ABSTRACT
A good number of people who are professionally involved in language teaching will at one time or another in their lives have the responsibility of producing a syllabus, or part of one. But what exactly is a syllabus? The answer involves some problems of terminology. An often-asked question is: what is the difference between a syllabus and a curriculum? For many, the term ‘curriculum’ (in British English at least) is the wider of the two, referring, in White’s (1988: 4) words to ‘the totality of content to be taught and aims to be realized within one school or educational system’. ‘Syllabus’, on the other hand, tends to refer to the content of just one subject area. Although the terms may be differentiated in this way, the truth is that many applied linguists use them as synonyms. I was recently preparing a course with the official title of ‘Curriculum Design’. As I was about to deliver the first talk, I checked through the handouts I had prepared. Half of them carried the official title. But the other half referred to the course as ‘Syllabus Design’. I simply do not, in practice, distinguish the two terms. Another two difficult terms are ‘syllabus design’ and ‘course (or programme) design’. Richards et al. (1985) describe the difference well. For them, syllabus design involves (as we shall see below) planning course content. Course or programme design involves other factors associated with implementation, including such issues as the timing (and indeed timetabling) of various course elements, and how the course will be evaluated.
