The planning for a year quandary 🧩

Dear Reader,

'tis that time of the year again (no, not Christmas, I'm not that big a fanatic): the sublime time of 4 seasons in a day.

And I'm not talking Vivaldi, I'm talking actual meteorological manifestations of the 4 seasons in the same day. England is at the forefront of this avantgarde and since this morning has delighted me with about 10 bursts of rain, 10 of sun, and it's currently raining while sunny¹.

As if I needed to get more confused than I already am - spoiler: I don't. I am more than sufficiently confused by so much in life, including, crucially, my new found British-like need to discuss the weather.

In all this bewildering mixture of seasons and feelings, I find comfort in looking ahead, which I have chosen as the theme for this month's newsletter (which, by the way, I'm starting to put together for you to consult easily at this shiny new page).

And if I know my readers a little, I know that you are getting closer and closer to the time of the year where you are supposed to go a little further than "~~surviving~~ planning your first week" and towards "planning the whole year".

Your school director needs it, the redtape is out to get you, and the parents will expect to see some form of syllabus.

Which is all well and good, but I still find the concept of planning a whole year ahead not only incredibly daunting but also a bit of a quandary. Because even if we assume that I can get to the end of the year in one piece (debateable), I don't feel capable of setting in stone now what my students might need in, say, 8 months' time.

However, notwithstanding my objections (and maybe yours? Hopefully I'm not alone in this) to writing a syllabus for a whole school year, it needs to be done.

So, dear teacher, bookmark this newsletter because it could come in handy in the next few weeks! Today, I will tell you about:

the starting point to write your syllabus
the types of syllabi that you could choose from (or mix and match)
examples of school syllabi for English
a little twist of the traditional English language syllabus

In the spirit of looking ahead: let's get started, full steam ahead 🛳️

The starting point: the end point

No, I haven't gone crazy: the best way to plan for a year is to start from what the students will have had to achieve by the end of the year.

The way you determine this is through a Needs Analysis. I talked about this more extensively in my newsletter from a few weeks ago, but in essence, you want to determine 4 things:

the objectives of the course (i.e. the Target Situation Analysis)
what the students want to learn (Learning Situation Analysis)
what the students can already do (Present Situation Analysis, usually analysed via a diagnostic test)
the practical aspects of the course, like the time, coursebooks and digital tools available (Means Analysis)

Of course I am not suggesting that you conduct a full Needs Analysis in each and every one of your classes. If you can, brilliant; if not, you're not a bad teacher.

*A reminder, because I don't think we get this enough. Credits: Sophie Lucido Johnson*

But at a minimum, it will be helpful to identify the current level of the students, some sort of objectives to work towards, and the practical aspects involved in the course.

One context in which this will be particularly useful is vocational and technical secondary schools. Teaching English in these schools generally falls into the realm of ESP, English for Specific Purposes. You may be familiar with what your students will have to do with English, or you may feel like you've landed in a land of aliens: regardless, getting information about the things your students will need to do with English specifically for their field of study will help you tremendously in defining what to do on a daily basis.

To show you what I mean, I decided to go on a deep dive into my archives and I was successful in unearthing this document I created about 10 years ago. I was teaching a Business English course and because I was young, wild and full of energy, I did a proper Needs Analysis. This included me taking a bunch of business documents my students worked with and running them through corpus analysis software to determine what sort of language it would be useful to prioritise in the course. Download it here if you'd like to have a look and maybe get a bit of inspiration.

Spoilt for choice: types of syllabi

Now, just for the avoidance of doubt: when I talk about a syllabus, I'm talking about that document detailing the aims and contents you will cover and the materials you will use in a school year.

I'm pleased to see AI has not yet managed to mess up this search function too, so if you google something like "programmazione inglese", hundreds of thankfully relevant results, like this one, this one or this one, will pop up (these are random examples by the way, I don't know the authors and I don't know the schools).

If you can take a minute, open them and have a think: what elements do they include? Do they look much like your own syllabi?

