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?

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.

OK with you so far: the big problem is cultural barriers rather than English classes themselves (there are plenty of them, both in school and in zillions of private language schools) or even in the lack of opportunity to use English, although I’d add that the “lack of opportunities to use English in Japan” comes close to meaning “no need!” If there aren’t many opportunities to use English here, then what’s the point in learning it? Surely a lot of Japanese high-schoolers and university students ask themselves this question (though they’re mostly too polite to ask it aloud, to their teachers). They “know” it’s important (because they’ve been told so and because an increasing number of company’s are setting English-requirement entrance conditions or promotion conditions) … but they don’t “feel” it.

Setting that aside, so, what cultural barriers are we talking about here?

Japan’s collectivist ideals necessarily arose to allow the nation’s large population to live comfortably together in a comparatively small archipelago. This has given rise to some commendable traits, such as an appearance of agreeableness among Japanese. But it has also led the Japanese to eschew disagreement and argumentation, even though these can be extremely beneficial forms of social interaction. Simply put, Japanese culture and etiquette doesn’t groom people to become confident communicators in English.

OK: collectivist ideals – check. Large population: check. Small archipelago: check. Japanese “eschew” disagreement and argumentation: check. [That word "eschew" gives me the willies: why does the writer have to show off his erudition? What kind of writer eschews the simpler word "avoid" and pick the rarer and more pompous "eschew"? But I digress.] They avoid it like the plague. But the writer’s cultural bias is showing. He assumes that being good at “disagreement and argumentation” makes people “confident communicators”. Japanese would probably disagree. After all, if indeed “an appearance of agreeableness among Japanese” is important for living “comfortably together in a comparitively small archipelago” (i.e. cheek by jowl with your neighbours) – something I don’t dispute – then that would make “agreeableness” or its appearance, a key communicative ability, rather than argumentativeness. Which is exactly what we find. A retired company executive once told me companies in Japan like to hire graduates who played sport in college. Why? Because they’ve learned to work hard and do as they’re told. (The Japanese don’t “play” sport in college: it’s a very serious business, more like becoming a monk – practice every day for several hours, and that includes vacations of course.)

Another problem: if the Japanese “eschew disagreement and argumentation” (they are, after all, famous for not being able to say “no”), then how can they eschew that eschewing, so to speak, just in English classes? Can they be argumentative in English class but not elsewhere? Perhaps. If they’re brought up bilingually or biculturally, like that lady with the American father and Japanese mother I wrote about a while back.

And another thing. Let’s agree for the moment that being good at arguing helps make you a better communicator (although as I said, the Japanese tend to value diplomacy and tact far higher than argumentativeness). If that’s true, then being poor at arguing will leave you worse off as a communicator, period. It doesn’t matter in what language. And in fact, this is a common complaint of Japanese company HR managers: that young people hoping to enter the workforce are poor communicators, generally speaking. Hiring employers are looking for people with strong communication skills. They have difficulty finding them. That may be true in any country, I don’t know, but it certainly seems true in Japan.

In my “problem” class this year, I have one student who is particularly argumentative. In fact there are several who are in that class, but he’s the best (or the worst, whichever way you want to look at it). At first, I was irritated. I actually had to speak sternly to him (privately), something I rarely have had to do in Japanese colleges. But then I recalled an article about the relation between argumentativeness and communication – written by an American, of course! In What We Can Learn from Chinese Mothers… and what They Should Learn from Us (But Won’t) (members only), Gary North wrote,

The [Chinese] mothers expect their children to get straight-A’s in everything except gym and drama.

The kids learn to work hard. I’m for that. They learn mastery. I’m for that, too. But there is a flaw in the training. The child is not encouraged to discover what he is really good at and spend extra time on that. He is also taught to shut up. Not good.

North compares this with a typical Jewish upbringing. Jewish parents also expect high standards and hard work from their children (read The Promise for a particularly astonishing, and probably astonishingly common, example) :

Jews are another highly educated minority group. They also excel academically. But Jewish kids talk back . . . early. They argue

…

Chinese culture produces engineers. But where are the Chinese lawyers? …. If I knew nothing of two lawyers, and my life was on the line, I would hire Schwartz rather than Wong. Call me prejudiced, but I cannot imagine Wong leaping to his feet: “Objection!” Where are Chinese politicians?

(So that brilliant female lawyer in Red Corner was fiction? Damn!)

…

Mastery of textbooks — high school skills — is a skill that ceases to be relevant at about age 20: upper division in college. Then the student had better be able to think on his own for himself. He had better be able to defend himself verbally. “I’m right. I’ll show you why.”

Why is this important? It’s important for sales, for marketing, for advertising, for success in business, particularly for entrepreneurs, perhaps less so for corporate drones. Dr. North refers to an essay by Dorothy L. Sayers, The Lost Tools of Learning (1947!) in which she makes a case for bringing back the three pillars of education in the Middle Ages: grammar, logic and rhetoric. The trivium. They are taught in that order, for a reason. Each nurtures skills necessary for the next level. Dr. North says the Chinese never get to the 3rd stage:

Chinese education focures on grammar and logic. It discourages rhetoric. This is a major failure. The first two are necessary skills. But around age 13 or 14, you had better move into the rhetoric stage. This skill takes years to develop. Asian kids do not get this training early enough. ..

What he says about Chinese education is also true to a large extent about Japanese education. Japanese teachers do not encourage questions or a questioning attitude. (I recently attended a presentation in English by an Englishman to a largely Japanese audience. The presenter, as is fairly common among English presenters, said there would be time for Q&A at the end, but please feel free to ask questions at any time. I did. Frequently. Afterwards, I was told that one Japanese gentleman present had been irritated by my many questions: “He shouldn’t have asked so many questions, he should have waited till the end. My students do the same thing. I hate it!”)

Is that attitude likely to encourage enquiring minds?

The Diplomat article and Gary North’s article have caused me to reconsider my “problem” students who argue. If they’re right, then young Japanese need to learn to argue effectively. That doesn’t mean just talking back, but that can be the start. That’s a bud that might, with care, bloom later.

Finally, what does Mr. Ogawa in The Diplomat article suggest as solutions? More government initiative.

For one, the Ministry could address the appalling lack of English discussion in classes in Japan—from elementary to high school, there exists a rigidly structured course that leaves few opportunities for students to apply the English they’ve learned in a practical way.

Could the Minsitry address this? How? Last year, with an advanced class, I tried some simple debates. About half the class were Japanese students, and the other half Chinese. Most of the Chinese students had had some experience of debates back in China. None of the Japanese had. The first step should be discussions and debates in Japanese, not in English.

[T]he English curriculum largely consists of teaching to tests, which is why you’ll see word count guidelines such as ‘1,000 words to be learned during junior high school.’

This is an old chestnut, although it still has a grain of truth, particularly in high schools, and it mostly applies to Japanese teachers of English, there is now a large number of non-Japanese teachers (or assistants) of English in many schools and universities around the country. Some, perhaps many, are not teaching to tests or insisting on vocabulary memorization. Some are teaching discussion and debate.

Modern English, at least in professional settings, is frequently employed in a direct, straightforward manner. This isn’t done to trigger confrontation, but simply out of a desire for efficiency. English isn’t as encumbered with many of the genteel honorifics of Japanese, nor does it rely so heavily on implication.

True, but you can’t separate the language from the speakers! The Japanese speakers live in a hierarchical world. They must constantly be aware of the social levels of themselves and the people they are talking with. As Mike Rogers wrote recently in Modern Marketing Japan,

Sumimasen and a sincere attitude and bowing of ones head shows that you know your place in society and that you respect people.

This is not a “know your place” meaning be a good little Egyptian, but rather be aware of your relationship with the people you are talking to. Japanese use different language to talk to different people depending on whether those people are their superiors or their inferiors. (There are almost no equals in Japan.)

English-speakers do, too, of course, but they are largely unaware of it and are often surprised when it is pointed out. For the Japanese, this is deliberate and conscious; it is a survival skill. Such a hierarchical society does not lend itself easily to the kind of straightforward and efficient communication style that Mr. Ogawa describes. Yes, English is unencumbered by the large number of honorifics that Japanese must know and use, but that doesn’t mean that Japanese can abandon their sensibilities at the drop of a hat, just because they’re in English class.

At the end of a recent 2-day communications workshop that I attended with an American and several Japanese colleagues, during which we did little other than sit and talk and play games like the “NASA Moon Survival” game, all my Japanese colleagues were completely exhausted, whereas my American colleague and I were both fresh as daisies. The reason? The Japanese must constantly remember who they’re talking to, what is the pecking order in the group, when should they speak and who they should let speak first, plus of course the possible repercussions of whatever they say on their future relations with their colleagues. They must be constantly on their guard, careful of what they say, and watching their colleagues faces and body language for clues as to how they are thinking. Displeasure will rarely be expressed verbally.

To sum up, Mr. Ogawa is right to point to cultural barriers or differences as being major hindrances to Japanese people developing good communication skills. But his solution is not going anywhere: how can Japanese learn to discuss and debate in a forthright and direct manner in English class when they can’t do it in Japanese? They can’t be expected to set aside their Japanese persona just in English class.

via Why English Is Tough in Japan | A New Japan.

Dr. Brown developed his ideas over many years of studying languages both as a learner and as a teacher, and he wrote the story of how he developed his ideas in “From the Outside In” (zippped pdf file free download).

Essentially, it follows Krashen’s recommendations: lots of interesting comprehensible input and no output, at least at the beginning. Brown and AUA (the Bangkok school where he developed his approach) are apparently famous for strict enforcement of this rule.

I found Brown’s account highly intriguing, and stayed up late reading it (I skipped the boring science bits; so sue me!). As someone who is familiar with Krashen’s Natural Approach and Input Theory and who has been using TPRS for about a year now, I was more interested in the nuts and bolts, such as materials (Chapter 7, p. 12):

1. Classroom procedures: Taking the roll, making announcements, etc.
2. Manipulating objects: Colored blocks, water in buckets, cups, and spoons, etc.
3. Daily routines: Getting up in the morning, making breakfast, taking a bath, etc.
4. Demonstrations: Using a computer, scientific experiments, magicians’ acts, etc.
5. Physical activities: Sports, exercise, physical games, dancing, etc.
6. Fun and games: Table games, party games, puzzles, toys, etc
7. Information about students: teachers talking about the students’ statistics.
8. Show and tell: Students bring objects and teachers talk about them.
9. Pictures and maps: Snapshots, slides, picture magazines, etc.
10. Role-plays: Taxi driver and fare, waiter and customer, doctor and patient.
11. Stories: Children’s stories, folk tales, comic books, anecdotes, etc.
12. General information: bus routes, weather data, current events, etc.
13. Cultural information about target country: how they eat, dance, bathe, etc.
14.  ‘Sheltered’ subject matter (teaching classes in the target language).

Another item of particular interest was the discussion of how to calculate students’ progress. This is done, as I understand it, in terms of hours of exposure. For this reason, teachers at the AUA school in Thailand, where Dr. Brown developed his method, were asked to supply students’ hours of attendance along with their grades (from Chapter 7, p. 16 ff):

Just as I knew what most toddlers of age 12, 18, and 24 months could do, I could tell fairly well what NA [Natural Approach] students of ‘age’ 200, 400, and 600 hours could do. And I could even start to match up the results of student hours with toddler months. 600 student hours, for example, produced results comparable to 24 toddler months. (I’m referring to English speakers learning Thai, of course. English speakers learning French might do this in less than 300 hours.)

