Traditional models tend to restrict themselves to objectives specification, content selection, grading and evaluation. It is felt by some syllabus designers that there ought to be a rigid separation between syllabus design and methodology, in other words, that considerations of what to teach ought to be kept separate from how to teach. Such a separation has led in the past to such aberrations as the teaching of courses whose input was specified in functional-notional terms through an audiolingual methodology.

In the model proposed here, all the elements are in interaction and each may influence the other. Objectives may be modified, altered or added to during the teaching-learning process. Decisions about what goes on in the classroom will be influenced, not only by pre-specified objectives, materials and activities, but also by needs, constraints (what is feasible, say, in the learning mode and environment) and by the evaluation feedback which emerges during the course itself.