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Sweet, H. (1885) Elementarbuch des gesprochenen Englisch (Primer of spoken English), Oxford: Clarendon Press; Leipzig: Weigel. Sweet, H. (1891) A new English grammar, Oxford: Clarendon Press. Sweet, H. (1964) The practical study of languages, London: Oxford University Press. Further reading Atherton, M. (1995) `Grasping sentences as wholes: Henry Sweet's idea of language study in the early middle ages', Neuphilologische Mitteilungen 96. 2: 17785. Atherton, M. (1996) `Being scientific and relevant in the language textbook: Henry Sweet's primers for learning colloquial English', Paradigm 20: 120. Atherton, M. (1996) `Henry Sweet's psychology of language learning', in K.D. Dutz and H.-J. nNiederehe (eds), Theorie und Rekonstruktion, Mu ster: Nodus. Howatt, A.P.R. (1984) A history of English language teaching, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Kelly, J. and Local, J. (1985) `The modernity of Henry Sweet', Revista Canaria De Estudios Ingleses (Universidad de la Laguna) 10: 20916. MacMahon, M.K.C. (1994) `Henry Sweet's linguistic scholarship: the German connection', Anglistik 5. 2: 91101.
MARK ATHERTON

such as how many languages should be studied, at what ages, how many hours should be devoted to the study of a language, etc. It is the term `syllabus' that is usually employed by applied linguists in discussions of foreign language, reflecting the tendency in foreign language methodology to separate foreign languages from the rest of the curriculum. However, when a broader perspective is taken for example, in discussions of LANGUAGE ACROSS THE CURRICULUM or of how CULTURAL AWARENESS, information technology, etc., can be integrated into FL teaching then the more general term may be preferred. Clearly, there is an area of overlap between the two concepts. Scope and significance of syllabus design The scope of a syllabus can vary considerably. At one end of the scale it can be purely institutional say, within a private language school and specify the language content of a single specific course. At the other, it can be part of a national curriculum and take the form of a complex document drawn up by a ministry of education and incorporating components such as a `teacher's handbook'. It is also common for examination boards to issue `syllabuses', though it could be argued that this type of specification is an inventory rather than a coherent syllabus. A syllabus may be explicit that is to say, it exists as a separate document, or it may be implicit for example, in a TEXTBOOK, where it only becomes apparent by examining the categories in the table of contents. In the last quarter of the twentieth century, syllabus design represented one of the central topics of APPLIED LINGUISTICS and educational policy, since the syllabus is seen as a means of positively influencing MATERIALS design and classroom practices. In respect of policy, its potential to provide a common basis for foreign language learning has both ideological and practical implications. This is apparent at national level in many countries, but it is also evident at an international level where considerable attention has been devoted to the issues by the COUNCIL OF EUROPE. Syllabuses are necessary for three main reasons. The first, and least controversial, is transparency: a

GUAGE PLANNING,

Syllabus and curriculum design

A syllabus can be defined as the specification of aims and the selection and grading of content to be used as a basis for planning foreign language, or any other educational, courses. (It might be noted that the plural form `syllabuses' is now usually preferred to `syllabi'.) In English, though not in some other languages, a distinction is made between a syllabus and a curriculum. The narrower specification of a syllabus, which refers to the aims and content of a particular subject, can be seen as part of a wider and more general curriculum. This may go beyond specifying the content of a single subject and may include both organisational aspects and questions of overall policy or LAN-

