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Paper short abstract:

This paper investigates the teacher’s role in a negotiated/process syllabus (Breen 1987) in a pre-advanced Japanese course at a UK university. Based on the teacher’s records and notes, the manners in which the learners increasingly became independent and empowered will be discussed.

Paper long abstract:

This paper investigates the possible benefits of a negotiated/process syllabus (Breen 1987) in a pre-advanced Japanese course at a UK university as a pilot study. With a focus on the teacher’s role, it qualitatively analyses a record and notes kept by the teacher of her attempts to implement the syllabus and compares it to the syllabus that would have been designed solely by the teacher. As the course unfolded joint decisions were made through negotiations by the learners and the teacher about the contents, structure, and delivery of the classes in response to the emergent needs of the participants (Graves 2008). More specifically the learners and the teacher negotiated and agreed on the topics/issues to be covered, materials to be used to investigate the issues, methods of presenting the outcomes of the investigations and so on in response to the jointly identified needs to achieve the objectives and intended learning outcomes of the course. These objectives and the intended learning outcomes were revisited a few times during the course so that further joint decisions could be made to achieve them, based on what had worked well so far, what needed to be done and how. As the course proceeded the teacher's role as a facilitator and a mediator became evident whilst the learners identified their own strengths and weaknesses, set manageable sub-goals, and increasingly became independent, empowered, and responsible for their own learning (Breen & Littlejohn 2000). It is argued that through negotiation and joint decision-making, opportunities to learn to appreciate different perspectives can be created which is an important transferrable skill needed for participation in the target language community. It is hoped that this study will trigger further research in and practice of active involvement of learners in syllabus design.

Breen, M. P. (1987). Contemporary Paradigms in Syllabus Design, Part I. Language Teaching, 20(2). 81–92.

Breen, M. P. & Littlejohn, A. (Eds.) (2000). Classroom decision making: Negotiation and process syllabuses in practice. Cambridge: CUP.

Graves, K. (2008). The language curriculum: A social contextual perspective. Language Teaching 41(2). 147–181.