Negotiated Syllabus

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negotiated syllabus involves the teacher and the learners working together to make decisions at
many of the parts of the curriculum design process. It is a way of giving high priority to the
recognition of learner needs within a course and to the need to continually adjust courses while they
are running to suit changing needs and circumstances.

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in negotiated syllabuses arising from humanistic methodologies like community language learning
which are very learner-centred, from needs analysis which focuses on learners’ needs, from work in
individualisation and learner autonomy, and from learner strategy research which sees the learner
playing a central role in determining how the language is learned.

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Purposes: Why are we learning the language? (Goals) Content: What should be the focus of our
work? (Content and sequencing) Ways of working: How should the learning work be carried out?
(Format and presentation) Evaluation: How well has the learning proceeded? (Monitoring and
assessment). 1) negotiating the goals, content, format and assessment of the course, (2)
implementing these negotiated decisions, (3) evaluating the effect of the implementation in terms of
outcomes and the way the implementation was done.

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Negotiation procedure. How will the negotiation be carried out? When will it be done?
Course planning: participation. Who will work with who? The range of answers to this question
includes individual work, pair work, groups working
What kinds of activity will be worked on? The range of answers is many and may include role play,
information gap tasks, guided writing
Course planning: learning goals. What will be the focus of the work? The range of possible answers
includes increasing speaking fluency, learning new vocabulary,

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focus on negotiation of assessment and evaluation, largely because this has direct effects on goals
and ways of achieving these goals. there are four major factors affecting feedback through
assessment:

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The first is the result of a lack of knowledge or experience with such a syllabus. Learners may be
reluctant to negotiate or to let their classmates negotiate because they feel it should be the teacher’s
expertise guiding the course. The second major disadvantage is that a fully negotiated syllabus
requires considerable teacher skill and time in accessing and producing resources. Where there are
several teachers with similar classes, this load can be partly shared.

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Summary of the Steps 1 Decide how the negotiation will be carried out. 2 Negotiate the participation,
procedure and goals. 3 Begin to run the course. 4 Evaluate the effectiveness of the negotiated
decisions. 5 Go through the steps again.