Lucky break--a way to handle a tough class

As a symbol of this lucky break I have included an image of my cat, Lucky. We call him Lucky, because we saved him from crows that were after him when he was a tiny little kitten that someone had abandoned. We figured he was pretty lucky to have found a family that cares about him. He is by far the friendliest of our cats, to me at least. I am also testing out the new image option that Blogger features.

I have this class that I have been struggling with all semester. They are really interested in lots of stuff other than English. So my job was to get them interested, or at least moving in the right direction. I finally happened on a way. I made a review of the previous lesson's content and a summary of today's objectives, including conversations that they should be able to conduct as a result of their learning. They each had one and followed along as we completed each of the tasks. Then at 20 minutes before the class ended, each student got a fresh review and summary which became a short quiz. As some wrote, I went around to each student to do the role-play that was the conversation goal of the class.

At first the students were really surprised that I would do such a thing, but since they had done all of it in that class, they soon got over that and had some fun with it. They were happy to get immediate feed back, too. I graded them immediately. All of them got A's, though their scores varied. (An A at most Japanese universities starts at 80 and goes to 100. Talk about grade inflation.) They were all excited and those with the higher A's were boastful, but the student with the highest score is one who is probably the least popular socially in class. He has some unusual personality quirks that tickle some of my neophyte learners. They were put in their place when they found out that he learns and speaks faster than anyone else.

Though this worked well the first time, there is an ethical problem. In order to grade the papers in the very limited time I had, I had to do it in front of everyone. That means that all of the students were privy to everyone else's score. That is a problem I need to solve in order to protect students' privacy.

A community of fear

For the past fourteen years, ten of them in Kumamoto and four of them here, I have been involved in English teacher development. I have been a part of two different programs, very similar in content, where English teachers have attended weekend classes over a period of weeks or months or intensive summer programs with the goals of developing their language and teaching skills. This academic year is new for me. I am not engaged in any teacher development program. It isn't that we canceled the program. It is just that teachers aren't attending, and when I ask questions about why they aren't attending, how we can reschedule the courses for a more convenient time, season, or place, the same specter appears. Fear.

One blow came some time ago when the prefecture decided that since teachers were not teaching six days a week now, they would have to come to work every day during the summer to make up the extra days. That meant that in effect, teachers could not attend intensive courses that we had organized. In a recent discussion with the local prefectural board of education about the issue, we were told that teachers could not attend courses other than those pre-approved by the prefecture, and those were all organized by the prefecture and/or the Education Ministry. Also, teachers who are responsible for clubs were all expected to be present on weekends when their teams had practice or matches. This meant that any teacher that was going to attend our workshops would have to attend them during their free time, read family time, and that no other time would be made available for teachers to do professional development.

Another blow to our program in Yokkaichi came when the prefecture cut off funding to teachers for participating in training programs. This money, far from extravagant, paid for transportation or course fees. It would not cover much else, like lunch or materials. This means that the only programs that teachers can attend now and receive some kind of financial support are programs by the prefecture or the country.

When one considers the reasons for these policies, there are very few. One may be money, but my guess is that all of the teacher development fees that the prefecture paid for over the entire course of the program would not even come close to the cost of one span of bridge on the new highway that is being built through the area that may never see a car.

Another reason is that the prefecture does not want to have their teachers exposed to ideas other the Education Ministry's or theirs, plain and simple fear. They must not want their teachers and, by extension, their students to be exposed to ideas other than those of the people who administrate this already failed system. In 2002 the ministry delivered its "Developing a strategic plan to cultivate "Japanese With English Abilities" report. In 2003 they came out with their new "Course of Study" that is supposed to make all of the dreams in the report come true.

It all sounds great on paper, but if there is no support, no opportunities for teachers to develop over the span of their careers, then the programs have already failed. The ministry and prefecture may say that there are training programs available (in the teachers first, sixth, and eleventh years of service), but they are hardly developmental or sufficient to train teachers to teach in new ways.

I haven't given up. I'm working on some new methods to provide teacher development opportunities to teachers in another way. It is, however, frustrating when the products of this education system show up at this university's door step without the basic tools to build their own language skills. It isn't their fault. It isn't their teachers'. The fault lies squarely on the shoulders of the people who built the system.

More motivations

Last night we had the latest installment of the Community College class for intermediate students. Since Nigel Fogden commented on one of the posts here, I've again been thinking about what motivates students to come out to attend an 8pm class in all kinds of weather. So I asked some of the participants last night what their motivations were.

Here is what they said about it:
uses English everyday in his work, and in addition to being enjoyable, he would like to be better at it.

finds out about language

learns knowledge important for us to live

accumulates knowledge, like a hobby

boosts self confidence through self improvement

Whether I can capitalize on any of these motivations as a language teacher is questionable. What I do believe is that these answers, though they may be part of the big picture, are just the convenient, easy to discuss answers that these learners have.

Motivations that were not mentioned are also fascinating. No one mentioned anything related to a career, for example, "English skills will get me a promotion." Aside from the feelings of self confidence, no one mentioned anything about good feelings. No one said that learning was just plain fun, lots more fun than sitting at home watching TV.

Shoe sizes: There aren't any that fit!

Maybe it's where I live, but I can't find a pair of size 28 shoes (Japanese size. American size 10.5) Yokkaichi isn't the biggest place on the earth, but there are nearly 300,000 people in the city. Honolulu has around 380,000; Colorado Springs has 379,000; Newark, NJ has around 300,000. Do you think I could find a pair of 28's there? And I don't believe, "But the average Japanese person doesn't have such big feet." Maybe most don't, but look at some junior high school kids around. They must have large feet.

Yesterday I went to a shopping/entertainment facility that just opened in town. I watched "Batman." After that the flick, I went to the shoe store in the building to look for, as I often do, and usually with the same result, a pair of shoes that I would pay money for. Not to be had. There were maybe two pairs of 28's, but they were not something I would wear.

The only thing that has kept me from buying online are prices, not the shoes, but the import taxes for leather shoes. My alternative is to buy shoes that don't use leather, and I am at that juncture. I found a great pair of shoes, the "Blackspot Sneaker:V2." It is 100% vegan. I guess they will be shipping in July, and I'm ordering one pair of 11's.

Little Black Sambo back on the shelves, and selling like hotcakes

Just when you thought it was a little less racist, someone goes and does something to erode your confidence. Zuiunshya, a publisher in Japan is printing the book again after it was pulled from the shelves in 1988. There is a good article on it in the Casper Star Tribune.

You can see a picture of the cover at the Zuiunshya site.

barley close-up

The barley is coming down! I'm not sure what brought this all on. It looked to me like it had been ready for harvest weeks ago, but the harvesters are out cutting it now. I guess those farmers will then plant some rice. Other famers have planted their rice weeks ago. It's nice to see the changes.

barley close-up Originally uploaded by Yokkaichi 1.

Community College Class

The first night of the "Intermediate Jump Up" (I didn't name it. Don't blame me.) class went well. Most of the people attended, and we started a spirited discussion on the environment.

It would be interesting to know why these students attend, what drives them to leave their homes at night and come to the university to study. They don't get college credit for the classes. They are more of an extension project. Most of them work and then come to class. I don't think any of them work in companies that promote based on English skills.

Whatever their motivations are, they are a good bunch, and I admire their drive.

New series of Community College classes

Got a new set of 6 intermediate classes starting tonight. From the looks of the role sheet, there will be a few new faces. Hope they all show up.
You can see the advertisement here. (Not very interesting)

Cambridge test to gauge skills of English teachers

Here's an interesting development. I had never heard of this test before. It's a test, not of English, but a test of "a teacher's knowledge of skills and methods needed to be a successful teacher."

First, I'm glad to see that someone has qualified and quantified this for us. I'm sure all those researchers out there working on exactly what makes a good teacher will be happy to know that there is now a test for it. Action researchers need research no more.

It is also "not a test of English." Except that I guess that it is delivered in English rather than say Japanese. If that is the case, then it is indeed a test of English, and it is a test of ESP (English for Special Purposes), because it will use the teaching vernacular.

My prediction is that some schools will see this as a way to insure that they will get "good teachers." They will only hire or retain teachers who score highly. And then as time passes, they will find that test scores and teacher performance are not as closely related as they imagined/hoped and they will wait until the next bit of testing wizardry comes along.
gauge skills of English teachers

Extensive reading

On a more positive note, I have instituted an extensive reading program in one of my classes. Last week we took a tour of the library. Most of the students hadn't been there since orientation. The English books are in this hard to find section of the stacks. I think they will last a long time there because the oxygen is limited in that space. Maybe it's just me.

Anyway, we all read one book together, just for practice. Then I had them write a very short, one or two-sentence, review of it. I'll be putting the students' comments up on my web site at the university soon. I'll include a link to it when I get it done.

On Wednesday last week, as one group wrote their evaluations of the first book, the other group went down to the stacks with me and selected another book for them to read. I showed them how to check books out and so on.

Some of their comments were better than others, but on the average, they were very positive about the exercise.

Today we spent a few minutes reading at the end of class. Most of the class had finished the books they checked out earlier, and some of them finished them today. Very few of them were still reading by the end of class, and those were the people who had checked out something that was too difficult.

Saturday's Presentation

The presentation that I did Saturday on vocabulary development went pretty well. I was pleased with my presentation. I was a disappointed with the turnout. My guess is that lots of people saw the gaijin name and decided not to attend, because they assumed that I would be speaking in English, or that it would be some kind of "conversation" class with fun games or something. I don't know.

This is the double bind, isn't it? People want the Western face. They want the "native speaker" advantage, what ever that is, and my guess is that it would come down to something like pronunciation. "We want to listen to a native speaker say it." But at the same time, they don't expect it to speak Japanese, and they don't expect it to know what learners really need. They don't expect the tall, blond, man (the usual expectation) to know what students have to know to get into universities. They assume English knowledge to be something different from test knowledge. That may be, but that is another double bind.

Do I sound like I have issues with this mentality? Yes, because I worked for hours preparing this thing, and the audience was small. 90 people they were telling me. Maybe there were 90 people in the whole building. Maybe that is what they were telling me. Maybe the guy speaking on robots got 90 people. Robots are useful. Yeah, for target practice in a Will Smith flick.

Presentation on Saturday

This Saturday I am making a presentation on learning vocabulary to a group of high school students. They are coming in to look over some area colleges, and this university asked me to make some kind of presentation. The title is ”簡単な単語の覚え方、” or in English, "An easy way to learn vocabulary." It isn't exactly an honest title, because it really isn't that easy, remembering vocabulary is just hard work. What is easy, I guess, is that there is a system involved. Rather than remembering random words, focus on really mastering the "most important 2000." That would be the most frequently used 2000 words. You can find gobs of vocabulary stuff at Rob Waring's site, the Second Language Vocabulary Resource Page. 　

I am also suggesting that students work on building word families from the head words that they find in any word frequency list. In addition to simple lists of words, I am going to point out that collocations may also be useful, not just remembering a word, but the environment where it lives, too. Finally I will discuss extensive reading and listening.

Even though it is only 45 minutes, I feea lotot of pressure going into this. It is important to me of course, but it is also important to the school that I deliver an interesting presentation. We'll see how it goes.