A syllabus (; : syllabuses or syllabi) or specification is a document that communicates information about an academic course or class and defines expectations and responsibilities. It is generally an overview or summary of the

curriculum In education, a curriculum (; : curriculums or curricula ) is the totality of student experiences that occur in an educational process. The term often refers specifically to a planned sequence of instruction, or to a view of the student's experi ...

. A syllabus may be set out by an examination board or prepared by the tutor or instructor who teaches or controls the course. The syllabus is usually handed out and reviewed in the first class. It can also be available online or electronically transmitted as an e-syllabus. The word is also used more generally for an abstract or programme of knowledge, and is best known in this sense as referring to two catalogues published by the

Catholic Church The Catholic Church (), also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the List of Christian denominations by number of members, largest Christian church, with 1.27 to 1.41 billion baptized Catholics Catholic Church by country, worldwid ...

in 1864 and 1907 condemning certain doctrinal positions.

Etymology

According to the

Oxford English Dictionary The ''Oxford English Dictionary'' (''OED'') is the principal historical dictionary of the English language, published by Oxford University Press (OUP), a University of Oxford publishing house. The dictionary, which published its first editio ...

, the word ''syllabus'' derives from modern Latin 'list', in turn from a misreading of the Greek (the leather parchment label that gave the title and contents of a document), which first occurred in a 15th-century print of

Cicero Marcus Tullius Cicero ( ; ; 3 January 106 BC – 7 December 43 BC) was a Roman statesman, lawyer, scholar, philosopher, orator, writer and Academic skeptic, who tried to uphold optimate principles during the political crises tha ...

's letters to Atticus. Earlier Latin dictionaries such as Lewis and Short contain the word , relating it to the non-existent Greek word , which appears to be a mistaken reading of 'syllable'; the newer

Oxford Latin Dictionary The ''Oxford Latin Dictionary'' (or ''OLD'') is the standard English lexicon of Classical Latin, compiled from sources written before AD 200. Begun in 1933, it was published in fascicles between 1968 and 1982; a lightly revised second edition ...

does not contain this word. The apparent change from to is explained as a

hypercorrection In sociolinguistics, hypercorrection is the nonstandard use of language that results from the overapplication of a perceived rule of language-usage prescription. A speaker or writer who produces a hypercorrection generally believes through a ...

by analogy to ( 'bring together, gather'). Chambers Dictionary agrees that it derives from the Greek for a book label, but claims that the original Greek was a feminine noun, , , borrowed by Latin, the misreading coming from an accusative plural Latin .'' Chambers Dictionary'', 1998, p. 1674.

Modern research

In a 2002 study, Parks and Harris suggest "a syllabus can serve students as a model of professional thinking and writing". In 2005, Slattery & Carlson describe the syllabus as a "contract between faculty members and their

student A student is a person enrolled in a school or other educational institution, or more generally, a person who takes a special interest in a subject. In the United Kingdom and most The Commonwealth, commonwealth countries, a "student" attends ...

s, designed to answer student's questions about a course, as well as inform them about what will happen should they fail to meet course expectations". They promote using action

verb A verb is a word that generally conveys an action (''bring'', ''read'', ''walk'', ''run'', ''learn''), an occurrence (''happen'', ''become''), or a state of being (''be'', ''exist'', ''stand''). In the usual description of English, the basic f ...

s (identify, analyze, evaluate) as opposed to passive verbs (learn, recognize, understand) when creating course goals. Habanek stresses the importance of the syllabus as a "vehicle for expressing accountability and commitment."

References

{{Reflist, 2 Curricula Educational materials School pedagogy

Etymology

Modern research

See also

References