Litreature Review on Situational Syllabus

The Situational Syllabus And The Theoretical assumptions

A situational syllabus is often defined as one in which the contents are

organized according to situations in which certain language is likely to be
employed (Richards, et al, 1985:260; Ur, 2000:178; Schulz, 2005). That is,
the fundamental principle for the organization of the contents is situation,
instead of grammar items, although which will also appear in the syllabus
(Kaur, 1990; Wilkins, 1976). Under this guideline, what the designer of a
Situational Syllabus probably tries to do is to predict situations that the
learners are likely to run into, such as “at the airport,” “at the doctor’s
office,” and “in the classroom.” According to Wilkins, Situational Syllabus
is the “only [syllabus] other [than Grammatical Syllabus]” used widely in
teaching material development in his day (Wilkins, 1976:20). Although
Situational Syllabus is now on the decline, it enjoys a century long history
(Dubin and Olshtain, 1986:37), and used to thrive in the 1950s.

As for the theoretical assumptions of the Situational Syllabus, Johnson

attribute it to the theory of language developed by John Rupert Firth
(Johnson, 2002: 179-180), which we thought is reasonable. Influenced by
Saussure and Malinowski, Firth believes that language is not only an
abstract system of structures, but also a “social process”; the meaning of
language is determined by the context in which it occurs, and language
has the capacity to get things done, thus human being need to learn
language to live (Liu and Feng, 2002: 302). Naturally, this “context of
situation” serves as the basis of Situational Syllabus: “Language, the
reasoning goes, is best learned and remembered in when presented in
contextual settings” (Johnson, 2002:179).

Another theory underlying the Situational Syllabus is the problematic

assumption that the learner can cope with all situations in the life by
putting together the learning of language patterns appears in each single
situations. Wilkins believes that this assumption on the learning process is
a “behavioral” one in nature (Wilkins, 1976: 21), which we think is
appropriate. Further, Long and Crookes (1992) interpreted the notion
“synthetic syllabus” as “…syllabus relies on learners' assumed ability to
learn a language in parts (e.g., structures and functions) which are
independent of one another, and also to integrate, or synthesize, the
pieces when the time comes to use them for communicative
purposes.”(Long and Crookes, 1992:30) Thus, in the framework Wilkins
circumscribes in the same book (Wilkins, 1976:2), the assumption of
learning could be termed as a synthetic one: at the final phase of learning,
that is the production of a language, the knowledge of the language is
synthesized by putting together what have been learned. As will be seen
in this report, this assumption is fatal to the Situational Syllabus.

2. Components of situational syllabuses

1) Aims/Goal

2) Objectives

3) Non-language outcomes

4) Learning contents

Knowledge: A list of the communication situations you want to be able to

operate in, and order them from the following criteria:

• Learner’s interests and Communicative needs

• The likelihood of the students will encounter them

• Language items involved (simplicity & learnability)

• Student’s language proficiency

• Cultural differences

--Topics: A list of topics that the students are expected to be able to talk
about.
--Language items: language items should be bear in mind when ordering
the communicative situations

--Skills: listening, speaking, reading and writing

5) Implementation

6) Evaluation

Many methods have used examples of the language being learned in

situations and settings. Many collections of conversations and
communication activities are organized in terms of situations.
There are three types of situational syllabus differentiated by their
informational content and linguistic content.
1. Limbo: Specific setting of the situation is of little or no importance.
What is important is the particular language focus involved.
2. Concrete: Situations are enacted to specific settings and the
language associated with it.
3. Mythical : Situations depend on a fictional cast of characters in a
fictional place.
Sets of structures and vocabulary items are emphasized in situations.
Situations may be constructed to present various types of discourse or
interactional phenomena. Students are expected to create or modify parts
or all of it so form and meaning coincide.
The most familiar way of presenting a situation is as a dialogue,
usually at the beginning of a lesson and the topics, settings, participants
in situations can vary infinitely. Situational material in many forms may
be used simply to provide comprehensible input to learners. Situations
are used to presented new material providing examples and more
focused exercises.
Situational content has been used with audio-lingual( behaviourist ),
cognitive and experimental( acquisition-based) instruction.
 Well-prepared situations can show how native speakers act and
what they talk about and are concerned about.

