INTED 2012 Conference, Valencia, March 4-7

INTED 2012, the international conference on technology, education, and development, March 4-7 was a very productive conference.

Conference Website

The oral presentation I made was about language learning anxiety (See details). This was with two other research partners, and we got some good reactions and questions from the audience that underscored our theory that language learning anxiety is a significant, wide-spread psychological phenomenon that instructors of EFL/ESL working with many different types of students from different cultural backgrounds are struggling to deal with. Several audience members commented how they agree with the importance of understanding factors of anxiety and solutions using qualitative interview-based methodology as we did. Another interesting discussion we had was regarding the balance between positive, encouraging feedback from the instructor to the student, or among peers, and ha certain degree of strictness, authoritarianism, and constructive criticism to challenge students.

We also made a poster presentation about Japanese students' academic performance in university in relation to that in the United States (See details) and how efforts to reform university education in each country (or the lack thereof) should take into consideration an international perspective of what is effective and what may be misguided. The points in the poster led to very active discussion with attendees from several countries about their own country's student performance and reform efforts in various levels of education. There was much interest in how Japanese industry developed successfully in the 20th century in spite of a very lenient university academic culture that does not demand much engagement in terms of attendance or coursework, and how that model may or may not need to change if Japan wishes to remain competitive in the future.

Both papers have been published in the proceedings and are available for those interested.

Attending oral and poster sessions at the conference was also beneficial. I focused my attention on university language instruction-related sessions, and got some useful insights on helping students deepen their ability to conduct research while avoiding plagiarism. The Center for Academic Integrity was cited by many professors from various countries as being a very helpful resource--which may be a good addition to what we share with students at ICU. I also attended sessions on blended learning with a few good tips for using Moodle and Blackboard more effectively for research paper instruction. Another emphasis of the conference was "m-learning" or e-learning using mobile devices such as iPhones and iPads, and it was interesting to see how many institutions are introducing m-learning tools for in-class and homework assignments.

Some other things I enjoyed were:

1) Seeing a very smoothly run international conference. As a member of JACET's convention steering committee, I have participated in conference administration for the past few years, and it was instructive to see how the IATED / INTED organization enhanced the conference experience with a) highly capable room staff--I wonder if they were free volunteers or paid staff--they were very much in charge and very helpful to the presenters and facilitators, and b) a comfortable schedule for mingling and getting to know people--coffee time twice a day and an attractive lunch where I met people from many countries and learned a lot about the issues various countries and institutions are facing--possibly even more than in the presentation sessions.

2) Listening to many different varieties of English interacting with each other. As a presenter, I was asked questions in many different accents, and as an audience member watched interactions between presenters and listeners of various cultures. Some speakers were intelligible and effective communicators, while others really struggled to get through. In all cases, it was interesting to watch the communication strategies that were used, including asking others in the room for help to interpret what somebody was trying to say, and asking for repetitions, rephrasing and even just bluntly "Your question is too complex. Please ask me an easier question."

3) Being in Valencia and trying to get around in a city that is not particularly English-visitor friendly. Knowing very little Spanish, it was interesting to have to navigate subways, buses, and street signs for getting from the airport to the conference and around the city to restaurants and order food etc. You notice a lot of things about where signs should be, how they should be consistent, when English should be added, and how a country that depends on tourism for a large part of its GDP should work a bit harder on making the city easier to navigate. These are good lessons for Tokyo and other cities in Japan as well.

Finally, a few amateur photos of Valencia from my camera.

From the tower of the Cathedral overlooking the city center

The cobble-stoned city center of Valencia

A little paella and beer with my research partners to celebrate a job well done

Using the 20x20 PechaKucha presentation format for presentation training

Here's a link to a paper I published recently with my colleague Sylvan Payne in the Language Research Bulletin. Many thanks to the editorial board for their suggestions and patience for us (especially me) to finish the final writing and editing.

http://web.icu.ac.jp/lrb/volume-26-2011.html

Enjoy! We hope this will encourage teachers to try the 20x20 method in their classes.

It is always nice to be done with a research paper. Once again I wished I had done more sooner before the final deadline, but somehow it got done.

I want to thank my partner Sylvan for introducing 20x20 to me and persuading me to try it when we were team teaching a presentation course. He also created the initial templates we used.

I also want to thank all my students for the feedback they gave on their 20x20 experiences. Hopefully they have learned more about how an effective presentation can be prepared, rehearsed and delivered!

20 Questions: Can Pecha-Kucha 20x20 Help Students Improve Presentation Skills?

1. What is Pecha-Kucha 20x20?
   Pecha-Kucha (PK) 20x20 is a presentation format that asks the speaker to make a presentation using 20 slides shown exactly for 20 seconds each, with slides advancing automatically. Pecha-Kucha is a Japanese onomatopoeic adverb based on the sound of chit-chat and used to describe chattering or jabbering on in an energetic way.
   
   Official website and explanation = http://www.pecha-kucha.org/what
   
   Note: In Japan, the phrase pecha-kucha has a bit of a negative connotation meaning noisy, mindless and even annoying jabber, which may have been lost on the non-Japanese inventors when they chose that name...but oh well, it is the official name and it has stuck to a cool presentation format that I like. My Japanese students find it an awkward name to use for what ends up being a well-prepared presentation and we just use "20x20." Another problem is that most people around the world never know how to pronounce pecha-kucha, so personally I feel PK 20x20 or just "20x20" may be a more practical and informative name to use in the long term. But at the same time Pecha-Kucha is quite a unique sounding and mysterious word for non-Japanese people, and can be fun to try to pronounce, so I guess it may stick.
   
   
2. When, how and why did it start?
   PK 20x20 was invented by two architects Astrid Klein and Mark Dytham in Tokyo in 2003 as a format for young architects and artists to showcase their recent work in a concise, visual way. Given a microphone on stage, some speakers can get a little too carried away and take too much time explaining their concepts, so 20x20 was devised to help "liberate" the speaker (and the audience even more) from that type of over-explanation and force the presentation to be highly visual and to the point. That's the genius of 20x20. My own experience made me a fan. When I tried creating and delivering a 20x20 myself as a pilot and sample to show my students, I found the constraints of the format very helpful and fun to work with.
   
   
3. Who does 20x20s today?
   Today PK 20x20 presentations are made at events called PK Nights in hundreds of cities around the world. See pecha-kucha.org for event details and many examples of voiced over slideshows in the 20x20 format. After we did 20x20s in my ICU class, some students decided to go check out a PK night in Roppongi and said it was a cool experience.
   This video here doubles as an example of a 20x20 and an invitation to a PK Night sponsored by Speakers.org (click to see video).
   
   
4. What are people saying about it?
   Scott Gross of Forbes.com (Dec. 10, 2010) has called it "An amazing cure for death by PowerPoint" and Garr Reynolds, professor of Kansai Gaidai, presentation consultant, and author of the best-selling Presentation Zen books has labelled it an "art of liberating constraints" that helps presenters keep their talk focused and concise, much to the pleasure of the audience (Sep. 28, 2007). See also Wired Magazine Aug. 21, 2007 and www.pecha-kucha.org for what people think about 20x20 presentations.
   
   
5. How long have you (Mark) used it in your classes and in what ways?
   In January 2011, I was introduced to the concept by my highly artistic and innovative colleague Sylvan Payne (See/listen to his cool PK night presentation here) when we team-taught a presentation skills course at ICU . This year I have used it for a total of 100 students in two different English language courses at ICU and in one course in the engineering faculty of a national university called TAT where I teach part-time. I'm going to focus on describing the results from my core ICU class.
   
   
6. What did the ICU students present on?
   In Feb. this year, I used PK for academic research paper summary presentations at International Christian University (ICU) in my Academic Reading and Writing (ARW) course. 1st year ELP students finishing up their academic year presented their 1000 word research paper results in PK 20x20 format. Each student had 10 minutes including the 6 min. 40 sec. for the 20x20 and Q&A time. Topics = Death penalty, suicide, commercial surrogacy, child labor etc.
   
   
7. Did the ICU students like it? What do your surveys show?
   Almost all of my ICU ARW students (n = 32 survey respondents) rated it very positively both for being:
   "enjoyable" (31% Strongly Agree, 56% Agree, 9% Disagree, 3% Strongly Disagree) and "good as a format for improving presentation skills (69% Strongly Agree, 22% Agree, 3% Disagree, 6% Strongly Disagree).
   Judging from the comments, 3 students out of the 32 seemed to have had a negative reaction due to struggling with the PowerPoint requirement and the demands for preparation and rehearsal.
   
   
8. What did the TAT students present on and how did they react?
   My 2nd year TAT engineering/biology students did "Team 20x20s" in teams of three for a final presentation on a social issue (problem/analysis/possible solutions) at the end of a required English Communication course. Each student spoke for 6 or 7 slides, or a little over a minute. Topics included the need for volunteers in Tohoku, child abuse, food poisoning etc.
   