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well-designed syllabus provides a framework for clarifying OBJECTIVES, content and methods for learners, teachers and perhaps parents too. The second is that of regularising teaching and learning, which, particularly in the case of national syllabuses, may help to ensure uniformity of content, attainment standards, etc. The third is that of guiding the process of teaching and learning, in particular by specifying methodology. This represents a controversial aspect of syllabus design, since the dividing line between guiding and constraining can easily be overstepped. A syllabus that is prescriptive or too comprehensive in its specifications may be seen by teachers as forcing them into a straitjacket, and may result in the negative view that teachers sometimes have of the type of syllabus, referred to by van Lier (1996: 8) as `disempowering', which seeks to impose content and methods on classroom teachers. The degree of acceptance a syllabus enjoys amongst teachers and learners may be linked to factors such as: Who draws up the syllabus? Who is the intended reader? To what extent are teachers and learners consulted in the design process? How much scope does a syllabus leave for individual interpretation? One approach is to `democratise' syllabus design procedures by including classroom teachers and students in the construction process, a negotiated syllabus (Nunan, 1988b), and by piloting it before it takes effect. Another interesting development in this connection is a type of syllabus designed to be read by the learners themselves rather than by teachers or textbook writers. Factors in designing syllabuses The design of a syllabus may be a complex procedure, consisting of several stages: preparation; construction; implementation; and EVALUATION (Richards and Rogers, 1986: 159). An important part of the preparation stage is a NEEDS ANALYSIS, which has the function of determining the needs for which learners require a language. It might include aspects such as the situations or domains in which learners might use the foreign language, the topics which should form part of a course, the SKILLS required by the learner, their expected attainment levels, the methods by which they wish to be taught, their preferred LEARNING STYLES, etc.

The informants of a needs analysis are usually the students themselves, but may also be teachers or employers, and the analysis can take the form of a questionnaire, an interview, or some other piece of research. A second source of input which will determine the design of a syllabus will be theoretical aspects such as views of language learning held by the designers themselves, or current thinking in education or methodology, which will be reflected in the content specification. The categories used in specifying content in foreign language syllabuses have expanded considerably from the traditional list of structures to a range of categories that incorporate not only language, but also learning and teaching as well as general educational aspects. The following types of categories are those most commonly found in modern syllabuses:
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Objectives of language learning, which might range in their definition from general aims or goals of foreign language learning (e.g. `to be able to interact with NATIVE SPEAKERS in real situations') to more specific performance-based objectives (e.g. `to be able to ask for and understand directions'). Contextual categories which specify the type of domains in which students should be able to interact and which are therefore to be included in the foreign language programme. These include: settings (e.g. in a restaurant, church, school), topics (e.g. leisure activities, house and home), behavioural specifications, i.e. what learners should be able to do in communication (e.g. describing their own house, saying how they travel to school). Language items, which may be described in terms of grammatical forms or structures (e.g. present progressive, definite article); NOTIONS (e.g. size, time, frequency); functions (e.g. apologising, asking the way, greeting someone); lexical lists; the four skills READING, WRITING, LISTENING, SPEAKING and related sub-skills (e.g. listening for gist, scanning a text for specific information, note-taking); TEXT TYPES that students will be confronted with (e.g. a conversation, a newspaper advertisement); discourse categories (e.g. typical dialogue exchange patterns); compensation strategies to cope with

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language difficulties (e.g. asking for clarification, guessing from context). Teaching methodology, consisting of general pedagogical guidelines or specific examples of classroom tasks and activities. Learning STRATEGIES, usually examples of `LEARNING TO LEARN' techniques, ways of enhancing AUTONOMOUS LEARNING. Cultural awareness or sociocultural components, which may be: knowledge based (e.g. major national holidays), behavioural (e.g. interpreting body language, visiting rituals), or attitudinal (e.g. developing empathy towards otherness). Attainment levels, specified in terms of skillbased behaviour and corresponding degrees of proficiency, often defined as levels or bands (Carroll and West, 1989).

Communicative syllabus design Most differences between syllabuses and controversies surrounding them concern the specification of content, and run parallel to swings of the pendulum in linguistic and methodological approaches. Until the early 1970s, the main purpose of most syllabuses was seen as listing and grading the language content of courses, textbooks or examinations. In keeping with prevailing views of linguistic description, this took the form of lists of formal items to be mastered by students: the socalled structural syllabus. From the mid-1970s onwards a shift of emphasis in language description and corresponding changes in methodologies led to a broad acceptance of principles of COMMUNICATIVE LANGUAGE TEACHING, according to which language was to be seen in terms of `acts of communication'. For syllabus designers, the nature of whose task requires them to think in categories, this necessitated a major re-orientation. First, this different approach required a broadening of categories beyond narrow linguistic units to incorporate use-based contextual and behavioural components, i.e. units of communication. Whilst this did not preclude the specification of language components, it became necessary to stipulate language categories based on the meanings that give rise to the forms, rather than the forms themselves, which in turn required new theories of

