There are cognitive, social, personal, and practical reasons for studying a second language, and the syllabus is shaped by these and the identity of the learners, general and specific course objectives, educational principles, course components, learner input, and student evaluation procedures. A dynamic syllabus addresses four language competence types: grammatical, sociolinguistic, discourse, and strategic. These competencies, and the language skills that play a role in each, constitute an individual's language proficiency, and provide the framework for a syllabus and sub-syllabi with variations in emphasis. Construction of the sub-syllabi follows a non-culture-specific procedure of syllabus preparation, testing, and revision with components including teacher/learner input, individual/group output, speech acts/functions, general notions and relations, discourse features, grammatical exponents, skills, topics and sub-topics, themes, activities, testing, negotiation, evaluation and reflection, and reintroduction. The components can take a variety of forms, and any can serve as an organizing principle for the overall syllabus. Beyond this point, the syllabus becomes culture-specific and it is the teacher's responsibility to provide culture-specific information continually. Students can take some responsibility for their own learning. There does exist a need for test item banks and formats valid across languages. (MSE)