Microbrews in Denver

I tried quite a few in Denver during the week I was there and all were good (except Coors-my taste for beer has definitely changed since college), but the one that left the strongest positive impression was the SKA Nefarious Ten Pin Imperial Porter. Very pleasant sipper, creamy, slightly fruity, slightly chocolate, with a good balance of hops

Highly recommended!
http://www.skabrewing.com/

B+ on http://beeradvocate.com/

Here is a review by Bubba83, quoted at length because I'm still working on my beer review vocabulary:

"22oz bomber poured into a tumbler at 45-50 degrees. Nice amount of head on the pour, good tan color and the brew itself is midnight black. Lacing is pretty good and a thin rim of head stays around til' the bottom of the glass.

Smells pretty good, chocolate cake comes to mind, along with some freshly milled grains, almost like being at the homebrew shop. Roastyness is also apparent along with some vanilla.

Taste was a little chaotic, all over the place. First I get some sweet/tart fruits that seem a little out of place. Afterwards some chocolate followed by a bit of vanilla and cake batter. Finishes pretty hoppy. The taste just doesn't feel cohesive to me, it seems like there are a bunch of flavors thrown into the brew without any real flavor goal in mind.

Feels too thin for an Imperial Porter. Also, not much livelyness from the carbonation. After the good appearance, I was expecting a little more.

Drinkability could be improved by making the beer a little chewier/creamier. Alcohol is fairly well hidden, but some of the tartness and richness from the cake batter also somewhat negatively impact drinkability.

I don't regret the purchase at all, it was enjoyable and interesting throughout. If you haven't tried it before, give it a whirl."

Making EFL learning real and relevant to students' lives

I found this quote in an journal about Service Learning Studies published at ICU.

"Learning is more fruitful and dramatic when it is contextualized, when it is shown to have relevance to real life, and when it makes a difference in the lives of students and those they serve."

This leads to two questions.

First, in foreign language learning focusing on academic skills, how can we contextualize and make the learning relevant to real life?

For one, we need to show more video or other representations of real academic or professional situations in which effective (or ineffective) written and oral communication is being used. Assignments in classes should be linked to authentic activities and that link should be persuasively shown to students. Hopefully the examples and the tasks can be "cool"--something that inspires and creates excitement and makes students want to engage in.

Second, how do we make activities that can make a difference in the lives of students? The service learning system at ICU is an excellent example. Helping others can often lead to a higher awareness of the need for more learning, for a reexamination of self, one's cultures, and other cultures, and a critical inquiry into the dynamics that shape the world around us.

For language classes, will it make sense to design activities to try to make a difference somehow? Students can always do research on paper etc. with a specific local or global issue in mind, but that does NOT make any connection to real people. How can writing or speaking by about a real need? Interviews...emails...newletters...vodcasts...letter to the editor...presentations to persuade someone to do something...Specific ideas might be

• something to help refugees or other foreigners in Japan, something to an embassy in Japan
  
• something on an issue in an English speaking country that relates to Japanese students (overseas study, visas?, international relationships, depictions of Japanese culture...an letter to the editor or a letter to a policy institution about some cause?).
• something about their own university/community/life/culture - to introduce it in English to students of other countries
• Hmm...in any case, I want to get away from "Write an essay about education" (for me) That's not bad, and motivated students can use tasks like that to improve, but it is not engaging, inspiring, authentic.
  

Communication Strategies that can be used when you get stuck in speaking

Have you ever gotten stuck in a foreign language conversation, not being able to understand what the other person is saying, or not being able to express what you want to express? Did you stay stuck for an uncomfortable amount of time, or were you able to solve the problem and move on in a comfortable way? How many "strategies" for getting unstuck can you think of?

Canale and Swain (1980) include "strategic competence" as one of the four main components of communicative competence along with linguistic (accurate expressions for what you want to say), socialinguistic (appropriately polite choice of verbal and non-verbal language), and discourse competence (making a smooth transition from idea to idea so that you don't lose your partner). Strategic competence is defined by Canale and Swain (1980) as "strategies that speakers employ to handle breakdowns in communication. (p.25)" In other word, it is the ability to "keep going" with your communication in spite of difficulties with understanding or expressing ideas in the foreign language." Judging from my experience with professionals and college students in Tokyo, I feel that strategic competence is one of the areas in which Japanese speakers of English need more explicit practice.

I had read about strategic competence before and had seen taxonomies of strategies such as the one below adapted from Yoshida-Morise's article in Young and He's Talking and Testing (2001), but had never worked through them with a view to introducing them systematically to language learners. I'm considering some kind of introduction in my speaking class next term, but will knowing these be useful somehow? Also, how do I make this list into a usable resource for learners to draw on when they get stuck. What learners are interested in, unlike researchers, is what strategies they SHOULD use, not what they DO use.

Reduction Strategies (abandoning or reducing the meaning)
-Topic avoidance (staying silent or changing the topic)
-Message abandonment (giving up trying to say that idea)
-Semantic avoidance (changing the message to a simpler one)

Achievement Stragies (filling in the gaps of IL to achieve communication of the meaning)
1.Approximation (using a similar meaning when you don't know the right phrase)
--Lexical substitution (similar word)
--Generalization (more general word)
--Exemplification (listing examples to let the listener guess)
2. Paraphrase (saying the meaning in different words)
--Circumlocution (like playing Taboo)
--Word Coinage (two sleep days)
--Morphological creativity (internationalizated)
3. Restructuring - Changing to a different sentence structure
4. Borrowing from their L1, which is usually not effective
5. Cooperative Strategies - Asking the interlocutor for help
-Indicate they cannot explain "It is very hard for me to express."
-Ask how to say something "What do you call the..."
6. Non-linguistic gestures, mimes, pictures, sound imitations
7. Repair - saying it, then fixing it and saying it better
8. Telegraphic strategies--communicating without saying anything, just a pause
9. Fillers (in L1 or L2) nanteyuuka How do I say it?
10. Change of role (Asking a question instead of answering it)

So...all of these are good, of course, in the sense that learners have to do what they have to do to survice with limited language resources. There is nothing wrong with abandoning something that is not working as a message in communication.

Next, the most useful of these, as "good" strategies to teach seem to be:
1) Giving examples
2) Circumlocution
3) Non-linguistic circumlocution (?) - mimes, drawing etc.
4) Asking for help
5) In any case, not giving up on the conversation or going quiet. Continuing to find a way to go forward with the communication (assuming that is the best thing to do, of course)

Question:
What would a conversation between native speakers of English show? What kind of strategies for communication are used among advanced speakers to make the conversation go smoothly? Less proficient speakers definitely should learn from those.
Can a database of academic spoken language shed light on that?
http://lw.lsa.umich.edu/eli/micase/ESL/FormulaicExpression/Definition.htm
http://lw.lsa.umich.edu/eli/micase/ESL/Clarifying/Intro.htm
http://lw.lsa.umich.edu/eli/micase/index.htm

What would a corpus of academic spoken discourse look like at ICU? What kind of speak acts will students actually need to perform? Also, in business or other professional arenas beyond ICU, what will be required of many of our students? (Is it even realistic to try to guess that?) How do we lay a foundation that will maximally applicable to the maximum number of students?

