Syllabus: how much does it contribute to the effective communication with the students?

Course syllabi provide valuable information which enables meaningful communication between the students and the instructors. They can also be used as a contract, a plan or as a means for learning and teaching. The lively and effective classroom atmosphere, where all the students are engaged into the lesson, could be obtained when the syllabi are prepared thoroughly in order to answer students' questions and comments beforehand. Due to the fact that the students' achievement can be determined by the amount of the match between the students' performance or needs and the instructors' expectations, well-designed syllabi are very crucial in terms of format and wording. The present study took place at the ELT department of a private university in Istanbul. The authors aim to investigate how effective the syllabi prepared by the instructors are in terms of communicating assessment with the students. The data was collected by means of the syllabi of the courses in the undergraduate program of English language department and interviews were held with the students from each level (1st-4th) to see if there is a discrepancy between the assessment policies given in the syllabus and the actual use of assessment techniques in the classroom. Twenty syllabi have been analyzed. These syllabi used in the study belong to the instructors who give courses only related to ELT field. Furthermore, the undergraduate program consists of courses including methodological and pedagogical approaches to foreign language teaching as well as raising students' awareness of the English language system. The objective of the program is to equip the students with advanced and specialized knowledge in the field and to help them acquire skills for teacher research and professional development. The results show that the syllabi which have been used are not insufficient in communicating with the students but need to be enhanced by the help of students' expectations and perceptions. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved