劇的なゴールを目の前で

マイキと味スタでＦＣ東京vs磐田を観戦してきました。なんとロスタイムに赤嶺が劇的な逆転ゴール!マイキと二人で大興奮でした。

追記：相変わらずマイキのサッカーブームは盛り上がってます。はっきり言ってオタクです。寝ても起きてもサッカーのテレビ観戦、世界中のリーグのサッカー戦績表のチェック、そして畳の部屋や公園でのサッカーの練習の話ばかりです。最近はすこし野球にも興味を示していますが、はやりポケモンよりも何よりもサッカーにはまっています。

まぁ、父としては嬉しい傾向です、ポケモンの話するよりサッカーならある程度付いていけるので。"Hey Dad did you know that Chelsea lost to Wigan last night?" と興奮して話しかけてくる彼のお宅ぶりには負けますが、なんとか話を合わせて英語の練習と親子の対話のきっかけにしようとしています。時間があるときにサッカーの練習の相手をするとかなり良い運動になりますし、このサッカー熱は今後も煽っていこうと思っています。

To give a choice, or not?

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/30/books/30reading.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all

I am slowly being persuaded to believe in the importance of learner choice for reading and writing classes. In a mailing list of college English teachers in Japan that I am a part of, we read Atwell's In the Middle together and debated the pros and cons for introducing workshop style classes for foreign language classes in secondary and tertiary education.

Accepting student choice requires a very different philosophy of education than the traditional teacher-centered, teacher-evaluating style that values ranking students against others and sorting them into Excellents and Failures with "reliable" standardized assessment schemes. Student choice can only be accepted if teachers accept that the goal of education is to develop each learner in their own individual way, valuing the fact that each learner has different goals and preferences and can learn meaningfully when they are guided to make wise choices about their own learning.

This article gives both sides of the debate, which apparently is heating up in high school and middle schools across the US as the movement spreads.

One of the quotes in the article is by Dr. Snow of Harvard:

“If what we’re trying to get to is, everybody has read ‘Ethan Frome’ and Henry James and Shakespeare, then the challenge for the teacher is how do you make that stuff accessible and interesting enough that kids will stick with it....But if the goal is, how do you make kids lifelong readers, then it seems to me that there’s a lot to be said for the choice approach. As adults, as good readers, we don’t all read the same thing, and we revel in our idiosyncrasies as adult readers, so kids should have some of the same freedom.”

My feeling is that both approaches can work for some kids, but only choice can work for all.

As for the "building a literary canon" approach, where ostensibly "all" English speakers (or Americans?) should know the same "classics" defined by some limited "western" intellectual tradition (ruled by the church? by Oxbridge and the Ivy League elitists?) in order to be called "literate" in some stifling, snobby environment in the future that acts like intellect is defined by knowledge of some limited body of literature...well you can already tell what I think about that from all my quotation marks above.

In particular, the concept of a "canon" makes no sense from the perspective of using English as a global language. Different people from different cultures are going to read different books based on their interests and backgrounds, and there is nothing lost from that as long as they are able to communicate their values and feelings and listen to others' with open minds.

初めて高校の研究運営指導委員をやることになりました、秋田県で

４月下旬に以下のようなメールが突然一通：

先生のブログをたまたま見つけ、
このように突然メールしております。
実は、本校は今年度より、
文部科学省から「英語教育改善のための調査研究」の指定を受けました。
「大学等の高校教育機関との接続の研究」というテーマで、
秋田にあります某大学と連携しながら、
生徒にどのようにコミュニケーション能力を付けさせていくか、
その能力をどう評価していくのか等を研究していく予定です。
つきましては、今、運営指導委員という、外部から指導・助言をくださる方を探しています。
お忙しいとは思いますが、もし興味がありましたらお返事をいただけませんでしょうか？

初めての研究指導のチャンスということでもちろん即OKでした。大学生と社会人を主に教えてきた私は日本の高校の英語授業はあまり見たことがないので興味ありましたし、それ以上にその高校の先生たちや他の大学教授と協力してカリキュラムの改善を考えて研究することは日本の英語教育や教師研修・授業研究の実際を理解する上で貴重なチャンスです。日本の英語教育について文献であーだこーだと読んで研究するよりも実際に高校に入って現実を理解し、どのあたりの変化が最も優先順位が高いのか知ってみたいと思いました。

こんなペーペーでまだ日本の大学教育研究歴が浅い講師が選ばれて良いのか分かりませんでしたが、とにかく行ってみようという気持ちで先週一泊二日で秋田に行き一回目の研究運営指導委員会に参加してきました。朝１０時開会式、研究授業参観、お昼後に授業参観の感想を交え、今後の課題と改善アイデアを４時半ごろまで話し合う、という感じでした。話し合いは人数がちょっと多いことと、やろうとしているプロジェクトが様々な側面を持ちすぎていて、焦点が合わない部分を感じましたが、自分としてはとても有意義な経験でした。

（行きの新幹線最終列車が信号機故障で盛岡で止まってしまい、散々待ったあげくタクシーの代行運転で盛岡から秋田まで百数十キロ乗り、夜中３時近くに寝ることになってチョイ寝不足でしたがNo problem.）

改善策は、結論からいうと、すでにすごく英語に力を入れている学校のしかも英語科で、先生たちの質も高く、学生もかなりやる気がある様子で、それほど大きな改善は必要ないのだと思いました。しかし勿論改善点はどんな教育環境にもあるので、みんなで今後３年間の研究課題を話し合いました。この一回目では主に高校・大学連携の研究ということで、高校生が大学の留学生と交流したり、大学の先生が高校の先生や学生にレクチャーをすることを予定しているようです。

そのような大きなイベントも勿論大事なので、是非導入する良いと思うのですが、何より大切なのは週に５時間の英語の授業の中で学生の英語力をどう伸ばすかです。３年生になった時に興味あるトピックについて研究し、資料やレポートを作成し、プレゼンし、話し合いをする能力が目標となっていた気がするのですが、今回見た一年生の授業ではそれに向けてのステップがまだあまり効率よく計画されていないかな、という印象を受けました。今後の課題です。

次は１月あたりにまた委員会があるそうです。それまでの間は私は何もしなくていいのでしょうか？特に決定がなく委員会が終了しました。先生たちの参考になりそうな文献の紹介だけでもしようと思っているのですが。。。

The dark underside of Japanese education

Please note that I am not necessarily affirming everything in this article by posting it. I found it while searching for readings for one of my classes and plan to include it in the class for discussion purposes. There are many bright sides to Japanese education, and like any system, there is an underside as well and that underside should be identified and dealt with rather than shoved under the rug. Of course, this article is from 1993, and I believe many aspects have improved in the past 15 years. -Mark

The dark underside of Japanese education
Phi Delta Kappan. Bloomington: Oct 1993. Vol. 75, Iss. 2; pg. 130, 3 pgs

Abstract (Summary)
A man who spent four years in Japan teaching English in a private language school had his share of "bikkuri," the Japanese word for "surprise," which usually carries unpleasant connotations. He details his experiences in the Japanese educational system.

Full Text (2433 words)

Copyright Phi Delta Kappa Oct 1993


On 15 June 1986 I graduated from the University of Oregon at the age of 56. The next day I took advantage of the opportunity for early retirement from my job as a printer at the local newspaper. The following week my wife and I set off to explore modern Japan, while supporting ourselves by teaching English in a private language school.

Bikkuri, the Japanese word for "surprise," usually carries unpleasant connotations, as though all surprises are automatically bad news. During our four years in Japan, we had our share of bikkuri, especially with regard to the Japanese education establishment.

When I first began teaching English to university students, I soon found that the best way (often the only way) to elicit spontaneous speech from a student was to ask a direct question. I immediately noticed that answers to questions that should have required some thought came a little too quickly; they were also suspiciously mechanical. Asking what students thought of the strength of the yen always elicited the answer: "It is not good for small companies; many small companies will go out of business."

After hearing this answer twice in the same day from two students who were majoring in economics, I made it a point to ask every economics student the same question. The answer was invariably the same, almost word for word. None of them seemed to consider their new purchasing power abroad.

Even at the university level, it seems that many Japanese are not educated; they are trained. Individual initiative and independent thought are savagely repressed. I remember one student who studied at the prestigious Kyoto University. In an attempt to drag some spontaneous speech from him, I asked for his opinion on a fairly controversial subject. He became very uncomfortable, and the rest of the conversation went like this:

"Does it make you uncomfortable when I ask you for your opinion?"

"Yes."

"Has anyone ever asked you for your opinion before?"

"No."

"Do you think you have a right to an opinion?"

This last was the magic question, and I will never forget the look of wonder and joy that spread slowly across that student's face as he pondered my question. He thought hard and seriously. He was that kind of person; every question merited his best consideration. His eyes opened wide, and he sat perfectly still, savoring the joy of discovery. I could see the radical new idea flashing in his mind: I have a right to an opinion!

It would be easy for us Americans to think that this student must have been a little dense not to have figured out after 23 years of life that he had a right to an opinion, but we would be wrong. Japanese students are not asked for opinions or conclusions based on what they have learned in a particular class; they are asked to regurgitate information.

If a student were foolhardy enough to volunteer an opinion, he or she would have to be a masochist to do it a second time. Japanese education is harsh, and discipline is severe. Nowhere else is the old Japanese adage "The nail that sticks up gets pounded down" applied more strictly than in the schools. Although corporal punishment is against the law, it is commonly practiced. The teaching aids used for this purpose can include a fist, a belt, or any convenient weapon.

I used to pass a cram school (juku) every morning on my way to work. The teacher was usually writing on the blackboard in English and lecturing in Japanese. The students would wave surreptitiously to me, and I always smiled back.

One morning as I passed the open door, a student was standing with his hands pressed against the wall above his head. On his face was an expression of disgust, humiliation, and resignation. He was trying to smile to cover his shame, but he wasn't having much success. The teacher was just going into his backswing as I passed the door. He held a bat in his hands that was made of fine bamboo switches tightly bound together.

I didn't see the blow land, but I heard it. And I stopped and stood there, forcing myself to mind my own business; it took all my persuasive powers to remind myself that I didn't know the customs, didn't know the transgression, was a guest in the country, and could easily wind up in jail for interfering with the mighty sensei (teacher).

I also realized that the many fine pieces of bamboo bound together made a mighty rattle when they landed and did little real damage. It was much like swatting a puppy with a newspaper. But that student wasn't a puppy. He was a human being, and some of his humanity was being knocked out of him at that moment.

High school baseball tournaments are the high points of the year for many Japanese students. They are followed by devoted fans of all ages. In 1987 one team had a star pitcher whose talent had carried them to the finals. The night before the final series was to begin, the boys didn't get into bed and have the lights out by the time the coach had prescribed. When the coach came to their room at 10 p.m. and found them still up, he flew into a rage and beat several of them -- including the star pitcher -- with his fists.

The next morning, the pitcher resigned from the team. A major league scout was in the stands that day to see the young man pitch. Without the pitcher, the team lost by a wide margin -- but it had already lost the game the night before, at the hands of its own coach.

In 1991 the Tokyo Metropolitan Board of Education conducted a survey of 4,800 students to determine the reasons behind the growing number of school dropouts. Seventeen percent of the students polled admitted that they had often considered quitting school, and 33% said that they sometimes wanted to quit. The reasons mentioned for wanting to quit were: "disappointment with the school" (29%), "lack of academic ability" (14%), and "attitudes of teachers" (13%).

The committee responsible for conducting the survey paid devout lip service to progressive ideas. The members pointed out the need for "guidance and advice that respect the individual feelings of students and for the creation of an appealing school atmosphere."(1) No one who is familiar with the way things are done in Japan is waiting with great anticipation for these suggestions to be implemented.

An analysis of the reasons why some pupils refused to attend school during 1989 revealed that more than 5% objected to their teachers' "harsh language and corporal punishment."

In 1990 Toshihiko Hosoi was posted at the front gate of the high school at which he taught. He had instructions to slam the gate on the stroke of 9 a.m. One day, he slammed the gate on the head of a student who tripped and stumbled into the path of the gate as she raced into the school yard. The student's skull was crushed, and she died instantly.

School authorities decided that the teacher had been just a little too zealous in carrying out his gatekeeping duties, and he was fired. In February 1993 the district court in Kobe found him guilty of involuntary manslaughter, and he was sentenced to a one-year prison term and to three years' probation. The prison sentence was suspended, however, because the court felt that Hosoi had suffered enough by being fired.

Some other incidents were reported in the Japan Times of 23 April 1991.(2)

* On 3 July 1986, a 13-year-old female student was kicked twice in the face by her male homeroom teacher, the school's soccer coach. The first blow struck her in the mouth, killing a nerve in her tooth. The second blow struck her in the chin, dislocating her jaw. This was her punishment for being three minutes late for lunch.

* On 10 September 1986, another 13-year-old female student was summoned to a fourth-floor conference room at a junior high school in Shizuoka Prefecture. There she was slapped, kicked, and punched by 12 teachers for 3-1/2 hours. This was her punishment for riding a motorcycle for a few hours one day during her summer vacation.

* From 1985 to 1990, five students died as a result of beatings from teachers.

Forgetting textbooks can mean being beaten on the buttocks with a board in the presence of the entire class. Girls who use mousse or curl their hair and boys who display a part in their hair are also transgressing school rules and can expect to be punished -- sometimes even expelled.

Most Japanese schools use what is euphemistically known as "controlled education." This simply means that the school enforces rules to control all aspects of the students' lives, in school and out. In addition to corporal punishment, teachers use secret reports that follow students throughout their lives and can effectively bar them from attending a university, regardless of their scores on the entrance exams. According to the Japan Times, "Controlled education became increasingly popular in the 1960s with Japan's economic rise and industry's need for obedient workers."(3)

Parents who complain to the school about the beating of their child are routinely told that it is their fault for not raising the child properly. The school then informs the parent/teacher organization, and the parents are ostracized by that group. To be cut off from the group in such a strongly group-oriented society as Japan is a severe punishment that more independent Westerners cannot fully appreciate.

Not all parents accept the implied threat of banishment, however. And the parents of Hirofumi Shikagawa, who hanged himself in the washroom of a subway station in Tokyo, did not.

Hirofumi left behind a note that described his life as a "living hell" and asked two of the ringleaders of the group that drove him to his death to change their ways. His death was the result of bullying -- and, unfortunately, it was not an isolated case. In one six-month period in the mid-1980s, 150,000 cases of bullying were reported to school authorities. By 1989, bullying cases had declined to 30,000 reported cases.

The aspect of the bullying problem that most Westerners find impossible to understand is that all too often teachers join in the cowardly acts, as happened in Hirofumi's case. One of the last cruelties inflicted on Hirofumi was a mock funeral, at which he was forced to play dead. His homeroom teacher was one of the signers of the "condolence" note and admitted in court that he had tried to retrieve the note from the Shikagawa family after Hirofumi's death.

Hirofumi's family sued the Tokyo Metropolitan Government, the Nakano Ward Office, and the parents of the two ringleaders he had named in his suicide note for 60 million yen ($476,000). The judge ruled that the "funeral" was only an episode of teasing and that it was not provable that this event led to Hirofumi's death. His parents were awarded damages of three million yen plus one million yen for legal expenses ($31,700).(4)

At the time of the decision, Hirofumi's father said that he felt his son had died in vain. However, the case did receive a great deal of publicity, and perhaps my retelling his tragic story here will help to ensure that his death was not in vain nor his life wasted.

The children of executives who are transferred along with their families to a foreign country face great difficulty upon returning to Japan. When the children try to reenter Japanese schools, they are discriminated against, not only by their fellow students but also by school officials. Some schools have refused to admit children returning from foreign countries.

A few years ago, mothers of these unfortunate children formed support groups and took their problems to the Ministry of Education. But very little was done about it. Tax-supported schools still refuse admission to students on no more than the jingoistic whim of the principal.

All is not well with these children, judging from the ones I met. They were usually withdrawn and quiet -- even sullen. I got the impression that they had faced antagonism so often in their young lives that they no longer trusted anyone. It was a long time before the barriers came down and they would talk to me.

