5syllabusnts

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Lexical Content and Organisation of a LanguageLexical Content and Organisation of a LanguageCourseCourse Syllabus: a list of items to be covered in a course / a

set of headings

Language syllabus: language elements and linguistic orbehavioral skills

Who makes the syllabus?

1. Education Ministry(books are then written accordingly)

Teachers have no control on the syllabus.

.international market

Syllabus of a course=Syllabus of the coursebook

Teachers have limited control on the syllabus: selectionof the coursebook

Where can the teachers see the syllabus of theircourse?

1. Education Ministrys web page

2. The coursebooks contents page (!!!)(!!!)Zoom (a primary English course for children)

, ,

Fairyland 2 (for children)A butterfly, A sweet tooth, Looking good

3. Map of the book for teachers


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Language Syllabuses (Item types)

Structural syllabuses: grammatical structures (simplepresent tense, passive voice, reported speech, etc.)

e.g. Grammar translation / Audio-lingual

Functional syllabuses: functions (requesting, agreeing &, , , .

e.g. Communicative Approach

Task-based syllabuses: tasks (posting a letter, etc.)

Lexical syllabuses: a set of words /lexical skills

Lexical syllabus in Headway (1986)

Three strands:1. new words related to topics (e.g. Animals, Air travel,etc.)

MWUs (collocations & idioms): (e.g. Make or Do, Multi-Word Verbs

2. Vocabular learnin habits VLSse.g. Using a bilingual dictionary, building vocabularynetworks

3.Systems of Vocabulary (patterns)grammar: irregular verbs, -ed and ing adjectives

meaning: polysemous words, male and female wordspronunciation: homophones, stress in word families

Place of a lexical syllabus in integrated courses

(listening, reading, writing, speaking taught together inthe same unit)

Strong view (Sinclair & Renouf, 1988):-purely lexical (lexical syllabus is the only syllabus )

- study of words in context)

-most frequent words/in their frequent context(based on frequency and concordance data from theCOBUILD Project)

-A large vocabulary is not targeted (recombination ofknown vocabulary rather than new vocabulary)

Collins COBUILD English Course (Willis & Willis, 1987)

Purely lexical syllabus(based on Sinclair & Renoufs ideas)

Compared to traditional coursebooks: give as muchcoverage to the usual grammar items

not commercially as successful as other coursebooks


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Weaker view (Lewis, 1993)

vocabulary is not the only syllabus/ a component in thesyllabus alongside other language elements or skills(grammar,functions,etc.) / a more prominent role

a large target vocabulary

formulaic sequences e.g. collocations, sentence heads

discourse functions of lexical items

The Cambridge English Course (1984-1987)

a multi-syllabus approach / 8 main syllabuses

vocabularygrammarpronunciationnotionsfunctionssituationstopicsskills

Skills-based Courses(vocabulary is taught as a separate skill)

Advanced English Vocabulary by Helen Barnard (1972)English Vocabulary in Use by Michael McCarthy & FelicityODell (1994)Focus on Vocabulary by Diane Schmitt & Norbert Schmitt

(2005)Graded reader schemes (supplementary material): LongmanStructural Readers, Oxford Bookworm Series, etc.

Components of Course Design

1. Needs Analysis

.3. Sequencing


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Vocabulary Needs Analysis

a. Lacks (present state)

b.Necessities (needs)

c.Wants learner references

Lacks (present state)

What vocabulary do they know?

A vocabulary size test (receptive)

Vocabulary Levels Test (receptive & productive)

Eurocentres Vocabulary Size Test (receptive)

What strategies can they use?

Strategy knowledge test / questionnaire/observation ofperformance

Necessities (Needs/goals)

What vacabulary do they need?

type /number of words

(high-frequency, academic, technical, low-frequency)

Interview / questionnaire to determine language use goals/research on size and coverage

e.g. Higher education in an English-speaking university:aca em c voca u ary ow requency wor s

Minimum:3000 wfs (Laufer, 1991)

Optimal: 10,000 wfs (Hazenberg & Hulstijn, 1996)

e.g. Travel to an English-speaking country as a tourist:

Survival vocabulary /120 items: (Nation & Crabbe, 1991)

e.g. To be able to speak to foreign tourists: GSL words

Adolphs & Schmitt (2003)

What strategies do they need?

Interview / questionnaire to determine language usegoals

e.g. Higher education in an English-speaking university:(low frequency words)

e.g. Travel to an English-speaking country as a tourist:

(Survival vocabulary)

Memory strategies


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WantsWhat vocabulary do they want to learn?

Class discussion /Interview / questionnaire to determineareas of interest

PsychologySpaceSportsCelebritiesFashionEtc.

Content Specification (Selection of words)

(Early Stages/General English)

Coursebook / not the teacher does the selection

1. Frequency (of use in the TL)

(More frequent words are more useful than less frequent)

buy - purchase

walk - stroll

2. Range (number of text types)

marriage has a wider range than matrimony (religion)

3. Coverage (of meaning)

go has a broader coverage than travel / walk

4. Availability (to native speakers)

Pepper is lower frequency, but equally available as salt

5. Learnability (ease of learning)

cognates / loan words, short words, concrete words, etc.

6. Opportunism (words relevant to immediate situation)

classroom words

whiteboard: low in frequency, range , coverage

English Word Lists

GSL : general service words (2000 words)

Hindmarsh (1980): Cambridge EFL examinations

Waystage English (van Ek et al., 1977): Council ofEuropes language programme

u s ers wor s s: ongman e n ng voca u arygraded readers and coursebooks

AWL: Academic Word List

Technical dictionaries

BNC frequency lists

Francis and Kuera (1987): Brown Corpus (American)


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Advanced Stage

(target vocabulary not specified in coursebook / selflearning)

personal centres of interest

wor s e y o n eres e earners n ques on

Sequencing

Series Approach: ordered according to a principle(frequency, complexity, communicative need)

Field Approach: a group of items chosen & introduced inany order

Division of a long list into manageable fields/ covered inan opportunistic way)

Oxford Bookworm Series: 2500 words / 6 fields (levels)

1. 400 400

2. 300 700

3. 300 1000

4. 400 14005. 400 1800

6. 700 2500

Thank You!

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