The 4th Annual Debate Competition in Gifu

I had the opportunity to attend The 4th Annual Debate Competition in Gifu (this page is from the Nagano English Club League, and is in Japanese) as a judge. It was a great event, very well organized from the beginning (becoming less so as it progress, however).

One of the professors at this university was asked to attend as a judge, but he was busy, so he asked me. I have done some debate with some English classes, so I thought this would be a good opportunity to see some high school students debating in English. It was also good to go and see what was happening, since there is a Japanese langauge debate competition held at this university in December for high school students.

There were 36 teams from 25 schools from the following prefectures, Kanagawa, Shizuoka, Saitama, Gifu, Ishikawa, Nagano, Mie, Hyougo,Shiga, and Nagasaki.

My impression of the participants' language ability was that they were very capable students. Their ability to listen and organize arguments was nothing short of amazing. I was very impressed by their ability to listen, process information, and make arguments.

Update: class for advanced learners

Last Friday I blogged about a class for advanced learners that I am teaching on Tuesday nights. This week's class went really well. The theme was travel, and we used the "conversation cafe" organization again. We went around the group, and they were to introduce themselves again, and tell everyone where they suggested that we travel and why. They are a very well traveled group, and we heard about places all over the world.

After everyone had told us about their suggested, we asked questions about everyones suggestions, something they are not allowed to do during the initial comments. That exchange took nearly all of the rest of the 90 minute period. It was a very natural conversation in English about everyone's suggestions. It was delightful to be part of it.

Toward the end, I wanted to ask them about their perceptions of international travel since 9/11. Their feelings were that travel is more dangerous than it was before 9/11, and certainly more dangerous since the Iraq war, but not dangerous enough to keep anyone from traveling where they want to.

honda ranch

I can see this huge parking lot of new Hondas on my way to work every morning, and so this morning I stopped by to take some pics of it. It was a beautiful morning, and with the mountains in back, made a cool image. One thing I noticed, and I think you can see on the cars on the left, is that they all have their wipers up. Wonder why.

honda ranch2 Originally uploaded by Yokkaichi 1.

Study abroad

I've recently been working to get the summer study abroad program at Long Beach, California started again. Two years ago the trip got canceled because of SARS. Last year it got canceled because not enough people were interested. This year I really want a group to go. Not because it has anything to do with me directly. I will not teach the group, nor will I accompany them. I think though that any well educated student should spend some time abroad. That goes for anyone, anywhere.

This led me to search for statistics on Japanese students studying abroad. I didn't find any really current numbers, unfortunately. There are some numbers for 2001 in the Japanese Education at a Glance, 2005. This is four years ago, but there were 78,000 Japanese university students studying abroad in 2001. That is amazingly high, I thought. Then I thought I would see what the numbers were for Americans, and I found this article, "Cultural Illiteracy of U.S. students poses economic threat." This article deals specifically with the US/Japan relationship, and focuses on the numbers of American students who travel to Asia in general and Japan specifically.

A team of top international educators headed by a UB professor is recommending major changes in the policy that defines the educational relationship between the U.S. and Japan.

They have found that ignorance of Asian language and culture among U.S. students is so widespread that it portends serious negative consequences for America's economic, political and cultural interests in the Pacific-Rim region.

I found another article that is rather upbeat about American study abroad, "U.S. Study Abroad Increases by 9.6 Percent, Continues Record Growth; More Interest in Non-Traditional Destinations; Study Abroad in China Up by 90 Percent." This looks at American students who travel abroad in general. It says that there were 191,321 students taking classes for credit abroad in 2003/04. The percentage of Japanese population studying abroad as students is pretty much the same as the US, but what we see is a huge number of Japanese traveling to the US, but a very small number of Americans coming here. The number one destination for Americas is Great Britain (32,000). 3,307 Americans came to Japan.

The numbers of Americans studying abroad is increasing, which is encouraging. I'm surprised, though, at how Eurocentric America still is.

Class for advanced learners

This month I started teaching a class for advanced level learners at the Yokkaichi U. Community College. The first class was this week on Tuesday. I have been anxious to try out the Conversation Cafe idea as a way of conducting a class. It worked well for the first week.

Conversation cafes were actually organized in the US for a developing more conversational gatherings where people would discuss politics and peace issues.

At Conversation Cafés, we will learn together how to create a culture of conversation—which is a culture of intelligence, peace, and political awareness. We are the media. We are the talk shows. We are America, waking up and tuning in. --from Conversation Cafe site

I liked the idea and the process for conducting a class where all of the participants are encouraged to contribute and are protected from potentially stifling remarks, interruptions, and attacks. The process also encourages active listening, instead of jumping in whenever the urge takes you, speakers are limited to their turns, mostly. There are opportunities for more lively interactions, however.

One other feature in this class is that we aren't using a text, and the participants chose the topics for discussion. There are some great places to get topics if you are teaching an advanced class and are looking for some topics and questions.

Conversation Questions for the ESL/EFL Classroom (from ITESLJ)
Karin's ESL Partyland
Learning Resources (from Literacy Net)

New member of the family

I'm a daddy again. My wife gave birth to a little girl two weeks ago. All of her next of kin have been notified, so I can tell you. All is well with mother and child. I thought it would be useful to write down some of the thoughts that I had leading up to, during, and following the birth. For some ex-pats, it might be difficult to imagine what having a child in Japan could mean. (It might be difficult to imagine what it could mean to a Japanese person in Japan for that matter.)

