How's It Going: Reactions to the Afterword + Final Thoughts

p.189-191 Anderson goes back through his stored away boxes of past writing class portfolios, and remembers how his students affected him with their writing about affairs in their lives. Then he writes: "To teach writing well--to confer with student writers well--we must be affected by our students and the details of their lives. That is, we need to fall in love with our students for the first time."

"They (the students) too need to be affected by the details of our lives. Conferences go well when students come to see us as people with whom they genuinely want to talk."

"We should know at least five details about the lives and interests of each of our students."

I pondered these quotes. Fall in love? As a college instructor in a program focused on developing my students "academic essay" writing skills, I very rarely have a chance to be "affected" by the writing of my students. I am often impressed by the thoughts they have, and I love working with my students, but I never considered myself as falling in love with them. I also feel like I know so little about the lives of my students after working with them for 10 week terms.

I learned many things from How's It Going: How to structure conferences, How to prepare students and myself to be ready for conferences, How to use Mentor Texts to get students learning good style, and How to create Mini-Lessons that meet the needs of my class.

But can I learn to design college writing classes so that I am affected and in love with my student writers?? To do that, I would need to allow students to be WRITERS in the truest sense--to write about topics that mean the most to them no matter how "unacademic" they may be. To allow them to write genres other than the thesis-driven argumentative research essay.

In my current program, I don't have much of a choice about this. But I feel a change is needed. Anderson has turned me on to this. I want to try a conference-based workshop style writing class, even on a small scale.

Grading 2.0: Evaluation in the Digital Age

http://www.hastac.org/forums/hastac-scholars-discussions/grading-20-evaluation-digital-age

Very interesting consideration of how we may need to re-think grading and assessment practices.

I'm particularly interested in how Learning Portfolios could replace letter grades for competitive screening functions such as scholarships, graduate school applications, and job application.

As a teacher, I think it would be much more fulfilling to write up a strengths/weaknesses blurb and add it to the student's portfolio at the end of the term based on the performance of the student rather than give a letter or point grade. Would this be any more time consuming than punching in quiz grade numbers to arrive at some kind of number? Perhaps a little, but it would drive us to really assess the value of what the student has done and identify where more work is needed.

One example I've started to look at is the Learning Record. I need some more time to figure out how this exactly works and will try to get back to it.
http://www.cwrl.utexas.edu/~Syverson/olr/intro.html

はじめてのアクション・リサーチ（佐野正之編著）から学ぶ

アクション・リサーチの重要性は大学院時代から把握しているが、継続的にまとまった形で行ったことがない。授業に関する論文を書いている時の研究課題は勿論アクション・リサーチの一種であるが、理想的には各学期の各授業でなんらかの研究課題を小さくても、直感的でもいいから文章にしたい。このブログで様々な授業の改善計画や反省文を書いたりしているが、もっとまとまった形にしてみよう！という意気込みで以前他校の教授からご紹介いただいた佐野正之編著の「はじめてのアクション・リサーチ、英語の授業を改善するために」（大修館2005）で勉強し直すことにしました。

英語教育に従事して約１０年、大学で英語を教えることにある程度自信というか、慣れみたいものはあるが、今外国語教育に使っているアプローチや考え方をもう一度根本から「こんなやり方でほんまにええんかぁ？」と問い直したい。そしてそのプロセスにより直感的な「教育者」としての自信だけでなく「教育研究者」としてより強い自信と自覚を備えたい。

Action Research = From Nunan (1989) Understanding the Language Classroom: A Guide for Teaching Initiated Action. Prentice Hall.

1. 問題の発見　もっとこうだったらいいな、と思う点で、なるべくほぼ学生全員に共通する点
2. 事前調査　　簡単な質的、量的調査、アンケート、インタビューなど
3. リサーチクエスチョンの設定 　具体的な問題に対して実施可能な対策があり、期間内に具体的で現実的で測定可能な目標をつけられる (SMART goal=specific, measurable, attainable, realistic, time-sensitive)　Example：　How should my teaching method/curriculum for...be changed so that in an end of term survey 90% of students feel... and in the end of term assessment 80% of students can...
   
