Mindoro State College of Agriculture and Technology
Bongabong Campus
Labasan, Bongabong, Oriental Mindoro
ENGLISH
for
SPECIFIC PURPOSES
English for Specific Purposes 1
Unit 1:
English for Specific Puposes
English for Specific Purposes 2
Module 4
Syllabus Design, Condition to Syllabus Design, ESP
Syllabus
Objectives:
At the end of the lesson, you should be able to:
a. understand the concepts/conditions on syllabus development and design a syllabus in ESP.
Syllabus Design
It is not easy to separate the issues concerning syllabus design set up for specific purposes programmes
from general language teaching. Designing a syllabus to a specific group in a particular situation is not a simple
task for the designers aiming at achieving learners requirements, since the existence of various concepts and
basis dealing with syllabus. Thus, it seems of great importance to define „syllabus‟ in order to have a better
understanding of what it actually meant by the term in education.
Hutchinson & Waters (1987: 80) define “Syllabus” as “... a document which says what will (or at least
what should) be learnt”. In the same vein, Robinson (1991: 34) states that syllabus is “a plan of work and is,
thus, essential for the teacher, as a guideline and context of class content.” The above assertions point out that
the syllabus first concerns the teacher, and that it helps him/her plan courses.
Basturkmen (2006:20) argues that “in order to specify what language will be taught, items are typically
listed and referred to as the syllabus”. She exemplifies the definition by giving a standard view of the syllabus
through the figure below.
Another issue in defining „syllabus‟ is that it is “an instrument by which the teacher,..., can achieve a
certain coincidence between the needs and the aims of the learners, and the activities that will take place in the
classroom” (Yalden 1987:86) that is to say that the syllabus is “a teaching device to facilitate learning” (Nunan
1988:6) which organises classroom activities according to learners aims and requirements after the process of
needs identification and analysis.
The syllabus is perceived differently in the goals and functions by the literature in the filed, because of
the existence of different educational approaches, accordingly, various types of syllabi are suggested by the
scholars each one being systematically planned according to specific language components.
Types of Syllabi
According to Basturkmen (2006:21) syllabuses can be “synthetic‟ in which the “language is segmented
into discrete linguistic items for presentation one at a time”, or “analytic‟ wherein “language is presented whole
English for Specific Purposes 3
chunks at a time without linguistic control”. Long & Crookes, (1993) give a classification of the different
syllabi which compose the synthetic and analytic programs.
The figure shows that the “Synthetic‟ syllabus includes the classical approaches to syllabuses as the
grammatical, the lexical, the functional- notional, the situational and topical ones. However, the „Analytic‟ one
consists of the task-based, the learner centred and content- based syllabi which are considered as modern
approaches in language teaching methodologies.
Each one of them is based on a specific conceptual teaching ideology and not all of them received
popular status, accordingly the researcher will deal only with the most known and largely used.
a-Synthetic syllabi
The synthetic syllabi “…rely on learners (assumed) ability to learn a language in parts independently of
one another, and also to integrate, or synthesise the pieces when the time comes to use them for communicative
purposes” ( Long & Crookes, 1993:12). That is to say that the teaching/ learning process is based on providing
the different language forms and structures separately.
b-Analytic Syllabi
The analytic syllabi “… rely on the learners‟ ability to induce and infer language rules, as well as on
innate knowledge of linguistic universals” (Long & Crookes, 1993:11). So, analytic syllabi are based on
learners’ personal capacities and aptitudes to produce the different grammatical structures and forms. The
syllabus plan is “organised in terms of the purposes for which people are learning language and the kinds of
language performance that are necessary to meet those purposes” (Wilkins,1976:13).
In reality, the different kinds and forms of syllabi previously referred to and even other types, not
mentioned in this work, are relatively in almost all the times pooled when using them. Furthermore the syllabi
elements are combined by the practitioners so as to find the correct and suitable teaching plan. It is important to
admit that “no syllabus can bring positive results on its own because of the variety of students’ needs.”
(Benyelles, 2009:55). For this reason it is essential to expose learners to the various elements of the target
language knowledge in a systematic way in order to help the students to produce correct language forms and to
use English appropriately.
