Syllabus design

Knowing the basics of how to put together a syllabus for a course of study or series of textbooks is an essential teaching skill and can have a profound effect on how well material is applied in the classroom. This section of the English Raven site provides examples of basic syllabuses as well as ready to use templates that can be adapted according to classroom and institutional needs.



Generally speaking, a syllabus need not be a complicated affair, but should aim at ensuring that material is organized into manageable 'chunks' while at the same time catering for opportunities to review, apply projects and reading,
and facilitate time to apply assessment/tests. All too often, many teachers' and/or institutes' idea of a 'syllabus' is to calculate the amount of pages in the book and then divide that by the number of teaching days in a session. The resulting figure accounts for the amount of pages that need to be covered in one lesson, and wha-la! the school has a simple plan to make sure that textbooks are completed in a timely fashion. Perhaps this could be called a syllabus in some contexts, but it is really missing some important factors that could make applying the textbooks both more enjoyable and more effective.



In organizing a syllabus, teachers and/or administrators really should be asking themselves some important questions. Which parts of the textbook material are worthy or in need of more attention (and therefore time) than others? How can an organization of the material create both a rhythm and a routine that can apply to any given week and/or any given session of study? Does the syllabus allow sufficient time to engage in more production-based activities, such as projects and task-based learning? If we are to test the students on this material, how can we ensure that the syllabus provides days for pre-test revision and preparation as well as post-test review and reflection? Is the syllabus organized in such a way that a new teacher (or indeed, a student's parent) could glance at it and get a quick overview of what is going to form the focus of any given lesson as well as what was studied over the course of a week or a month? How can we be sure that a relief teacher could walk into our classroom and know what to do with the class and how (based on the sorts of language areas and activities the students have already covered)? In answering these sorts of questions and then sitting down to the task of organizing our material, the challenging nature of syllabus design becomes much more apparent. In fact, session planning, syllabus design and daily lesson planning are fundamental aspects of basic language program design and implementation - and all teachers can and should benefit from knowing how to engage in these activities