Skill-Based Syllabi

4. A skill-based syllabus is one in which the content of the language teaching is a collection of
specific abilities that may play a part in using language. Skills are things that peopk must be able
to do to be competent in a language, relatively independently of the situation or setting in which
the language use can occur. While situational syllabi group functions together into specific
settings of language use, skill-based syllabi group lin- guistic competencies (pronunciation,
vocabulary, gram- mar, sociolinguistic, and discourse) together into generalized types of
behavior, such as listening to spoken language for the thaM idea, writing well-formed
paragraphs, giving effective oral presentations, taking language tests, reading texts for main
ideas or supporting detail, and so on. The primary purpose of skill-based in struction is to learn
the specific language skill. A possible secondary purpose is to develop more general competence
in the language, learning only incidentally any information that may be available while applying
the language skills.

Much less is known about the skill-based, task-based, and content-based syllabi than
about the types already discussed. This is especially true of the skill-based syllabus, a type that
has not been previously identified as a separate kind of instructional content in the literature on
language teaching. The term "skill" in language teaching has generally been used to designate
one of the four modes of language: speaking, listening, reading, or writing (Chastain, 1976).
Here, however, the term is used to designate a specific way of defining the content of language
teaching.

A working definition of skill for this volume is a specific way of using language that
combines structural and functional ability but exists independently of spesific settings, or
situations. Examples are reading skills such as skimming and scanning; writing skills such as
writing specific topic sentences and certain kinds of discourse (e.g., memos, research reports,
work reports); speaking skills of giving instructions, delivering public talks, giving personal
information for bureaucratic purposes asking for emergency help over the telephone; and
listening skills such as getting specific information over the telephone, listening to foreign radio
broadcasts for news or military information, taking orders in a restaurant, and so on. Another,
and more traditional, way of viewing skill-based instruction is what is called competency-based
instruction. Competencies are similar to behavioral objectives in that they define what a learner
is able to do as a result of instruction. Extensive lists of competencies have been developed for
adult ESL (refugee and immigrant) programs in the United States.

Not all native speakers of a language are equally competent users of language. Also,
individuals have varying competence in the different skill areas. For ex- mple, even though
anyone reading this book may be considered a speaker of English, including many native
speakers, not all are reading with the same degree of efficiency. Some are more "skilled" readers
than others. At the same time, one person may be a particularly skilled reader but perform
extremely poorly when required to carry on an emergency conversation on a mobile radio. Or
someone who is an inefficient reader maybe adept at getting people to buy waterbeds.

The ability to use language in specific ways (settings and registers) is partially dependent
on general language ability, but partly based on experience and the need for specific skills.
Language skills may, in fact, be limited to specific settings. Many waiters and waitresses in
restaurants, and other workers in similar jobs, have learned only the English skills needed to
carry out their work in the restaurant. They have learned a specific second-language skill.
Preparing students to undertake higher education in a second language often involves teaching
them specific skins such as notetaking, writing formal papers; and skimming and scanning while
reading.

Such skills are somewhat independent of a more general language ability. Experience has
shown that learners with limited overall ability in a second language learn to perform specific
limited tasks but cannot always generalize to other applications of the skills in the language.
Still, while teaching with specific occasions of use in mind is possible, the degree to which it is
possible depends on the complexity and predictability of the task. Taking an order in a restaurant
is a relatively predictable task. So is the assembly of a computer chip. To some degree, the same
possibility holds for aspects of language use in academic settings, where wen-defined forms and
routines are supposed to occur. Nevertheless, increasing evidence shows that the predictability
that is often assumed may be a matter of folklore, and academic language use may be as varied
and unpredictable as any other.

To the degree that situations of language use and the needs of learners can be defined and
matched, it is sometimes possible to teach or emphasize specific types of language use and to
teach toward them. To some degree, skill-based syllabi have been used in language for specific
purposes (LSP) programs, for learners who have some more or less well-defined activity they
need to carry out in the second language. Actually, such programs have used a ccmbination of
structural, functional, situational, and skill-based content.