Broadly speaking, when you design a syllabus, your end product will be in one of two camps: a synthetic syllabus or an analytic syllabus.

A synthetic syllabus is based around the linguistic items (e.g. grammar, vocabulary) that learners at different levels typically need to know. These items could be grammatical structures, words, pronunciation rules, etc.

So, you might have a grammatical syllabus, listing verb tenses, the passive voice, reported speech, and so on. You might have a lexical syllabus, focusing on lexical patterns like collocations. You might have a functional syllabus, listening the functions you want your students to learn (apologising, making a request, greeting, etc).

An analytic syllabus, on the other hand, doesn't include any pre-determined grammar, vocabulary or pronunciation to teach. The prime example of the analytic syllabus is the task-based syllabus, which includes the tasks learners will learn to accomplish, using the language at their disposal (and not the language the teacher has decided they should use).

If you'd like to know more about the many, many options you have for your syllabus, have a look at this table by ELT Concourse, which summarises the main types for you.

The third way

Naturally, things in reality are not quite as clear cut, and the real syllabi you will see in schools tend to be a mixture of two or more syllabus types.

This third way, the hybrid syllabus, will make you cringe if you're a bit of a syllabus purist. Indeed, scholars like Mike Long warn us about

“

the psycholinguistic incompatibility of linguistic units and synthetic approaches

Which, in simple words, means that either you believe:

A. that you can teach a language in a cumulative, linear way, by teaching a series of language items and the students will learn them in that order - this resonates with a synthetic syllabus - or

B. that language learning is non linear, so the best way to "teach" it is to let the learners engage with it based on what they already know and can do and build on it more naturally while they try to do practical things with it, like tasks - this is assumption behind the analytic syllabus

My personal take? As you might suspect, I'm largely a realist, so: although I know the analytic syllabus reflects how we learn a language better, I also know that most people (i.e. parents, school directors) don't know this, and since syllabi are often for the benefit of parents and school directors, you are going to be bound to show some lexical/grammatical units. I also think coursebooks are a big influence on syllabi and they're not always your own choice as a teacher.

Plus, I have an interesting example that made me think about this whole diatribe in a different way. If you look at this article by Pete Clements, you will see he kindly shares and explains his syllabus and long-term planning document.

The document lists, among other things, areas for "language development", which do include things like grammar, vocabulary and language skills. However, as he explains:

“

any focus on grammar, and it’s rarely an explicit focus, isn’t ‘leveled’. Our grammar coverage is at the point of need and related to the content taught, it’s not a case of working through certain grammar points associated with certain ‘levels’ of learning. We do level test in a CEFR way at the end of the year just to appease various stakeholders to be honest, but I’m quite forgiving on accuracy when I assess that – and weighted more towards communication, development of ideas, vocabulary, etc.

I think this is a practical way of thinking about it.

However, if you are really curious about working with tasks and doing a task-based syllabus - well, first of all, kudos! Second of all, here is how Mike Long, my favourite TBLT person, suggests you proceed:

I don't know if you're teaching flight attendants (if so, très cool indeed), but this process can be replicated for most jobs your students may be working towards, so for example: what tasks might a waiter need to do in their job? How can you break them down into manageable tasks on a practical level? And finally, how could these be done in the classroom? Answer these questions and you'll be well on your way to designing your task-based syllabus.

This brings me happily to the end of today's newsletter! I hope you enjoyed it (or at least you found something valuable in it) and if you have questions, comments, feedback or good news, hit reply please. I'm keen to hear all of the above!

Wishing you a lovely Sunday with your loved ones - and a good first day of school if you're starting next week!

Take care, dear teacher ✨

¹ Which, little did I know at the time of writing, would result in this worthy-of-stopping-the-car moment:

Which goes to show that after the rain, a double rainbow is always a possibility.

P.S.: My weekly suggestion for things to listen to/watch/read to improve your English while relaxing: currently reading Life lessons from historical women by Eleanor Morton and learning about some really cool women. Highly recommended!