Doc Brown no longer works at AUA, but AUA is still active and still using this variant of Krashen’s Natural Approach. ALG has its own YouTube channel. Here’s director David Long explaining the approach (it drags a little at the beginning, but starts to get interesting and detailed at the 5th minute or so):

Another fan of TPRS and Krashen, and a developer of his own method and materials, is AJ Hoge, who also spent years teaching English in Thailand. Here’s AJ’s critique of the AUA method:

The Thai language program at the AUA Language School is unique in the world. This program attempts to follow Krashen’s theories to their obvious conclusion. The program utilizes a long silent period of approximately 800 hours, during which students do not speak Thai. Rather, all emphasis is on comprehensible input. AUA uses a technique called the “talk show” in order to give students input in Thai. Two teachers teach each class…

The good news is that AUA is getting excellent long term results from those who complete the entire program…

The bad news is that most students do not complete the program. AUA has a big retention problem…

Last semester

• Final assessment was 50% of the final grade, the rest being a combination of the average of weekly test scores (mainly vocab items) and homework assignments (usually 1 point if they did it on time).
• The final assessment had 2 parts:
  • speaking
  • listening, reading and writing

Speaking

• I interviewed each student for 2 minutes. They re-tell a story based on pictures they’ve not seen before.
  • I gave them a picture story which they had not seen before
  • I call the first student. He/She sits at the table in front of me. I give him/her the storyboard and start the timer.
  • When 2 minutes are up, I call the next student up and give him/her the same storyboard.
  • I then go back to the first student, start my voice recorder and ask “What’s your name?” then gesture to them to begin their narrative.
  • When 2 minutes are up, I interrupt them even if they haven’t finished. I must be strict about the time otherwise we’ll never finish on time.
  • The 2nd student takes the place of the first student, while I call the 3rd student who sits in the place of the second student and looks at the storyboard (I give him/her a fresh one to make absolutely fair) .
  • If I’m organized, I have some work prepared to give the students who have finished the speaking test.  They take the worksheet and return to their seat.
  • If I’m not organized (but that never happens, right?), I let the students who have finished the speaking test go early. Many are incapable of staying in the room and remaining quiet, so it’s better to ask them to leave the room.
• If I have more than 25 students, I might test half one session and the others the next session. This also gives absentees another chance.
• If I have time, i.e. more than 2 minutes per student, I try to engage them in a conversation by asking them some questions on topics we talked about in class: family, interests, part-time jobs, holiday plans, etc.

Reading, listening, writing

• Reading.
  • Read a short story that they have not read or heard before. I set a time limit that forces them to hurry if they want to read the whole thing before I start asking the questions.
  • I ask 10 comprehension questions about the story. Students just write the answers. I keep the pace fairly brisk. I’m testing their reading fluency.
• Listening.
  • Same as the reading, except students do not have the story text in front of them (or the questions, either).
• Writing.
  • Students have to write a story based on a picture story that they have not seen before. I set a time limit: 10-15 minutes. The picture stories I used last semester were all from Blaine Ray’s “Look I Can Talk” series, so 4 panes.

2nd semster

Speaking

• I kept the same basic format: a personal interview with each student, some picture stories to prompt the student to speak, and a voice-recorder so that I could talk to the student and not worry about assessing him/her at the same time.
• This time, I decided to focus on encouraging success, rather than forcing students to make errors. I gave them 2 picture stories:
  • one that they had seen before (I gave them a choice of 3)
  • one that they had not seen before.
• They had 2 minutes to re-tell the first story.
• I show them the 2nd picture story and give them 1 minute to think about it before recording what they say.