   Student reactions at TAT were mixed--one of my classes really liked it and did a fabulous job on their team 20x20s. In my other class, several groups had difficulty with team work and energy level and really struggled to make it work. I'm still tabulating those (n = 60) and may present them at an upcoming conference. 20x20 is a quite challenging speaking task and imposing the format as a requirement may not be ideal for some types of students or presentation projects.
   
   
9. How do students make a PK 20x20? What's the most difficult part?
   If I have enough time in the course, the 10 steps are 1) topic selection/goal-setting, 2) background research, 3) outline, 4) draft of script/visuals in 20x20 format, 5) creation of visuals with timed slides, 6) rehearsal, 7) delivery, 8) peer feedback, 9) criterion-based self-assessment and self-grading after watching one's own video on YouTube, 10) instructor feedback. If time is limited, I make some steps optional.
   
   The most challenging part of a 20x20 is adjusting one's content to fit the 20x20 format - Showing 20 slides 20 seconds each. To help students, I give two types of documents:
   1) A 20x20 .doc planning outline (Click to Download)
   2) A 20x20 .ppt template (Click to Download)
   
   Credit due: The original forms of both of these documents were created by my cool, innovative colleague Sylvan Payne.
   
   
10. Overall, what are the main benefits as perceived by students?
    The three biggest benefits seem to be that PK 20x20 forces students to
    1) focus on what they really want to say,
    2) use visuals effectively, and
    3) prepare/rehearse well
    and as a result of those, end up making a more interesting presentation for the audience. Some other benefits are easier time-management because speakers cannot go over their time limit, and no problem with speakers rushing to finish their conclusions. Rehearsing with the timer forces the speaker to prepare a just-right amount of ideas for each slide.
    
    
11. Benefit 1: Forces students to have more focused and organized points - Really?
    Student Comments (in their own English):
    "In PK, the number of words are strictly limited, so my skill to sift the content and focus on what is the most important and to summarize the contents was improved."
    "I liked that I need to create or present as simple as I can. By that way, I need to focus on only the most important thing, so it helped me to understand what I want to say most too."
    "Because each slide only takes 20 seconds, I could say only the main key point so that it was good to organize the presentation."
    
    
12. Benefit 2 Better use of visuals = more interesting to create / watch ?
    Survey Results:
    
    "PK helped me make a more visually attractive presentation"
    50% Strongly Agree, 28% Agree, 13% Disagree, 6% Strongly Disagree
    
    "PK helped me make a better presentation than a free style presentation"
    38% Strongly Agree, 41% Agree, 16% Disagree, 6% Strongly Disagree
    
    "PK presentations (of classmates) are more interesting to listen to than regular presentations."
    50% Strongly Agree, 34% Agree, 9% Disagree, 6% Strongly Disagree
    
    Of course, we have to consider that not all of the students have extensive presentation experience, and so their ability to compare to other types of presentations may be limited.
    
    Student Comments (in their own English):
    "Creating slides was enjoyable, because PK made us to use images to communicate with the listeners."
    "First of all, doing/listening to this kind of presentation was not boring! I think it is very efficient to keep audience's attention during presentation because of many images."
    "As for the listener, I was never bored because the tempo was good and easy to understand."
    
    
13. Benefit 3 Forces more preparation and rehearsal?
    Survey:
    
    "I had to practice harder than regular presentations to prepare for PK"
    Strongly Agree 41%, Agree 34%, Disagree 16%, Strongly Disagree 9%
    
    "PK helped me speak with more rhythm"
    Strongly Agree 41%, Agree 38%, Disagree 13%, Strongly Disagree 6%
    
    Student Comments (in their own English):
    "It made me practice more, but it was effective because I could find easily what I had to practice on"
    "The first few practices were hard because I couldn't keep up with the time limit, but it was easy to practice once you got the hang of it. I felt i could speak more smoothly when I did the PK than when I did a regular presentation."
    "The PK is demanding, so I like this. To make good presentations in the PK Style, students have to think, think, and think, and practice, practice, and practice."
    
    
14. What are the drawbacks or issues that came up? What did students want to change about their PK assignment?
    Students mainly mentioned problems with
    1) the demand of preparation and practice being heavy within the tight schedule we had,
    2) the format being too inflexible for what they wanted to communicate, and
    3) discomfort and a feeling of being rushed with having a timer to worry about during their presentation.
    Let's look at these one by one below.
    
    
15. Drawback 1: High demand for preparation and practice
    "To create the content and slides suitable for and effective for 20x20 slides, we need a little bit long time."
    "There should be more class time to rehearse the PK. Also, I wanted to start preparing much earlier in the term" (We had one month, but it was not enough because I chose a new topic different from my essay.)
    "There were some technical defects creating PK; for example, the counter doesn't work or the visual effects animations cannot be used."
    
    
16. Drawback 2: A lack of flexibility in making and delivering
    "Not every slides have the same importance, so 20 second for 20 slides are not so effective sometimes. "
    "In the PK presentation, speakers can hardly tell deep contents."
    "It was uncomfortable for me to make 20 slides. I want to make slides more few. This method didn't fit my want to improve my presentation."
    "Once I failed to mention some key information, but I do not have chance to retry because of time restriction."
    "I thought presenters should be in control of the timing to switch the screens because changing screens at the right time is also an important skill for presenters to make their presentation look smooth."
    
    
17. Drawback 3: A sense of discomfort with the timer
    "I very worried about whether I could finish speaking in 20 seconds, so I was hasty during the presentation. It was hard for me to relax!"
    "
    
    
18. Is it better than other types of presentation requirements? Does it help students MORE? Is it worth trying?
    This is the ultimate question, but I think it depends on what level the students are at and what their needs are. I imagine that trying to get empirical comparison results to other types of presentations (with no timer, no slide number constraint) would be a complex study to design and am not setting up anything at this point. What I can say at this point is: Give it a try yourself (for a conference presentation or class lecture to explain something) and consider it as one way to push your students to develop good habits to make better presentations (focused, visual, rehearsed). For motivated students who have some experience with trying to make an English presentation, PK 20x20 will probably work well. For students who do not have much to say or do not care enough to prepare well, or have never made a presentation in English before, PK 20x20 may not be ideal or modifications of the format may be needed. Also, for fairly advanced or experienced presenters (like myself), some of the constraints can be a bit frustrating, too, but it is still enjoyable to try to design a message within 20x20 specs.
    
    
19. Will you continue to use it in classes or research it in the future?
    Use in classes? Yes. Research? Still seeking future directions. My main research interest is identifying the stages that Japanese college and professional ELLs go through toward developing a sense of confidence in their ability to communicate orally in an effective way, and I believe that using PK 20x20 is beneficial training for emphasizing good habits in making a presentation using slides and avoiding death by PowerPoint. At the same time, I think I will use it in a flexible manner with an aim to squeeze out only the real essence that makes 20x20 work. For example, 20 seconds may not need be an exact time. The essence is to help students speak shortly on a focused point, so it probably makes more sense to require the use of a timer, but say "No more than 20 seconds per slide" just in case students want to speak more shortly on one image. The timer can be easily shortened (or lengthed a bit, perhaps) in the PowerPoint template by deleting some of the dots. As a result, 20 slides becomes a minimum number to encourage students to not overload slides and keep key words and images focused on one point. I want to try with those new flexible guidelines.
    
    It may also be interesting to act like the requirements are strict until just one day before the presentation and then relax them suddenly to allow some degree of flexibility in the style of delivery such as: 1) It will be OK to stop the timer or even go back to a slide to clarify a point, 2) It is OK to change the timer a little by adding or taking off dots, and 3) It is OK to not have exactly 20 slides. Plus or minus a few is no problem. Too flexible for Pecha-Kucha purists? I want to try it and see how it goes.
    
    
20. Can we see samples? Can we ask you questions about it?
    Samples of my materials and student work such as slides, photos, handouts, and video clips will be presented at JACET 50 in Fukuoka next week. Also, feel free to send me questions or comments through this blog. -Mark
    

RW/WW Offline Conference, ICU Sept. 19, 2010

I'm part of a group of researchers and teachers exploring how the "Workshop" method of teaching writing and reading can be leveraged in Japan for better language teaching.

The 19th was our third "offline" meeting, giving us a chance to develop new projects that we have been studying and planning for over our online mailing list for the past few years.

One event coming up in November is our interactive 60 minute session at JALT 2010, which will give participants to experience the concept of the Writing Workshop Method, see examples of how it has helped Japanese EFL learners at various levels (junior high to college), and ask questions about it.

After we shared recent teaching practice and planned our JALT workshop, we had a chance to go out for drinks for the first time, finally after studying together for almost three years. The group has some of the most dedicated teachers and researchers I know, and the discussions about fundamental problems with education systems in Japan were very stimulating. We have a lot of work to do to help educators at all levels recognize that education is about learning not teaching.

Yoshida-san, the initiator of the group, has published a number of books that have helped me to reexamine how learning takes place, and how classrooms can be transformed into active communities of learners rather than passive audiences for the teacher.

ASIA TEFL Conference, Hanoi, Vietnam 2010

I haven't had a chance to move my Hanoi photos from my laptop to my desktop yet, so here are some stock photos from the Internet.

This 2010 August Asia TEFL conference got sandwiched in between a trip to the US and obligations back in Japan, so we were in Hanoi for...two nights? It was really in and out. We arrived, slept, presented, met some new and old friends at the conference briefly, crashed from jet lag and exhaustion, and barely got in a few bites of absolutely excellent Vietnamese food and a few cups of aromatic, creamy Vietnamese coffee before boarding a plane back to Narita.

My research partner and Kota presented our paper "Development of Learner Self-Confidence: The Case of a Japanese EAP Program" to a good size group and had some good exchange of ideas with participants from Indonesia, Malaysia, Vietnam, and even Uzbekistan.

Next time I need to stay in Hanoi at least a week. I didn't get to tour the bay or the terraced rice fields in the mountains, and the city itself had plenty to do. It felt safe and the people were very friendly. As the motobike scene below shows, the streets of Hanoi look a lot like China. Having lived in Shandong for two years, I felt right at home crossing streets with thousands of mopeds with no stoplights. But everyone is very careful and organically adjusting to traffic even without lanes or lights. Amazing.

JACET 2010 in Sendai

September has been going by so fast that I haven't had time to write up much at all.

JACET 2010 at Miyagi U. in Sendai was a lot of fun:

1. Presented! in Japanese for the first time, my classroom activity report on 「Critical Academic Discussions (CADs): 批判的思考とスピーキング力を伸ばす学生主導タスクの試み」 ("CADs: A student-centered task for developing critical thinking and speaking skills"). This is about the new type of speaking task I tried in the Advanced Academic Speaking class at ICU. Basically, it is a 15 minute mix of argumentative, presentation, debate, and discussion and enhances traditional "present and discuss" activities by building in an element of "critical questions" like debate. My ICU students liked the flow of activity a lot, so I decided to share it with other college teachers in Japan. I showed some video clips and explained how it flows, and what students liked and disliked about it. This academic year, I plan to try it again and gather more data on how students improve their confidence and ability to interact with critical question and answer to dissect arguments and suggest in a constructive, polite and friendly way. The paper is forthcoming...

2. Steered--Did my duty as a member of the Convention Steering Committee for JACET 2010, mainly contributing to the creation of the convention program and other documents like the call for papers along the way. It is nice to be involved in an academic organization committee, working together with people from different universities and exchange ideas with them. The only problem is that this type of volunteer work can tend to snowball...and I hope I can keep the amount of work reasonable by drawing in new recruits to share the work with me. Anyone interested?

3. Picked up some new ideas--My colleague Masuko did a very nice symposium presentation on how her students did critical analysis and reflection on language learning materials, and developed their autonomy as language learners (and future teachers) in the process. I also learned a lot from a workshop by Dr. Asakawa et al on integrating global studies and social activism into language classes. The plenary by Dr. Simon Borg on teacher autonomy was a nice overview of how to examine our own beliefs as teachers, but I personally wished that it had been a workshop style. Met some old and new friends at various parties along the way and am looking forward to seeing them again in Fukuoka September 2011.

4. Enjoyed the city of Sendai--If you are looking for out-of-this-earth beef tongue barbecue, Rikyu is a solid choice for lunch or dinner with stores conveniently located here and there around downtown Sendai. We were already satisfied with Rikyu's "芯たん" which is amazing, but decided to explore the ultimate beef tongue. The true champion, according to rankings on word-of-mouth site TabeLog, and confirmed by my own amateur tasting, was a hideout known as Tsuruno. The flavor defies words. The seafood such as oysters were good too, but the beef tongue, as tataki and as yaki was amazing.


I'll be looking forward to going back to Sendai.

Should "Willingness to Communicate" be the primary goal of language instruction?

I was reviewing some literature for a paper on self-confidence of Japanese language learners and read this article again.

Macintyre, Clement, Dornyei and Noels (1998). Conceptualizing Willingness to Communicate in a L2: A Situational Model of L2 Confidence and Affiliation. Modern Language Journal, 82.

Noting that there are language learners who are quite competent, but avoid communication, what this paper proposes is that "willingness to communicate" (frightfully abbreviated as WTC-like the World Trade Center) ought to be the primary goal of language instruction rather than "competence". In other words, we shouldn't be only helping our students to be "able" to use English for intercultural communication, but to actually "want to" to use it. As the authors put it, "a program that fails to produce students who are willing to use the language is simply a failed program."

Their definition: Willingness to Communicate is "the probability that a learner will use the language in authentic interaction with another individual, given the opportunity."

Another interesting quote is "In the past, emphasis on grammatical skill produced students with rather high linguistic competence but did not concentrate on authentic use of the language. Current emphasis on communicate competence may pose a similar problem, producing students who are technically capable of communicating, particularly inside the classroom, but who may not be amenable to doing so outside of the classroom. We suggest that a suitable goal of L2 learning is to increase WTC. By engendering a willingness to communicate, language instruction may achieve its social and political goal of bringing cultures into contact and nations together."

I've had similar thoughts, but what exactly does this entail?

First of all, whether a person is willing to communicate or not in a L1 or L2 in a certain situation is influenced a large number of variables including personality, motivation or lack thereof for the communication, perceived competence (=confidence) in the language, and the interpersonal environment (group size, scary, judgemental people etc.). For example, if I attended a departmental meeting and had a chance to make a comment or ask a question, would I raise my hand and speak up in front of my colleagues? My willingness to do so would be based on many things.

However, for learning a language, the act of using the language is essential, so it makes sense to say that teachers should design their courses so that students feel motivated and willing to use the language, and that those opportunities to use the language are easily and abundantly available so that students who seek to communicate can do so. Instruction to improve competence in the language has to be combined with incentives and opportunities to increase willingness to communicate.

So, what does that mean in my teaching context? Do my students feel "willing to communicate"? Or do they feel unwilling? Fortunately, it seems that most of the students in my classrooms seem willing to try to communicate as well as they can.

A survey of students at ICU who just finished their 1st year of intensive ELP showed:

"I am more interested in learning English than when I started at ICU"
n=365
Strongly Agree =110 (30%)
Agree = 165 (45%)
Disagree = 75 (20%)
Strongly Disagree = 14 (5%)

So...75% of our students are MORE interested in learning English. That is good.
And...25% felt they became less interested in learning English. What does that mean?
Either it means they were already highly interested in studying English when they started, or their interest decreased due to some reason. Hmm...

Also, going back to my literature review on "confidence," how does willingness to communicate relate? Obviously, if language learners are confident (or comfortable) that they can communicate (=have L2 self-confidence), they are going to be more willing to try to communicate. And if they try to communicate and succeed, that builds their self-confidence. The two psychological states create a mutually reinforcing positive cycle.

Obvious? Perhaps. Easy to do? No. Due to differences among learners, it is not always easy to design learning environments and tasks that meet the needs of all in terms of supporting the positive cycle of willingness to communicate (want to do it), confidence (believe I can do it), and competence (can do it).

They survey mentioned above had a "confidence" question, so I'll crunch the numbers here:

"I am now more confident in my English ability than I was in the Spring term."

n=365
Strongly Agree =120 (33%)
Agree = 195 (52%)
Disagree = 41 (12%)
Strongly Disagree = 8 (3%)

Based on these results, which are difficult to interpret due to the lack of qualitative comments attached to them, 85% are more confident, but 15% are not. We could pat ourselves on the back for the results, but to me, it is somewhat baffling how 50 of our students could study English intensively at a rate of 10 class hours per week for 30 weeks (300 hours) and not feel more confident. Either they were already confident when they came in, or they were influenced in some way to make their confidence weaker. Next year, it would be nice to have a survey item that confirms which case it is.

So, what factors make students more confident or less confident in their English learning or usage? That is the paper I am writing right now...based on long interviews with 15 students at the end of their first year.

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。。。

people who do not belong anywhere, really belong to the world."

"...people who do not belong anywhere, really belong to the world."

As a person who does not particularly belong to any single place, I liked this quote from a Japan Times article featuring Sophia professor Matsuo.
http://search.japantimes.co.jp/mail/fl20090509a1.html

I think anyone who has lived in a different culture or two can relate to this. After living together with people from a different culture, I think we begin to realize that our most important identity is "human" more than any smaller category such as American or Japanese

I think it takes time for people to realize that they do not primarily belong to one small social or cultural category of humans, but many. For example, I consider myself having a Californian (born, raised), Seattlian (college), a Tokyo-ite (high school, now), and a Nagano-ken (most of my childhood) identity among others such as 1970s born, male, heterosexual, ex?-Christian, missionary kid (still), language instructor and researcher, Dad, husband, marathon runner, beer lover and so on.

Without doubt, all of us are multicultural; we just don't accept that fact until we feel out of place in one of the monocultures we thought we belonged to or happen to be lucky enough to feel at home in a new culture.