4. 仮説の設定 First work through, Sano's iceberg model for finding causes underlying the performance problem. Then, upon identifying possible causes, set a hypothesis for improvement
   Level 1 Performance
   ----------------
   Level 2 Amount or Type of Practice / Activities
   Level 3 Linguistic Knowledge
   Level 4 Attitude / Motivation
   Level 5 Classroom Management of Instructor (not explained--seems to overlap with )
   
5. 計画の実践 the "D" in PDCA
   
6. 結果の検証
7. 報告
8. 結果の反映
   

例えば、来週から始まるICUのSpeakingのクラスの場合、どんなARが可能か考えて８つのStepで進めてみたいと思います。

１１月２９日の河口湖フルマラソン~ 熱でダウンして棄権です

いや～　来ちゃいました。体調を崩して明日のマラソンは棄権です。

２６日の木曜、朝からちょっと体調悪いなと思いつつThanksgivingを両親と祝うため長野県まで運転。到着したらかなり熱が出ていて病院行ったところインフルエンザ検査は陰性だが、熱は３９．５°まで上っていて、関節が痛い、そして喉と気管支が痛く腫れあがっている。よっぽど新型インフルかなと思わせる症状だったのに、検査は陰性でとりあえず安心。でも感染初期の陰性は間違っている可能性もあるということで抗生物質とタミフルの両方を出されました。

長野で一泊の予定も切り上げて木曜の内に妻の運転で東京へ戻り寝込むも、今日土曜になってもまだ熱と腫れが続き、歩くのも辛い状態なので残念ながら明日の河口湖マラソンは棄権するしかないでしょう。

初めての棄権です。７０００円の参加料がもったいない！

Gearing up for AASP Winter 2009-2010--decisions, decisions

I'm just brainstorming here to develop some ideas for the following course I will be teaching and coordinating for the second time. 5 teachers will be working together to teach about 160 students.

1) Advanced Academic Speaking for Freshmen (1 period per week, 9 classes in total):

In the Autumn term, we focused on public speaking and group presentation skills. In the Winter term, I am really not sure what is best. We could do more public speaking and individual presentation skills, or we could focus on debate, or some mixture of those two. Of course, there are many other academic speaking skills we could focus on such as problem solving, tactfulness, giving advice, making predictions etc. etc. but presentations and debate/discussion are probably what will help students prepare for English language classes at ICU.

Some students have mentioned that focusing on only one main skill such as presentations or discussions is tedious and they want more "variety" of skills. We can do a variety in a shallow way, or focus and go deeply. I tend to think the shallow one-class topics don't have much meaning...and my syllabus reflects that. I prefer to do the same set of skills a few times to aim for mastery. However, at the same time, I can see the value of keeping students excited about learning new things or doing new types of activities in classes, so I want to keep that in the balance too.

A mixture of presentations and debate would mean students would make a short presentation arguing for a certain position and that would be followed by some kind of debate. My sophomore classes have often mentioned that they feel it is important to learn debate skills, so I think doing some kind of introduction in Winter term will be valuable. The only problem with setting up a debate is that a good debate depends a lot on research but this class is designated as a "lab" class where outside preparation is to be minimal. If we do small debates with little research, the content may feel shallow; however, for learning basic skills and expressions for debate, that may be fine. Also, it may not be good to call it debate because that implies students will learn a certain structure for debate competitions, which is not an objective of this class. It may be better to call it something like Critical Academic Discussions, where the goal is not to debate to win, but to conduct a critical examination of the arguments for a certain proposition in a collaborative manner.

I know from experience that this is the point that many students still have trouble with. When given a topic to discuss, they fail to examine the arguments for their viewpoints in depth, and they need to enhance this ability. It may be tough for some of the struggling students (who may benefit from lighter, more structured activities), but they need to work on those, so we will try to give lots of scaffolding to work on that and also try to keep it fun with a reasonable stress level and workload.

How would the syllabus for debate (critical academic discussions) work? What would the components be?

• Mini-lessons: In most classes, we should provide teacher presentations of techniques and useful phrases, possibly accompanied by video. Students evaluations of AASP in the past often complain about the lack of instruction, and while class time is limited, it seems reasonable to spend 5~10 to present some key points that will help students with their speaking.
• Opinion Presentations: In each period, a chance for some students (or all?) to present their viewpoints on an issue within small groups (not to the whole class since that takes too long?). Some presentations can be prepared, while some can be spontaneous. For example, if some students know they need to prepare a viewpoint for that class, they can present their view based on prepared notes and charts-visual representation of information is important! Then, the students who heard that presentation can try to make a short presentation to argue against it spontaneously with just a little preparation.
• Critical Discussions: Based on the presented opinion on the issue, have some kind of structured discussion where one side attempts to argue the opposite view, and then each side examines the arguments that have been presented. At the end, some kind of summarizing and reporting should occur as well.
• Teacher Observations & Suggestions: Another complaint that some students have had is that in many classes, the teachers seem to offer no suggestions on what they are doing. They only get peer comments and self-evaluations. This can be fairly easily remedied by having a system of teachers observing students in a set schedule
• Reflections/Goals-Setting: We want to set up an effective learning cycle where each student is identifying his/her own difficulties with speaking and trying to overcome them in subsequent classes. Of course, that will only work if 1) the students are invested in developing the skills that are being assessed, and 2) students feel the assessment process is designed in a fair way that does not make them feel compared, i.e. considered less valuable than more talented speakers in the class, and 3) the workload for reflection is reasonable and does not excessively eat up time and energy for practice and preparation.
• Consideration of Mixed Levels: I'm not sure how to do this, but one reality we have to consider is that we have a wide spectrum of skill levels for English speaking and critical thinking in these classes. Some students love to speak in English but do not have very strong critical thinking skills. Others have good ideas, but fail to get them out in English. Still others may need much development in both areas. So...how do we consider these for curriculum design and evaluation purposes? Basically, we want students to have plenty of choices to do what they feel is just right for them. We also want to stress that we are evaluating by engagement and improvement performance in the target areas rather than by a rankinkg of speaking abilities. This needs to be made clear in the first class along with the evaluation/grading system.

Class 1: Introduce/show what we mean by critical academic discussion skills (CADs, if we want add another acrynom to the world's acronym overload)

Classes 2, 3, 4: Mini-lessons (10 min.) 1~3 + Round 1 of CADs (5~7 min. * 7 students per class)- Students bring their opinions for presentation and critical discussion in each class. In a traditional P&D structure a ICU, each student gets 15 minutes. In a 70 minute class, the goal should be for the teacher to observe 6 to 7 students. But will this work? This is where I have been stuck for the past few days and need to work this out.

Lesson Plan for 18~24 students, 60 minutes with elbow room
00min Hi, speaking warm-up, confirm schedule
05min Mini-lesson, points to focus on today
15min CADs start and run for 45 min.--6 groups of 3 or 4 students, or 3 or 4 groups of 6 students? The advantage of the smaller groups is they will interact more. The advantage of the bigger groups is they will feel the teacher's presence more. Why not have some big groups and small groups? For example, the students who are "on the spot" for that day will be in the teacher's circle of 6 or 7 being recorded and observed. The other students will have a freer format in smaller groups--and get 10~15 minutes each to practice their skills-present, listen to counter arguments or critical questions, exchange ideas and then close with some kind of consensus or summary to report.
60min CADs finish, final comments by instructor

--------------

If a student is absent, what happens? Squeeze him in the next period?

What topics would be good? Topic choice for an "argumentative" question is diffcult for many students. Students will be free to choose their own? I can give a number of topics (and data sheets that give the pros and cons-just need 7 topics or so) and then have to decide what to do about overlap--which can be boring-cloning, cloning, cloning--, but is not a big problem. One simulation of a group is:

Presenter 1: Should euthanasia be legal in Japan?

Presenter 2: Should commercial surrogacy be allowed in Japan in the future?

Presenter 3: Should pre-natal testing be allowed?

Presenter 4: Should cloning be allowed?

Presenter 5:

Or, shall we forget the CAD centered approach and go with more day by day topics and activities? Today we will study how to disagree politely (review of ASP), Today we will ask critical questions about sources, assumptions, opposite views, . Today, we will study how to conclude a presentation. Today we will practice tactfulness, Today will we will practice making and explaining visuals for an argument, etc. Do that for six topics and the course is finished. The only way the students will be evaluated is how consistently they came to class and participated actively--all students can get an easy A.

They could also choose topics out of a hat and try to do spontaneous opinion presentations--Hmm...if we set a list of topics and say that the evaluation will be based on how well they deal with these topics at the end of the term, that may be an interesting way to get around topic choices.

