Hanife BENSEN* and Fatos SILMAN**
*Near East University English Preparatory School.
**Assoc Prof. Dr., Cyprus International University Faculty of Education.

Abstract

Problem Statement: Curriculum development involves the process of planning, setting up and running courses. The knowledge about designing syllabi, making choices of content and materials and assessing student performances plays an important role in curriculum development. Syllabus design is one aspect of curriculum development. It covers the kind of materials that are adopted and the ways they will be exploited for the classroom teaching. Choosing a syllabus is a major decision in language teaching. Therefore, it should be made as conscientiously and with as much information as possible.

Purpose of Study: The purpose of the study is to examine the syllabus designs used in the three preparatory schools of the three universities in the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (TRNC) and make suggestions on how to improve these syllabus designs.

Methods: A qualitative research method was used in this study. An interview schedule was used to collect data. The study was conducted with 27 participants from the preparatory schools of the three universities in the TRNC. The data were broken into categories followed by thematic coding.

Findings and Results: The findings show that two universities are still using the traditional product-oriented approach (in other words, the grammarbased syllabus design), while one university is using a process-oriented approach with a skill-based syllabus design.

Conclusions and Recommendations: The integrated syllabus design seems to be the most beneficial design type, as it involves the use of language skills, functions, texts and grammatical items. Institutions can also be flexible in making adjustments to fit their students’ needs.

Keywords: Syllabus, Syllabus design, Preparatory schools, TRNC