未来の大学のあるべき姿 - End the University as we know it

From the NY Times Op-Ed
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/27/opinion/27taylor.html?pagewanted=2&_r=1

現在のアメリカ・日本の大学の姿の問題点を良く捉えている記事です。しかし、このような未来の姿を実現することは果たして現実的か？

Columbia大宗教学教授のTaylor氏が書いている６つ改革段階を要約すると：
His Bio
１．カリキュラム改革：知識分野毎に「専攻」や「必修」がある割れたシステムを改め、学生の勉強と研究のために人材と施設がネットワーク状に提供される構造に変える。興味ある問題について幅広く・超分野的に学習できることが基本とする。

２．常設の「学部」を廃止し、時代のニーズによって７年毎に見直されるZones of Inquiryによって学習プログラムを考える。Mind, Body, Language, Waterなど

３．大学間の連携と相互補完をネットワークで実現する：例えば、全ての大学が発達したフランス語やギリシャ語の講座を提供する必要はない。他大学の学生がネットワーク的にVideoConferenceなどで講座に参加するのが当たり前にする。

４．コースの論文・卒論はテキストのベースではなくMultimedia的な研究成果のプレゼンテーションにする。（彼は書いていないが、卒論は社会に発信するために書くのを当然とすべきだと私は思う。そのためには電子的なフォーマット、そして誰でもその知識にアクセスし、要点が分かりやすいフォーマットにするのは当然だと考える。）

５．大学院は将来の「教授」を育てるために設置するのではなく、NGOなど様々な社会の分野で実用的な能力を発揮できる人材を育成できるプログラムに作り変える。

６．「Impose mandatory retirement and abolish tenure. Initially intended to protect academic freedom, tenure has resulted in institutions with little turnover and professors impervious to change.」　教授は６５歳で引退させ、雇用の終身保証（Tenure）を廃止する。

My Thoughts
さて、このような将来の方向性でよいのか？
全ての大学がこうあるべきなのか、それとも一部か。
少なくとも、上記の１～５は今後１０年でかなり進むと私は思う。
現在の大学を経営しているのは教授会であり、終身雇用を自分達から切ることは有り得ないので、６番はかなり難しいだろう。しかし、理事会が強引に導入するか、若い研究者や自治体が自分たちで新しい大学を起こすなら、そのような大学は出てくる気がするし、出てくるべきだと思う。

RW/WW Atwell Chapter 8: Responding to Readers and Reading

RW/WW Atwell Chapter 8: Responding to Readers and Reading
Summary:
Atwell uses Reading Journals to promote a dialogue about reading between the reader, the reader's peers, and herself. Students write "literary letters" to each other and to their teacher about what they are reading and thinking, at a minimum required pace of once a week to be submitted on Friday. Students respond to each other within 24 hours by returning the notebook to the owner, and Atwell does her best to write back to students's literary letters addressed to her, promoting more and more developed literary conversations, giving advice and encouragement and simply reacting as a reader to another reader. In Atwell's view, journals effectively replace book reports (and worksheets and quizzes) in the classroom--the dullest genres of writing she has ever encountered--and allow students to be true readers learning to read and react for themselves.

My reaction: This case for dialogue journals is very powerful, and I want to consider using them for my own classes. Currently, my academic reading classes use Discussion Worksheets as the main channel for me to see what students thought about the assigned reading. Basically, students fill out a sheet with a basic summary of the reading, their reactions, and the discussion questions they want to discuss with their peers and instructor when they come to class. I used to use journals, but found that I could not collect them frequently enough to ensure that most students had prepared for that day's discussion. Most students crammed their entries in just before the submission deadline. In a foreign language class moving at a high pace through difficult academic readings, pressure to prepare well for each class seems very important to me. So that is why I do not currently use dialogue journals for reading. I only do fluency writing journals, which give students a month or so to write freely about a minimum number of topics.

Admittedly, with assigned reading, the reactions are quite forced, whether it is in a journal or in a worksheet. Some students have engaged and been stimulated, while others have not. It is difficult to compete with Atwell's Reading Workshop where readers are reading what they have selected on their own (usually adolescent literature, very attractive and meaningful for US middle school students), taking responsibility for their own learning and development of literacy (with support from peers and instructor, of course).

Ideally, all of my students would have an e-portfolio where they keep their reactions to what they read, think, and learn. Their peers and I would access those blog like records, leave comments, and promote frequent dialogue in that way, just like I have with a number of friends through various blogs I have had.