葛西臨海公園の一日

Issues in ELT in Japan-Syllabus

SE: Issues in English Education in Japan

Mark Christianson, ILC-273, (0422) 33-3497, markc@icu.ac.jp, Email for appointments

Why do all Japanese students have to study English? Why not Chinese? Do you feel it is reasonable to start English language classes in Japanese elementary schools? Why not start in college? Also, why do many Japanese students who study English intensively for several years still feel a lack of confidence in their ability? What are some of the main difficulties that Japanese learners of English face? What is MEXT’s policy of English language education in the first place? How should Japanese society perceive the role of English as a foreign language and what actions should educators and government leaders take in the next decades?

The goal of the course will be for you to develop your ideas regarding the above issues based on reading various viewpoints and analyzing the various arguments. The class will include discussions and debates, a reading journal, opinion essays, and a final presentation. The ultimate, most important goal is the development of your ability to use English for academic communication in speaking and writing. For each issue, we will try to have a cycle of Read, Discuss, Research, Write, Debate, Reflect.

Date	Homework Due	Class Activities (Can change by mutual agreement)
1. 9/9 W	Welcome!	Intro, ice-breaking, brainstorm topics of interest
2. 9/14 M	Moodle No.1	Your personal "Issues of English Education in Japan"
3. 9/16 W	RJ No.1	Issue 1: Is Japan’s English education a failure?
4. 9/21 M	Moodle No.2	Issue 1: Debate Skill Basics, Preparation
*9/23 W	Holiday
5. 9/28 M	Debate Prep	Issue 1: Debate Day
6. 9/30 W	RJ No.2	Issue 2: Should English education start from 1st grade?
7. 10/5 M	Debate Prep	Issue 2: Debate Preparation
8. 10/7 W	Opinion No.2	Issue 2: Debate Day
9. 10/12 M	RJ-Reflection	Mid-term reflection, make presentation groups
10. 10/14 W	Research	Group Work Day
11. 10/19 M	RJ No. 3	Issue 3: How should Japan’s language policy be changed? (tbd)
12. 10/21 W	Debate Prep	Issue 3: Debate Preparation
13. 10/26 M	Opinion No.3	Issue 3: Debate Day
14.10/28 W	Group Outline	Group Work Day
*11/2	Holiday
15. 11/4 W	Visual Aids	Rehearsal tutorials with Mark (11/4 or other day)
16. 11/9 M	Practice!	Presentation Day
17. 11/11 W	Final Reflection	Presentation Day, Final Summary

Participation 20%, Moodle Tasks/Writing 30%, Presentation 30%, Reading Journal 20%

Basically, A Excellent= 91%+, B Good=81%+, C Satisfactory=70%+, D=60%+, E=59% or less, but final grades will follow the criteria given in the ELP Student Handbook p.11-13.

---

Key Assignments

Participation 20%

Participation means how well you attended and participated in classes, on time, with sufficient preparation. Here are some guidelines for penalities related to participation:

Absent with no explanation = -2% per class

Absent with explanation = -1% (If you have a good reason, it may be no penalty, too.)

Late with no good reason such as official train delay = -1% per class

Not prepared or not actively participating in class = -1% per class

Moodle Tasks/Writing 30%

We will also have a class website on Moodle, you will be evaluated on how well-written your opinions or ideas were and also how well you responded to your classmates’s ideas. Each week, your teacher will give you specific instructions for Moodle, and most tasks will be to write your opinion and reasons prior to the debates or discussions, and to write comments to your classmates ideas. Some guidelines will be:

Submitted/Essay Moodle posting is late, short, or unclearly written with many mistakes = -1%

Did not write any reactions to other students’ Moodle opinions = -1%

Final Group Presentation (30%)

The class will be divided into four groups, and each group will make a presentation of 20-30 minutes on a topic of your choice. Each person must speak for at least 3~4 minutes. A detailed outline or the presentation and PowerPoint slides must be submitted by the group in advance. Each person will be graded by individual performance and also the contribution to the group effort. We will make groups around the beginning of October.

Reading Reaction Journal (20%)

Each of you must submit a Reading Reaction Journal on designated dates during the term. Your Reading Reaction Journal should be a well-organized record of your reading notes, questions, reactions, vocabulary learning, and other learning in this course. Also, if you prefer to do an "e-Journal" using a blog or other format, that is also welcome, but you will need to print it to bring it to class to use for discussions.