Skill- or competency-based syllabi are also becoming widely used in adult education ESL
programs, espetially programs for immigrants and refugees. The Mainstream English Language
Training Project (MELT) (U.S. Dept. of Health & Human Services, 1,985) is an excellent
example of this type of syllabus. The motivation for their use in such programs seems to come
from the program designers' goals of making the students as functionally competent in society
and in the work place in as short a time as possible. The volume Fram the Classroom to the
Workplace: Teaching ESL to Adults, published by the Center for Applied Linguistics (1983), is
an excellent survey of the concerns of life skills and vocational ESL and the role of skill- and
competency- based instruction.
 Skill-based instructional content often reflects a reductionist theory of language, which
views the overall language system as reducible, at least for teaching purposes, to specific skills
or applications. At its worst, reductionism embraces the notion that specific skills can be grafted
onto limited general ability (according to which a 5-year-old can learn to play virtuoso violin
pieces). More generally, the reductionist view holds that language as it is used in some specific
ways is formulaic and predictable.

Another approach to skill-based instruction addresses general or overall language ability

through specific skill instruction. In this approach, instruction in specific skills is provided in
addition to instruction designed to develop global language ability. The skills are presented
broadly and with varied and variable applications (e.g., intensive reading of many different types
of texts) so that specific skills and global ability are developed simultaneously.

Skill-based ingtruction is not associated with any specific theory of learning. The general
theory is that the learning of complex behaviors such as language is best facilitated by breaking
them down into small bits (skills), teaching the bits, and hoping that the learner will he able to
put them together when actuallyi using them. This notion is shared by many approaches to
instructional content in language teaching.

Examples of Skill-Based Syllabi

One example of a skill-based syllabus is used in an advanced-level reading course for students
preparing for higher education:
 Guessing vocabulary from context
 Scanning of nonprose material
 Reading for the main idea
 Using affixes as clues to meaning
 lnferencing
 More scanning of nonprose material
 Summarizing readings
 More work on affixes
 Dictionary work
 Restatement of informational content
 More inference work
 More affix work
 More restatement
 More inference
 Analysis of paragraph structure
 More affix work
 Critical reading skills
  Using contex: clues
 Using expectations

Examples of some competencies in adult education ESL are as follows:

Student will be able to identify common hod items from each food group.
 Student will be able to read name and price labels.
 Student will be able to identify coins by name (e.g., nickel, dime) and amount.
 Student will be able to give correct change.
 Student will be able to identify family members by name and relationship.
 Student will be able to write name, address, telephone number, and age in appropriate
place on form.

Positive Characteristics of Skill-Based Syllabi

Skill-based content is most useful when learners need to master specific types of
language uses, either exclusively or as part of broader competency. For example, students
planning to work in higher education in a second language obviously need broad proficiency in
the language. It is impossible to predict all of the kinds of language and information they will
encounter or need. On the other hand, it is possible to predict at least that these students will need
specific reading and notetaking skills, the skill of comprehending academic lectures, and the
ability to do certain types of academic writing. Graduate students who need to read limited types
of second language material in specific fields need only those specific reading comprehension
skills. Recently arrived immigrants and refugees need immediate abilities in the practicalities of
daily life (housing, food, health, social services, law), and those being trained for work need
specific skills in comprehending work instructions. These immediate needs may be subordinate
to a more general proficiency in the new language. A military intelligence officer being trained
to monitor enemy radio broadcasts may need no speaking or productive skills, but only certain
narrowly defined listening comprehension skills using the medium of the radio and tape-recorder
and dealing with the informational content of military intelligence. Thus efficiency and relevance
of instruction are major strengths of the skill-based syllabus.

Relevance to student-felt needs or wants is an advantage of the skill-based syllabus

because learners who know what they need to do with the language generally show great
acceptance of instruction that is clearly directed toward their goals.