First, the pre-natal care situation here is great. When the woman finds out she is pregnant, she gets a full set of tests and a handbook in which the records, mostly medical records, for the child are kept through infancy. One unfortunate bit is that, since pregnancy is not an illness, everything after this is out of the realm of insurance. The parents pay it all. However, after the child is born, the child gets free medical care for the first three years of their life.

Second, there are well-trained midwives in Japan who can help you with delivering naturally. Most children are born in hospitals, but we chose to have our kids with a midwife. She is 94 and still delivering babies. She guesses that she has delivered 4,000 babies in her career. It all happened without drugs or cutting. It was great for us, though I'm sure that there are people whose circumstances dictate a hospital birth.

One other nice thing is that the money for the birth itself will all come back through insurance. Since we didn't have the baby in a hospital, and so didn't have to pay for the "machine that goes ping" (a little something for you Monty Python fans out there), our return will just about cover everything.

Japan is a good place to have babies, and so far, a good place to raise them, if you are ever diligent and ready to take over when the existent system doesn't quite do things the way you think they should be done.

the nature of EFL textbooks

A little while ago, I volunteered to answer a questionnaire about a textbook that a large publishing house is in the process of editing. It gave me the opportunity to think about textbooks. My opinion is that with the given technology employed by publishers, that is words on paper and accompanying audio program on CD or tape, the definitive textbook has already been produced. I don't know what book that may be, and it may change from class to class, teacher to teacher, but it's probably out there for you already.

This should not be confused with satisfaction. Publishers haven't really come close to making a really good text yet. The texts available do not do a very good job of integrating skills, for example, including listening activities in the writing section, or speaking in the reading section. Nor do they exploit trends in language learning, like extensive listening/reading, or process writing.

Texts are organized into several units/chapters/sections. Each unit is composed of sections, usually uniform throughout the text, that present a variety of language to be learned by the students and activities that are intended to entertain and provide opportunities to practice with the vocabulary and grammar that are the centerpieces of the unit. The organized presentation of material must be one of the reasons that people consume them, but, especially with beginner learners, even after they go through a unit, the material presented doesn't ensure that they have mastered learning objectives of the unit. My students can zoom through a unit totally unaware of what is going on. They are masters of spotting patterns and manipulating them without having a clue about the meaning. For example, I am nearing the end of one unit in a textbook that deals with the word like in the context of personality or personal characteristics. As I worked with learners in some roleplays, I found that they were confusing the like we were using and like meaning preference.

What does he like?
What is he like?

I knew that would happen, because it always does when we get to this particular unit. Maybe it's just the way I teach, but about half of the class reaches the end of this unit, and still has problems making a distiction. I went back and explained the difference and reviewed some of the practice dialogs, and then proceded to the end of the unit again. This time everyone seemed to have gotten it.

I could go on with a litany of things that I think that writers and publishers should change about how textbooks are written, but these are some of the comments that I made in the questionnaire.

Question: Is the material easy to use? Are the activities clear? Please suggest any changes.
Answer: I find that many texts give very little help with helping teachers and learners to master language that appears in the text.

How are teachers and learners supposed to approach dialogs? Audiolingual, mim/mem, by memorizing the dialog, doing drills and extrapolate from there to develop their own conversation about themselves?

I suggest that if the vocabulary in the boxes are words that are thought to be useful words, suitable for learner acquisition, that there be some kind of expansion of this activity and all similar activities, with flash cards, drills, and clear goals for accomplishment.

Activities border on irresponsible without some kind of framework for teachers and learners to work toward mastery of the material included. I end up creating the course from the hastily prepared lists of vocabulary and dialogs in the texts that I use now. I make my own flash cards. I develop the criteria for successful completion of a unit. If you want to make a useful textbook, include that kind of material. Otherwise, I can use any text on the market, because no matter which one it is, I supply the missing parts.

Question: Do the Listening activities work well? Is the language level appropriate? Are the task types appropriate?
Answer: Yes, they are fine, but they are like every other text on the market. Some voices on a CD say stuff, and the students’ job is to figure out what they are saying. This is just a modified listening exam. Are the students listening to each other when they practice a conversation, or are they just doing substitution drills? Do learners listen to each other read their answers out loud to each other, or are the fill-in-the-blank activities just desk work to fill time? Include other listening activities that support other sections of the text.

Question: Are there any features that you think we should include? If so, please list them below.
Answer: With every text that I use, I have to supply a writing activity and culture activity. If you want to make a text that is more than just a book of practice tests or drills, then a writing assignment on learners’ answers in the conversation would be a good place to start. Then the text should also outline various options for publication of the learners’ work. If the writing just ends up in the garbage after the activity, then it isn’t real writing.

Finally, a section on culture would make this text a time saver for me, because then I wouldn’t have to do my own. There are may possible culture topics here, for example a comparison of values concerning food, nightlife, dating, or travel.

The publishing company was doing market research on a "new" product that is just like all the other products out there. Why should I change from the text that I have used for the past three years and embellished with my own activities to make it a complete course when all I'm going to get from the new one would be the pleasure of redoing it all? No thanks.