Each Journal entry will be evaluated as Excellent 4pts(wow! beyond criteria) , Good 3pts(=meeting all criteria well) , Mostly Good 2pts (meeting most criteria), or Need to do more! 1pt.

I'll give more details on each assignment step by step, so please ask me about any unclear points.

Reflection on my 2009 sophomore seminar: English Education Issues in Japan

This was my 3rd time to teach this and I felt that everything ran smoothly.
Syllabus and Moodle Site

As usual, I had 20 motivated "education" type students who seem to be interested English education as a future career or research area. The atmosphere of the class was very nice, especially in relation to the three debates we did with the cycle of 1) read an article and take notes on it to prepare for discussion, 2) discuss it and develop a debate question from it such as "Should English be taught from first grade in all schools in Japan?", 3) brainstorm for or against arguments (claim, evidence, assumptions/weaknesses) on a wiki, 4) choose a side and write an opinion essay, and 5) debate the issue. The presentations were mostly very good quality too. I think the students stimulated each other very well.

So...how could this class be better?

• In the read-think-write-debate cycle, some things that are still weak are 1) when they got to the debate, some students felt they still did not have enough knowledge about the topic to debate it well. I could dismiss these comments as their enculturated intolerance for ambiguity--this is no way you are going to ever know everything about a topic, so just debate with what you know!--or their lack of preparation, but I want to thing of ways to help them feel more ready, perhaps by giving a short lecture about the background of the issue and summarize some of the pro/con arguments they should consider. Give more background sources too.
  
• Give readings at least a week in advance.
• More interaction on Moodle? The exchange of ideas seemed limited to me. Perhaps do opinion essay peer reviews in addition to the self-evaluation?
  
• More time for group presentations. Why not let one group have a whole period? The drawback would be less time for teacher suggested topics, but I would have more time to work with the groups to prepare a good presentation and they could do a lengthier discussion or Q&A too. Perhaps the groups could even choose a reading for their classmates?
• Why not make the presentations into a photo essay or movie project? Ask the group to get footage of an English education situation and then explain issues and facilitate a discussion. Also, teach better principles of presentation design, and work together with groups to make the content persuasive.
• Have a "solo" presentation option for a person who does not want to do group work?
• Give a "problem/solution" framework as a guideline?
• 
  

Reflecting on AASP Autumn 2009

This was my second time to teach AASP Autumn (See course blog):

It is strange how sometimes the second time you teach something, you don't feel as good about it, possibly because you have more presence of mind to observe what students are reacting to, and as a result tend to notice difficulties with the curriculum. Or is it because you have higher expectations that it will be better now that it is your second time? Or because the first time is more intuitive and by the seat of my pants rather than planned?

The course went OK...and course evaluations that are coming in seem to show fairly high student satisfaction overall in terms of usefulness and enjoyability and many comment that they increased their confidence for presenting in English in front of an audience. All other instructors went along more or less with the syllabus I piloted last year as coordinator and continued this year, and the satisfaction their classes seems good too.

Basically, in just 8 classes, we teach students the basics of creating an English group presentation and have them present for 15 minutes as a group of 3 or 4 students. Along the way, students record a 1 minute presentation on video for seeing their habits as a public speaker and self-analyze. Then after they do the group presentation, they watch and analyze that as well. It is quite intensive to do a research-based group presentation in just 6 classes when most have never done English presentations before.

1. What went well?

• Compared to last year, the final presentations were more organized and polished. This is probably due to the changes in scheduling--making groups and getting them started right away on the first day, and in supporting students by giving a sample research question and thesis template rather than let the group choose any topic at all.
  
• All students in my classes made their final presentations except for one who was absent due to family funeral--she made up her presentation by recording on a separate date.
• The topics focused on introducing Japanese culture and JLP students came to two of the presentation periods. I was hoping for people to come in more periods, but am happy we got those. I have them on video and can "threaten" my students they need to prepare well next year.
• The self-assessment system worked mostly well, although I disliked replying to all 40 students by email. The advantage of email is a quicker exchange and the text is more permanent for grading/research purposes, but writing short comments on paper may be faster for the teacher. Ideally, students would reflect and exchange comments with peers and instructor using a blog or other portfolio.
• Making groups randomly by lottery on the first day mostly worked. Only two or three groups out of ten in my class had difficulty with teamwork for reasons such as mis-communication about the topic or members who did not really understand or care about what was going on. That will always happen to some extent--I think it builds character among the other members when one member is causing trouble, so it probably good as an educational experience.
  