Negative Characteristic of Skill-Based Syllabi

As with other types of instructional content, the drawbacks to skill-based syllabi are
potential rather than absolute. Under the right circumstances, the skill-based syllabus has few
drawbacks. One theoretical question is the degree to which ability to perform specific tasks in a
language is dependent on or independent of overall language proficiency. If the skills are limited
and predictable, and can be performed with the overall competency the learner already has, then
skill instruction is unarguably effective. If there is a great degree of unpredictability in the
language the learner will have to process, however, a greater degree of general profi- ciency will
be required. The question of amount of general proficiency needed thus raises the issue of the
relationship between skills instruction and general proficiency. It can be argued that teaching
specific skills also addresses general language proficiency. Indeed, any meaningful second
language activity probably improves overall language proficiency, but the more specialized and
narrowly defined the instructioin, the more unlikely it is to enhance overall proficiency. Instead,
instruction in specialized language skills will remain just that, an efficient way to achieve
specific language Ilse abilities.

Serious social and philosophical questions have been raised about the social values that
are contained in many skill- or competency-based instructional programs (Auerbach, 1986). It
nossible that skill- or competency-based instruction that is too limited in scope can program
students for particular kinds of behavior (e.g., obedience in a work setting) or isolate them from
achievements and ambitions that the competencies do not prepare them for (e.g., education rather
than entry-level employment).

Applications
Obviously, skill-based instruction is most appropriate when learners need specific skills,
and especially when these skills are well-defined and the learners have little need for global
language ability. Skill- or competency-based instruction has a valuable application in life skills
anti vocationally oriented language programs for adult immigrants and refugees. The practical
and immediate needs of these learners is a natural application for skill-based instruction.
Language programs preparing students for academic work certainly have some need for skill
instruction, as do vocational language programs and especially prevocational instruction whose
content is intended to be applicable to a variety of similar work situations (e.g., receiving
directions, measuring, counting). All of these are LSP program.

Skill-based instruction is probably more appropriate for adults than for children, for
whom an emphasis on concrete content is more appropriate. Children, however, may need a
combination of skill and content work to help develop their cognitive and academic language
ability along with the new language, especially if, for example, they are limited-English-
proficient (LEP) students in a public school system where the language of instrUction is English.
Skill-based instruction is not appropriate, in large amounts, at least, for general purpose or
beginning-level language programs in which the needs of the learners are broad or yet to be
defined in such cases, focusing on narrow skill-based applications will take instructional time
away from content that is more likely to address their need for overall language proficiency.
 Silabus berbasis keterampilan adalah silabus yang isi pengajaran bahasanya merupakan
kumpulan kemampuan khusus yang mungkin berperan dalam penggunaan bahasa. Tujuan utama dari
pengajaran berbasis keterampilan adalah untuk mempelajari keterampilan bahasa tertentu. Tujuan
sekunder yang mungkin dicapai adalah untuk mengembangkan kompetensi bahasa yang lebih umum,
mempelajari hanya informasi apa pun yang mungkin tersedia secara kebetulan saat menerapkan
keterampilan bahasa. Isi pengajaran berbasis keterampilan sering kali mencerminkan teori bahasa
reduksionis, yang memandang sistem bahasa secara keseluruhan dapat direduksi, setidaknya untuk
tujuan pengajaran, menjadi keterampilan atau penerapan tertentu. Pendekatan lain terhadap
pengajaran berbasis keterampilan membahas kemampuan bahasa secara umum atau keseluruhan
melalui pengajaran keterampilan khusus. Dalam pendekatan ini, pengajaran keterampilan khusus
diberikan sebagai tambahan pengajaran yang dirancang untuk mengembangkan kemampuan bahasa
global. Keterampilan disajikan secara luas dan dengan penerapan yang bervariasi dan bervariasi
(misalnya, membaca intensif berbagai jenis teks) sehingga keterampilan khusus dan kemampuan global
dikembangkan secara bersamaan. Teori umumnya adalah bahwa pembelajaran perilaku kompleks
seperti bahasa paling baik difasilitasi dengan memecahnya menjadi bagian-bagian kecil (keterampilan),
mengajarkan bagian-bagian tersebut, dan berharap bahwa pembelajar akan mampu
menggabungkannya ketika benar-benar menggunakannya. Konten berbasis keterampilan paling berguna
ketika pembelajar perlu menguasai jenis penggunaan bahasa tertentu, baik secara eksklusif atau sebagai
bagian dari kompetensi yang lebih luas. Pengajaran berbasis keterampilan adalah yang paling tepat
ketika pembelajar membutuhkan keterampilan khusus. Oleh karena itu, efisiensi dan relevansi
pengajaran merupakan kekuatan utama silabus berbasis keterampilan.