Reading, listening, writing

• Due to completely unforeseen circumstances (i.e. I left it all to the last minute), I did not include a reading section in the 2nd semester test.
• I gave them 3 listening questions of various kinds:
  • dictation (covering some of the topics and vocab I’m supposed to have covered with them)
  • a short story to which they must draw some illustrations (I used stories that students in another class at the same school had created).
  • students listen to another short story followed by my questions and they must write down the answers.
• Writing.
  • Draw the pictures and write the story (I used  story strips from Blaine Ray’s Look I Can Talk More that students had worked on before. These story strips give the first and last frame only and students fill in the intervening 4 panels).
  • Write a story based on a storyboard (choose one from 2 or 3) that they had worked on before.
  • Write a story based on a storyboard they have not seen before.
  • Write freely on a general topic, with the aim of writing as much as possible withing 10 minutes (My topic: “Plans for Spring Vacation”. I know, I sometimes shock myself with my own creativity.)

Yes! Here’s a way I used today:

1. pick out 10-20 words from the song. These will be substitutes for the “blanks” in your cloze exercise, so pick words that are suitably challenging for your students. I used mainly nouns.
2. Add a handful of similar or related words that do not appear in the song.
3. Tell the students all the words (from #1 and #2 above).
   1. Dictate them to the students or write them on the board.
4. Check students understand them.
5. Tell the students that
   1. you are going to play them a song;
   2. some of the words you told them/wrote appear in the song;
   3. you will play the song twice/several times;
   4. they should listen and circle/underline/check off the words from the list as they hear them.
6. Play the song several times.
7. After each repetition, ask students how many the heard – this will help you judge how many repetitions they will need.
8. After 2 or 3 reps, tell students how many of the listed words appear in the song, then play it again, Sam.

A variation might be to pick words that appear more than twice and ask students how many times they hear them.

I followed up this listening with a writing exercise: within a time-limit (in my case, 10 minutes) they had to create a short story using 80% of the listed words.

The importance of free reading in mental development as well as acquisition of knowledge might help explain the success of many home-schooled children.

http://voicethread.com/#q.b708367.i3748651

I’ll post more about specific points made in this presentation later., once I’ve had a chance to digest the contents.

Here’s a list of 12 “Brain Rules” which look interesting and of interest and relevance to EFL teachers. The link to this was given on the More TPRS mailing list. I’m generally leery of fake-science “theories” and “brain-based learning” seems a prime candidate for that category.

Also, I wonder about rule #11: doesn’t that sound suspiciously like polylogism? However I might learn something from this, so here goes. Plus I like that each rule has its own icon and is illustrated with video. A picture is worth a thousand words.

EXERCISE | Rule #1: Exercise boosts brain power.
SURVIVAL | Rule #2: The human brain evolved, too.
WIRING | Rule #3: Every brain is wired differently.
ATTENTION | Rule #4: We don’t pay attention to boring things.
SHORT-TERM MEMORY | Rule #5: Repeat to remember.
LONG-TERM MEMORY | Rule #6: Remember to repeat.
SLEEP | Rule #7: Sleep well, think well.
STRESS | Rule #8: Stressed brains don’t learn the same way.
SENSORY INTEGRATION | Rule #9: Stimulate more of the senses.
VISION | Rule #10: Vision trumps all other senses.
GENDER | Rule #11: Male and female brains are different.
EXPLORATION | Rule #12: We are powerful and natural explorers.

Seven principles of input based language learning.

Seven principles of input based language learning.

1) We learn languages by listening, not by speaking.

A new language has words and phrases that are strange to us. Before we can learn to speak the new language, we have to make these strange words and phrases familiar to us. All learning consists of creating new patterns in our brain.  Language learning is no different. We have to listen to the language in order to form these new patterns in our brain. We cannot generate these new patterns from within. They must come from an external source, the native speaker. The greater our interest in the native speaker, or what he or she has to say, the better we can learn a new language.

2) Language learning is a gradual, morphing and unpredictable process.

It takes time to form these new patterns in our brains. The process is not linear, nor is it a step by step process. It is random and unpredictable. Therefore it is pointless to test students on what has been taught.  As more and more new patterns are layered onto our brains, the language gradually becomes clearer and clearer. Some new words and patterns resist our efforts to learn them, until suddenly they just click in.

3) Meaning is easier to learn than grammar….

Read the rest on Steve Kaufman’s website.

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