A fairly good run and a personal best at the Tokyo Marathon 2009

いや～終わりました。ホッとしてます。３０キロまではお祭りムードで快適だったんですが、最後の10キロは足が動かなくなって辛かったぁ。最後の２キロは痙攣との戦いでしたし、ゴールしてからしばらくはちょっと吐き気がしてました。でも終わってみると楽しい思い出です。新年明けからトレーニングで健康な生活が送れましたし、頑張ってよかったです。

しかし、このように走れたのはファミリーの支えあってのことです。２時間も３時間も練習に出て子供の相手しなかったり、臭いせんたくものを増やしたり、いつも世話をかけてました。今日も大きなポスターを作って３人で浅草の方まで応援に来てくれてました。雨や混雑でお互い見えないままになってしまったのですが、それでも気持ちは伝わってました。Ｔｈａｎｋｓ　ｆｏｒ　ｙｏｕｒ　ｓｕｐｐｏｒｔ！

タイム的には、もう少しいいタイムが出るかなと願っていたのですが、あまり厳しい練習はしていなかったので実力通りでした。結果は４時間２６分ぐらいで、おそらく自己ベストです。前半は快調で「このまま維持すれば４時間切るかな」なんて妄想を抱いてました。でもハーフぐらいから現実の壁。まあ練習の実力通りでした。２５キロ以上走った回数がやはり少なかってですし、ペース的にも普段から５キロ２５分ぐらいで走る練習をしないとsub-4は無理ですね。また気が向いたら来年やってみます。

ちなみに自己ベストが「おそらく」というのは東京マラソンは何故かスタートラインを越えた時間を速報の中に入れてくれないのでスター選手の「よ～いドン！」を基準にしたタイムと自分の腕時計のタイムしか分からない訳です。３万人もいるのでスター選手が出てから自分がスタートラインを跨ぐまで約１５分かかってます。

http://www.iza.ne.jp/news/feature/4811/sports/allphotomatrix/

それを前提に以下の速報を見るとゴール時間が４時間４０分なのでざっと４hr２６minと計算してます。

ＣHRISTIANSMARK 種目(Category)：マラソン男子
5km　00:44:28 　（実際は29分ぐらい、快適）
10km　01:12:37 (split 0:28:09、快適)
15km　01:41:23　(split 0:28:46、快適)
20km 02:12:15 (split 0:30:52、強い向い風、トイレ休憩)
25km 02:41:28 (split 0:29:13　快適)
30km 03:12:59 (split 0:31:31　少し疲れ気味)
35km 03:48:24 (split 0:35:25　ゆっくり走るだけで精いっぱい)

40km 04:23:57 (split 0:35:33　ゆっくり走るだけで精いっぱい)
Finish 42.195km 04:41:34 (split 0:17:37　痙攣！足が動かない。かなり歩いた)
(Estimated time adjusted for delayed start is probably 04:26:34)

２００５年のHonoluluマラソンのタイムが４hr２９minだったので４hr２６minはpersonal bestと思ってます。去年の東京マラソンはかなり練習不足で４hr５７minでした。

でも、結局タイムはどうでもいいのです。速くなっても何もいいことはないわけで。マラソン参加の最大の意味は日ごろの運動の促進に尽きます！体重もほぼ目標値まで下がりましたし、体の調子いいですし、今後も続けていこう！

今回の反省点：　昨年同様衣装が地味だったこと、そして一緒に走る仲間がいなかったことですね。練習では時々一緒に走る人はいるのですが、東京マラソンは当選するのが難しく彼は落ちてしまいました。今度は数人で派手な衣装を決めてチームで是非走りたい！

今回一番よかったこと：終わった後、冷えたボロボロの体を引きずりながら品川の駅中で食べた熱々激辛のタンタン麺。うまかった～。そして三鷹に戻って入った銭湯のジェット・マッサージ風呂とそのあとの生麦酒。（カッ～！）この二つが最高。走るのも（前半は）楽しいけど、やっぱり終わった後が最高に気持ちいい。

感動したこと：自分と同じぐらいのタイムで走っていた６８歳の外国人のおじさん。ドイツからこのために来たらしく、楽しそうに写真を撮りながら快走してました。走るリズムは速くないけど、ものすごく堅実で歩かない。自分が抜いてもジリジリ最後の方に追いついてきてほぼ同じタイムだった。最後の５キロは彼の後に着いて走法を真似ていたら快適だった。７０歳間近ですごい！自分がそのぐらいの年齢になったらできるのだろうか？

BEYOND THE PAIN...

LIES...A MEDAL,WRENCHING　CRAMPS　AND　REALLY STIFF,SORE LEGS

RW/WW Atwell Chapter 7: Responding to Writers and Writing

Summary
Atwell describes how she interacts with students in two different types of writing conferences: content/craft conferences and editing/conventions conferences.

Content and writing craft focused conferences: These start with an open, listening-focused getting of "How's it going?" or "How can I help you?" and allow student authors to talk through difficulties they may be having in their writing and get advice from their teacher based on her much more extensive experience as a writer. Illustrating with examples from her class, Atwell emphasizes the importance of:

• Giving support while the students are writing, not after they have written and submitted it
  
• listening-letting the student describe the problem and possible solutions,
  
• building on the positive aspects of what the student has done so far (rather than going to the negatives that you notice),
  
• giving specific compliments of what is working, and to give honest questions about the points where the writers meaning is not clear yet, and
  
• being patient about the long term progress of the student.
  
• time management to make sure all students get chances for help,
  
• preparing to take/give notes, and
  
• keeping a balance between fostering independence for solving the problem and giving advice or ideas as a mentor while not intervening to the point of taking over the writing.
• Ending the conference with "What will you do next?"
  

Another key skill Atwell aims to teach students is "How to have a writing conference with yourself," to enable students to have an inner dialogue about the quality of their writing in terms of focus of purpose, level of specific detail, effectivness of leads/conclusions/titles and style.

Editing/conventions conferences: Atwell believes that students will learn to use conventions well (as they write their draft, ideally) if they believe in the importance of writing well for an audience to read it easily. She also emphasizes that conventions should be taught mainly in one-to-one conferences (along with some whole class mini-lessons?) focusing on only 1~3 convention issues in the context of the piece of writing of the student and AFTER a number of preliminary steps: 1) the student author has already edited the piece with a different color pen based on a personal Editing Checksheet specific to the piece, and a personal Proofreading List in the writing notebook developed step by step over the weeks, and 2) Atwell has also edited with another colored pen.

Reaction
良かったこと・参考になったこと
このチャプターは自分がどのように学生の作文に対してコメントをしているかを問い直す良いチャンスとなり、発見・再発見が多くありました。以下の文は主に自分のresponseにおける問題点の考察になってしまいました。

p.220

"Students know that I will confer with them while they are writing, not after the writing is done."

ICUではこのような書く過程での個人サポートが多少できていますが、まだ改善の余地があると思っています。

現在EssayのDraftを提出させ、その数日以内に１０分ほどTutorialと呼ばれる個人Conferenceをしています。幸い学生数やスケジュールの面でそれが可能なのでこの貴重な個人指導の時間が各学生と２～３週間に一度ほどのペースで持てます。Essayは600~1000語の長さなので事前に提出してもらい、私が読み、気づいたこののコメントを多少つけ、それを返却し、Conference学生はコメントの意味を確認したり、内容の相談をしたりして最終版のEssayを書く準備をします。Conferenceの内容は基本的にAtwellの"How can I help?" みたいなStyleですし個人的なadviceもいろいろできて、プロセス自体は学生にそれなりに良いサポートになっていると思っています。

しかし。。。問題は：今の悩みはこのシステムを活用できていない学生がいることです。つまり、どうしてもDraftの期限までに十分に書けない（書かない？）学生がいて、あまりにも内容がまだ「目指す基準」のEssayから遠いので"Good luck with your research and writing"ぐらいしかアドバイスができない場合があるのです。学生としては難しく書けなかった、資料が見つからなかった、時間がなかったなど、理由はいろいろです。

皮肉なことに一番苦労していてサポートが必要な学生ほど期限通りに満足なドラフトを書くことができず、Conferenceで十分なサポートが受けられていない現状があるような気がしています。そして結局最終的に提出されたEssayに低い評価が付き、低い評価を説明するために問題点を指摘するコメントを書いてしまいます。

やはり全員同じようなものを同じスケジュールで書かせている故に発生しているのかも知れませんね。書く能力や興味、そして書く事に使える時間は十人十色なのに同じことを要求するとどうしても「できる・できない」が分かれる。なんとか解決したいものです。

解決としては、何よりもAtwellのようにWritingで苦労している学生をもっと早い段階から把握し、その学生へのサポートを増やすことが必要かと思っています。それから評価においてはprocessにおいて「努力していたけどできなかったのか？」それとも「やる気がなかった・時間をかけなかったからできなかったのか」を見分けることをできたらいいなと思います。Self-EvaluationやReflectionをやってはいるのですが、課題ができていない学生はあまり具体的なことを書かない・提出しないという傾向があります。Self-Evaluationは「できた！」という実感があると意味がありますが、「やらされたことができなかった」時は書くのが嫌になるのでしょう。自然な反応なのかも知れません。全員同じ課題・基準で量ることもできるだけ見直すことを考えたいと思います。

やってみたいこと
My Proofreading Listの作成は是非やりたいな。私が作るChecklistではなく、学生自身がMini-Lessonなどから理解したポイントを自分でリストし、チェックする。すばらしいです。組み込みたいです。

みなさんへの質問
みなさんの書く内容を読んで考えたいと思います！

追加：稚拙ですが、昨年２月にCambodiaの英語教師のための学会でWriting Feedbackに関するWorkshopをやりました。その時のスライドを以下に挿入します。理論があっても実践は難しいものです。。。

Speaking Improvement FAQs

These are just some notes I'm making to prepare an FAQ list for a speaking class website. I'm hoping to have a number of FAQ articles about speaking skill development for ICU students to peruse.

It is actually very challenging to keep responses short. I guess what may work best is a short response with a link to more imformation about sub-points that can be easily navigated.

I want the FAQ list to be visually appealing and accessible. I want students to enjoy wading through it and getting ideas. Hopefully they will discover many concepts and practice methods that will encourage them to become self-propelling learners of speaking.

Q. How can I improve my speaking skill? (The most general question)
A. Improving your speaking has three main steps:
1. Input through listening, understanding when to use what type of language
For example, you hear somebody say "I'm sorry, could you say that again?" when they can't catch something somebody said. You notice the function of the words, intonation, timing, and (if possible) even the gestures or facial expressions that make up that act of communication successful.
2. Practicing a similar expression in a similar context. This can be in a classroom, or in a real situation, or even in an "imagined situation" that you simulate by yourself.
3. Getting feedback on your effectiveness. In other words, getting a reaction to check whether your communication is successful or not. In the example of "I'm sorry, could you say that again?" if the listener stops and repeats his words for you, your communication has been successful. By experiencing positive feedback/reactions, your confidence increases.
Basically, people who speak a foreign language well have repeated the 3 step cycle again and again, building their confidence with more input, more practice, and more feedback.

Q. I speak English very slowly--the words don't come out. How can I develop my fluency?
A. This often happens to learners who have not had a chance to practice speaking very much even though they have learned English for many years. Don't worry! As you repeat the 3 step cycle of input, practice, feedback and try expressing your ideas in various situations in class and outside of class, your fluency will develop. In addition, here are some key practice methods to keep in mind for improving fluency:
1. Repeat useful phrases until you can say them smoothly (Use dialogue materials to learn what kinds of phrases are useful for the situations you will be in, such as class discussions. Keep trying to use new phrases for a variety of functions.)
2. Prepare what you want to say before class and do a rehearsal. If you have a chance to discuss something in a class, imagine what you will say when you do your homework.
3. Practice talking about what you like to talk about. For example, you can do a Oral Journal by recording yourself talking about what you did that day or other topics that you choose. Even if you do not ask someone else to listen, just speaking and recording can be an excellent way practice connecting your ideas more smoothly.
4. Use time limits and systems such as 3-2-1. With a topic, first give yourself three minutes to talk about it. Then, try to say the same content more smoothly in two minutes. Finally, summarize the ideas in one minute--not just speaking more quickly, but also speaking more efficiently to get your main points out. If you record yourself, you can reflect on your own improvement too. If you have a partner to exchange recordings with or give presentations to, your study can be even more enjoyable or effective.

Q. I feel like some of the topics we discuss in our academic English program are too difficult. I want to practice more casual conversation English. What should I do?
Topics in ICU English classes can be difficult sometimes, and may not always help you develop fluency in terms of being easy to speak main ideas without thinking. Unlike "free conversation" lessons, academic English practice asks you to develop skills to think critically and discuss at the same time, in a good balance. You should see those difficult topics as an excellent chance to practice phrases that analyze the difficult issue and keep the communication going even if you are not exactly sure what your opinion is. By getting ideas from others and asking questions about the question, you can "think together as you discuss." This ability to "think together as you discuss" is one of the most important skills that you can learn if you want to use English skills in professional situations in the future. Of course, preparation before class to read the text and have some ideas about the content helps immensely too. However, even if you have not prepared, you should still be able to use class time to engage in a meaningful discussion. There is no reason for silence or lack of participation, especially when your chances to speak English while living in Japan are so limited.

Q. I think my pronunciation is not good. What should I do?
Q. I have a poor vocabulary. What should I do?
Q. I get nervous when I speak English. What should I do?
Q. I want to find a native speaker conversation partner. How?
Q. My classmates often speak Japanese in discussions. What should I do?
Q. How can I use movies to improve my speaking? (What is shadowing?)

These ideas are all good...now to start developing the site...

DeepeNing my knowledge of Nings as I create an online course resource

So I'm looking for a good way to create an interactive learning site for academic/professional speaking improvement for non-native speakers of English. I'm mulling over Moodle (not bad, but not public if I use our university platform), Google Sites, a blog on Blogger or Wordpress, or a combination thereof.

And I think I should look at Nings too. I once audited an online course on web literacies that used a Ning for instruction and interation. It seemed to have potential. But is it easy to use for the instructor and students?

Nings basically are communities-social networks of invited persons or people who join an open community on their own. That is basically what a classroom or course should be, in a sense.

http://improveenglishspeaking.ning.com/forum

The features of being able to easily upload videos or audio files make it conducive to a "speaking" class site. The ability to use forums for discussions between members is powerful and easy to use too. That puts it above using a class blog in some respects.

If it were only for my own class, it might be ideal. The problem is that I am trying to create a site not only for one class for a whole department and possibly for English learners all over the world. Of course, it may be realistic to try to do everything on one site.

I may need to combine a combination of Moodle (for institutional things), a Google site (for resources that should be easily accessible on the web without membership/community things), and a Ning for membership things (my class of this semester to share videos of their own speaking like a portfolio?) - Or should all students have their own blog for that, and just use an aggregator like Google Reader for their blogs...

Decisions, decisions. The easiest way is to get started in Moodle, I suppose, and branch out as needed with things that I want public or that Moodle does not support enough, with links back into Moodle...

Hmm...where's the perfect online course creator application with all kinds of options for private/public, resources, quizzes, surveys --like Moodle, only more flexible and restrictively open to the public?

Some research ideas on speaking skill improvement through video reflection

I'm kind of in groping mode for a new major research project, possibly leading to a dissertation, so here goes some brainstorming. So far I've produced scattered work in the fields of materials development, spoken fluency, self-assessment of speaking by learners, feedback on essay writing, self-confidence in language learning, and teacher training--and it is time to launch into a fairly involved study that will define my main specialty. So what will that be?

My main general interest is how to help people develop intercultural communication competency, with a focus on methods for developing skills in spoken fluency and confidence. At my university, I'm part of a team coordinating curriculum development for academic speaking of English for Japanese college students, and one of the most exciting developments is the video-recording based self-assessment system we will pilot from April.

What kind of research could we do there? Let me type as I think here...

From April to June, I'll be helping 40 some new college freshmen learn basics for "English academic speaking" ie the oral communication skills they will need to survive in English language medium college courses at ICU. The syllabus will start with skills/phrases for basic greetings, self-intros, small talk and then move on to skills for participating in or leading class discussions (lots of sub-skills there). It will touch on presenting, but not in a big way aside from presenting an organized opinion as part of a discussion.

One part of the curriculum will be a "self-assessment" that students will do based on video-recording, watching, and analyzing their own speaking to set goals and improvement strategies. What this basically means is that we'll have groups of students come into a recording room, take turns leading or participating in small group discussions, video-record them doing it, give them the video file to watch, and then ask them to notice what areas they especially have difficulty in...and they will probably come up with a bunch of typical things such as "I lack fluency" or "My voice is hard to understand" or "My opinion didn't really get across to the other person" "I have broken grammar--We'll have a fairly long checklist for this kind of thing and fairly difficult? task to "flush out their bugs". After they self-identify their areas of difficulty (and we are assuming these self-analyses will be basically valid--accurate enough?--...they won't be saying "My main problem is only grammar" when actually their main problem is pronunciation. In any case, the most important thing is that each student finds some clear goals for working on their speaking skills over the next year or so in the intensive English program. Also, based on the goals they set such as "I want to improve my pronunciation (my intonation, R-L difficulties etc.)," they need to find specific and realistic practice plans/methods they can try to implement independently. "I will listen to podcasts from xxx on every Thursday" and then actually do those plans, and actually make improvement.

Here's the critical issue: If the reflective process of Record->Watch->Self-analyze->Set goals/plans->Implement-> Review/Reflect on improvement (Measure progress in focus areas)-> Modify or Continue implementation does not really help learners improve their speaking, or if it is impossible to really measure any improvement based on the process, then arguably it is a waste of effort. Last year's pilot and survey results showed, at least, that learners feel they benefit from watching and analyzing their own speaking. This year's project, ideally, needs to go one more step and demonstrate that valuable progress is being made in the areas of focus. Of course, the inherent complexity of measuring language acquisition progress has to be considered. To be realistic, a simplified pre/post measurement of a isolated task/skill area, even with control groups etc. proves very little about whether the learner has become a better speaker.

So...what are some good research questions here:

1. In what way do foreign language learners benefit from self-analysis of their own speaking performance? Clearer goals? More self-awareness/monitoring when speaking? What do the learners say (based on questionnaires/follow-up interviews)
2. Is video-watching / reflection really needed? How much? One time? I've only seen myself speaking Chinese once and I hated it (it was ugly) Maybe I should eat my own dog food more. Is it a waste of time and effort? Are we going down the wrong alley here? Isn't it better to just practice, practice, practice?
3. Can learners identify their weaknesses? (like a teacher would) Do they need to?
   
4. Can learners set effective practice plans for themselves? (given resources)
5. Will learners at my institution actually do the self-study that they set out to do? (Or will they just be listing a bunch of bull to appear to engage in a reflective process)
6. Why do we do it two times in the term? Are they supposed to see improvement? Do they? (Sure, they get used to the tasks (organizing an opinion with appropriate signal phrases, leading a discussion etc., so their performance obviously improves, which is a good thing.) Does doing it two times lead to encouragement to continue the cycle of reflective learning/improvement?
7. Can engagement in the learning process be the main basis for the grade in the class? (I wish we didn't have to give grades in the course, but we have to, so...) How will that work? How do we use the video and self-assessment to determine whether a student has worked hard/made progress in the areas we want them to? Can we use a portfolio system? (record, self-evaluate, reflect, set goals, reflect on practice methods) Is that too much writing in a speaking class? Can the reflection etc. be in speaking, like a speaking journal with an online recorder function? Hmm...maybe in the future.
   

A little tangent here. What should we be calling this process of Record-Watch-Analyze-Set Goals/Plans-Do it-Reflect-Modify? Last year we misnamed it the Academic Speaking Assessment, and we had many students and teachers completely misunderstanding that we were giving them a test with a score about how good their speaking is. We should at least call it the Self-Assessment, but even that is just one part. It is more like a Academic Speaking Improvement Cycle/Process which is evaluated by a portfolio of measurement, analysis, goal-setting, practice and reflection. The assessment (for the grade of the class) is just whether they engage deeply and thoughtfully in the process of improving their speaking skills.

Maybe we shouldn't call it anything and just explain. "The best way to improve your speaking is not only to just practice, but have a cycle of... In this class, your grade will be determined largely by how well you complete two cycles of reflective learning about your own speaking..." Something like that?

Learning from the VALUE Project + Eportfolios (Valid Assessment of Learning in Undergraduate Education)

How can we really asses whether students are gaining truly valuable competencies?

I found this in my Google Reader's RSS feed to Academic Commons
http://www.academiccommons.org/commons/essay/value-project-rhodes-interview

The article is an interview with Terrel Rhodes, Director of the VALUE project and Vice President of the Association for American Colleges and Universities (AAC&U). He discusses how meta-rubrics of Essential Learning Outcomes (ELOs) such as Critical Thinking, Creative Thinking, Written and Oral Communication based on the LEAP project (Liberal Education and America's Promise) are being developed by a number of universities to be used with ePortfolio based assessments of student learning.

Here is the developing draft of the Critical Thinking rubric.

The list of Essential Learning Outcomes is here, and basically includes:

1. Knowledge of culture and the natural world (science, math, history etc.),
   
2. Intellectual and practical skills (critical thinking, communication, inquiry, IT skills, teamwork),
   
3. Personal and social responsibility attitudes (intercultural sensitivity, civic awareness, ethics, lifelong learning), and
   
4. Integrative learning (ability to synthesize fields of knowledge/skills to adapt to new tasks).

That's a nice list. I'm particularly interested in how these outcomes can be evaluated holistically through e-portfolios. I think ICU should be moving toward a 4-year e-portfolio based assessment of projects in various classes, plus reflective essays for each project or class, a crystalization of learning for that term/class.

I liked the following quote by Terrel Rhodes: "We also know, from twenty or more years of pioneering work with portfolios in higher education that periodic reflections on learning by students are critical components of an education. Student reflections, along with self and peer assessments, guided by rubrics, help students to judge their own work as an expert would. These reflections and self-assessments all become part of the collection of work that gets evaluated in light of the Essential Learning Outcomes."

The e-portfolio eventually should supercede GPAs and other fragmented, less valid evaluation schemes as evidence of learning and ability for the student to show graduate schools, potential employers and other parties. One of the most important skill that a college can teach students is the ability to critically self-evaluate and reflect and set goals for further learning directions and interests.

So...are there any examples of eportfolios on the web? Here is a long list of schools in America.

Or, go no further than the authoritative website: https://www.eportfolio.org/conference/

Owen James of ICU has used a Blogspot based epf for his social learning class (example).

Clemson seems to have a nice program: http://www.clemson.edu/ugs/eportfolio/index.html with the following example of an education student: http://beckyportfolio.googlepages.com/

Iowa State University student example: http://www.public.iastate.edu/~mtwetten/documentary_poster.html
City U of NY-Technology has an eportfolio project here, with several samples and this type of project eval rublic. LaGuardia College has a large eportfolio project introduced here with examples like this and student feedback like this: The ePortfolio really helps me improve my critical thinking, writing and communication skills and most of all my computer skills. Learning all the digital tools help me become a better students because it is very helpful for the future. I can do better assignments due to my new knowledge. I also do lots of presentation and computer work for class and this ePortfolio helps me prepare for the future.

Also: Nice data on effectiveness:
"“How much has your experience in this course contributed to your knowledge, skills, and personal development in understanding yourself?” Eportfolio students = 80%, national community college average = 5-%.

The interview says there increasingly are "free Web tools that students can use to construct e-portfolios"...such as?

The Visual Knowledge Project is an important hub for discussions on how multimedia projects should be used in higher education. This article Multimedia as Composition is a How-To on introducing multimedia essays in composition classes instead of the traditional 5-7 page composition. Using Moodle etc. for peer review-another VKP article (Main takeaway is that US students found peer review very useful and draft improvement was quantified-having specific narrow categories to give feedback on is useful thesis, content, organization, development, critical thinking-with a rubric and explanation, students can evaluate papers quite well.)

Ideas for a website on Developing Professional English Speaking Skills

ICU needs a website to support students' development of spoken English proficiency. When a student wonders "What should do I do next to improve my speaking further?" "Where can I practice more?" or "How do I overcome my difficulty with pronunciation, fluency, stage fright or other skills?", they should be able to easily access useful information that guides them to tips, resources, and practice exercises.

This has been on my mind a while and it is about time that I do something about it. So here goes the brainstorming:

-Moodle, blog, ning, or other platform-need to explore
-The site should not be ICU specific, but available to people around the world, and hopefully more people will contribute ideas interactively
-Main content will be:

1) a basic overview of what it means to develop professional level English speaking skills as a non-native speaker in terms of comprehensibility (accent, intonation, phrases), cross-cultural sensitivity (humor, non-verbals), communication strategies (circumlocution/paraphrasing, giving examples, asking for help etc. etc.), communication style (direct/indirect, brief/elaborate...need to research and review these for myself)

Format = Q&A style linking from a graphic or box

2) audio/video examples of good speaking (including some related to ICU's speaking class - why not?)

3) sample practice methods by speaking difficulty (Could use a forum type tool to get ideas from all over the world- How can I improve my fluency? = shadowing, conversation partners, attend conversation cafes on campus etc., oral journal, random Skype-Me conversations, voice chat= describe/demonstrate these practice methods as comprehensibly as possible

4) Links to a variety of speaking/listening resources
http://www.italki.com/ has some good content, nice community to join for a language exchange or finding a language tutor. The future of language learning?
http://www.italki.com/resources/1/learn_english_in_english.htm
http://www.audioenglish.net/
http://mm.eigotown.com/c/aclOaabI49q57Vaj
http://www.yackpack.net/
is a nice list of resources, but as with many links lists, it is too much information for students to wade through. We need to give a select few with specific suggestions on how to start using it.

Where will the ASP course info go? We can't put it up in public, can we? Needs to be password protected if we want to upload textbook audio files.

