ESP COURSE AND
SYLLABUS DESIGN
Every day you hear about
curriculum, courses,
syllabus and
course/syllabus design.
Have you ever stopped to
wonder what differentiates
one from the other?
SYLLABUS
• Content or “”subject matter
• "specifications of the content of language teaching which
have been submitted to some degree of structuring or
ordering with the aim of making teaching and learning a
more effective process." Wilkin,1981
• Organized syllabus inventory- Johnsons, 1982
SYLLABUS
• Crombie (1985) also defines syllabus as a list or inventory
of items or units with which learners are to be familiarised.
• "a plan of what is to be achieved through our teaching and
our students' learning" (Breen, 1984) while its function is
"to specify what is to be taught and in what order"
(Prabhu, 1984).
SYLLABUS
A syllabus is an expression of opinion on the nature of
language and learning; it acts as a guide for both the
teacher and learner by providing some goals to be
attained. Hutchinson and Waters (1987) define syllabus
as follows: “At its simplest level, a syllabus can be
described as a statement of what is to be learnt; it
reflects the language and linguistic performance”
CURRICULUM
• A very general concept. Allen, 1984
(philosophical, social and administrative factors)
• The totality of what happens in an educational
setting
CURRICULUM
• Curriculum development comprises of: (Brown, 1995; Johnson, 1989; Richards, 2001)
Design, implementation, and evaluation
CURRICULUM VS SYLLABUS
Curriculum covers all the activities and
arrangements made by the institution
throughout the academic year to facilitate the
learners and the instructors; whereas Syllabus
is limited to particular subject of a
particular class.
ESP CURRICULUM
The objective or goal is more to the practical
aspect: applying the language in a job-specific
related-situation.
Corresponding to this goal, ESP requires a
curriculum which facilitates the use of English
language in a job-related-situation.
THIS CURRICULUM CONTAINS THE
FOLLOWING ASPECTS
• Specific task, vocabulary, and language in context
(Higgins in Swales, 1988),
• The starting point based on the learners’ background
knowledge,
• Operational, communicative, and notional syllabus,
• Learner centred.
COURSE/ SYLLABUS DESIGN
• . A course is a set of lectures that consist of any type of content.
Scenario: Thus you and I might quite properly write rather different courses, with different
materials, but based on the same syllabus
SYLLABUS DESIGN
•Syllabus design is seen as "a matter of
specifying the content that needs to be
taught and then organizing it into a
teaching syllabus of appropriate learning
units."
• needs analysis
• formulation of objectives
• selection of content
• organization of content
• selection of learning activities
• organization of learning activities
• decisions about what needs evaluating and how to evaluate.
COURSE DESIGN
• Concerned precisely with how much design should
go into a particular course, that is, how much
should be negotiated with the learners, how much
predetermined by the teacher, and how much left
to chance and the mood of the participants on the
day.
CURRICULUM DESIGN
More general as it includes all processes in
which the designers should look into the
needs of the learners, develop aims,
determine an appropriate syllabus, and
evaluate it.
CONCLUSION
Designing a language syllabus is no doubt a
complex process with the language planner
paying every attention to all variables. Syllabus
design is a logical sequencing of what to be
taught. In ESP, the practitioner negotiates this with
the learner who knows why he or she needs
English.
ACTIVITY
By Three’s
• Think of any courses that needs to have an in-
depth knowledge of English.
• Justify why that course needs to learn English.
• Create a course design.