My favorite quotes from Chp. 8

p. 291 In response to a student's concern about slow reading speed:
"Dear Jason...."I'll never give you a test on a novel, so you should remember that you're reading just for YOU, and you should feel free to experiment with skipping parts (etc.)...As long as you're getting meaning out of the story, however you read it up to you." Love, Ms. Atwell

p.293 "In the fall you had a panic attack at the end of each book. Oh my God! What am I going to read next? Now I look at your list of books you are dying to read, and I see a reader.

p.298 "I remember suffering through piles of junior high book reports, the dullest writing I've ever read. By contrast, the letters are a constant source of surprise, pleasure, and stimulation."

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?

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.)

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

Creating a ELP/JLP Exchange Class

Tomorrow will be my first attempt at an international exchange class at ICU. My English language program students ("ELP students") will be visited by a group of international students studying Japanese at ICU ("JLP students") and the schedule will roughly be as follows:

10:10 Class starts with an explanation of a ice-breaking activity that will be conducted in Japanese.

10:15 The ice-breaker consists of everyone introducing three things in Japanese about themselves. One thing is false, so the others need to guess. This will be played in groups of roughly 3 or 4 ELP students plus 3 or 4 JLP students, so groups of 6 to 8. That can be quite large... If we allow 3 minutes to write three things, and then each person takes 3 minutes to introduce...it can take 30 minutes just for that. Strict time keeping is needed. Or, smaller groups... Or make sure the JLP students go first and skip the ELP students 3 things intro if time runs out.

10:40 (target time) ELP groups start their presentations in English, with a time limit of 15 minutes, definitely finishing by 11:00?

11:00 JLP students match up with ELP students to ask questions about the presentation and possibly give some suggestions.

11:15 Try to get some feedback on what each student thought about the exchange...or just ask them to take it home and submit it later.

-Things to be careful of:
1) Time management. Make sure things go according to the schedule so that all parts get the planned amount of time. Otherwise, the exchange can feel like a waste for certain group.
2) Equality of opportunity: Make sure everyone knows that there will be an exchange next Friday too with a similar structure.
3) Expectation management: Make sure all sides have realistic expectations about what is going to happen. They need to know this is experimental and that their speaking time for their foreignn language will be cut in half. The goals of the class have to be made clear -- Hopefully they will agree that the goals are worth the time allocation.
4) Fear of frustration/stress -- It is very likely that students will feel stress about their language ability. Hopefully most students will be OK, and students will be able to help each other by good listening, good encouragement etc.

I hope it goes well! I plan to write a report on this blog, so stay tuned.

University of London Institute of Education - a good place for a PhD?

Two of my colleagues are currently doing part-time doctorates in education with the IoE and they invited me to an event where IoE students in Tokyo presented their current research. Professor Paul Dowling was there to answer questions too. I got a chance to ask several people, including Paul, about the process of application and the "tortuous" challenge of getting the disseration done, especially on a part-time basis while teaching full-time.

Most of the advice I had heard before, but it was good to hear it again:
-Make sure you know what your research passion is
-Design a small, realistic project for researching that passion
-Try to find a good supervisor for the research
-Make a solid financing plan
-Be ready to dump your social life and neglect your family (My interpretation)

So, Mark, what's the plan? Decisions, decisions.
-I have many research interests, but what's my research passion? How in the world do you decide that?
-Which school is best for that research area/approach?
-Do I go full time (and break the bank) or go part time (and try to balance job and degree)?
-Do I go to a US program with course requirements (which I kind of feel I need), or a British program which is mainly just the disseration?
-Do I wait until...

Mark

Happy New Year! Goals for 2009--hopefully!

5 Goals for 2009

1. Keep blogging on my Learning Blog! I'm doing this mainly for my own reflection and won't worry too much about quality of content or readability. In general, develop my personal learning environment with my Google tools and Delicious bookmarks.

2. Read with my kids! I hope to keep up an almost daily pace of reading English books with my almost 6 year old son and almost 2 year old daughter. I've gotten a bit inconsistent on this.

3. Run 2 marathon races to keep fit. I'll do the Tokyo Marathon in March, but I want to do another one in the autumn.

4. Develop my research on how "confidence" develops in learning to speak a foreign language and how goal-setting, self-recording/analysis, reflection, and other active learning skills can contribute to that. Write two papers and make two presentations on that--hopefully. Explore PhD programs for this.

5. Get a babysitter so Meg and I can get away from the kids!

Learner Conceptualizations of Self-Confidence

Here is another 2008 paper I wrote with colleague Dr. Ohata based on interviews we conducted with ICU students following the end of their intensive first year academic English program.
http://jalt-publications.org/archive/proceedings/2007/E048.pdf