A skill-based syllabus is one in which the content of language teaching is a collection of

specific abilities that may come into play in language use. The primary aim of skills-based
teaching is to learn specific language skills. A possible secondary goal is to develop more
general language competence, learning only whatever information may be available incidentally
when applying language skills. The content of skill-based teaching often reflects reductionist
language theory, which views the language system as a whole as reducible, at least for teaching
purposes, to specific skills or applications. Another approach to skill-based teaching addresses
general or overall language ability through the teaching of specific skills. In this approach,
specific skill instruction is provided as an adjunct to instruction designed to develop global
language abilities. Skill-based content is most useful when learners need to master a particular
type of language use, either exclusively or as part of a broader competence. Skills-based teaching
is most appropriate when learners need specialized skills. Therefore, teaching efficiency and
relevance are the main strengths of a skills-based syllabus.

kemampuan menggunakan bahasa dengan cara tertentu sebagian bergantung pada

kemampuan berbahasa secara umum, namun sebagian lagi didasarkan pada pengalaman dan
kebutuhan akan keterampilan khusus. Efisiensi dan relevansi pengajaran merupakan kekuatan
utama silabus berbasis keterampilan
 Silabus berbasis keterampilan mendekati “desain mundur” karena tujuan utama dari
pengajaran berbasis keterampilan adalah untuk mempelajari keterampilan bahasa tertentu dan
pada tujuan tertentu. Silabus berbasis keterampilan ini banyak digunakan dalam program ESL
pendidikan orang dewasa, khususnya program untuk imigran dan pengungsi. Motivasi
penggunaan program-program silabus ini tampaknya berasal dari tujuan perancang program
untuk menjadikan siswa kompeten secara fungsional di masyarakat dan di tempat kerja dalam
waktu sesingkat mungkin. Baik silabus berbasis keterampilan maupun desain mundur
memfokuskan pada tujuan cara atau pendekatan yang ebrbasis kompetensi. Pembelajaran melalui
penguasaan bahasa yang akan digunakan pada target tertentu. Contoh lain dari penggunaan
silabus ini adalah pada siswa yang berencana untuk bekerja di pendidikan tinggi dalam bahasa
kedua jelas memerlukan kemahiran luas dalam bahasa tersebut. Mahasiswa pascasarjana yang
perlu membaca jenis materi bahasa kedua yang terbatas di bidang tertentu hanya memerlukan
keterampilan pemahaman bacaan khusus tersebut. Imigran dan pengungsi yang baru tiba
membutuhkan kemampuan langsung dalam kehidupan sehari-hari (perumahan, makanan,
kesehatan, pelayanan sosial, hukum), dan mereka yang sedang dilatih untuk bekerja memerlukan
keterampilan khusus dalam memahami instruksi kerja. Ini menunjukkan bahwa tujuan dari
pembelajaran ditentukan sebelum pembelajaran dilakukan. Hal ini mencerminkan bahwa silabus
berbasis keterampilan dan desain mundur memiliki pendekatan yang sama. Desain mundur
dimulai dari akhir terlebih dahulu, yaitu tujuan nyata yang akan didapatkan oleh pembelajar dari
kegiatan pembelajaran. Kemudian kita akan mundur untuk mengembangkan bahan ajar dan
kegiatan yang memenuhi tujuan dari pembelajaran tersebut. Sehingga, pelajar dapat mengetahui
apa yang perlu mereka lakukan dengan bahasa tersebut untuk menunjukkan penerimaan yang
baik terhadap pengajaran yang secara jelas diarahkan pada tujuan mereka.

