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?
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