language meaning. The term `notionalfunctional' reflects the two principal categories of meaning which found their way into communication syllabuses. Notions came to be used to refer to general existential concepts possibly universal categories of human experience such as time and space, whereas language functions can be defined as the purpose for which language is used, often specified as action-based or behavioural meaning, such as `apologising' or `asking for help'. Both the term notionalfunctional syllabus and communicative syllabus are used, and sometimes confused, in theoretical discussions. The former is a narrower term, referring to the semantically-oriented specification of language; the latter includes reference to aspects of language use (contextual features, skills, etc.) as well as to methodology. One of the aims of communicative syllabus design was to take a broader `top-down' entry point to categorisation, rather than the traditional `bottom-up' view which begins with grammatical structures. To this end, Wilkins (1976) distinguished between a synthetic approach, in which language items are introduced separately and sequentially so that, as in a jigsaw puzzle, the student gradually builds up a picture of the whole structure, and an analytic approach, which involves a graduation based on broader units such as situations, texts, etc. The practice of `communicative' syllabus design was strongly influenced by two publications which attempted to provide communication-based descriptions in the form of comprehensive inventories, both of which appeared in the 1970s. These were Munby's Communicative Syllabus Design (1978) and the very influential Council of Europe publication, the THRESHOLD LEVEL (van Ek, 1975; van Ek and Trim, 1991) which, though an inventory rather than an actual graded syllabus, has served as the basis for the design of many European national syllabuses for a variety of different languages. Alternative designs Although communicative or notionalfunctional syllabuses took a radically different approach, their primary task was nevertheless to categorise language, albeit from a user-based semantic, rather than formal, perspective. In the 1980s, following a

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general learner-centred view of foreign language learning, the attention of methodologists and applied linguists began to move away from the analysis of language use to focus more strongly on the process of SECOND LANGUAGE ACQUISITION. As a result, there was a shift in emphasis from what students should learn in the direction of how students do learn. As far as teachers were concerned, they came to be regarded less as `managers of communication' and more as `facilitators of acquisition'. This led to a distinction being made between product-oriented and processoriented syllabuses (Nunan, 1988a; van Lier, 1996). `Product' can refer to any kind of target knowledge, ability or other outcome of learning, be it linguistic, cultural or whatever, whereas `process' refers to the means by which students gain this knowledge or develop these skills. This might be seen in terms of classroom activities or tasks the task-based or procedural syllabus (see Johnson, 1982; Nunan, 1988b) or at a more abstract, psychological level in terms of learning strategies or cognitive processes which learners employ to facilitate acquisition. A process approach, based on principles of learner autonomy, can represent a direct challenge to product-based syllabuses, as can be seen from the following quotation: [a curriculum] . . . is process-oriented in the sense that pedagogical interaction is motivated by our understanding of learning rather than by a list of desired competencies, test scores, or other products. The settings of goals and objectives . . . are themselves integral parts of the curriculum process, rather than preestablished constraints that are imposed on it from the outside. (van Lier, 1996: 3) Despite its appeal to idealism, it is likely that both at an institutional, and more especially at a national, level a purely process-oriented approach will be difficult to implement, for, as Stoks (1996) points out, these pose a problem of accountability. It seems that governments, teachers and students alike feel a need for expected outcomes of learning to be stated at the outset of a course. A further development is the outward expansion of the foreign language syllabus in the direction of a more general curriculum, in the sense that the