The skill-based syllabus is close to "backward design" because the main purpose of skill-
based teaching is to learn specific language skills and for specific purposes. These skill-based
syllabi are widely used in adult education ESL programs, particularly programs for immigrants
and refugees. The motivation for the use of these syllabus programs seems to stem from the
program designer's goal of making students functionally competent in society and in the
workplace in the shortest possible time. Both skill-based and backward design syllabi focus on
the goal of a competency-based way or approach. Learning through mastery of the language to
be used at a particular target. Some examples of the use of this syllabus is in students who plan
to work in higher education in a second language clearly requiring extensive proficiency in that
language. Graduate students who need to read a limited type of second language material in a
particular area need only those specialized reading comprehension skills. Newly arrived
immigrants and refugees need immediate skills in daily life (housing, food, health, social
services, law), and those being trained for work need specific skills in understanding work
instructions. This shows that the purpose of learning is determined before learning takes place.
This reflects that skill-based syllabus and backward design have the same approach. Backward
design starts from the end first, which is the real goal that the learners will get from the learning
activities. Then we go backwards to develop teaching materials and activities that meet those
learning objectives. Thus, the learner can know what they need to do with the language to show
good acceptance of the teaching that is clearly directed towards their goals.

Menurut pandangan kami, silabus situasional lebih mendekati “desain sentral”

dibandingkan pendekatan lain karena keduanya mempunyai fokus yang kuat pada isi atau materi
yang diajarkan dalam konteks tertentu. Silabus situasional adalah jenis silabus yang
dikembangkan dengan mempertimbangkan situasi atau konteks pembelajaran tertentu. Biasanya
digunakan dalam konteks pembelajaran bahasa atau pelatihan khusus di mana kebutuhan siswa
atau peserta pelatihan dapat bervariasi berdasarkan situasi atau tujuan tertentu. Baik silabus
situasional maupun desain sentral memberikan penekanan utama pada identifikasi dan
pengembangan konten atau materi pembelajaran yang sesuai dengan konteks tertentu. Dalam
silabus situasional, isi pembelajaran dipilih berdasarkan kebutuhan siswa dalam situasi atau
konteks tertentu, sedangkan pada desain sentral, isi pembelajaran dipilih berdasarkan komponen
inti atau sentral yang relevan dengan tujuan pembelajaran. Selain itu, silabus Situasional
dirancang untuk mengakomodasi perbedaan situasi pembelajaran yang dapat berubah. Hal ini
mencerminkan pendekatan fleksibel yang dapat mengadaptasi materi dan metode pembelajaran
agar sesuai dengan situasi atau konteks yang berbeda. Desain sentral juga dapat mengadaptasi isi
pembelajaran pada situasi tertentu, terutama jika isi inti dapat diubah atau disesuaikan dengan
berbagai konteks pembelajaran. Selanjutnya keduanya berusaha memenuhi kebutuhan siswa atau
peserta pelatihan dengan merancang pembelajaran yang relevan dengan situasi atau konteks yang
dihadapi siswa. Silabus situasional dan desain terpusat memberikan fleksibilitas untuk
merespons perubahan kebutuhan atau tuntutan siswa dalam situasi tertentu.

(Hradilová, 2018)

Bibliography
Hradilová, A. (2018). SOFT-SKILL BASED SYLLABUS IN LEGAL ENGLISH COURSES. THE JOURNAL OF
TEACHING ENGLISH FOR SPECIFIC AND ACADEMIC PURPOSES, 11.

Hradilová, A. (2018). SOFT-SKILL BASED SYLLABUS IN LEGAL ENGLISH COURSES.

THE JOURNAL OF TEACHING ENGLISH FOR SPECIFIC AND ACADEMIC
PURPOSES, 11.