SLA as Pieces of Puzzle in Syllabus Design and Materials Development

Abstract

First of all, the link between the field of Second Language Acquisition (SLA) and curriculum development and more scrupulously syllabus design at the level of materials development is an issue which can neither be associated to any definite theory of SLA in general nor to an exact scholarly feature in particular. Special thanks to SLA scholars, it seems that all of the SLA researchers are at consensus that providing content materials for second language (L2) learners to triumph over their L2 mastery of their language is reasonably enough a prodigious and a herculean task. Therefore, each of the SLA scholars tries to rationalize their theory in relation to the materials development and consequently take away the criticism or the praise of the other critiques in that the credibility of the SLA theories has permanently been under an unanswered and enigmatic query, let alone giving false hopes to investigate their applicability in curriculum development and materials development. As a result, the present paper focuses on the following two basic and leading questions. The former investigates whether SLA has the capability of being used as a resource of the materials development, and if yes in what ways. And the latter sheds light on the unique feature of SLA which acts as the basis of materials development which is called ‘unit of analysis’.