ESL Term:

Structural Syllabus

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structural syllabus:  A syllabus in which grammatical structures form the central organizing feature. A structural syllabus proceeds from simple grammatical structure to more complex grammatical structure. An example might be something like: Present progressive -> Comparatives -> Simple past -> Past progressive. The main faults of structural syllabuses is that they tend to ignore meaning and a lot of really useful language is neglected at the beginning because it is viewed as structurally too complex (If I were you, I would).

Structural syllabuses can be contrasted to functional syllabuses, which are organized according to the functions that language has (greeting, asking advice, disagreeing).