In line with the fact that it is difficult to achieve satisfactory outcomes by using a single syllabus,
Harmer (2001) suggests that instead of courses founded on a specific types, “the syllabus may show a
combination of items from grammar, lexis, language functions, situations, topics, tasks and different language
skill tasks or pronunciation issues” (Benyelles, 2009:55), this view is labelled „multi-syllabus syllabus‟ or
“eclectic syllabus” in which all the elements are matched and synchronized.
English for Specific Purposes 4
Conditions to Syllabus Design
Harmer (2001) establishes some rules that should be taken into consideration when designing a syllabus,
and states that “every syllabus needs to be developed on the basis of certain criteria” (Harmer, 2001:295), which
consist of:
a- Learnability: the content should be organised in a gradual manner in order to be more efficient, i.e.
from the easier themes to the more complex ones.
b- Frequency: integration of the most frequent items used in target language.
c- Coverage: incorporate the terminology and structures that have wider coverage in the use of the
language.
d- Usefulness: set up language forms and skills that are socially useful for the learners.
These criteria are greatly influenced by some environmental factors surrounding the teaching learning
situation as the existence of a number of social restrictions that have a great impact on its effectiveness.
Benyelles (2009) selected the main constraints as follows:
-The language setting which concerns the role of the language in the community.
-The areas of language use in society (how and where it is used).
-The role of the language in the political life taking into account the countries economy and technology
(Ashworth, 1985 a).
-The attitudes of groups and individuals towards the language. This is determined by the degree of their
awareness of the language (Van Leir, 1995). (Benyelles, 2009: 58-59)
To summarize, the designer will have to take into consideration the various parameters that can
influence the technical and pedagogical criteria in designing appropriate and practical syllabus.
ESP Syllabus
Designing an ESP syllabus is not an easy task to perform because of its significant and complex role.
However, it obviously satisfies a lot of needs since it has a multifunctional purpose. Thus, syllabus designers
need to be aware of the different functions the syllabus fulfils so that it can be designed and used most
appropriately.
For that reason, Munby (1978) introduced Communicative Needs Processor (CNP) as an approach to
investigate specific communication needs of a particular group, according to socio-cultural and stylistic
variables which act together to find out a profile of such needs. That is to say that the target needs and target
level performance are established by investigating the target situation. In the CNP, descriptions are taken from
“the variables that affect communication needs by organizing them as parameters in a dynamic relationship to
each other” (Munby, 1978: 32). This process will engender the nature of the content that will be selected and set
up for ESP learners’ programme.
In ESP, the nature of the content is extracted from real life situations in which the syllabus designers
have to select the most relevant language discourses that will supply for learners target requirements. However,
“it is necessary to introduce what is known as common-core language (Miliani, 1994) selected according to
students own needs” (Benyelles, 2009:64) in order to provide basics of language knowledge. Accordingly, “one
might begin with grammar and pronunciation only, as one does in a structural approach, but introduce work in
the language functions, and in discourse skills fairly early, and in time increase the component of the course”
(Yalden,1987:94).
ESP rejects “synthetic‟ approaches to course design (Basturkmen 2006:103); so, it is important to
present the language using an eclectic method by combining the required features of the language
systematically and gradually according to the target objectives.
The syllabus is also an essential document in the teaching/learning process since it provides a set of
principles for materials production, teaching, and testing; this is why, it should be flexible, open-ended, and
subject to regular adjustment.
English for Specific Purposes 5
Bibliography
Lamri, C. E. (2016). An Introduction to English for Specific Purposes. Abou Bekr Belkaid University –
TLEMCEN Faculty of Arts and Languages Department of English
Gatehouse, K. (2001) Key Issues in English for Specific Purposes (ESP): Curriculum Development . khoey [at]
[Link] < [Link]
Mumby, J. (1978).Communicative Syllabus Design. Cambridge : Cambridge University Press.
_________ (1994). Syllabus Design. Seminar presented in Magister Course .I.L.E: Tlemcen.
Nunan, D. (1988). Syllabus Design. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
[Link]