Promoting confidence in English speaking skills

What does it mean for a foreign language speaker to be "confident" in speaking that language? The feeling of "I can do it" or "I can manage to get the job done" is an important psychological plane for foreign language learners to reach, but little systematic research seems to have been done on what it takes for learners to get there, and why some learners reach that positive psychological state, while others do not, often in spite of having basically similar language skill levels. "Confidence" is most likely closely related to ability, motivation, anxiety and other concepts that have been studied in second language acquisition, but it seems important to analyze it further in terms of what it is, where it comes from, and how can it be attained or maintained.

In a still unpublished study on self-confidence in language learning, Dr. Kota Ohata, my colleage and research partner at ICU, and I have started to identify the following factors as main influences on confidence. These emerged from thematic analysis of qualitative data from interviews with college age English language learners of Japanese background at ICU:

Internal, personal factors including:

-personality,

-a sense of accomplishment,

-comparison of self with others,

-self-evaluation based on personal standards or goals

Task related factors including:

-difficulty of task

-familiarity of task

-authenticity of tasks used for practice, and

Social factors

-feedback from instructor

-feedback from peers

All of these were mentioned by the interviewees in various ways as playing a role in raising or lowering levels of their self-confidence as language learners. There may be more, of course, and the categories need to be worked on with more data.

The next step in our research is to use the factors that emerged from the qualitative data to construct a quantitative study using a questionnaire to survey a larger number of learners.

This is one of the many projects I need to work on during this spring break...let's keep pushing forward Ohata-sensei!

RW/WW Atwell Chapter 6: Mini Lessons

Summary:
Mini-lessons (as opposed to "maxilessons") are 5~10 minute (or sometimes longer) sessions for the workshop teacher to efficiently "introduce and highlight concepts, techniques and information that will help writers and readers grow up" using an OHP or easel in front of the whole class. It is also a chance for the whole group to interact, collaborate and make discoveries about writing and reading together. Obviously, for concepts that many students need to become familiar with, whole class mini-lessons are more efficient than individual conferences. Atwell chooses topics for mini-lessons based on her experience and observations of what students need. The topics roughly fall into four categories:

1. Procedural, on how the workshop should be run: "How to use an editing checksheet" "Self-evaluation procedures at the end of each trisemester" and other basics such as schedule, folders, resources, how to do a conference or use reading journals (taught with good vs. bad role plays/examples-cool!), how to publish, how to set goals at the start of a term, "Establishing a portfolio-a collection of evidence that shows one's growth" p.157 WHAT AUTHORS DO is a nice list of the writing process:
   
2. Literary Craft, on "What authors DO, What readers NOTICE" to help students increase their repertoire of methods: "How to revise" (show that any author cuts/adds/changes a lot!) "Titles" "Style-Don't tell, SHOW!" (p.165) "Narration (person/tense)" "Focusing" "Types of Leads" (typical, dialogue, action, reaction/thought), "Genres" (parody-cool to teach!) "The Outsiders" "Resources" (when/how to use a thesaurus, rhyming dict.)--and 7 MORE pages of literary craft topics she teaches. I want to be a student in this class.
   
3. Conventions, what she calls "the agreements between readers and writers." It is important to remind students these are arbitrary agreements developed over time, but they are quite important for helping the reader. I like how she will present something like the difference between homonyms THEIR THERE THEY'RE and say "Now join the FUN and write two of your own (questions) (p.201)
   
4. Reading Strategies: What "real" fast readers do is to skim, scan, skip, read what they want, abandon books sometimes. "Schema" is extremely important. IRS example p.205 Laundry example p.206. What our eyes do in reading--focus on main words in chunks-skip small words (Paris in the the Spring p.210), process from context (top-down). p.208 has a nice list of 12 Goals for Fluent Readers. p.211 Comprehension Demonstrations (Keene and Zimmerman 1997) can show students a range of mental strategies for improving our understanding of texts, talk aloud to show how readers can Ask questions, use life knowledge to connect, make predictions, decide what's important, draw inferences, raise problems, create visual images/diagrams. Knowing vocabulary for such stategies helps raise metacognitive awareness of how to read well. She also teaches skills for test reading (p.212, interesting, quite practical)

p.215, Atwell concludes- In mini-lessons...."We can teach the happiest lesson of all--how the mind of the reader interacts with a text to create a good book."

☆良かった・参考になった点
まず、Mini-Lessonというコンセプトがとても好きです。学習の中心は学生主体の活動という前提で、「ちょっと聞いて」という感じで多数の学生が必用としている役に立つ情報をさっと効率良くプレゼンする・みんなでブレストする。一度に多くの点を語り過ぎようとしない。

トピックやレッスンの内容で「いいなぁ」と思った点は上記のSummaryにかなり盛り込んだので割愛します。

最後の言葉、
p.215, Atwell concludes- In mini-lessons...."We can teach the happiest lesson of all--how the mind of the reader interacts with a text to create a good book."これはとてもいいと思いました。この点はまだまだ自分がICUの学生に伝えきれていない。

☆難しい点・疑問点
やはり最も難しいのは：
・限られた授業数で何をmini-lessonの焦点にして語るか、そして
・どう短くまとめるか
これは経験を積むしかないかと思いますが、みなさんどうでしょうか？
言いたいことはたくさんあるし、ちょっとでは説明できないことがたくさんあるような気がして、mini-lessonの最大の効果を出すにはきっと少しづつ研究していくしかないのでしょう。

☆やってみたい事
Atwellと同じように、自分も「通常、ここは毎年みんな躓く」reading, writing, speakingなどの点に気づいています。そして毎年授業で言及し、個人指導で繰り返し、評価などのコメントでも繰り返します。それでも伝わっていなかったり、他のことを説明するのに時間を使ってしまったためにその年は説明が出来なったりもします。

その解決策としてははやり効果的な自主学習教材・環境の開発が不可欠だと思います。例えば必ずやるMiniLessonをVideoに撮って残し、少し編集してOnlineで学生がいつでも自分で学習・復習できる環境を作るという手があると思います。私自身のIT能力がまだまだ足りないのでInteractiveなものを上手に作る自信はありませんが、勉強したいなと思っている点です。ICUで数人で協力して少しづつ開発ができればいいなと思っています。

今やっているのはMoodle上に毎回の授業のNotesやPowerPointを掲載するぐらいです。Mini-LessonのSelf-Study Menuみたいな感じに編集し直したいと考えていますが、まだ手がついていません。でもICUも３年目になって２回、３回と同じ授業を教えたことがあるので、そろそろ手をかけなくてはいけないと感じてます。

目標としてはこのような「語りかける」プレゼンや：

Tips for Receiving Feedback from Speeches -- powered by ExpertVillage.com

何かの方法を見せる教材が作りたいなと思います。

How to Draw a Cartoon Character Outline -- powered by ExpertVillage.com

Graves氏もいました。Atwell氏はまだInternet上にWorkshopのVideoを出していないのでしょうか、検索では当たりませんでした。


みなさんの学校ではそのようなものはありますか？

今度の春の授業ではクラスの最初に何らかの「Mini-Lesson Time」を設けたいなと思っています。資料をOnlineで閲覧可能にし、授業の後でも学生が見れるということを整備できれば、時間制限をつけてもいいかなと思います。

その他みんなと共有したい事
みなさんの書き込みを読んで考えます！とりえあずここまで。遅れてすみません！

A little family vacation with snow and birthdays

Grandma and Grandpa have March birthdays, so we decided to head up to Nagano and put on some festivities on the 11th.

Since we were going to be up in snow country and the weather looked good, we went up the mountain a day early and hit the slopes at Sun Meadows in Kiyosato for the first time. Beautiful blue skies, views of Fuji and Yatsugatake, and decent snow--a little slushy, but not bad.

I thought Michael might be ready to try skiing for the first time, and we were able to borrow skis and suits for free at the B&B we stayed at, so I put him in ski gear...but he got tired of falling and not being able to get up easily and went back to sledding after about an hour or so. I wanted to put him in the kids ski school in the afternoon, but he had had enough of skiing already by then. We'll try again next year.

Mei got tired of snow after about an hour too and Megu wasn't too keen on skiing either, so I was the only one who wanted to stay longer. The panorama lift at Sun Meadows takes you up 500m in altitude in a few minutes and I had fun crashing down the slopes at reckless speeds.

We stayed at a little "pension" (which is Japanese for B&B for some reason) called Little Bird, a very kid-friendly and reasonably priced place. The main draw for us was that they rent out skis, boots, and suits to guests for free--and amazingly they had my 29.5cm shoe size. That saved like 20,000yen in rental fees we would have had to pay. But that wasn't all. Little Bird has a kids' (and parents') dream-come-true play gym with a full-size racket ball court, billiards, darts, a table soccer game, air hocky and many other great little things to wear out 5 year olds like Michael. His favorite was the Foosball-like soccer game and I think we played for over an hour at night and also in the morning. I'll think about that for his birthday.

