| >
return to program
Title
The Negotiated Syllabus: Limitations and Implementations
Presenter
Rahma Al Busafi
Oman
Abstract
There is no question that successful classroom learning and teaching relies on communication between the teacher and the learners. It is therefore important that the teacher understands the students' perception- and that the learners understand the teacher's perception. For this to happen, classroom negotiation must be possible. The so-called Process or Negotiated Syllabus clearly embodies this notion of negotiation and provides learners with a degree of choice and self-expression, unavailable in most existing types of syllabus.
The Negotiated Syllabus is a translation of research findings in a number of overlapping streams in ELT such as; Needs Analysis, Communicative Language Teaching, Humanistic Methodologies, Independent Learning and Learner Individualization. These research findings claim that learners' voices need to be heard regarding their own learning, what they need to learn and how they prefer to learn it. According to Breen and Littlejohn (2000) Classroom Decisions that are open to Negotiation could be:
- the purpose of language learning (Why);
- the contents or subjects matter which learners will work upon (What);
- ways of working in the classroom (How);
- means of evaluation of the efficiency and quality of work and its outcomes (How well)
This paper analytically studies the potential implementation of the Negotiated Syllabus in ESL/EFL classrooms. It also attempts to answer the following questions:
- How can we involve students in classroom decisions?
- Why should we do this?
- Can it work? What implications does this have for teachers?
- What difficulties might arise?
- What benefits can we expect?
Keywords: Negotiation, Classroom Decisions, Negotiated Syllabus, Role of Teacher, Role of Learners
References
Breen, M. and Littlejohn, A. (2000) The Significance of Negotiation. In Breen, M. and Littlejohn, A. (eds.), Classroom Decision-Making: Negotiation and Process Syllabuses in Practice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Biography
Rahma Al Busafi is currently lecturing at Rustaq College of Applied Sciences in Oman. She received a Bachelor's Degree of English from the College of Education at Sultan Qaboos University-Oman in 2004. The following year she completed her Master's Degree in Applied Linguistics and TESOL at University of Newcastle Upon Tyne in England. During the academic years 2006-2007 and 2008-2009, she gained considerable teaching experience at Rustaq College. She successfully taught a number of diverse courses such as: Communicative Language Teaching Development, Readings in Applied Linguistics, Second Language Acquisition, Reading and Writing Skills Development, Initial Literacy Skills Development, Phonetics and Phonology, Discourse Analysis, Foundation Year Speaking course and General English. In 2007-2008 she was awarded a Foreign Language Teaching Assistantship (FLTA) from the Fulbright Program in the United States of America.
|
