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:
1. Structural (formal) Syllabus
- The content of language teaching is a collection of the forms and structures, usually grammatical, of the language being taught.
- Examples include nouns, verbs, adjectives, statements, questions, subordinate clauses, and so on.
2. A notional/ functional syllabus
- 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 include: informing, agreeing, apologizing, requesting; examples of notions includes age, size, color, comparison, time, and so on.
3. Situational syllabus
- 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 meeting.
- The language occurring in the situation involves a number of functions, combined into a plausible segment of discourse.
- The primary purpose of a situational language-teaching syllabus is to teach the language that occurs in the situations.
- Examples of the situations include: seeing the dentist, complaining to the landlord, buying a book at the bookstore, meeting a new student, and so on.
4. A skill-based syllabus
- The content of language teaching is a collection of specific abilities that may play a part 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. 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-formed paragraphs, giving effective oral presentations, and so on.
- The primary purpose of the skill-based instructions 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.
5. A task-based syllabus
- The content of the teaching is a series of complex and purposeful tasks that the student wants or needs 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.
- 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). The students draw on a variety of language forms, functions, and skills often in an individual and unpredictable way, in 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.
6. A content-based syllabus
- 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 language learning occurs incidentally to content learning. The content teaching is not organized around the language teaching, but vice-versa.
- 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.
