notional-functional syllabus

A syllabus organised around the meanings learners need to express (notions) and the communicative purposes for which they use language (functions), rather than around grammatical forms or recurrent situations. The first systematic alternative to the Structural Syllabus in mainstream ELT and the bridge between earlier methods and CLT.

Origin

The model crystallised in D.A. Wilkins's Notional Syllabuses: A Taxonomy and Its Relevance to Foreign Language Curriculum Development (Oxford University Press, 1976), which extended an earlier paper Wilkins had written for the Council of Europe in 1972. Wilkins distinguished semantico-grammatical notions (time, quantity, space, agency) from categories of communicative function (requesting, apologising, agreeing, persuading) and argued that a syllabus organised around both would serve communicative competence better than one organised around forms.

Wilkins coined the terms synthetic and analytic to characterise the contrast: structural syllabuses break language into parts and ask learners to reassemble them; notional-functional syllabuses present language as already organised by meaning and use.

Application: The Threshold Level

The notional-functional model became operational through the Council of Europe's modern languages project. Jan A. van Ek produced The Threshold Level in 1975 as a specification of what an adult learner of English needs to do, mean, and say to function in everyday transactional situations across Europe. Van Ek and John L. M. Trim revised and expanded it as Threshold 1990 (Cambridge University Press, 1990; for the Council of Europe). The specification organises content under situations, language activities, language functions, general notions, and specific notions, with exponents for each.

The Threshold Level anchored a family of T-Level descriptions — Waystage (A2), Threshold (B1), Vantage (B2) — that fed directly into the CEFR when the Council of Europe consolidated its work in 2001. CEFR can-do descriptors retain the notional-functional grain even where contemporary syllabuses have moved on.

Design Features

A notional-functional syllabus specifies, for each level, the functions learners will perform, the notions they will express, and a set of linguistic exponents for each. Sequencing follows perceived communicative priority and surrender value rather than grammatical complexity: a beginner unit on requesting might present Could you, Can I, and I'd like in parallel, ignoring their formal differences in modality. Grammar is not absent but subordinate, introduced as needed to support the functional repertoire.

Critiques

Critics including Henry Widdowson, Christopher Brumfit, and later Michael Long argued that listing functions and notions does not amount to teaching how to combine them in real interaction; the syllabus inherits the synthetic logic it claims to replace, only at the level of meaning rather than form. Function-form correspondences are also unstable: the same function maps to many forms and the same form serves many functions. Most modern coursebooks fold the notional-functional grid into a Multi-Syllabus alongside grammar, lexis, skills, and topics rather than using it as a sole organising principle.

References

• Wilkins, D. A. (1976). Notional Syllabuses: A Taxonomy and Its Relevance to Foreign Language Curriculum Development. Oxford University Press.
• van Ek, J. A. (1975). The Threshold Level in a European Unit/Credit System for Modern Language Learning by Adults. Council of Europe.
• van Ek, J. A., and Trim, J. L. M. (1990). Threshold 1990. Cambridge University Press for the Council of Europe.
• Council of Europe (2001). Common European Framework of Reference for Languages: Learning, Teaching, Assessment. Cambridge University Press.