So the PCE was out of the way, but the very next day was the LASIG strand day. What does that mean? Well, we had been allocated a room and throughout the day, all of the talks in that room had been specially selected and would be Learner Autonomy related. I will be posting the PowerPoints of these talks on our website soon too.

The first was given By Lindsay Ellwood and was entitled “Reflection Sheets As a Tool for Implementing a Negotiated Syllabus”. Firstly we discussed the meaning of negotiation in the language classroom. It was clear that the audience were extremely open to the idea. We then looked at theories behind classroom negotiation. Next we saw how reflection sheets can be used to implement a negotiated syllabus. We discussed in small groups situations where our students had negotiated their own syllabus. We heard from a lady teaching in Romania that her final year high school students rejected the textbook she had chosen and she told us about how this then resulted in the students negotiating the syllabus. It turned out to be a very positive experience for all concerned. I told my group a time when my students negotiated part of the syllabus for their TOEIC preparation course. This is actually quite unusual in Japan and was triggered when the students had just taken the TOEIC exam and realised that they had done badly on the reading section. We worked together to target ways in which their reading skills could be improved. We talked a little about ways of getting students to give feedback on a course. One participant mentioned Survey Monkey (http://www.surveymonkey.com) which allows teachers to make anonymous online surveys which everyone can read. Lindsay ended her workshop by asking us to think about common ground we had established during our discussions and ways in which we might make opportunities for our students to be involved in their own course of instruction.