EFL for fluency and autonomy, in a Japanese college

Integrating a WordPress blog with Twitter

Just discovered I have a Twitter account for autonoblogger. Using Twitter’s tools, I added a “Follow Me” button to the RH sidebar. Not satisfied with this simple arrangement, I decided to do something more sophisticated: have WordPress automatically send my latest pearls of wisdom on this blog directly to Twitter. I’ve done this before on a different blog, so I know it can be done.

How to do it? Ah. Erm. Forgotten. Maybe it’s something in Twitter? A tool or a widget? Nope.  As I will no doubt forget this and want to do it again at some stage, here’s the procedure. Basically you use the “socialize” option in the “publicize” menu of Feedburner.

How comprehensible must comprehensible input be?

According to Krashen, for language-learning to occur, language input must be comprehensible.

I’m teaching a class of university freshmen, in an English Dept. Some of them learned absolutely no English in high school. Some seem to have learned nothing in JHS. Some do not recognize the word “young”. One boy said he doesn’t understand “does” (as in the written question “Does it take a long time?” and this is after 20 x 90-minute sessions of me circling and using TPRS! I think that student was pulling my leg, don’t you? Or is he mentally retarded?).

At the beginning of the semester, I started off circling with questions, but many did not understand the questions. I checked comprehension with my barometer students, but became bogged down: I had to translate and explain EVERYTHING! And write it down on the board.

There are also some wise guys in the class who ask questions just for fun.
There is also one boy who asks picky questions that require complex answers (he’s the one who said he didn’t understand the word “does”). That’s why he asks them. I think he asks questions out of nervousness. I don’t think he understands my answers. I’m not sure he’s paying attention to my answers.

So I stopped checking/explaining/translating “every little thing” (http://www.avexnet.or.jp/elt/ also [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A5aUXAodv4Y])

This meant going back on my promise to make everything 100% comprehensible.

Tuff? Or have I taken a wrong turn here down the TPRS road?
Waddaya think?

Classroom management – how to nip potential troublemakers in the bud (4)

Coming to the end of the semester. I’ve learned a few things from my troublesome students.

One is, they don’t pay much attention to what the teacher says. You first have to get their attention and show that you mean business right from the start. The sooner you demonstrate this (not talk about it), the better. They won’t pay attention until you do.

Like Coach Carter does here (or go visit splicd if you’re short of time and just want to cut to the chase):

Notice how Carter doesn’t fall into the trap of answering when Timo Cruz’s asks “What for?”

Why English Is Tough in Japan | A New Japan

(Originally posted at Searching for Accurate Maps. Reproduced here with permission.)
An interesting article on English education in Japan over at The Diplomat. Referring to the Japanese government’s making English classes compulsory in 5th and 6th grade (that’s the last two years of primary school for you non-U.S. readers) onwards, law-school graduate Hiroki Ogawa writes,

The reality is that raw English ability alone is unlikely to produce any significant change, even assuming that Japanese students go on to have basic conversational skills in English which is often not the case anyway. The problem for many Japanese doesnt necessarily stem from the English lessons themselves, nor the lack of opportunities to use English in Japan though this does exacerbate the situation. The big problem is often the significant cultural barriers.

I’m going to comment on a few points of this article, as it’s well worth reading and makes an important point, but needs amplifying. Ogawa’s point is that Japanese don’t learn to discuss or argue in English class, and that this severely cramps their English communicative ability, and that (inevitably these days) the government should do something about it!

I think he’s right. Partly. But the situation is more difficult than he implies, and I don’t think the solutioncan be implemented by governmental regulation or initiatives. Read more »

YouTube – Greeks Myths “Theseus and the Minotaur” 1of3

 

A treasure, stumbled upon by chance: a whole series of videos illustrating the Greek myths, or some of them at least. Here’s the one of Theseus and the Minotaur, starring Michael Gambon (aka Prof. Dumbledore) and a Muppet dog but don’t let that put you off: it’s good quality and to the point.

When young Theseus learns that he is the son of King Aegeus of Athens, he goes to Athens and is warmly accepted by his father. Theseus wants to help the king so he decides to go with the yearly tribute to Crete: every year, Athens must send seven youths to be eaten by the Minotaur. If Theseus can slay the Minotaur he can save many Athenian lives. Once in Crete, the prince seduces the princess Ariadne who helps him defeat the Minotaur. But when Theseus marries her and then abandons her on the way home, Ariadne curses him to a tragic end.

via YouTube – Greeks Myths “Theseus and the Minotaur” 1of3.

Classroom management – how to nip potential troublemakers in the bud (3)

How I’m trying to manage some troublesome students, using ideas from Fred Jones’ book “Tools for Teaching. (See this blog entry for an intro to the book. Part 1 of this series is here, part 2 here.)

As usual:

1. Re-arrange the furniture.
2. Assign seats. Today they filled seats from the front in the order in which they showed up. I gave them their card (with their student number and family name in Roman letters) at the door.
3. Today’s  bell-work was, write as many of the lyrics of “Love Me Do” as you remember.

New addition: PAT – 10 minutes per week (2 sessions of 90 mins each). Today’s was watch the first 10 minutes of  an English movie.

Problems:

The main problems are now coming into focus.

1. Talking out of turn, either to neighbours or shouting out to me or to the class generally.
2. Not having the right materials.
3. Eating or drinking in class. A minor problem, that has occurred just twice so far and quickly taken care of at the beginning of class. But it happened a second time. 
4. Failing to complete assignments on time or as directed.

The first problem is the major one. The loud-mouthed students are all boys; the loud-mouthed girls have settled down. At first, their loud comments or chat were good-natured banter. However, the last 2 classes the nature of the banter has changed: students are trying to disrupt the class and see what they can get away with.

The banter is taking my attention: I still do not know the names of the quietest students in the class. Worse, I do not know how much they are understanding by their facial expressions or their vocal responses. I ask all students to fill out a feedback sheet each class where they circle a % number to indicate how much they understood, and leave a brief comment. This has been very helpful, but I am not used to relying solely on this.

A couple of students at the front of the room were starting to “fade”: their body-language was telling me they found it difficult to concentrate, and it was pretty clearly due to the constant interruptions.

Solutions: Read more »

Classroom management – how to nip potential troublemakers in the bud (2)

1. Re-arrange the furniture
2. Assign seats
3. Assign bell-work. Coming up with good bell-work (work that actually engages them and keeps them quiet yet productively busy) is difficult.

Problems:

1. Today’s bell-work was not so hot. I was so busy photocopying and cutting and pasting (literally, not digitally) to prepare for today’s classes (which run back-to-back with just 10 minutes between each) that I forgot to properly plan the bell-work.
2. Rowdy behaviour. Students got me off on the wrong foot by rattling the rear locked door before entering the classroom before the bell rang. Read more »

Beyond the Education Bubble

Couple of interesting articles on “the education bubble” (excerpts and links below). Of course they are U.S. based. It takes time to extrapolate this kind of article to Japan and the Japanese situation. I have little doubt that higher education in Japan is over-rated and over-valued, i.e. too expensive for what you get.

But, it’s not a bubble fueled by student debt, like in the U.S. or the U.K. because in Japan students themselves rarely go into debt to pay for their college education: their parents pay, and parents pay out of savings. They start saving up for this when the babies are born, in many cases (as I did).

So what do you think? Is higher education in Japan a “bubble”? And are we going to therefore see an increase in less expensive options such as online/distance courses for degrees? Here’s “Cyber University“, for instance, but it doesn’t offer a wide variety. There’s also this rather thin Japanese wikipedia article on online universities. I don’t think people are going for it yet.

What do you think? What’s the trend going forward here in Japan?

Here’s Kevin Carson (he’s not talking about Japan):

To challenge the college mystique, Thiel is in the process of selecting the twenty most promising candidates under age 20 to drop out, in return for $100,000 over two years to start a business….

So the organization and selection of educational options will be driven much more by producers’ own assessments of what they need to learn to be able to produce effectively, instead of a curriculum set to the specs of HR  at GlobalEvilMegaCorp LLC. Curricula will be set on a much more decentralized, bottom-up and ad hoc basis, with the student — not the corporate employer — as the real customer.

Higher education, as conventionally understood, is a legacy of the 20th century model in which giant interlocking bureaucratic institutions — large oligopoly corporations, centralized government agencies, bloated bureaucratic universities — dominate society. 

via Beyond the Education Bubble.

And here’s JOURNAL: The Education Bubble, by John Robb on his blog Global Guerrillas:
.

So, what should you do?  Thiel says you should refuse to participate and drop out.  Unfortunately, that’s not a solution.  Just because something is vastly overpriced (like houses or stocks), it doesn’t mean that it is worthless.  A degree is still valuable because it’s valued in the workplace (even though it’s not the golden ticket to employment anymore).  

The solution to this problem is to help create employment  opportunities (like what we are doing with our open venture start-up) that don’t use a degree as a gating mechanism.  A solution that creates its own educational modules if needed (from scratch using modern tools and techniques). A solution that delivers something better than an Ivy league eduction and then backs it up with economic and social opportunities that exceed what you get in the global economic and social sprawl. 

Create the pull (the opportunity) and the rest will follow.

TPRS Workshop with Susan Gross in Shimabara, Japan, Sep. 2011

 

Just to Sum Up… « Scenes From The Battleground

I came across this article I’d printed out last year, and I want to write about how it compares with Japanese education: are there lessons here for teachers in Japan?

The author of the post below (Old Andrew) is an experienced teacher in the British state and private school systems. He writes with wit and passion about the daily struggles to try to get students to a) pay attention, and b) learn something, neither of which most students want to do.

But there are many “school” or “teacher” blogs. What makes this one attractive is that Old Andrew is able to discern the moral and ideological roots of the behaviours he deals with daily.

In some of his other posts, he describes the frustrating, annoying, infuriating and downright unpleasant or violent, but often (unwittingly) hilarious behaviours exhibited by British schoolchildren faced with a teacher who actually expects them to obey, to work, and to learn.

In this one, he tries to outline the main theoretical problems that underlie education in Britain today. Read more »

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