Table 1 Stages, decision-making roles and products in curriculum development.

The syllabus

What is a syllabus?

A syllabus may consist of an independent publication – a book or booklet – if it is intended to cover all the courses in a particular context regardless of the actual materials used: a country’s national syllabus for schools, for example, or the syllabus of a group of language colleges.

The syllabus is a description of the contents of a course of instruction and the order in which they are to be taught.

Characteristics of Syllabi

A syllabus is a document which consists, essentially, of a list. This list specifies all the things that are to be taught in the course(s) for which the syllabus was designed (a beginner’s course, for example, or a six-year secondary-school program): it is therefore comprehensive (wide-ranging, all-inclusive). The actual components of the list may be either content items (words, structures, topics), or process ones (tasks, methods). The former is the more common. The items are ordered, usually having components that are considered easier or more essential earlier, and more difficult and less important ones later. This ordering may be fairly detailed and rigid, or general and flexible.

The syllabus generally has explicit objectives, usually declared at the beginning of the document, on the basis of which the components of the list are selected and ordered.

Another characteristic of the syllabus is that it is a public document. It is available for examination and analysis not only by the teachers who are expected to implement it, but also by the consumers (the learners or their parents or employers), by representatives of the relevant authorities (inspectors, school boards), by other interested members of the public (researchers, teacher trainers or textbook writers).

There are other, optional features, displayed by some syllabi and not others. A time schedule is one: some syllabi delimit the time framework of their components, prescribing, for example, that these items should be dealt with in the first month. A particular preferred approach or methodology to be used may also be defined. It may list recommended materials – course books, visual materials or supplementary materials.

1. It consists of a comprehensive list of content items (to explain words [vocabulary], structures [grammar], topics [pollution, family, etc]) and process items (tasks and methods).
2. It is order either from simple to complex or from more essential to less essential.
3. Explicit objectives.
4. It is a public document.
5. It may indicate a time schedule.
6. Preferred methodology/approach. 
7. It may recommend materials (e.g. a tape).

Types of syllabi

1. Grammatical: a list of structures such as the present tense, comparison of adjectives, relative clauses. These are divided into sections graded according to difficulty/importance.
2. Lexical: list of vocabulary items (words and their different associations + idioms).
3. Grammatical-lexical: very common. Both structures and vocabulary are listed (together or in separate lists).
4. Situational: it teaches the language needed for each situation; headings refer to situations or locations such as ‘at the restaurant’ ‘at the shop’.
5. Topic-based: headings are topic-based, e.g. pollution, marriage, food.
6. Notional: general notions (number, time, place, colour) and specific notions (man, woman, afternoon à like voc. items).
7. Functional- Notional: giving orders, asking, requesting, giving directions, promising. Purely functional syllabi are not quite common, that’s why the functions are combined with notions.