The next day we drove down into Saku in Nagano where my parents live and had a nice lunch and birthday party. Michael drew a highly artistic portrait of his grandparents and all of us in his family. Got him to write Happy Birthday!!!!!!!!!! (with 10 exclamation points as was his choice for emphasis) Love Maiki and Mei in his (again) highly artistic font of alphabet letters of all sizes and shapes. I have a picture of that somewhere, but not on this computer, so I'll try to put it up again.

Bilingual Schooling Options for Michael and Mei

With Michael turning 6 in June this year and only one more year of preschool to go, the time has come to make a decision about elementary school enrollment and settle on a broad vision of how we want to school our kids.

The default choice for primary school is our local public Japanese school, Nishi-Mitaka Gakuen, which is a model program of sorts and seems to have a good reputation in the area. Unless we come up with a better option, Michael will enroll there in April 2010. Basically, I feel very comfortable with allowing Michael to enter Japanese elementary school. He already is forming an identity as a local Japanese kid, many of his friends will be going there, and Japanese primary school education has many strengths in helping students form good learning habits and basic literacy. It will be a good educational experience for him. Megumi and I both went through Japanese public elementary schools and we have good impressions of it.

The biggest drawback of going to a Japanese school, of course, is that his identity as an English speaker will weaken, so we need a plan for English. Even now, after two years in yochien, he is starting to refuse to reply in English when I try to talk to him. He can converse in English at an OK level for a 5 year old, but English communication is getting more and more frustrating for him as his Japanese communication ability develops at a much faster rate from interaction with local kids, media input, and talking with his Mom. I've taught him to read almost at the first grade level already and he can write his alphabets too, but since I'm basically the only English speaker he talks with, I'm feeling the limits of what I can do through communication and schooling at home.

So...what are we going to do about his English academic ability? First of all, I think our main goal is to make sure Michael has enough academic ability in English to go where he wants for college. However we get there, through Japanese schools or international schools or schools in the U.S., we just need to be able to keep his options open. How can we do that? Here are some methods we'll eventually need to choose from:

Option 1. International schools
Use international schools in Japan at some point, switching over from Japanese public schools sooner or later. ASIJ is close to ICU but would be close to impossible financially, especially for two kids (2.5 mil per kid). I went to CAJ and enjoyed my years there; it is more reasonable but still expensive at 1.5mil per kid. Enrolling in international schools for many years is tough financially, but the more we delay, the more difficult it will be to keep the kids' English levels high enough to get in. Here's a long list of international schools in Japan. Should we start from 1st grade somewhere? If not, at what point should we switch over? Can we maintain English levels until 5th or 6th grade and switch over, for example?

Option 2. Japanese public or private schools,
(with just enough English study on the side)
If our goal is to help our kids get into English language universities abroad, one way is to graduate from Japanese high school and apply as an international student using TOEFL scores etc. Basically, academic ability will be developed in Japanese, going through the Japanese system of taking examinations to get into decent schools, hopefully with good English programs suited to the level our kids will have. Some place like Kato Gakuen in Numazu?

Getting up to speed on TBLT

TBLT, or task-based language teaching has been a buzz word in foreign language teaching for a while now, but I've never done a systematic examination of the concept. A lot of the teaching I do is probably "task based," but I don't do it with any explicit theory of task design. The March '09 edition of the The Language Teacher focuses on TBLT, so I've decided to educate myself.

The Willis and Willis article has a reader friendly Q&A format and here are the highlights:
http://jalt-publications.org/tlt/resources/2009/0903a.pdf

Q. Why do we need TBLT?
A. Many language teachers become preoccupied with teaching grammar rules and other parts of the language and forget that the main purpose of learning a language is to communicate effectively and confidently. Tasks help learners engage primarily in wholistic meaning focused activities in the classroom rather than form-based activities that teach the items that compose a language.

Q. What's the difference between TBLT and Communicative Language Teaching?
A. Nothing. Task-based learning has the same goals as CLT, but puts the "task" at the center of the learning process explicitly.

Q. What's a task?
A. According to Willis and Willis, the main characteristics of a good task are 1) Does it engage the learner's interest? 2) Is there are primary focus on meaning? 3) Is success on the task measured in non-linguistic outcomes rather than accurate grammar, and 4) Does it relate to real-world activities (not artificial exercises just to ingrain grammar).

Task-based lessons can be divided into 3 parts Pre-Task, Task Cycle (do the task, plan a report, make the report), and Language Focus (analyze the language they produced and then practice focus areas found in the data). A typology of tasks includes Listing, Sorting, Comparing, Problem-solving, Sharing personal experiences, and other creative projects.
Resources: http://www.jalt-publications.org/tlt/files/98/jul/willis.html
http://www.willis-elt.co.uk/documents/AThreeWayDisntinction.doc

Q. According to Willis, what is important in acquiring a foreign language?
A. A three way distinction between a focus on meaning, language, and form seems needed.

• A focus on meaning, in which participants are concerned with communication.
• A focus on language, in which learners pause in the course of a meaning-focused activity to think for themselves how best to express what they want to say, or a teacher takes part in an interaction and acts as a facilitator by rephrasing or clarifying learner language.
• A focus on form in which one or more lexical or grammatical items are isolated and specified for study or in which teacher comments on student language by drawing attention to, problems. (Willis and Willis 2007: 5)

Q. Is TBLT supported by research? Is it better than form-focused instruction?
A. The debate seems to still be on-going. Everyone agrees that the process of language acquisition is a complex cyclical combination of comprehensible input (exposure), use of the language for meaningful communication (use/engagement), and noticing features of the language that help meaning become more accurate and pragmatically appropriate (autonomous noticing =focus on language/teacher induced noticing = focus on form). The debate is on the weight that should be given to those components. TBLT argues that "use" of the language for meaningful communication by the learner should be primary, with support by the teacher for input and focus on form. Ellis and others may disagree, saying that some systematic instruction or drilling of grammar forms can be helpful. My view is that the weighting of meaning vs. form focused instruction may have to vary by individual needs and goals. My leaning is toward the task-based, meaning focused approach. Plenty of input (with some focus on form in the input stage), engaging tasks, and due treatment of form-after the task. One important step in TBLT seems to be to accept that fluency and confidence in the language are more important than grammatical accuracy.

Q. Can TBLT work in Japan?
A. Not as long as Japanese teachers are preoccupied with teaching accuracy. Textbooks in Japan are designed for grammar structure presentation, practice and production (PPP) rather than for meaningful functions or skills. Tests are based on knowledge, not ability. However, seeing how everyone accepts the sad reality of the failure of the current system - that the majority of Japanese high school graduates are remedial beginners in English after hours and hours of form instruction which mainly only succeeds in producing an inferiority complex and fear to communicate, Japan obviously needs a fundamental change of approach in how it sees language learning.

Q. How can TBLT be assessed?
A. The key is "What can they do?" The Common European Framework for Languages and ACTFL Guidelines use "can do" statements for learners to show their competence in various functions, with evaluation of fluency, appropriacy, and achievement of outcome.

Q. How can TBLT concepts be used to help ICU ELP students?
A. Many classes at ICU are skill or content-based, and consist of a communicative "task" such as a discussion about a reading text. However, as the Pre-Task, Task Cycle (do the task, plan a report, make the report), and Language Focus (analyze the language they produced and then practice focus areas found in the data) model of TBLT shows, "doing the task" is only a very small part of the task-based learning process. The pre-task stage is important for input (discussion phrases, skills, models of good discussion debate), some type of report on the task is needed after planning time, and analysis of the report/output language and practice based on it are needed. More care on those missing components seems needed in my classes and probably many classes in the ELP.

Little and Fieldsend in the same TLT argue against Willis and Willis, saying that a "reactive approach" to language difficulties is not enough. Targeting language difficulties of the learners in a proactive way in advance through "form-focused tasks" is more efficient and practical. They recommend, citing Samuda's model, a sequence of meaning - > form focus (giving phrases, grammar practice) - > back to meaning in the task cycle. Hmm...sounds quite reasonable, but which is better? difficult point to determine unless I try both ways with learners.

