Ten questions and answers on 'notional' syllabuses and their compatibility with structural syllabuses
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What is the advantage of a 'notional' syllabus?
A notional syllabus takes the learner's desired communicative capacity – what the learner wants or needs to communicate – as its starting point. Language teaching is then organised primarily in terms of content and meaning rather than linguistic form.
The claim is that this approach can help learners develop communicative competence while also sustaining their motivation by giving greater prominence to language which has an identifiable purpose.
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Can both semantic and structural realisations be indicated in the index of learning units?
There is a danger that learners may assume that there is a one-to-one relationship between a communicative function and a particular linguistic form. Nevertheless, it is important for course book writers and teachers to consider questions such as: What are the most frequent uses of the Present Perfect? when selecting and sequencing material for general English courses.
The Council of Europe's Waystage and Threshold syllabus specifications also attempted to suggest relationships between communicative functions and the linguistic forms used to realise them.
The important point is that functions and forms can be related without assuming that each function has only one possible linguistic realisation.
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Will semantic needs correspond with what is grammatically easy?
Those who want to suggest that notional / functional syllabuses are incompatible with structural ones sometimes use How do you do? as an example. In a structural syllabus, this may not be the first language pattern that a teacher wants to introduce. Moreover, in the context of a greeting, How do you do? does not have the same meaning as How do you do that?, where the Present Simple is being used to ask about how something is done.
For a learner meeting friends of a host family today, however, Hello or Hi would serve perfectly well.
Structural syllabuses have never prevented teachers from using rote learning and memory to retain useful pieces of language which are difficult to analyse in terms of simple syntactic forms. This is rather like the use of phonics in reading: it does not prevent learners from learning whole words such as the, ghost and enough by sight.
People can also get by in foreign languages through a combination of naming things and using gestures such as pointing, nodding, smiling and grimacing. This is particularly evident when shopping for food.
The syntactic forms is / are + noun phrase or adjective occur in the opening units of most elementary English courses. This is not only because they are grammatically accessible, but also because the functions of identifying and naming things are extremely useful. They provide learners with a basic survival skill.
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Is there one simple form to meet each simple communicative need?
The skill of a course book writer, and that of any teacher, is partly a matter of providing accessible entry-points into a subject: simple models which meet immediate needs but can be refined later for more formal or specialised contexts, such as a court of law or an occupational setting.
The Council of Europe's syllabus specifications made useful suggestions about how relatively simple syntax could be used to meet functional needs.
Does Notional / Functional design alone provide viable syllabus specifications at lower levels of proficiency? If a linguistic form is so complex that it is difficult to retain, what is the value of teaching it during the early stages of a course?
Once communicative needs are separated from the linguistic forms used to express them, it becomes clear that most functions can be realised through both easier and more difficult forms. This allows teachers to introduce accessible forms first and develop them later.
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What is the linguistic character of language-teaching material derived from a notional syllabus?
One feature of notional / functional course books is the use of functional headings to signpost the purpose of an activity. At best, such signposting can be unnecessary clutter; at worst, it can be confusing. Examples include headings such as Say where things are, Give correct information or, in Spanish, Cómo expresar las cualidades y actitudes físicas y morales.
Such terminology can replace the carefully selected defining vocabulary found in Elementary Learner's English Dictionaries and structurally graded readers. Some of the abstract words used in chapter and section headings may actually be more difficult than the language items being taught. This can create an unnecessary distraction when teachers have to explain the terminology itself.
The better Notional / Functional course books, such as Brian Abbs and Ingrid Freebairn's Building Strategies [1979], recognised the need to relate different aspects of syllabus design. Their Teacher's Book included tables which mapped out:
- Function / Language Focus;
- Topic / Situation;
- Main Forms, together with examples of those forms.
Too much metalanguage in Student's Books, derived from competing approaches to syllabus design, can distract learners from the language that teachers actually want them to notice. Unnecessary description can turn a potentially useful book into a less effective working document.
On the other hand, avoiding familiar grammatical terms such as adjective, noun, definite article and Present Simple can also be counterproductive. These terms are already familiar to many learners and teachers because of the long history of grammatical syllabus design. Why discard useful working knowledge in favour of terminology which may be less useful?
Signposting which is either ridiculously obvious or too abstract to provide a useful point of reference reminds me of what is sometimes called 'street clutter': something which occupies space without helping people to find their way.
The absence of a structural thread alongside a notional / functional syllabus can also have an adverse effect on learners' motivation. This is particularly likely when variations in the difficulty of the material do not provide learners with what they perceive as a fair and manageable challenge. The resulting uncertainty can also make classroom management more difficult.
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Why are global courses, such as General English, not necessarily the most effective field of application for the notional approach?
Until learners face specific challenges – for example, following a degree course at a UK or US university or using English in a particular occupational role – their needs can be difficult to define precisely.
When L2 learners are of school age, particularly when English lessons take place in their own countries, opportunities to use English in real-life situations may be deferred. Their first visit to a country where English is widely spoken may still be months or years away.
A notional approach could therefore come into its own in teaching spoken English to immigrants already living in the UK, or in in-company training where learners have identifiable communicative needs.
Industrial English: An example of theory and practice in functional language teaching for elementary learners by T. C. Jupp and S. Hodlin [1978] was written for just such a purpose.
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Why is special course design a more effective field of application for the notional approach?
The notional approach could be particularly effective on a limited-duration course where the aim is to provide maximum communicative value within a fixed number of hours.
When learners have arrived in an environment where their target language is spoken, they may not want to spend their limited time systematically studying grammatical structures which they could easily study in their own countries.
In English for Specific Purposes, roles and functions – what learners actually do in their workplaces – can become the priority, especially on one-to-one courses or when groups are screened so that they have a genuinely common purpose.
However, simply because learners work for the same company does not mean that they have identical language needs. Some employees may work in accounts while others work in a hot rolling mill. In practice, the need to fill gaps in general English is often the most significant common denominator within an occupational group.
For this reason, highly detailed guidelines for communicative syllabus design, such as those associated with John Munby's specifications, may sometimes prove more elaborate than the actual teaching situation requires.
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Would grammatical forms be distributed in the same way on a special course?
The Structure of Technical English by A. J. Herbert [1965] could be regarded as a special-purpose course, with its focus on machines such as centrifugal governors which control the speed of engines.
The topics were too specialised to sustain the interest of the learners I taught, who were all from the same Swedish steelworks. What was interesting about the course book, however, was its demonstration that common syntactic forms can be used to convey meanings which learners may not normally encounter on a General English course.
Specialist fields such as Hospital English involve learners in concepts which are less common outside particular professional environments. These concepts may be communicated through formal Latinate vocabulary or through shorter Anglo-Saxon words – sometimes the same words which form part of a general English course at lower levels of proficiency.
In a specialist context, however, familiar words can acquire meanings which differ from their more general meanings. It would therefore be a mistake to separate syntax from meaning. Linguistic forms can also take on different meanings in specialised contexts.
These points are best illustrated by looking at handbooks of special usage. Some deal with grammar as well as vocabulary, while others concentrate entirely on vocabulary. Three of my favourites are:
- Handbook of Medical English Usage by Simo Merne [1989] – a gem of a book, and well worth looking for.
- Longman Business English Usage by Peter Strutt [1992].
- The Learner's Vocabulary for Text Analysis by Egon Werlich [1979] – an excellent book for literature, theatre and the arts, particularly when you need to review or discuss works and are unsure of the appropriate terminology.
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What are varieties of language, or registers? Do categories of communicative function demand a specific lexicon, or are they determined by other factors?
As well as specialised occupational varieties such as Medical English and Business English, there are academic and literary varieties, regional varieties and social varieties. These may include the language of travellers, school playgrounds, teenagers and particular social groups.
Work on communicative syllabus design has identified a number of factors which influence language use, including:
- situational context;
- linguistic context;
- topic;
- physical setting;
- social and occupational relationships between speakers.
Situational analysis can therefore help to predict lexical needs. It is important to note, however, that Wilkins distinguishes the Notional / Functional Approach from Situational Syllabus design.
Situations cannot always be expected to proceed according to plan because individuals control what they choose to say, although they have much less control over what they hear. The assumption may be that functional, modal and conceptual meanings are more general categories than particular situations.
I would nevertheless defend the Situational Syllabus as having an important part to play. I have heard numerous cabin crews on aircraft explain safety procedures in English in a way which I can understand perfectly well. Their ability to use this language has quite literally earned them their bread and butter.
As an English teacher, I would therefore argue that it is often possible to predict people's language needs sufficiently accurately to be helpful to them. The Situational Syllabus certainly has a part to play.
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Why should courses based on the notional syllabus pay particular attention to receptive competence and authentic materials?
One strength of notional / functional courses is that they are less likely to subject learners to structure-speech and can provide opportunities to listen to spoken English as discourse rather than as a series of disconnected questions and answers.
In structural syllabuses, dialogues used for contextualisation – that is, dialogues designed to embody particular teaching points and focus attention on syntax – are often constructed at sentence level.
A notional / functional syllabus, particularly when it makes use of role play as in Building Strategies, should be able to offer more substantial opportunities for learners to experience language as communication.
The repetitive tum-te-tum effect of meaningless drills in poor structural syllabuses is not the kind of comprehensible input that is likely to motivate learners. Nor is it likely to prepare them adequately for understanding people who converse normally.
The use of authentic materials can provide learners with a much wider range of spoken English: speakers who do not all speak slowly or use carefully controlled classroom language; speakers with regional accents; and speakers using different social and occupational varieties of English. Learners should not encounter only middle-class language teachers speaking Received Pronunciation.
Useful references include:
- Listening to Spoken English by Gillian Brown [1990].
- Reading and Thinking in English: Discovering Discourse by Tom McArthur [1979].
- English Accents and Dialects: An Introduction to the Social and Regional Varieties of English in the British Isles by Arthur Hughes and Peter Trudgill [1996].
- International English by Peter Trudgill and Jean Hannah [1982].