Some of them told me they had to be especially careful in English class. Usually the teacher's spoken English was almost nonexistent, but these children, with their excellent command of idiomatic American English, were expected to follow the teacher's lead -- mistakes, poor pronunciation, and all.

For a short time I had an adult student, an executive of a tire company who started to take English lessons but suddenly quit. He had been looking forward to a transfer to Europe, but he gave up that idea for his children's sake. He and his family had seen what happened to other children who returned from foreign countries, and they wanted none of it.

This man was one of the new generation of Japanese fathers whose family comes first. I remember him with affection and admiration. It must have taken a great deal of courage to turn down a transfer and thereby damage his career perhaps beyond repair.

For a period of 250 years, ending around 1860, the penalty for leaving Japan was death if the offender returned. Although such legal sanctions have long since been removed, it seems that some of the stigma lingers on.

Confucian philosophy, which so strongly influences Japanese thinking, teaches that great respect should be shown to teachers. Unfortunately, power has gone along with the respect, and power has done just what Lord Acton, more than a hundred years ago, said it would do -- it has corrupted its possessors.

The one saving grace of the Japanese system is the high expectations everyone has of the students. Despite a rote-memory system of learning, harsh discipline, and occasional brutality, Japanese students do manage to learn quite a bit. I can't help but wonder what our students would do, under our system, if our expectations of them were equally high.

1. "Half of Students Mull Quitting, Poll Finds," Japan Times, 2 May 1991.

2. Christian Huggett, "School Corporal Punishment Leaving Scars That Never Heal," Japan Times, 23 April 1991, p. 4.

3. Ibid.

4. "Lessons from a Schoolboy's Suicide," Japan Times, 31 March 1991, p. 22.

MORLEY YOUNG is a freelance writer living near Eugene, Oregon. (C)1993, Morley Young.

Indexing (document details)
Subjects: Schools, Education policy, Education
Locations: Japan
Document types: Feature
Publication title: Phi Delta Kappan. Bloomington: Oct 1993. Vol. 75, Iss. 2; pg. 130, 3 pgs
Source type: Periodical
ISSN: 00317217
ProQuest document ID: 5004612
Text Word Count 2433
Document URL: http://proquest.umi.com/pqdweb?did=5004612&sid=1&Fmt=3&clien tId=23868&RQT=309&VName=PQD

Should I try student blogs in my reading/writing class?

I'm writing as I think here, so this might be messy to read...

For the past three years, I have organized my classes on a Moodle site, and used Blackboard before that. Today, as I finalize my syllabus, I'm pondering the possibility of using student blogs for some of the components such as posting reactions to the readings and essay outlines and drafts.

On Moodle, I can post and update key documents such as the syllabus and handouts as links to Google Documents very easily, and students can post their ideas/questions on the readings and their drafts and peer reviews of essays on Forums. I use wikis for tutorial sign up and for student collaboration on summarizing the main points of readings. Doing interactive quizzes is easy too. Everything is so easy for me to organize on Moodle.

The drawbacks of Moodle are that it is controlled by the university IT admin, and we have to request the creation of new courses through them each term. That is a pain and I would prefer to avoid that. Also, another weakness of Moodle seems to be that after the class is over, all of the work the students do is locked up in Moodle and not part of the student's own learning portfolio. Ideally, the essays and reading reactions the students did, and the comments they got from classmates and teacher would be owned by the student on their own blog. By using a blog for multiple courses, the blog can become a developed e-portfolio showcasing the student's work and reflections on it.

So...for this term, I wonder if I can ask students to:
1) Use Moodle for most things--resources, tutorial sign up
2) Set up and use their own blog for posting reactions and essays. For example, if they create an outline for an essay, they would post it on their blog, and I would leave a comment with my recommendations for improving it. They would also do a self-evaluation of their outline to find points to discuss with me in a tutorial. They would do something similar for a essay draft and final submitted essay(?). Of course, I want to require a paper submission also because I, personally, don't want to read all essays online. I want to go to a cafe or the library and chew through them off-line. But they would still post their essays online for their classmates to give feedback on prior to submission. Create in MS Word or Google Docs -> Post -> Self-Evaluate -> Get Peer Comments (pairs or group of three) - > Revise -> Print & Submit - > Get Teacher feedback and assessment. Yes, it could work on blogs, just like in Moodle as long as I can aggregate the feeds of all of student blogs into one blog for the class. I don't really have experience with that yet...would it work? in the worst case, I just make a list of blog addresses and put it on Moodle.

Write, like a journal, on their blog, their reactions to the readings and discussions they do...Will this work for facilitating comprehension and exchange of ideas regarding the readings we are going to do? In my first two years, I used paper Reading Reaction Journals, read, take notes, write reactions, bring notebook to class, submit two times during the term for a diligence check. Very simple, very personal...but students cannot collaborate very well by reading each other's ideas with that system except on a very limited basis in class discussions. Also, I found that I disliked collecting piles of heavy notebooks and evaluating them. But most importantly, I found that students would not prepare for class discussions consistently because they were not held accountable for having done the reading and prepared ideas about it.

So, I switched to one page worksheets. After reading and annotating, students had to write a list of main ideas in the text, write a few critical reactions to points they felt needed more evidence or clarification, and created a few discussion questions to ask their classmates. They had to submit those in each class to show evidence of preparation, and a fairly large portion of their grade was based on that class-to-class homework. It takes a lot of paper management, but I firmly believe that in a language skills class, even if the approach is content-based, the short-term cycle of read/write/discuss is the most important way to ensure development, especially in speaking about difficult topics. If you don't prepare, it is really difficult to come up with ideas to say in class.

However, this term, I might allow one half of the class to make submission optional--in other words, only one half or one-third will be responsible for preparing notes for discussion for that day....or, I might cut up the reading so that one group is in charge of one part and another group is in charge of another.

So, can the worksheet method be changed to a blog based system? It does not make sense to require paper submission and also a blog submission on top of it. It is too much. But if one or two students are responsible for posting something for all classmates on a wiki or class blog, that might be good. Hmmm....Moodle still seems fine for this.

So, only the essay draft portfolio or some type of personal journal really has much meaning to put in a blog...so I may just try that. Or, I could introduce a Google Doc system...which can be convenient for peer/teacher review of drafts...Hmmm.

I'll wait until I assign the essay later this term.

Back from JACET 2009 in Hokkaido

From 9/3-9/6, I was in Sapporo for the Japan Association of College English Teachers annual national convention, and just got back late last night.

It was the busiest conference experience I ever had because of my involvement with the convention steering committee. Just doing a presentation is enough work, and doing more on top of that is a bit hard--but it is also just a matter of getting used to dividing energies.

So I was was busy with:

1. Listening to presentations--I'll try to summarize what I learned in a separate article in the future. The most practical one for me was about the establishment and management of a Writing Center at a Japanese university. I also learned a lot about how Japanese departments structure grading of English classes.
   
2. Making my presentation reporting on the Academic Speaking Assessment we use at ICU--Need to write an article on that too, with PowerPoint slides embedded.
3. Moderating a session of presentations--This was a first experience for me, but apparently is a long tradition at JACET. I introduced the speakers, gave time management signals to them, opened up the Q&A (but let the speakers moderate it themselves), and closed the session. Both of my speakers were speaking in Japanese, so I guess I could tried to do all that in Japanese, but I did in the American style in English with "Please welcome...with a big applause" in the same way a Japanese professor had moderated my presentation.
4. Helping at the Registration Desk--but it was during a slow hour and I had a good time chatting with the other volunteer staff members.
5. Staying on stand-by to assist the Plenary/Invited speakers--I was just a backup person, and I never got called on, so I guess the main staff from the Hokkaido chapter did a great job!
6. Networking: Went to dinner/lunch with a number of instructors and professors from different universities
7. Exploring; And of course, searched around Sapporo for good places to enjoy sushi, ramen, sake, and beer. I need to write a different article on that too.
   

ARW Spring '09: Summary of course evals/student feedback from Spring term my students

This is my third time teaching ICU's Spring Academic Reading and Writing course, so I feel that I've been able to set up the schedule and support systems for student learning mostly.

I'm particularly happy that my students felt I conducted the class with energy, gave them plenty of opportunities for interaction, helped and responded to them appropriately in and out of class, and managed time well.

Below is from one of my two classes. The other class was similar, but I won't bother averging them.
Anonymous "Teaching Effectiveness Survey" Results. N=17 June 12, 2009.
4=Strongly Agree, 3=Agree, 2=Disagree, 1=Strongly Disagree

Basic Questions for all ICU Courses:
1. Course goals were clearly presented 3.76/4
2. The grading policy was clearly presented 3.71
3. The course stimulated my interest 3.88
4. The lecture portion was appropriate (English skills course, few lectures, so n/a)
5. There were sufficient opportunities for student interaction 3.94
6. The instructor conducted the class with enthusiasm 3.88
7. The instructor taught in a way that helped my understanding 3.82
8. The instructor responded appropriately to questions and assignments. 3.94
9. The instructor managed time well. 3.94

ELP ARW course specific questions:
14. The course helped me develop my Academic Reading skills 3.35 (low)
15. The course helped me develop my Academic Writing skills 3.94
16. The articles in the ELP reader were appropriate to my English ability. 3.35
17. The class Activities helped me learn. 3.94
18. The course assignments were intellectually challenging 3.88
19. The amount of work in the course was reasonable 2.94 (vs. 3.18 for all ELP levels AB)
20. the instructor provided opportunities to answer questions outside of class. 3.71
21. My work was evaluated fairly. 3.65

Departmental averages for all instructors are mostly similar, but 4 of 17 students chose "Disagree" and 1 chose "Strongly Disagree" on No.19 and seemed to feel I worked them a bit too hard. The ARW course at ICU is highly challenging and I pushed my students to master the content and skills at a high level by showing evidence of preparation for each class, especially for the reading. Perhaps it is better to take a more flexible approach and leave the choice to work hard or not up to the students? Autumn term is even more challenging in terms of reading quantity and documented essay skills, so I wonder whether I ought to give students a bit more slack. Of course, given the same criteria for quality work, their grades might suffer...but if they are aware of the need for taking the intiative it might be better overall to develop their autonomy. Or, keep it just as challenging to push them to be more efficient workers?

I received many positive comments supporting the results above with reference to how challenging but meaningful the learning experience was, but I will skip the praise and focus on improvement.

Student suggestions, which I encourage them to write in Japanese, included:

• もう少しスケジュールに余裕をもたせて欲しい。一日丸々宿題でつぶれることが多々あるので、授業に集中できるくらいの余裕がほしい。(My response: I agree that doing 4 or more hours of preparation for each class, as several students told me, is too much. I want to design tasks differently and help students find strategies to be more efficient. 75% of my students studied "6 hours or more" per week, which was the highest choice--as opposed to 34.5% for the department. ARW has 3 classes per week, so doing 6 hours per week, or 2 hours per class seems acceptable to me, but I think many of my students were doing 3~4 hours before each of the classes, including reading for discussions, and essay writing related activities. 2 hours per class seems ideal to me.)
  
• 全体的にハードで最後の方尻切れトンボになってしまった気がする。もう少し内容を減らしじっくりやるべきだと思った。(My response: I agree that the part with Old Man and the Sea was too rushed. It should be changed to a focus on how to do independent extensive reading over the summer.)
  
• ワークシートにチョイス式の質問箇所があったらいいなと思った。サマリー式の長文回答が嫌というわけではなく、理解したことを整理するために必用だと思ったから。（I agree! I want to put multiple choice questions on Moodle to assist with comprehension assessment.)

Extra note: I was very happy to see that my students expectations for A/B/C grades was almost exactly what I gave. 35% As, 50% Bs, 10% Cs, 5%Ds. I think this is because I emphasized objective criteria for grading essays and worksheets and asked students to self-evaluate themselves before I gave any evaluation. My grades are actually higher than the Program A average, so my students are working hard and getting rewarded for their efforts.

For Autumn term, which starts tomorrow, I want to aim for similar student perceptions of the class, so I think I will basically be using the same system for reading and writing instruction. Will I make changes?? That's my next job as I finish up my syllabus and evaluation criteria...

札幌の魚平は凄い!