Early textbooks contained lists of grammatical structures as their tables of contents, with lessons organized around these structures. The syllabus of the first beginner-level textbook I used (an Audiolingual textbook) in the 1970s was largely verb tense-driven, a feature of textbooks at the time, although other elements of grammar were also given some coverage. The course introduction stated explicitly that:

The basic organisation of the course is around the verb and the verb phrase. The uninflected forms (except for be) are presented first, and gradually the others are introduced. Affirmative and negative statement, simple and negative questions, substitute sentences, and attached questions are presented, first for be and then for all other verbs. (Intensive Course in English, Part I, 1963: vi)

The verb tenses were listed as in Table 3.6:

Table 3.6: verb lists from Intensive Course in English, Part I (1963)

This kind of listing is still fairly common in today's textbooks. The sentences and texts used to illustrate specific language forms are generally concocted for illustration purposes, and are often unnatural. Andrews notes how much textbook language lacks authenticity and context:

[M]any of the sentences appearing in textbooks, guidebooks, and prepackaged workbooks have been written by a professional Illustrative Sentence Generator. The sentences are isolated and have no context of authentic use. Second, these sentences do not represent the ways real people use real language in real circumstances. They are, therefore, misleading inasmuch as they appear out of nowhere onto a page in a textbook, but are, nevertheless, held up to the students as examples of good models […] Only when sentences are placed into some real context can we accurately describe them and their uses. Few people use language in single, isolated, one-shot sentences. The traditional program tends to forget, nevertheless, that in real-time language use, normal people simply do not go around making unconnected, unprompted, unsolicited statements or comments about the world! (Andrews, 1998: 37-38)

While modern textbooks still focus largely on grammatical items, functional or other categories may also appear; these categories are listed in the five different types of syllabus reported by McDonough and Shaw (1993: 15):

• grammatical or structural
• functional-notional
• situational
• skills based
• topic based.

McDonough and Shaw point out, though, that most syllabuses combine a number of the above, as illustrated by the contents of a coursebook unit focusing on comparatives and superlatives (Richards et al, 1990):

The focus of the above unit is essentially the teaching of comparative and superlative constructions, with the functional and other categories organized around this, so that discussing the unit topics (comparing, etc), practising the language functions (describing similarities and differences), and so on, all involve using the grammar target.

Like many coursebooks, the one above claims to be a multi-skills syllabus in which 'language is used for authentic communication' (Richards et al, 1990: ix). In many ways, the functional, listening and other activities seem at best to be disguised attempts to present the grammar item. Again, as in most coursebooks, grammar items are presented in list form, to be learned one-by-one, with appropriate opportunities for practice - what Rutherford (1987) refers to as the 'accumulated entities' approach, whereby the language is segmented into 'hierarchically arranged constructs' (Rutherford 1987: 149).

Essentially, the multi-skills syllabus is often really clothing for a structural scaffold, and it is therefore the structural syllabus that is still the most common in language teaching today (Long and Robinson, 1998).

Variations on the multi-skills syllabus are also common. The following five units from a 12-unit French course for advanced learners (Le français en faculté, 1999) weds a series of topics to specific grammar items, in an attempt to 'combine an inductive, text-based approach with a deductive, grammar-based one' (Le français en faculté, 1999: 6).

Similarly, in the following unit from a German textbook (Brückenkurs: Deutsch als Fremdsprache für die Mittelstufe, 1998), we find a variety of strands, including sections on grammar, speaking, writing and vocabulary: