Verb-form clustering and syllabus design

Abstract

Within language teaching, verb form is generally recognised to be the central organising principle of the syllabus. An examination of current EFL materials, however, reveals a failure to take into account the fact that verb forms are not discrete linguistic items but cohere together in functional clusters, each of which characterises one of the major communicative contexts of language: description, narration, etc. The article begins by arguing the view that social language, because of its complexity and unpredictability, needs to be delayed on a language course until a core of relatively unmarked and formally regular factual language, or language for the conveying of information, has been built up. It goes on to give a brief account of verb-form clustering, together with some of the problems caused by a discrete, step-by-step treatment of verb forms. By way of exemplification of clustering, a fairly detailed examination of the context of description is given together with suggestions as to how this might be implemented in terms of syllabus design.