Current trends on syllabus design in foreign language instruction

Abstract

The last decade has seen lots of changes in many fields of education. The field of syllabus design in foreign language instruction is no exception. The main purpose of this paper is thus to examine critically the recent approaches in syllabus design. First, three schools of syllabus design A) Lancaster School, B) London School, and C) Toronto School will be introduced. Then the following six types of syllabi which will be of particular relevance for foreign language education and syllabus design will be explained. (a) structural syllabus (b) notional/functional syllabus (c) situational syllabus (d) skill-based syllabus (e) content-based syllabus (f) task-based syllabus