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Literature
review: EFL syllabus design (Continued).
Previous Pages: 1, 2
3.4.3.
The propositional paradigm
3.4.3.1. The formal
syllabus.
The formal (also termed 'structural' or 'grammatical') syllabus can be
classified as 'synthetic' (Long & Crookes 1993),
'propositional' (Breen 1987a), and 'Type
A' (White 1988), and addresses the main question
of what the learner of a new language needs to know, with
its five sub-questions (section 3.4.2), as
shown in table 28, below):
The
formal syllabus
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1.
What knowledge does it focus on?
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A systematic
and rule-based view of the nature of language itself.
A primary
concern with a language learner's
knowledge of the code of a new language.
Subsystems
of phonology, grammar, lexis (morphology) and discourse as text
are prioritised.
"Only
a supportive role to the meanings or ideas conveyed through language
(ideational language) and to the ways in which we behave socially
with language (interpersonal knowledge)."
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2.
What capabilities does it focus on and prioritise?
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Language
use and skills use, typically proposing that the skills be worked
upon in a sequence from the receptive to the productive.
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3.
On what basis does it select and subdivide what is to be
learned?
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Pronunciation,
grammar, vocabulary and morphology, and the structural features
of discourse are separately identified..
"Those
aspects of each sub-system which are taken to be appropriate to
the 'level'
of the learners".
The
criterion of 'level'
is derived from the extent to which a
learner has mastered - in terms of accurate production - these linguistic
sub-systems.
The
criteria for selection and subdivision of a formal syllabus "approximate
very closely to the analysis of language undertaken by the linguist."
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4.
How does it sequence what is to be learned?
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"Anticipates
that a learner will gradually accumulate and synthesise the various
parts of components of the new system".
"Sequenced
primarily from simplicity to complexity but in ways which may also
honour frequency of usage."
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5.
What is its rationale?
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Four
main arguments:
1.
It is well established and is informed by a long tradition
of linguistic analysis. It captures a view of language which many
teachers find familiar.
2.
It presents learners with a subject-matter which is systematic
and rule-governed. "The
Formal syllabus has the potential to provide the learner with generative
knowledge."
3.
Because the linguistic system is analysable in terms of propositions,
the new language is more amenable to planning as subject matter
4.
Such a syllabus calls upon the human capacity to be metalinguistic.
to reflect upon, talk about, and try to work out just how a language
works. It directly addresses our wish to impose order upon the seeming
chaos of a new language.
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Given
Halliday's three functions of language (textual,
ideational, and interpersonal, [Halliday, 1973; 1978]), the formal syllabus takes the first as its focus,
basing itself in descriptive linguistics, in the contrastive theories
of the 1950s and 1960s, and the works of "traditional, descriptive"
grammarians in the 1970s and 1980s, focusing on surface structure differences
between languages. It is the most robust and well-tried type of syllabus
in language teaching, growing from the description and analysis of the
classical languages, and is still by far the most widely used, especially
in foreign language settings (perhaps partly due to its "user-friendliness"
for new teachers and teacher trainers).
Contents
of structural syllabi usually consist of discrete sentences, yes/no and
wh-questions, articles, prepositions, conditionals, and relative clauses,
plus inductively or deductively presented pedagogic "grammar points",
with structures being generally presented one at a time (occasionally
in contrasting pairs), using guidelines laid down by
Palmer (1917/68) as a basis for selection, rather than empirical evidence.
Long & Crookes (1993) make the point that such
syllabi no longer reflect current linguistic theory and research, and
owe little to modern generative grammar (e.g. Chomsky's universal grammar,
Bresnan's Lexical Functional Grammar, Foley's lexical unification grammar,
etc.) and functional-typological grammar (e.g. Givon
1984) (Long & Crookes 1993:13). Thus a number
of criticisms of structural (and synthetic) syllabi (as epitomised by
the formal syllabus) have been made, regarding:
- the
inevitable unnaturalness of structurally and lexically graded dialogues
or reading passages (Widdowson 1968;
Crystal 1981; Ventola 1987);
- the
tendency to model usage, not use (Widdowson
1971);
- the
misleading mixing of different functions of language which happen
to be encoded using the same form;
- the
negative effects on motivation for learners who need to be able to
communicate as soon as possible (Wilkins
1972);
- the
inefficiency in the idea that the whole grammatical system has to
be taught when few learners need it all;
- the
limitations of non-psychologically based descriptions of linguistic
competence to the psychological process of SLA (Miesel
et al. 1981; Bowermann 1982;
Heubner 1983; Kellerman
1985; McLaughlin 1988);
- the
inability to recognise that learners do not acquire structures in
isolation but as parts of complex mappings of form-function relationships;
- the
use of instructional sequences which do not reflect acquisition sequences
(Lightbown 1983, Pienemann 1987);
- for
beginners, at least, "the inadequacy of full native-like target
structure as a unit of analysis in syllabus design"
(Long & Crookes 1993:15).
Continue
reading this literature review: "The functional syllabus"
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