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The curriculum development or design is the study and development of the goals, content, implementation, and evaluation of an educational system. In language teaching, curriculum development (also called syllabus design) includes:

•    the study of the purposes for which a leamer needs a language (needs analysis),

•    the setting of objectives, and the development of a syllabus, teaching methods, and materials,

•    the evaluation of the effects of these procedures on the leamer’s language ability.

7.1. Language teaching syllabuses

Language teaching syllabuses may be based on:

•    grammatical items and vocabulary (structural syllabus);

•    the language needed for different types of situations (situational

•    syllabus);

•    the meanings and communicative functions which the leamer needs to express in the target language (notional syllabus).

7.1.1.    The structural syllabus

The structural syllabus is a syllabus for the teaching of a language which is based on a selection of the grammatical items and structures (e.g. tenses, grammatical mles, sentence pattems) which occur in a language and the arrangement of them into an order suitable for teaching. The order of introducing grammatical items and structures in a structural syllabus may be based on such factors as freąuency, difficulty, usefulness, or a combination of these.

7.1.2.    The situational syllabus

The situational syllabus is a syllabus in which the selection, organization, and presentation of language items is based on situations (e.g. at the bank, at the supermarket, at home).

7.1.3. The notional syllabus

The notional syllabus (ąlso notional-functional) is a syllabus in which the language content is arranged according to the meanings a leamer needs to express through language and the functions the leamer will use the language for. The term notional is taken from notional grammar. A notional syllabus is contrasted with the structural syllabus (grammatical) or the situational syllabus A notional syllabus contains:

a)    the meanings and concepts the learner needs in order to communicate (e.g. time, ąuantity, duration, and location) and the language needed to express them. These concepts and meanings are called notions,

b)    the language needed to express different functions or speech acts (e.g. reąuesting, suggesting, promising, describing).

These notions and functions are then used to develop leaming/teaching units in a language course. The notional syllabus is used in communicative language teaching.

7.2. Curriculum development

As the previous terminology indicates, the work on language curriculum belongs to decision-making processes. The products of these decision-making processes generally exist in some concręte form and can be observed and described: for example school policy documents, syllabuses, teacher-training programmes, teaching materials and resources, and teaching and leaming acts.

7.2.1. Policy decision-making

There are four stages or decision points in policy implementation:

1.    Curriculum planning

2.    Ends/means specification

3.    Programme implementation

4.    Classroom implementation.

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