3. Benefits of the situational syllabus

Whether or not a syllabus is considered as feasible in the actual teaching

or learning environment, in accordance with our group’s discussion,
should be examined along three dimensions: (a) language content, or the
specific matter to be included; (b) process, or the manner in which
language content is learned; (c) product, or outcomes such as the
language skills learners are expected to master. To put it more
specifically, materials, teacher and learners are three fundamental
components of a syllabus. Since our group have selected “situational
syllabus” as the point of penetration, we would like to adopt this three-
dimensional criteria to evaluate this syllabus type by illustrating some of
its merits and drawbacks.

To begin with, situational syllabus attaches much importance to the

context within which the theme and the linguistic topics are presented;
more often than not there would be a list of useful situations which
learners would encounter during the course.

3.1. Content

As the content of a situational syllabus, in most cases, is organized in

order of different authentic situations, it certainly has the potential
advantage of tapping students’ knowledge of the world as an aid to
learning, and also of providing realistic, and hence motivating, materials.
Thus, as has been observed, there exists a correspondence between
students’ personal experience and the materials, on one hand; on the
other hand, it can facilitate the process of grounding so-called indirect
knowledge into schemata which is generally viewed as the ultimate phase
of language learning.
Moreover, especially when it comes to ESL environment, like in China, the
situation-based method of selecting and organizing materials may well
serve the purpose of bridging cultural gap by various conversations and
topics that are implied with typical social conventions and customs of the
countries and people the learners are interested in.

Last but not least, situational syllabus is flexible in nature. It is

manageable to take situational syllabus as a pedestal, upon which we can
incorporate many other syllabus types, for instance,
grammatical/structural, functional/notional syllabi, etc. Granted, students
learn more rapidly about how to use different lexical items or linguistic
structures, given specific situations in which they are often employed.

3.2. Process

Process, as mentioned above, refers to the manner in which language is

learned. In compliance with this dimension, a few things have been
covered in subsection 3.1. But here we would like to emphasize the role
that teachers often play under the guidance of situational syllabus.
Certainly, teachers have a larger knowledge base than that of students’,
so it is plausibly assumed that teachers are able to relate to the different
situations listed in the syllabus, and come up with a specific plan
concerning how to teach students and what aspects of learning shall be
given more priorities. Taking “Coursebook for PETS (Level 1)” for an
example,

Unit 7 At Home

Dialogues

Passage: Ａ Childlike Father

Words and Expressions

Notes

Exercises
Supplementary Reading: The British Bobby
Unit 8 Receiving Friends

Dialogues

Passage: My Friend Charlie

Words and Expressions

Notes
Exercises

Supplementary Reading: American Senior Citizens

Under such circumstances, teachers do not have to figure out by

themselves how to make up some rigid and lifeless situations in which
certain words or structures should be used. Conversely, the syllabus
provides such contents beforehand.

In accordance with the functional viewpoint of the nature of language,

language is a social semiotic system and a meaning potential which is
composed of infinite words and structures. Bearing this in mind, as far as
our imagination goes, those teachers, if conscientious enough, will go and
glean as many similar materials as possible which fix their central themes
on the given topic of the situation. Anyhow, situational syllabus makes the
case in description more apt to happen.

As is known to all, the number of situation types is innumerable, and

therefore, situational syllabus will definitely have a countless resource to
utilize, so as to construct and design a variety of courses without worrying
about repetition and boredom. Also, as time goes by, society changes as
well as the mode of people’s thinking and perceiving; thus, if we adopt a
situation-oriented approach to design syllabus, the adaptability of the
syllabus to social needs will, expectedly, be greatly improved.