The final article is by O'Dwyer introducing how a European Language Portfolio (ELP-not to be confused with English Lang. Program) can supplement a task-based curriculum.
Language Portfolio = 1) Language Passport (summary of linguistic identity and current competency), 2) Language Biography (learning goals set and reviewed), and 3) Dossier (Samples of work and evidence of achievement). Cool stuff! Need to harness this for EAP for ICU students-much of the portfolio process can be used for Academic Speaking and they should be trying to build a speaking portfolio.
http://jalt-publications.org/tlt/resources/2009/0903a.pdf

Review of "The Constant Gardener" (2005) 邦題「ナイロビの蜂」

I picked this up at Tsutaya in the Academy Awards corner that always gets set up this time of year. Rachel Weisz won best supporting actress for this in 2005 and somehow I had missed seeing it until now. The bland title (in both English and Japanese) may be to blame, or the cover photo with Ralph Fiennes who has never quite been a compelling must-see draw for me.

Not knowing what to expect, I stayed engaged watching the story unfold and appreciated the realistic no-winner ending.

The best part was the acting by Weisz, who plays Tess, a save-the-world activist who is murdered after uncovering a conspiracy by a major drug firm to use Kenyans to illegally trial a risky TB cure and trusting the British embassy to act on it. Awareness that free drug provisions to African countries by big pharmaceutical companies could be abused seemed to be a valuable message to send as well. The directing of the film by Fernando Meirelles seemed smooth enough to keep the drug company conspiracy and the romance of Tess and her diplomat husband played by Fiennes engaging to the end.

Regrettable was the lack of African actors/characters developed in major roles and a lopsided white-centric scenario of white heros (especially Fiennes the gardener diplomat, who is less than compelling) solving problems in Africa caused by white corporate and government greed with the African locals only shown in a peripheral, helpless assistant-to-the-whites sort of way. The D+ review by Schager on Filmcritic.com gave a good critique of that weakness of the film, an insightful balance against the overwhelmingly good reviews given by Ebert and many others.

Reflection on Winter 2009 - AASP (fall/winter both)

I taught Advanced Academic Speaking for the first time this year and worked as coordinator at the same time. Fall term is basically 8 classes of presentation skills and Winter term is 8 classes of discussion and debate skills.

Fall Term AASP

What was good?

• My class rocked! The traditional syllabus was largely usable with some good improvements. The group presentation project gives the course a sense of purpose and intensity. In only 8 class meetings, we need to form groups, choose topics, teach outlining skills, teach presentation skills, do rehearsals, do the final presentations for two classes, and do some reflection and self-analysis. It is a very busy class, but very rewarding. I think almost all of my students liked how it went, with only some frustration about putting together a research-based presentation as a team with so few meetings.
  
• One minute speeches each week help students get used to being on their feet and communicating without any notes. The last one of the one-minute speeches gets videod for a self-analysis, which the students seemed to find very beneficial.
  
• The "no reading" rule for the final presentation was important. Most groups had good presentation styles, even if their content was not strong.
• Got videos of all of the group presentations and distributed them on the net via email links.

What needs work?

• The course is too short for a fully researched, thesis based presentation and I don't want my students using up the limited amount of energy they can spare for this lab course digging up detailed research. The presentation topic/content needs a template or a few templates that can be followed. This idea came up from veteran teachers of this course, but I didn't follow through due to a lack of time and just let my students fight it out with "Choose any topic you like". I propose a survey based presentation focusing on one aspect of ICU life. No library research should be required. Coordinators should make a sample with one or two focused but meaningful research question such as "What are ICU students' perceptions of the SEA program? How can it be improved?" That will lead to a thesis and an outline that describes and analyzes the data obtained from interviews.
• Systems for dealing with delinquent group members are needed.
• A clear breakdown of grading would be nice so that students know what is expected.
  
• Getting OYR students or other guests (students from other AASP sections?) to listen to the presentations or some other "audience" system (put on web?) is needed to make the presentation an authentic experience. Making a video and making the room presentation face-to-face should BOTH be required.
  
• Making the videotaping a standard part of the curriculum, with a system that is doable for teachers of all tech proficiencies, and making sure students do self-analyses. We want students to build confidence by seeing themselves improve step by step in their oral communication ability, like a portfolio.
• Getting feedback from students. Need to pass out paper questionnaires on the final class - web based feedback through email doesn't get enough response (Don't they check their emails?)
• Phrases, skills, more web-based materials, hopefully for a unified curriculum used by all teachers.
• Going to individualized presentations is also one possible direction.
  

Winter Term AASP

What was good?

• Homework was very light-probably just right for a CS class, which is a lab class and technically is supposed to have less than one hour of preparation for each class. I am absolutely sure that no student can complain of having too much homework in that class. Just a few worksheets for preparing a short opinion about a bioethics issue or a short dialogue to think about how to facilitate a discussion.
• Many students mentioned that the course supported their efforts in ARW well. The P&Ds we did in class helped them get ready for their presentations in Winter Project.
  
• P&Ds are an excellent way to maximize speaking time (15 minutes per student for presenting/facilitating, 30 minutes for participating, 15 minutes for observing a peer to give feedback). No student can say they didn't get enough speaking time in AASP.
• Debates were very popular with my class. They were being challenged, obviously needed the practice, and many of them requested that we spend more time for debating, which is excellent practice for critical thinking and deserves a bigger position in the ELP curriculum. All students should be able to see issues in terms of pros/cons, arguments for/against a proposition (thesis).

What needs work?

• With the current P&D based class curriculum, there is little time built in for the teacher to demonstrate useful phrases and oral communication skills. A least a little bit of this should be built in to each class. Most lessons already have a list of useful phrases, so it is just a matter of deciding what the teacher should do with them. Ideally....there should be a short video that shows the phrase or skill in action and it should be available on the web. Easier said than done. Need to put together a team of teachers to do it week by week.
  
• Need a system for teachers to give individual support/coaching. With P&Ds, it is easy for the teacher to end up with nothing meaningful to do--reading a book in front or just hovering meaninglessly from group to group. Instead, the teacher should work on a set schedule to shadow the P&D of each student at least once, purely for developmental purposes (not evaluative). The problem is the logistics of such a system. If a teacher sits through 4 P&Ds per hour, it will take 5 classes to shadow a class of 20. If the term only has 8 classes, it won't work. So...either shorten the P&D times to 10 minutes, which will allow 6 shadowings (groups of 6?) and get things done in 3~4 classes...but the only problem is that 10 minute P&Ds are not really satisfactory discussions...Hmm...but the focus is presenting/facilitating/participating, so maybe it is OK. The teacher will a RECORDER as well, using the new VADO - This will facilitate self-evaluation early in the term.
• Lesson 1 - Overview, Lessons 2,3,4,5 practice P&Ds (with instructor or peer shadowing), Lesson 6 rehearsal, Lesson 7 final eval, Lesson 8 -reflection/analysis.
  
• Topics should be debate-like. In other words, the facilitator is given a Proposition Card by the teacher such as "Surrogacy should be legal in Japan" or "The death penalty should be abolished in Japan"and then, after a few minutes preparation, gives a little background (a sheet is given), takes a position, and starts a discussion. In the discussion, the participants should split into pre-agreed sides and go at each other. The facilitator should try to mediate? or defend the position? Advanced preparation should not be needed. But...the problem with that is 10 minutes is not a satisfying debate time. Hmm...more thought is needed on this. How can debate be built into the class with good cyclic, weekly experience and practice. Not preparing for a big debate, but doing small size debates over and over.
  
• More discussion on this in the summer...
  

Reflection on Winter term 2009 - Theme Writing

1. What was good about TW this term?

• 18 out of 20 passed! A very good rate.
• Did "hand-back" tutorials for final comments. These work really well, especially if the student has written a nice self-evaluation and submitted it before the tutorial. Need to require that more clearly next time.
• Several mentioned that they discovered a "love" of research paper writing. That's my main goal.
• The 18 who passed stayed with the draft deadline schedule mostly very well. Nobody got lower than a C, and ended up with about six As Bs Cs. The 60% process, 40% final paper formula seemed to mostly work well, although I might go to a 50/50 system because I felt that I wanted to reward the result of the final paper more.

