 We tend to think of a syllabus at least, I used to think of it as a very kind of traditional way. I have a very rigid idea, but in fact what we plan doesn't actually work when we meet students sometimes, or most of the time, maybe. So Fran argues that the variables which intervene of our planning of the syllabus and the actual learning that it's intended to do can sometimes be virtually irrelevant. I made my plan, I made my syllabus, but that's until I meet them. Then I need to make some adjustments, right? Okay, so then Fran also talked about this as being a negotiated syllabus, or I mean a process syllabus, and then Clark takes up and then changes it to negotiated. But if I'm not sure what that is yet, I'll give you a definition. We do love definitions, derived from and generated by specific groups of learners. I kind of think of it as a document that's collaborated by the teacher and the learner with expected aims, lessons of their interests and needs. Now this is important to me, I'm an ESP person, I love me some interests and needs of my students. So my background, right? This is obviously my class, this is me here in the back. This is the idea of a traditional classroom, a traditional syllabus. Oh I feel like I'm pretty good for my age, you know. A big big class, I have been teaching general English, I just recently moved into EAP, but I was teaching general English for about 10 years. I have many students, I taught in language schools primarily and then I go to uni. And they have different interests and aims, and also I had limitations by my school. In some cases my language school did not trust me and they prescribed my entire syllabus. So my question was, how do I engage my learners with these different interests and these different aims? That was the question I wanted to do. And Newton did an article, he wrote an article, he didn't do it, he wrote it. And I thought, you know, there's that age old, age old adage, right? Life gives you lemons, you then make lemonade. With my limitations I made lemons too, I'll create a lemonade. I'm so smart you guys. So Newton says, right, classroom negotiation helps to make the teaching program more responsive to learners' needs, increase learners' motivation and involvement in their learning. And also for my own sake I wanted to extend the teacher's training teaching strategies, right? There's great things there of two in this definition about responsibility and autonomy, effectiveness and boosting their enhancing self-esteem. So there's some good things in there as well. But I need to tell you how, right? What good is it if I just define it and tell you about it? Let me tell you how to do it. So the first thing that I tried was questionnaires with my students. I had them interview each other, asking them about what do you want to learn? How would you like to learn? Do you enjoy games? Do you enjoy grammar? What are you interested in? I did that first. And then more recently, this past summer I finished my master's in TESL and some of my research was interviewing a needs analysis, interviewing my students, asking them some questions which I'm going to give you. I would also remind you that when you do a negotiation, students who are not used to that need some training with it. Because in some cultures you're not used to being asked, well what do you want to do? So you have to kind of think about is this going to be difficult for them to take on? I need to give them a little bit of training. No, honestly, what do you want? Not what do I want, right? So remember you know that outlying to your students what is in the realm of negotiation and what is not. Now this might be something that is decided for you. So if you know I can't change my assessment, that has to be the way my DOS decided. Or if you think you know I'm just not comfortable with this degree of flexibility yet. I'm comfortable with giving them tasks to negotiate but I'm not going to give them the world, for example. So remember your boundaries. Also emphasize to them especially from those who might not be aware of the concept that their input will impact that syllabus that you make them. And they see that, right? And then also practice makes perfect, right? It's very unlikely but although I think in our last talk we learned we're pretty bad at our jobs. That's my take on it. So I know not to expect perfection. Okay so here's what I did. There's two applications of the negotiated syllabus. So I'm going to introduce both of them. The weak form sounds kind of bad but actually is very practical. That means I have some aspect of my external syllabus but I'm going to negotiate issue or parts to it. So what did I do? I did need analysis interviews. I asked my students questions like what is your motivation to study English? What subjects do you enjoy learning about? What subjects do you think you need to learn more about? Then I created three different ESP syllabi that were then given to them online. We've been talking a little bit about technology in the morning. And then at the end of the six-week period I then asked them was making the syllabus together helpful for you? Was it useful? Were the online activities that I created useful to you? What did you dislike? So I asked them these questions and what did they say? Are you guys excited to hear this? Okay so one thing was yes for me it was useful because it was personalized. I did different things in general English and I studied things or I didn't have to study things I wasn't interested in. Which I think is pretty important because those prescribed syllabi often say let's study poetry for a week. You're like I don't want to. Or it was a good experience learning about what I'm most interested in. It helps me. Or it's quite nice to be interviewed because it's an active way to be a part of my class. I tell you what you want and then I get better in those aspects and it's what you need most. And I think that's something we may forget as practitioners how much students want to be involved. And I think that's something that they kind of enjoy being a part of that social experiment in a good way. Now I'm also going to introduce the strong form of a negotiated syllabus. For those of you who said I have a great degree of flexibility in my class. Okay so you have a bit more power. So Kaplan and Maynard talked about in 2015. They were doing in a university contest. They were teaching a negotiation and conflict management course. They did a negotiation period in one week between drop ad. And the reason that they did this was because they too felt that the traditional syllabus is unilaterally decided that the students themselves were not being included. This is kind of strange given that we're all probably collaborative CLT teachers. We're community teachers ideally. And of course please bear in mind that there's no rolling move when you're at university which you didn't know. So what did their findings come from this university or from this study? The increased learner buy-in, ownership of the material that they were a part of. Also they felt that they represented their competencies because they weren't studying materials that they felt that they were already fairly good at and their interests. And it raised their commitment and their motivation in the class. So all definitely good things. So I'll show you also how did they do it. Because I talked about my week form, how I did the strong form for you more flexible teachers and how did they do it. So basically that's a very small text in fact. So basically part one is the teacher makes the syllabus. That is what they're calling the initial offer. Then in class one they give the syllabus to the students and in groups they then discuss how they might negotiate it. Then the students themselves create a counter proposal of the syllabus. Which is collected by the teacher. They then re-prepare the teacher's side of what they agreed on which things they would take. Then at the second class they would give out the new syllabus which would then either be accepted by the students or then a counter proposal again. But in the span of one week that's the idea. So far we're still with me. Excellent. Now in case you're curious what happened you have here on this side you might be able to see they talked about the types of assessment, exams, term paper, a collaborative bargaining project. So notice that in the first initial offer by the teachers the grade weight was 50%. The students of course, no thank you, 43%. And they said there's no format to the exam but the students said no, no, no, short structured essay only. And the term paper was 20% of the grade. They said no, no, please just 12. Or even it's 15 pages with 20 citations. The students negotiated how about just six with six citations. I think that's a win. And then the collective bargaining project was 10%. The students said I can work with my buddy. Now I'm going to make it 22%. I think it's 22, yeah. And then it becomes this kind of change, right? They're taking ownership of what things are more important to them, right? So basically through their negotiation the teachers decided they could negotiate the weight of the assignments, the amount of the course load the students could do, the dates that they were submitted as well as the how many quizzes and homework that they would do, right? So they had quite a lot of flexibility. Now granted that may not be possible for all of us but what I'm going to ask you to do is go back to your bestie. He's still sitting next to you, conveniently. And you're going to talk about in these negotiated items that worked for them what would work for you in your context? Would you feel comfortable negotiating some of these? Would you be able to do all of them? Right now think about it. What would you be comfortable with doing? I'll give you about one to two minutes with your friend. Okay, got it. Actually, I think there's only two slides left anyway. I think in the next one I can kind of skip through and throw in three. But I think this is an important part. You know, kind of taking it into... Oh really? I realized I was rushing through it and I was like, oh crap, I was speaking way too fast. And I think this is like camera pretty much recording everything that I'm taking. That's what you're supposed to do. Yeah, you don't have to do that. In terms of negotiating class, this might seem a little bit kind of more sensible in the sense that you can treat it as a real negotiation. But as your initial offer is a bit ridiculous, ask them to do five hours of homework a night. Ungrade it, unmarked. So they just do it and then you collect it. So I'm going to do this. Let's make this official, right? And then also learn about what your students are really interested in. Because they tell you that. This is a study that I did. These are reasons why I had to do the weaker form. I had issues I had, of course, but I had to work with. I had weekly and in-class tests. I had the DOS kind of making some decisions, as well as enrolling enrollment, which we all know makes studies much more complicated. This is the takeaway. Hopefully we'll resonate with you if what I've done was successful. Learners bring with them into their learning environment a great deal of experience and knowledge. I said, and I think this is ideation. I've heard that word all the time. I use it like a second language. Interpersonal and textual schematic, which can enrich the classroom experience and indeed determine the nature of that experience. So now that you feel good.