2. What needs to be better?

• Students feel that getting together to plan, organize and rehearse their presentations as a group is too difficult even using tools such as Google Presentations. So perhaps we should consider simplifying the project further? Group projects always have that element of outside class scheduling and interpersonal difficulties, so if we keep the group projects we will always have to live with that. Going to individual presentations would simplify things a lot...but I don't think so. I think we should live with the complexities despite how stressful they can be for students and instructors.
• The project can be simplified further: Instead of a presentation that uses sources to support a thesis, maybe we could have students argue for an opinion related to their education such as how to change ICU.
  
• The 1 minute presentation could be argumentative...some opinion about how ICU should be changed. The opinion need only include evidence from personal observation. The "My favorite ___" topic could be used for the first class, but not for all classes? We want them to be practicing academic speaking that is persuasive.
• 1 min = How could ICU be changed? -> Group 2~3 students work together to argue a certain need for change in more detail. Sounds interesting. Get them used to Problem-Causes-Solution type analysis to prepare for Winter Project.
• More sample phrases and sample presentations -- I had some on the website, but could not fit them in.
  
• Mini-lessons on PowerPoint online relating to different presentation skills - make those part of a database of presentation skills and phrases that all ICU students can refer to. Link from W3 ELP or the Self-Access Study Center or Critical Literacy Center in the future.
• Use the website more? Students did not seem to know how to use it. Perhaps a Ning is better?
  

How was my ICU ARW course, Autumn Term 2009?

Grades were turned in Monday, and it is time to reflect once again...

Need to start a label called Teaching Reflections so I can find these easily and refresh my memory before I teach the same course again.

Academic Reading and Writing, Autumn Term Program A Level in the ELP at ICU
(Click for Syllabus/Schedule)
---------------------------------------------------------------

Overall:
It was an enjoyable term. I was lucky to have two very diligent and cooperative groups of 17 students (Thanks sections AB and AI!). Participation and performance were very good, with only one struggling student in each class. The Autumn term syllabus at ICU is overstuffed with difficult required readings and is always the most difficult of the three terms spring/autumn/winter for us to teach. However, this year was definitely the most enjoyable of the past four attempts. To some extent, I was able to get through everything and still feel like I've helped my students with the reading and writing skills.

Priorities for Improvement:

1) Reduce the required reading: Almost all teachers are agreed on this and it is high time to do something about it. We've taught the same six readings for the past four years and have complained about how it is too much, but have not made the changes due to reluctance to mess with the syllabus and test questions. It is scary how the years roll by without making needed changes. Once the term is over, it is easy to forget about it until just before the term next year, and by then it is too late to make changes and we fall back on the old system. For my first two times teaching the curriculum, I considered myself and new teacher and felt I just need to get better at approaching the requirement, so I didn't say anything. Last

Solution: The immediate solution seems to be to cut two readings (or parts of them at least) in an informal way by taking them off the test. That should work. Teachers who want to cover parts of them can, while other teachers can ignore them.

Benefits: That will open up time for doing more meaningful learning such as other more up-to-date readings, student generated discussions, or explanations for essay writing techniques. Need to make sure this happens.

Drawbacks? Not really: We want to give students significant amounts of reading to help them get used to doing college level work in English, so reducing the amount of reading detracts from this. However, we really don't have enough class time to do justice to such difficult readings at the Prog. A (TOEFL 400-450) level. We really don't. Currently I can spend only two class periods talking about a reading like this: " Race Without Color" by Jared Diamond, Discover Magazine 1994. It is a lot to take in, and with weaker readers, time is needed to help them confirm their understanding before we can work on higher order reading skills such as pointing out the relatively weak points in his argument. The "make them get used to extensive academic reading by throwing large difficult chunks at them at high speeds" approach only works with a minority of students above a certain level of reading ability. For formative development of active and confident readers, the current syllabus seems detrimental. We need to change it.

2) Help students improve use of sources in academic writing: I noticed in the 2nd essays that my students submitted that citations of sources were still quite weak. We went over what is important--using a variety of good quality sources, integrating them, citing them in the text and the Works Cited (we use MLA style), and some students got it. However, in the rush at the end of the term, many of the essays were unpolished, and the use of sources was very rough. I was shocked when a few never cited any sources in their essays at all in spite of all of the reminders and conferences and checklists. What else can I do?

Solution: One improvement would be to make sure students have fairly developed "best effort" drafts when they meet the draft deadline and come to conference about their writing. For the 1st essay, many had good drafts and led to good final essays after discussing points for possible revision. For the 2nd essay, many did not really have a clear direction for their essay and just had some brainstorming with little reflection of research. That has to be changed somehow. I have to be stricter about the quality of the draft--possibly by imposing a grade related to completeness?? However, I noticed that the "grade for draft completeness" hurts the struggling students in an unfair way...so perhaps a better solution is to make the final essay deadline earlier and then pull it back suddenly to give them an unexpected pocket of time to check and polish things up.

Having some kind of visual online tutorial would be nice too...another thing we have talked about but never executed. For use of sources, perhaps the library could work with us to create a stronger tutorial? Or could we find or create something in Japanese that would deepen our students fundamental understanding of documentation in essays and point out common misperceptions. There may also be differences in the Japanese academic tradition for using sources that may be fueling misunderstandings in some of our students.

And of course, we need to provide our students with good samples of documentated academic documents that they can analyze to see how documentation helps (or fails to help) with the argument.

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So...if I can achieve those two changes above, I think I'll be happy next year.

Other Small Things-Before I forget:

1. Ask students more details in an online survey--goals, courses they are taking, how far away they live from campus, what they had difficulty with in the previous term in terms of reading/writing, what type of entrance exam they took to get into ICU--this makes a difference in what they studied before entering.
2. Make the 1st essay worth less than the 2nd to emphasize improvement. Also, possibly simplifying the first essay somehow to allow more focus on conventions and techniques rather than quality of research.
3. Grade more harshly on the quality of self-evaluations--if a student writes a weak essay, they should take five minutes (possibly after submission--Hmm) and explain which part is weak and why. Reading one's final essay and critiquing it is very important, in addition to peer critique and teacher feedback.
4. Do a weekly "reaction journal" online to allow opinion exchange on Moodle or other forum such as students' own blogs. Another teacher Jim seemed to have very good discussions going with that format.
5. Give students more information about how to prepare for a writing conference and how the conference will flow for maximum effective use of those 15 minutes.
   
6. The reading worksheets--make general guidelines so that the directions don't have to be repeated--....don't collect them every class--make it once per week or so--try checking as students discuss? Or, just change it to an online posting--don't make all students have to prepare everything--split the work on a class wiki. Also, focus more on critical reactions and opinions than the factual points--I meant to make this change, but didn't and regretted it! Try more of a P&D system like Choskins is doing.
   
7. Help students speak up more in class -- say that I will give points for people who volunteer ideas in class or do a good job when they report on the discussion to the class.
8. Say I expect them to be chatting in English when they come to the classroom--Sylvan's idea. Tell them what I expect an excellent student to be.
9. Grading--Give a clearer chart of what is expected for 100 points?
10. Try to integrate some kind of group project? One group in charge of each reading---they do especially intensive work for helping their classmates understand it? Leading discussions, developing study materials etc.
11. Publishing--how can essays be meaningfully communicated to people outside of the classroom?
12. More creativity and initiative in general--finding the enjoyment of developing their own ideas and sharing them with people. Teach how to integrate images into essays well.

A lot of these ideas will carry over into Winter Term starting the week after...Take it step by step!

Mark

How's It Going? Chp. 7 Making an environment for independent writers

皆さんこんにちは。

私は実際にWorkshopを運営していたり運営したことがあるというわけではないのでこのような実用的なチャプターの内容はまだ自分にとって現実味がないものです。

しかし、「今後WWをやるときの参考」だけではなく、どんな授業にも大切だなと思わされることもたくさんありました。

☆Envision the environment:　p.172 (from Seeman) "Environments push us into specific psychological sets..."