2. What needs to be improved?

• Peer review should be done on a "writer requested" basis. In other words, the writer should ask a peer to read/review the paper. "Could you let me know what you think?" rather than a reviewer just writing unsolicited ideas on Moodle. So, the task will be for the writer to get one or more reviews from peers and attach it to the draft or final paper, not for the writer to just write two reviews of peers. This peer review can be done in class or outside class as preferred. In the end, it will be the responsibility of the writer to find one or two classmates to do reviews. The evidence I see will only be the peer review report. Will that work? That may allow some students to get away without ever Giving a peer review. Is that allowable? I'll give it a try next time.
• Self-evaluation with a detailed checklist...I want students to come up with their own score out of 40 or 50 points and just sign off that "I agree with your self-evaluation." Dave makes that part of the grade, and I want to do that too. That ought to be part of one of the final classes.
  
• Read/Analyze past student papers. Sonomi's paper is a good one.
• Put more self-study resources online - How to choose a topic, What is a thesis? How do organize sections of research paper...short slide shows with voice overs would be coolest. Coupling slide shows/demos with a checklist would be killer. Maybe I'll start one for Spring ARW and grow it for TW.
  
• Reserve computer lab early on to allow for research of databases in one of the earliest classes and also to introduce online resources.
  
• Consider Owen's Google Doc approach - All outlining and drafts done on one Google Doc - How did that go over with his class? I assume it could really turn off some students who prefer to do less on computers, but at the same time, most of TW is done on computers anyway, so nothing is lost. It would be really nice to be able to keep comments recorded on the draft and also to see the stage by stage developments of the paper.
  

Overall, I had a very good feeling about how TW went this term, and seeing how I am not scheduled to teach it

Reflecting on ICU's Winter term 2009 - ARW

Submitted winter term grades on Friday last week, and today is a good day for reflection.

Academic Reading and Writing-Winter:

I was able to keep all of my students engaged (more or less) to the end. All passed and many did an excellent job to the end. Since I ran the structure of the course more or less the same as last year, I was able to make some good minor adjustments to how I helped students improve their skills for academic reading, writing and presentations.

A. Reading Skills

This term, I eliminated for the first time ever my set of "reading comprehension questions" and moved to an open Summarize/Critique/Discuss format. This puts more responsibility on students to read for main points without guiding questions and to be critical and identify weaknesses or raise original questions about the texts we were reading. Students had to submit Discussion Preparation documents each class, which was excellent for making sure students were well-prepared for discussions, but a pain in the neck for me to check. When I do it next year, I wonder if I can delegate the checking process to students somehow...Also since the preparation seemed difficult for some students and lead to non-submission by some, I wonder if there are ways to help the struggling students who cannot spend enough time to read the text and prepare a good summary/critique of the text prior to class. For example, I might want to separate the text into parts and put students in charge of only one part. Each class I want students to come to class EXCITED about what they read or discovered or prepared...Adding audio to accompany the readings seems important too. Also, I need to give more examples of types of developed critical responses to texts such as not only just saying "Author gives no evidence" but also "Is there any evidence of.... The author should add more detailed evidence about... to make this point more persuasive." Not just saying "I disagree" but saying "I am not persuaded by this argument because..."

As a result of this term, do students feel more confident about their reading skills? Less confident? What do our end-of-term surveys show? If they feel less confident, what needs to be changed? Should some students be reading different texts? Should students be choosing their own in a workshop style? How should we be differentiating for different levels of reading ability and motivation? (At least prepare this....and if you finish, prepare this...and if you are really ambitious, prepare this...) Also, how can they be helping each other more-collaborating on grasping the meaning and practicing their critical reactions?

B. Writing Skills

Did two essays, one on "Should Japan allow reproductive cloning if the technology becomes safe?" and one allowing a free choice of topic. For the first essay, I was able to hand back my final comments in tutorials. I think that was good for dialogue. However, for the second essay, I gave it back to their mailboxes, and who knows how many will pick them up and actually read those comments. I feel like my efforts may be wasted. I want the dialogue to end with some sense of closure--for all students, not just the good students. The final essay should be submitted in a portfolio, with drafts/copies of sources, with a self-evaluation using the same form that I use, and with reflective comments on the paper writing process and goals for future papers. I want to be able to just sign off on their self-evaluation. I need to re-design the writing schedules in each term to include that more systematically. I want the writing to end with a tutorial that confirms the student's final reflection on the portfolio...

Many students were not able to submit drafts for the 2nd essay. That is a big problem because those students are the ones who need to most help with grammar, format, expressions, organization. They seem to get overwhelmed with the process of researching in English that they cannot write out their opinion on their topic. So...is the topic "propose solutions to a global problem" too difficult? How do I make the topic more manageable...In any case, I need to ensure that struggling students submit drafts and have a chat with me at an early stage in the writing process. The solution may be to have only one main essay. Also, I like Owen's idea of having a timed writing with just 1~2 sources in front. Giving students more support of "how to" do a research essay and avoid pitfalls like a monster topic is needed too.

C. Winter Project

Had 6 groups. 4 did a good job. 2 really struggled. For the four successful groups (Water Shortage, Food Shortage, Gender Discrimination, World Heritage), the project worked very well and seemed to be a productive experience--Starting in the end of January, the groups got their topic and outline started early on, had tutorials/rehearsals with me, and put together nice performances (Review video). The only thing I forgot was to build in group deadlines for some credit of points (outline submission, PowerPoint submission etc.).

For the struggling groups, I really needed a drop dead rehearsal deadline. In the end, the groups (Fair Trade, Obesity) pulled together a doable, but unorganized assortment of ideas for 15 minutes, but it was ugly to watch. I had a rehearsal with both groups, but neither were ready at that time. I couldn't give any support because they didn't have their ideas together yet, even just a few hours before the presentation. I should include a stipulation that only groups who have their rehearsal by the deadline can make the presentation. Other groups must...videotape their performance for submission so that they don't waste the time of the whole class listening to unprepared content.

Fundamentally, maybe it is best to just have one main essay about bioethics and let WP go without a new essay.

---------------
Overall, Winter Term should be a final confidence-building, skill-consolidating term. Based on skills learned in spring/fall, students should be finding that they are capable of doing work that would be acceptable by non-Japanese professors at ICU...but the reality is that many students are not at that level and many do not have the energy or motivation to push themselves. It is sad how Winter Term seems to only work for about half of the class...(and a good class I had in AA this term).

I really should get a few of my struggling students in for a chat in Japanese to listen to their account of winter term. Will they come?

RW/WW Atwell Chapter 5: Getting Started

Summary:
Atwell believes the first week of her writing/reading workshop is the most important to set the tone and get students started on their paths as a community of authors and readers. She starts by having students get to know each other with drama games and also to get to know her classroom's resources by scavenger hunts. Then, she introduces the idea of Writing/Reading Territories-a brainstormed list (that will grow) written in a notebook and covering all of the topics, genres, audiences, and book titles or genres a student has written/read or is interested in writing/reading. When a writer or reader runs out of ideas, they can go back to their "terrorities" list. The first week of the workshop method also includes getting students familiar with the "status of the class" report, which is a one-by-one sharing of what each student is working on, and with other aspects of the workshop such as mini-lessons, quiet writing time, sharing portions of one's writing to the class in a circle, and read-alouds by Atwell and quiet reading time.

参考になった点

今回特に印象に残ったのはAtwellから見て学生に「やって欲しくない」こと。

Writingに関してはp.142 "How I Spent My Summer Vacation"に象徴される"too broad"な題材、そして"safe subjects they don't really care about"というものを避けて欲しいとAtwellは書いてます。

Readingに関してはp.146 "My most important responsibility...is to make sure nobody is reading a book he or she doesn't like"

すばらしい考え方だと思う。従来の一斉教育だと"subjects they don't care about" "books they don't like"を押し付けることが教育になってしまっている部分がある。それを避け、学生がreal writers and readersとして開花するサポートをする教師の役割・手順をAtwellは書いてくれている。

その延長としてp.147もとてもいい文です。
"Reading becomes a whole, sense-making endeavor, and texts are open books--wide open to kids' opinions, questions, interpretations, and enjoyment. Writing becomes purposeful, personal, and world-changing--not the turf of a talented few but the domain of everyone who has something to say and someone to say it to."

自分のWriting/Readingの指導は上記を少しでも達成してみたいなと思う。

それにしても、AtwellのWriting/Reading Territoriesはすごい。自分がReader/Writerとしての自分を磨かないといけないと思わされる。

Workshop Methodではまず教師が自分の読み・書きを「本物」に変えなくてはいけない難しさがある。でもその中で得るものはとても大きい気がする。

以上、短くですが、Chapter 5のリアクションでした。