Griffee also says :

Since a learner-centred curriculum is a joint-effort between students and teachers, teachers attempting to implement a more learner centred approach to their teaching will have to teach goal negotiation in the same way they would present a traditional exercise; step by step instruction will have to be given to take students through a process leading to student generated goals and objectives in a learner-centred classroom.

Griffee seems to wonder sometimes whether learner-centred methods were really worth all the trouble and pleading they involved. Nevertheless, he appeared ready to continue experimenting with them and comments that ?the jury is still out.?

At first sight, it seems that at least three of Ellis's facilitators are more likely to be activated in a 'learner-centred' classroom than in one in which 'teacher-dominant' styles of instruction are favoured. These three are : (2) 'the learner's perceived need to communicate in the L2, (3) 'Topic Choice' and (8)'Uninhibited Practice'.

However, there are complications, even with these three facilitators. Take 'perceived need'. There are many types of classes and circumstances in which few if any of the learners have any 'perceived need' to communicate in the L2, either in or outside the classroom. Many learners are studying English simply because it is there - on the syllabus. They have little interest in the language and even less reason to use it with their classmates, all of whom speak the same L1, and use it constantly both outside and inside the language classroom. What are teachers to do when there is simply no 'perceived need' by anyone except, perhaps, by the Ministry of Education official who stipulates that learners must get so many hours of instruction in English but who never has to teach those learners?

Let us consider 'Topic Choice'. How often, even in pair-work activities, do learners really have 'topic choice'? It is one thing to argue that pair-work activities will at least allow learners to say what they want to say. I often use pair-work for this purpose and also for 'rehearsal'. But this is not the same as claiming that pair-work or other allegedly 'student-centred' approaches actually give learners topic choice. The topic or topics have usually already been chosen by the teacher of materials-designer. The one facilitator that it is probably easier to bring into play through 'learner-centred' instruction is 'Uninhibited Practice'. The problem in many classrooms outside the UK or other English-speaking countries is not that learners might be inhibited if they were to practise the L2. The real problem is that, as we have seen, many typical learners see no need to practise the L2 at all. It is simply 'another subject'. There are people, I know, who deny this. To them I can only say 'what you are doing is intellectually reprehensible. You try to avoid the problem by denying that it exists. The only reason you do this is that you have never had to confront the problem. '