CHAPTER 3 LITERATURE REVIEW: EFL syllabus design

3.4.5 Syllabus-design: Conclusion

Breen (1987a) identifies (at least) eight major questions confronting syllabus designers, and which are therefore particularly appropriate to this study:

1. how to represent language knowledge as a 'complex' of competencie s (linguistic, sociolinguistic, discoursal, pragmatic, etc.);
2. how to represent language knowledge as the underlying capacity to apply, adapt, and refine rules and conventions during language learning and  use;
3. how to represent language capability as the ability to interpret and express meaning and to negotiate with and through spoken and written texts;
4. how to represent such knowledge and capabilities in ways which are amenable to the profession's development of the practice of teaching;
5. how can syllabus planning interact with methodology in a mutually beneficial way during a period of innovation?;
6. how can the syllabus harmonise in an unconstraining but facilitative way with the internal process of language acquisition, the strategic behaviour of learners, and with the personal-syllabus creation of different learners?;
7. how can the syllabus harmonise in an unconstraining but facilitative way with relatively unpredictable and necessarily diverse teaching-learning processes which will transform the syllabus into action?;
8. if the designer's plan of content is consistently subordinated within the more salient teaching-learning experience of the classroom, how might the designer nevertheless exploit the organising principles of a syllabus so that the accessibility of new knowledge and alternative ways of developing language capabilities is maximised for both the teacher and the learners?  In other words, how might the focusing, selection, subdivision, and sequencing of content become explicit elements within the classroom experience? (Breen 1987a:160)

Having identified the questions, Breen ( 1987a) suggests "three possible reactions to these challenges": i) the planning energy given to syllabi could be redirected elsewhere; ii) it could be asserted that as a planning document, a syllabus of content is independent of its implementation through teaching; and iii) the challenges could be met head-on in the development of alternative kinds of syllabus (e.g. process syllabi) (1987a:160). Breen further anticipates six areas of innovation in syllabus design "in the coming decade":

1. changing views on the nature of language;
2. multiplication of TBSs;
3. particular teachers in particular teaching situations will initiate and develop process syllabi, thus refining what is meant by such a syllabus;
4. a growing emphasis on the implementation of changes in viewpoint;
5. the development of classroom-oriented research and evaluation procedures will provide insights into learner views on the nature and values of a syllabus;
6. process plans may be developed that capture the proven beneficial aspects of earlier plans (Breen 1987a:171).

Legutke & Thomas, writing only four years after Breen's article, see some evidence of Breen's 'emerging' process paradigm gaining acceptance. However, they make the important observation that "our insights are still rather limited as to whether changes mentioned in academic works are matched by respective modifications  of classroom practice" (1991:6). Evidence of this shift in language teaching and learning ideas (up to 1991, rather than since 1987) is seen by Legutke & Thomas in:

1.  a shift from language as form to language in context and as communication (Widdowson 1978a);
2. increased attention on the construct of task as the pivotal component of classroom design and implementation (Prabhu 1987; Candlin & Murphy 1987; Legutke 1988a);
3. the shift from the learner as passive recipient of language form to an active and creative language user (Kramsch 1984);
4. a clear shift from the learner as individual to the learner as member of the social group actively involved in co-managing the learning process (Allwright 1984a);
5. a rediscovery of literary texts for L2 classroom use as an important means of authenticating communication (Kramsch 1985);
6. changing views on the curriculum (no longer exclusively understood as a list of items to be completed, but as something which also requires a process of negotiation in which both the teacher and the learner participate) (Breen & Candlin 1980; Nunan 1987a);
7. expanding and redefined roles of teachers and learners (Wright, 1987a);
8. a view of assessment as an aid to learning in addition to its traditional role of measuring outcomes (Brindley, 1989);
9. a rediscovery of the educational values of language learning: "The shift from language instruction to a holistic, critical and explanatory pedagogy is immensely political" (Bach & Timm 1989; Candlin 1989; Kohonen 1989). (Legutke & Thomas 1991:4-5)

Views on the nature of language have continued to develop since Breen's article (Skehan 1998; Williams & Burden 1997), along with research into autonomy (Benson & Voller 1997; Pemberton et al [eds.] 1996; Van Lier 1996) and affective influences on learning (Arnold [ed.] 1999; Gardner  & MacIntyre 1993; Macintyre 1995), the 'task' as a unit of syllabus design has been widely accepted (with differing interpretations) and the field of classroom-oriented research is growing (e.g. Bailey & Nunan [eds.] 1996). However, as with Canale & Swain's (1980) largely unanswered call for a rigorous research programme into the communicative approach (cf. Legutke & Thomas 1991:1), Breen's predictions (above) remain mostly unfulfilled twelve years after his 1987 article (though it is not easy to find information on efforts of individual teachers), and rigorous research into philosophical, theoretical, psycholingusitic, sociolinguistic and evaluative aspects of syllabus design remains to be carried out (Long & Crookes 1993; cf. Shaw 1997 for a review of recent approaches). There is also evidence of traditional methods continuing to be practised in 'communicative' teaching situations (Dinsmore 1985), and published textbooks are still "either explicitly Formal in their organisation or incorporate a Formal 'spine' within them" (Breen 1987a:87; Green 1987a). A number of communicative teachers' resource books have appeared (e.g. Hadfield 1987; 1990; 1995) which can provide the sort of materials (and the inspiration for creation) that Breen talks about as necessary for the learning bank in a TBS, however, they mostly leave the reasoning for the task and its method of implementation to the teachers, and can imply unselected/unstructured "one-off" activities to be inserted at random in the traditional "3-Ps" lesson, for those teachers looking for a bag of "magic" classroom devices which do not require a reflective assessment of the principles behind that teaching (cf Willis, J. 1996; Moskowitz 1978).

Research has cast "considerable doubt on traditional justifications for Type A syllabi" (White 1988:109), but with the exception of the Bangalore experiment and Mohamed (1998) there has been no really concerted effort to evaluate any task-based or process approach in actual operation (Seedhouse 1999) so that criticisms levelled at process syllabi remain to this day, concerning: i) the difficulty of differentiating tasks (especially tasks with 'sub-tasks' nested within them); ii) the finiteness of tasks or task types (or their 'generative capacity'); and iii) task difficulty (grading and sequencing criteria) (Long & Crookes 1993:43). It should be noted, however, that these problems were never resolved for synthetic syllabi either, that selection and sequencing methods for propositional syllabi have not been supported by research, and that "there is always a disparity between intention and reality" in a means-end approach to syllabus design (White, 1988:97).

Finally, figure 15 (below), summarises Breen's propositional/process paradigm shift in language syllabus design:

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