that situational organisation is a bit restrictive since it limits the amount of vocabulary available and may produce language use which only works in that situation.

2. Topic-based syllabuses

Topic-based syllabuses take a subject, or topic, as their organising principle. Thus, unit 1 might well deal with Health, unit 2 with Fashion, unit 3 with Families, etc. Such organisation allows for a wide range of language and activities. Within the topic of Health, for example, students can talk about the body, illnesses, sickness and cure, healthy living, environmental dangers to health, etc.

Topic-based syllabuses are certainly suitable for vocabulary material. They may also be more useful at more advanced levels since with limited language for beginner and elementary students it is difficult to sustain a topic over a length of time.

In general, the danger with topic-based syllabuses is that they demand the students’ continuing interest in the topic, i.e. something, which we cannot take for granted. Nevertheless, they provide a way of organising the syllabus which many teachers and students find attractive precisely because they do not insist on the teaching of language for its own sake, but use it in the service of interesting subjects.

3) Task-based syllabuses, on the other hand, take activities or tasks as the main organising principle. The syllabus becomes a list of tasks, rather than language or topics, etc. Task-based syllabuses are especially useful for skill-based courses where the students can run through a range of sub-skills in a variety of carefully sequenced tasks. For general courses, however, they may well be limiting in terms of language.

3.6.4. The syllabus and student needs

The final shape of a syllabus may depend to a large extent on the needs of the students who are going to be taught. The syllabus for a group of agronomists might look very different from the syllabus for a group of waiters, as well as the one for a general English class will differ from the one for philologists.

The level of the students will be vital too, since we would expect a beginner syllabus to be very different from the one for advanced students.

The age of the students may have a lot to do with it as well, especially where the selection of themes and topics is concerned. No less important would be the number and sequence of academic hours and the number of students in a group.

Other factors will also play a part. They are the cultural and educational background of the students as well as the kind of institution they are studying in.

Depending on our students’ needs we may wish to restrict the syllabus in some way. For beginners we restrict the language in the syllabus. For science students doing postgraduate studies we may restrict the skills in the syllabus to mainly reading, although this is by no means certain. For waiters we may restrict the tasks and we may place a special emphasis on techniques of performing communication, e.g., simulation and role-play.

This course deals especially with general (mainstream) English. In that context we must read the issue of restriction with great care. Certainly, language may be restricted according to level. We may want to restrict our choice of topics and activities based on the kind of students we are going to teach. But this would only be in terms of suitability according to age and class size, etc. Teaching general English classes means that syllabus designers, materials writers and teachers have a wide range of possibility at their disposal.

One area in which we would not expect to impose restrictions is the area of language skills. We would want to include work on all four skills in our syllabus, in other words. Certainly, we might exclude some genres (e.g., writing technical reports, reading scientific articles) from our list. We might restrict our sub-skills based on level, but a general English course should be a four-skill course.

As far as the competing claims of the different kinds of syllabus are concerned, syllabus designers need to be able to organise all the elements we have talked about into a coherent whole. Any programme of language study should have a list of language to be taught (and in what order); a list of functions; a list of vocabulary; a list of themes and topics to be dealt with (and their situations they are to be dealt with in); a list of tasks and activities that are to be included. Whether you are designing the syllabus for a national education system or simply for your own class these are the issues that confront you (as we shall see when we look at lesson planning). The manner in which these lists are written may vary. The issue of which part of the syllabus is the main organising principle may not an important one. It is the interrelationship of all the elements that we plan for our students’ needs most adequately.