教室のセット・アップは大切。これは大学でもそうだと思います。今学期はOfflineMeetingを行った丸机のWired Groupwork　Roomをほとんどの授業で活用したのですが、従来の教室よりもCollaborationという雰囲気が出やすいと感じています。

しかしIndependent WritingやReadingをしてもらう場合はまた違ったSetupが必用なのでしょう。Andersonのように教室の中にQuiet Zone, Peer conference zoneなどを作ると有効でしょう。大学や高校でもしWorkshopを流行らすならば「この部屋はWorkshopのためにある！」という教室を作って もらうのが最強かも知れませんね。神田外語大学のSelf-Access Learning Center (Link)みたいな感じになるでしょうか。

☆Teaching Independence/asking diagnostic questions: 実は今長男６歳のMichaelとWriting Workshop的なことをやろうとして苦戦しています。日本ではまだ幼稚園年長ですが、アメリカでは９月から一年生になったので英語のWritingを 少しづつ教えようとしています～昨年単語レベルから初めて今ではその気になれば１００語ぐらいの日記やお話を書くのですが、自立・自律してやる気にはまだ なってくれません。そういう意味ではfinding topics/starting/spelling/developing/getting unstuckのアイデアは全て重要ですし、Are students invested in the writing?のところで自分の息子をどう刺激しようかと考えさせられました。

はやり何よりも「書いて人に見せたらリアクションがもらえた」というPublishingの喜びを味わってもらうことが必用だなと思いました。

「自分の書 いているところを見せる」というWriterとしての模範ももっと見せたいなと思いました。Make Plans and Set goals－Write to deadlines, Write to the Xも使えそうです。

The Giverの新しい和訳が出ました！

http://thegiverisreborn.blogspot.com/

日本語の新訳が完成し、予約数が十分あれば再出版されることになったようです。
☆新訳のサンプルはここです。

英語のオリジナル版The Giverしか読んだことありませんが、私の大好きな短編小説です。何度読んでも感動し人間社会の構造と個人の欲求や感情の関係について考えさせられます。

中学・高校・大学の学生だけでなく日本人の大人全員に一読をお薦めしたい哲学的なフィクションなので、是非上記のリンクからアクセスして購入の予約や協力者としての申し出をしてみてください。

Lois Lowryが作り出す「Sameness」の異質なSF世界は日本の社会を考える上でとても面白い材料だと思います。中高生が国語・社会・倫理の時間に読んでDiscussionするのも良いでしょうし、大学生や社会人が教養のために読むのも大事だと思います。全国の図書館に是非置いて欲しいです。

Hope you will have a chance to read it! A movie seems to be in production for release in 2011.

Mark

Links:
http://www.amazon.co.jp/ザ・ギバー―記憶を伝える者-ユースセレクション-ロイス・ローリー/
http://www.amazon.com/Giver-Lois-Lowry/
http://www.shmoop.com/the-giver/

ＩＣＵ祭りで点訳に挑戦

兄ちゃんはちゃんと点字でＭＩＣＨＡＥＬと書きました。真っ暗迷路も気に入ってました。

How's It Going? Chp. 5, Laying the Groundwork with Mini-Lessons

Main Ideas / Useful Ideas

• Mini-lessons lay the groundwork for writing conferences--by using effective mini-lessons, you don't need to repeat key skills or techniques again and again because student writers have already heard those ideas
  
  
• Mini-lessons are effective because they are teaching to the intentions of student writers in the context of writing--We notice that many students need help with something and get them all together for a mini-lesson of 15 minutes. Ask "What is the one thing I can suggest or demonstrate that might help the most?"
  
  
• The 4 Parts of a mini-lesson should be
  Connect (explain what you are going to teach and why it is a priority for students),
  Teach (give explanations and examples or solicit them from the students),
  Have-a-Go (solo or pairwork to give the technique a try), and
  Link to independent writing that the students will do (encourage students to use the skill by asking for a show of hands or saying you will make them famous by putting their name on a board if they try it in this class.
  
  
• To keep mini-lessons short, avoid the main causes of going over-time: Inviting too much student talk, reading literature as an example too much, giving more than one or two examples, giving students too much time for have-a-go, repeating what we said too much, and not having our materials ready within reach.

My Reactions

• I have never thought of a general structure of mini-lessons, the "connection" and "have-a-go" are wonderful ideas I want to try to keep in mind.
  
  
• I often go over time with explanations or activities and the analysis of the causes was valuable. I want to try to monitor how I use time in lessons like Anderson does.
  
  
• Most importantly, I wish I could have access to mini-lessons by Writing Workshop masters to see on video! The poetry example in the chapter is excellent, but I wish I could experience various mini-lessons on writing craft to get an idea of what can be done in such a short time as 15 minutes!