Chapter 6 is very useful to anyone that has a fair amount of freedom in planning the courses they're teaching. Although I found myself believing in one syllabus design and then another when reading through the descriptions, they are a good start to rethinking a course design. I think I'll keep them in mind when deciding what to include in my classes.
However, I am not quite sure whether it is actually useful to think of them as 10 separate ways of going about deciding on a syllabus. It seems to me that many of them are very similar. For instance, what exactly is the difference between a function or a competency or between a text and a situation - isn't a text always part of a situation? It seems that many of these bases are almost identical or at least similar enough to make it difficult to distinguish between them. I also see many of them as being intrinsically linked. For instance it is difficult to teach a situation without including the vocabulary necessary for that situation or to teach a task without teaching the situation that calls for the specific task.
I guess I consider these syllabus approaches useful in triggering thought and discussion about a certain course design, but somewhat confusing when trying to keep them apart.
I like this observation. I like the exposure to the different types of syllabi are available depending on what your purposes are. Some of these I can think back on some of the language classes I've had, and how they might fit in one of these syllabus varieties.
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