Syllabus

According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the word syllabus derives from modern Latin 'list', in turn from a misreading of the Greek (the leather parchment label that gave the title and contents of a document), which first occurred in a 15th-century print of Cicero's letters to Atticus. Earlier Latin dictionaries such as Lewis and Short contain the word , relating it to the non-existent Greek word , which appears to be a mistaken reading of 'syllable'; the newer Oxford Latin Dictionary does not contain this word. The apparent change from to is explained as a hypercorrection by analogy to ( 'bring together, gather'). ==Modern research==

In 2005, Slattery & Carlson describe the syllabus as a "contract between faculty members and their students, designed to answer students' questions about a course, as well as inform them about what will happen should they fail to meet course expectations". They promote using action verbs (identify, analyze, evaluate) as opposed to passive verbs (learn, recognize, understand) when creating course goals. Habanek stresses the importance of the syllabus as a "vehicle for expressing accountability and commitment." ==See also==