I'm just brainstorming here to develop some ideas for the following course I will be teaching and coordinating for the second time. 5 teachers will be working together to teach about 160 students.
1) Advanced Academic Speaking for Freshmen (1 period per week, 9 classes in total):
In the Autumn term, we focused on public speaking and group presentation skills. In the Winter term, I am really not sure what is best. We could do more public speaking and individual presentation skills, or we could focus on debate, or some mixture of those two. Of course, there are many other academic speaking skills we could focus on such as problem solving, tactfulness, giving advice, making predictions etc. etc. but presentations and debate/discussion are probably what will help students prepare for English language classes at ICU.
Some students have mentioned that focusing on only one main skill such as presentations or discussions is tedious and they want more "variety" of skills. We can do a variety in a shallow way, or focus and go deeply. I tend to think the shallow one-class topics don't have much meaning...and my syllabus reflects that. I prefer to do the same set of skills a few times to aim for mastery. However, at the same time, I can see the value of keeping students excited about learning new things or doing new types of activities in classes, so I want to keep that in the balance too.
A mixture of presentations and debate would mean students would make a short presentation arguing for a certain position and that would be followed by some kind of debate. My sophomore classes have often mentioned that they feel it is important to learn debate skills, so I think doing some kind of introduction in Winter term will be valuable. The only problem with setting up a debate is that a good debate depends a lot on research but this class is designated as a "lab" class where outside preparation is to be minimal. If we do small debates with little research, the content may feel shallow; however, for learning basic skills and expressions for debate, that may be fine. Also, it may not be good to call it debate because that implies students will learn a certain structure for debate competitions, which is not an objective of this class. It may be better to call it something like Critical Academic Discussions, where the goal is not to debate to win, but to
conduct a critical examination of the arguments for a certain proposition in a collaborative manner.
I know from experience that this is the point that many students still have trouble with. When given a topic to discuss, they fail to examine the arguments for their viewpoints in depth, and they need to enhance this ability. It may be tough for some of the struggling students (who may benefit from lighter, more structured activities), but they need to work on those, so we will try to give lots of scaffolding to work on that and also try to keep it fun with a reasonable stress level and workload.
How would the syllabus for debate (critical academic discussions) work? What would the components be?
- Mini-lessons: In most classes, we should provide teacher presentations of techniques and useful phrases, possibly accompanied by video. Students evaluations of AASP in the past often complain about the lack of instruction, and while class time is limited, it seems reasonable to spend 5~10 to present some key points that will help students with their speaking.
- Opinion Presentations: In each period, a chance for some students (or all?) to present their viewpoints on an issue within small groups (not to the whole class since that takes too long?). Some presentations can be prepared, while some can be spontaneous. For example, if some students know they need to prepare a viewpoint for that class, they can present their view based on prepared notes and charts-visual representation of information is important! Then, the students who heard that presentation can try to make a short presentation to argue against it spontaneously with just a little preparation.
- Critical Discussions: Based on the presented opinion on the issue, have some kind of structured discussion where one side attempts to argue the opposite view, and then each side examines the arguments that have been presented. At the end, some kind of summarizing and reporting should occur as well.
- Teacher Observations & Suggestions: Another complaint that some students have had is that in many classes, the teachers seem to offer no suggestions on what they are doing. They only get peer comments and self-evaluations. This can be fairly easily remedied by having a system of teachers observing students in a set schedule
- Reflections/Goals-Setting: We want to set up an effective learning cycle where each student is identifying his/her own difficulties with speaking and trying to overcome them in subsequent classes. Of course, that will only work if 1) the students are invested in developing the skills that are being assessed, and 2) students feel the assessment process is designed in a fair way that does not make them feel compared, i.e. considered less valuable than more talented speakers in the class, and 3) the workload for reflection is reasonable and does not excessively eat up time and energy for practice and preparation.
- Consideration of Mixed Levels: I'm not sure how to do this, but one reality we have to consider is that we have a wide spectrum of skill levels for English speaking and critical thinking in these classes. Some students love to speak in English but do not have very strong critical thinking skills. Others have good ideas, but fail to get them out in English. Still others may need much development in both areas. So...how do we consider these for curriculum design and evaluation purposes? Basically, we want students to have plenty of choices to do what they feel is just right for them. We also want to stress that we are evaluating by engagement and improvement performance in the target areas rather than by a rankinkg of speaking abilities. This needs to be made clear in the first class along with the evaluation/grading system.
Class 1: Introduce/show what we mean by critical academic discussion skills (CADs, if we want add another acrynom to the world's acronym overload)
Classes 2, 3, 4: Mini-lessons (10 min.) 1~3 + Round 1 of CADs (5~7 min. * 7 students per class)- Students bring their opinions for presentation and critical discussion in each class. In a traditional P&D structure a ICU, each student gets 15 minutes. In a 70 minute class, the goal should be for the teacher to observe 6 to 7 students. But will this work? This is where I have been stuck for the past few days and need to work this out.
Lesson Plan for 18~24 students, 60 minutes with elbow room
00min Hi, speaking warm-up, confirm schedule
05min Mini-lesson, points to focus on today
15min CADs start and run for 45 min.--6 groups of 3 or 4 students, or 3 or 4 groups of 6 students? The advantage of the smaller groups is they will interact more. The advantage of the bigger groups is they will feel the teacher's presence more. Why not have some big groups and small groups? For example, the students who are "on the spot" for that day will be in the teacher's circle of 6 or 7 being recorded and observed. The other students will have a freer format in smaller groups--and get 10~15 minutes each to practice their skills-present, listen to counter arguments or critical questions, exchange ideas and then close with some kind of consensus or summary to report.
60min CADs finish, final comments by instructor
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If a student is absent, what happens? Squeeze him in the next period?
What topics would be good? Topic choice for an "argumentative" question is diffcult for many students. Students will be free to choose their own? I can give a number of topics (and data sheets that give the pros and cons-just need 7 topics or so) and then have to decide what to do about overlap--which can be boring-cloning, cloning, cloning--, but is not a big problem. One simulation of a group is:
Presenter 1: Should euthanasia be legal in Japan?
Presenter 2: Should commercial surrogacy be allowed in Japan in the future?
Presenter 3: Should pre-natal testing be allowed?
Presenter 4: Should cloning be allowed?
Presenter 5:
Or, shall we forget the CAD centered approach and go with more day by day topics and activities? Today we will study how to disagree politely (review of ASP), Today we will ask critical questions about sources, assumptions, opposite views, . Today, we will study how to conclude a presentation. Today we will practice tactfulness, Today will we will practice making and explaining visuals for an argument, etc. Do that for six topics and the course is finished. The only way the students will be evaluated is how consistently they came to class and participated actively--all students can get an easy A.
They could also choose topics out of a hat and try to do spontaneous opinion presentations--Hmm...if we set a list of topics and say that the evaluation will be based on how well they deal with these topics at the end of the term, that may be an interesting way to get around topic choices.