two terms were distinguished above. One reason for this is the wish to locate language learning within more general educational aims, seen, for example, in the strong focus that is given to the category of CULTURAL AWARENESS or sociocultural competence, and another is a much broader view which is taken of learning. This trend can be seen by comparing the two major Council of Europe documents, the Threshold Level with its mainly language-based specification, and the COMMON EUROPEAN FRAMEWORK of Reference, whose categorisation reflects this broader perspective. A further issue in syllabus design is the grading of content within a syllabus, with regard to both selection and organisation. In many syllabuses the criteria for selecting items of language (GRAMMAR, functions, VOCABULARY, etc.) are not made explicit but may be based on frequency of occurrence, usefulness to the learner or perceived difficulty or complexity of structure, content, task, etc. An interesting approach the lexical syllabus is taken by Willis (1990), who proposes as a basis for selection and grading the frequency of occurrence of lexical items in AUTHENTIC language. There are three significant features of this approach: first, Willis's data is based on a twenty-million-word corpus of authentic language (COBUILD): second, Willis not only incorporates lexical items but syntactic and discourse patterns too; and third, he proposes an analytic syllabus, i.e. that a syllabus should be based on texts rather than isolated lexical items of structures. Another aspect of grading is the question of organisation. Most syllabuses take a linear approach. Each language item is specified only once to indicate when it is to be first introduced into a teaching programme. An alternative approach is offered by the spiral or cyclical syllabus (Corder, 1973: 297), which includes proposals for recycling various elements. Every syllabus operates within certain contextual constraints and, as Johnson (1989: 18) says, one of the challenges of the syllabus designer is to reconcile `what is desirable (policy) with what is acceptable and possible (PRAGMATICS)'. In addition, it is important to remember that a syllabus is only one element of an overall operational framework, which may begin with policy making, include materials development, and end up with what

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Girard (Girard et al., 1994: 108) in his model terms `teaching and learning acts'. As van Lier says: A map is not the territory. In a similar way, the syllabus is not the journey. Experience, appreciation, criticism, and so on, are not laid down in the syllabus, they are merely made available by it, and brought to it by the learners. (van Lier, 1996: 20) See also: Council of Europe Modern Languages Projects; Graded objectives; Notions and functions; Objectives in language teaching and learning; Planning for foreign language teaching; Proficiency movement; Teacher education; Textbooks References Carroll, B.J. and West, R. (1989) ESU framework, London: Longman. Corder, S.P. (1973) Introducing applied linguistics, Harmondsworth: Penguin. Girard, D. (1994) Selection and distribution of contents in language syllabus, Strasbourg: Council of Europe. Johnson, K. (1982) Communicative syllabus design and methodology, Oxford: Pergamon. Johnson, R.K. (ed.) (1989) The second language curriculum, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Munby, J. (1978) Communicative syllabus design, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Nunan, D. (1988a) Syllabus design, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Nunan, D. (1988b) The learner-centred curriculum, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Richards, J.C. and Rodgers, T.S. (1986) Approaches and methods in language learning, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Stoks, G.L.M. (1996) Modern languages: learning, teaching, assessment. A common European framework of reference. Guide for curriculum developers, Strasbourg: Council of Europe. van Ek, J.A. (1975) The Threshold Level in a European unit/credit system for modern language learning by adults, Strasbourg: Council of Europe. van Ek, J.A. and Trim, J.L.M. (1991) Threshold Level 1990, Strasbourg: Council of Europe. van Lier, L. (1996) Interaction in the language curriculum, London: Longman. Wilkins, D. (1976) Notional syllabuses, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Willis, D. (1990) The lexical syllabus, London: Collins ELT. Further reading Artal, A., Carrion, M.J. and Monros, G. (1997) `Can a cultural syllabus be integrated into the general language syllabus?, in M. Byram and G. Zarate (eds), The sociocultural and intercultural dimension of language learning and teaching, Strasbourg: Council of Europe. Council of Europe (1996) Modern languages: learning, teaching, assessment. A common European framework of reference, Strasbourg: Council of Europe. Johnson, R.K. (ed.) (1989) The second language curriculum, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Nunan, D. (1992) Collaborative language learning and teaching, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Widdowson, H.G. (1990) Aspects of language teaching, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
DAVID NEWBY