3.3. Product
Product in syllabus design is mainly concerned with what students are
expected to learn; or in other words, the objectives of the syllabus. It has
been commonly acknowledged that under a situational syllabus, the
communicative competence is given first priorities. Of course, this has
much to do with and shares a lot in common with functional syllabus. By
and large, students’ communicative competence will be improved in
terms of learning and understanding language more thoroughly and
comprehensively by knowing language in use, and to be exact, the
language will be more smoothly transformed into procedural knowledge
that would be stored into the long- term memory, and according to the
connectinalist view, the procedural knowledge could be activated in real
life situations with no signs of transfer. As a result, students’
communicative competence will be naturally enhanced.

4. Drawbacks of the Situational Syllabus

Despite the merits mentioned above, we think the situational syllabus has
the following four major drawbacks.

First of all, the situational syllabus may not satisfy the learner’s needs.
There are different types of learners with various learning purposes and
learning needs. Although the exact contents of the situational syllabus are
the result of a careful behavioral prediction, consisting of an inventory of
language situations and a description of the linguistic content of each of
these situations, the situational syllabus may not include all the situations
in real life. For example, if a situational syllabus were to be used for any
learner whose needs could not be identified in these situational terms,
including the general language learner, the course might not provide him
with the means to handle significant language needs. As claimed by
Rabbini (2002), the situational syllabus is limited for students whose
needs were not encompassed by the situations in the syllabus.

Secondly, the situational syllabus may not predict and include the
language necessary to handle the language situation. It may be true that
the situations in which the learner is likely to need the language may be
predicted, and the language necessary to perform linguistically in those
situations are then taught, language used for the same situations may be
unpredictable. Learners’ response to the same situations may be quite
different due to their life experience, intentions, as well as their views of
the world. The limited aims of a tourist, a waiter or a telephone
switchboard operator might be achieved adequately under the control
situations. However, they would be unprepared for anything 'out of the
ordinary' (Robbini, 2002). Wilkins (1976) argues that situational syllabus
only includes language functions that occur in specific situations (p.19).
Brumfit and Johnson (1979) also address the problems with the situational
syllabus such as the limited horizons of language in specific situations and
difficulty in defining what the situation is in the first place (p.83-84).

Thirdly, in the situational syllabus cultural difference may be a factor

influencing the learner. Cheng (2002) points out that due to the cultural
differences, different things may be done in the same situations.
Situational courses consist of learning units with labels like 'At the post
office', 'Buying a theatre ticket', 'Asking the way' and so on. In all
probability they are successful in what they set out to do. But the learner
may find in Britain a person may have gone into the post office, not to buy
stamps, but to complain about the non-arrival of a parcel, to change some
money or to ask a friend who works behind the counter to come to a
football match.

Within each topic-based chapter we are led through a number of example

conversations,
discussion points, lexical and structural exercises based around the
specific topic for
that chapter. A problem with this situational / topic-based approach is that
often categories are defined too narrowly or broadly. (White 1988:63)
Within the coursebook examined here, there are examples of both
problems. Certain chapters are designed “so situation-specific that the
content [has] relevance to only a limited number of students.” (ibid: 63)
An example of which is one chapter, which focuses on investments. In my
experience of using this coursebook a lack of interest in this investment
chapter from students has been expressed because the chapter is both
too narrow, and too broad. In the case of a number of students studying
English as a hobby and for general self-improvement, the chapter was too
narrow and of little interest. A student who worked in the investment
industry found the same chapter too broad and lacking in relevant
vocabulary and experiences to be of any practical use. If a number of
students find significant chunks of a coursebook uninteresting it could be
a major demotivating factor and possibly points to a syllabus that is not
suitable for a school such as this with such a wide range of students.

It’s true that language is closely related to situations. In some situations

certain intentions are regularly expressed, certain linguistic transactions
regularly carried out, but this does not mean that they are typical of our
language use. Moreover, the making of complaints and requests, the
seeking of information, the expression of agreement and disagreement
can take place in almost any situation. There are probably no situations
where we typically express possibility, probability, certainty, doubt or
conviction. The situational syllabus seems to only provide with examples
of general language use in specific situations.

5. Summary

As discussed above, Situational Syllabus is to be remembered both for its

pros and cons. The members of this group share the consensus that it
might be more insightful to combine Situational Syllabus with other
syllabus design approaches in the design of a single syllabus.
Written

New Headway

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