Syllabus & Course Design for ESP Robinson 1991

Praxis: Start | Anforderungen | Vorkenntnisse | Leistungsbereitschaft | Zerlegung | Prüfung | Implementierung

Overview: types of syllabi

 
  1. Content-based: Language form - notion - function: Product ends-driven
  2. Skill-based
  3. Method-based: processes - tasks: Process means-driven
 

(1) Content-based syllabus

 
 

traditional, well established designs

Form

consisting of an ordered set of language items
typically graded by supposed difficulty of learning
 

Notion

basic units are notions or concepts (e.g. time, space)
or functions (e.g. greeting, asking, seeking clarification) (Wilkins)

  1. structural-analytic, i.e. language form
  2. functional-analytic, i.e. notional-functional
  3. non-analytic, i.e. process

Situation

"Is there any possible way … of sequencing situations?" (Bell)
Order: in business; chronological order of a typical day's or week's work
 

Topic

deploys the content of the student's work or specialist study
LAC: Language Across the Curriculum

 

(2) Skill-based syllabus

 
 

major innovation in the 1970s

Focus

on exclusively or principally on one of the four traditional language skills
writing business letters - oral skills for business people - academic reading
actual content may be in language forms or functions (content-based syl.)
 

Micro skills

belong to more than one l. skill, e.g. deducing gist: both listening & reading
taxonomy of skills:
primary language skills which are acquired naturally in a first language are to be extended in the traditional language education
 

Macro skills

'professional-' 'communication skills': e.g. making an oral presentation
 

Questions

involvment of cognitive skills
transfer of skills from one language (e.g. first l.) to another language

 

(3) Method-based syllabus

 
 

the major new paradigm

Process

key feature: what happens in the classroom is a matter for negotiation between the students and the teacher; discipline & culture specific:
 

Negotiability

+ students learning seminar skills
– technical students learning about safety procedures
 

Tasks

activities ordered according to cognitive difficulty
Class time is devoted to performance of the tasks
attention to language only if this is necessary for completion of the task
 

Procedure

starting point: a set of objectives which define the terminal behavior required of the student (Wilson)

a set of intermediate or enabling objectives is then set up to help the students attain the terminal behaviour; enabling objectives are called tasks.

tasks reflect the structure of the terminal objectives,

the difference between them being their level of complexity
 

each task has a conceptual, a linguistic and a physical aspect

Buch 

Robinson, P. C. (1991) ESP Today: A Practioner's Guide. New York u.a.: Prentice Hall
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