Promoting international exchanges on campus - One success case

This week I had an "exchange class" between my Academic Reading/ Writing class of 22 Japanese university students' and 23 international students studying Japanese at our university.

It went really, really, well, so I wanted to share what we did and how the students reacted.

For the past four years, I've done joint sessions like this once a term with another professor in charge of teaching Japanese to international students. My Japanese students have commented for years that the exchange class is the most valuable and stimulating 70 minutes in their language study experience, and today's reaction was just as strong.

I hope to propose that this type of exchange become a regular part of the university curriculum. The benefit is not only that the students on both sides can stimulate each other in terms of language and culture learning, but also establish connections that will extend beyond the joint session and enrich their university life.

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2012 Autumn Exchange Class Summary

Who: 19 students from ELA section 4F met up with 23 students from JLP level 4 in H-352. Both groups had a few absent students. Ms. Suzuki and Ms. Hosaka from the JLP and Mark Christianson from the ELA facilitated the session. The JLP students mostly came to ICU in September as OYRs (one year regular students) and have been living in Japan for 7 weeks now. JLP Level 4 is low-intermediate, and most studied Japanese in their home institutions for a year and a half to two years.

When: 2012/10/22, Monday 2nd period. Planning started at the beginning of the term to compare schedules for the two classes and find good timing. JLP classes are basically only held in the morning, so 2nd period is the most common time for exchanges.

What: The first 35 minutes were in Japanese. The last 35 minutes in English. An even exchange. In the Japanese part 日本語の部, all students did self-introductions in Japanese and then JLP students led discussions about things they found were interesting or strange in Japan and interviewed the ELA students about them. In the English part, ELA introduced their 2nd ARW essay research questions and outlines and led discussions to ask the JLP students' opinions on the issues.

Survey Responses: At the last 5 minutes of the session, the students filled out an anonymous questionnaire regarding their reactions, especially focusing on what they gained and whether they felt such exchanges should be done during class time or not.

Q1: I enjoyed this exchange class:  Strongly Agree = 17 out of 19 for ELA, 21 out of 22 for JLP. Two ELA students and one JLP student chose "Agree".  The two ELA students commented that they felt frustration because they wanted to communicate more effectively but did not have enough English skill yet.

Basically, all who attended enjoyed it. The energy in the room was overwhelming.

Q2: This type of exchange is a valuable use of class time for my communication practice: Strongly Agree = 18 out of 19 for ELA, 22 out of 22 for JLP. Agree = 1 ELA student, frustrated with his/her ability.

Basically, all felt it was a valuable experience. Most explained their main reason as because they were able to practice communicating with native speakers and able to learn about the others' culture from peers. They were also able to see how the other side is making efforts to learn their language (or a third language, in some cases) and were able to make new friends. For some ELA students this was the first time to ever talk with a non-Japanese student on campus.
Q3: In your opinion, how often should ICU have exchanges like this during class time per year? Write a number of times per year you feel would be best.

JLP students' average = want to do it 17 times per year.  (Many wrote weekly or biweekly exchanges are best)
ELA students' average = want to do it 9.2 times per year. (Many wrote 2~3 times per term are best)

Q4: Free response: How was this exchange? What was the main benefit or gain for you?
       (Pasted from the Excel form. Original responses were hand written.)

From JLP Students
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1. It was really fun. This "exchange" should be our speaking class. I'm glad I got to practice Japanese more and try to communicate more. Very useful.    Experience. Practice.
2. I really like it and think it is good to have classes like this twice a week or three times a week.    This kind of class is more useful than the usual class because we can learn speaking and listening more.
3. 楽しかったです。    日本語を良く使いました。
4. I found this to be more useful than our projects, so I think having more of this and less projects would be beneficial. Fun and useful.    Speaking and listening practice.
5. I loved this! すごく楽しかった！ I found this very helpful for my Japanese. I learned SO much. It was nice to use my Japanese in a real setting. Once a week or once every two weeks would be great. It was helpful to converse in Japanese, then in English. I made lots of friends.    Now that I've met Japanese friends, we are planning on meeting up again and practicing languages.
6. I think it would be helpful to have this every other week. I think it was really enjoyable. It is fun to meet with other students your age who are just as eager to practice speaking.    Because both groups of students know what it is like to study another language, its more comfortable to practice.
7. It was a good way to meet people practice real Japanese/English. It was interactive and challenging.    I feel like I was challenged to speak more than I normally would in class, so it was more useful. Also, I had to form sentences about things I would normally want to talk about.
8. It was awesome. Very, very useful and interesting. It should be done at least once a month.    Speaking with people in a different environment than the usual class.
9. I really enjoyed! It was very fun. I can have this kind of class every week in one semester.     The exchange of ideas between Japanese and JLP students.
10. It was a very fun and valuable experience.     I was able to exchange ideas from Japanese students and tell them about my opinions about their projects.
11. I wish we had more time. It was extremely informative and fun as well.    I have a better understanding of Japanese culture and learned about issues that are important to ICU's Japanese students.
12. It was amazing. It should be done once a week at least.    Language practice
13. It was really fun! I got to know more Japanese students and more about Japanese culture.    人間関係！I finally got to talk to Japanese students, one of my goals of studying abroad.
14. It was beneficial to my education, and very helpful. Can we do it again please?    Practicing speaking about topics we've done in class with real Japanese people.
15. It was very fun getting to talk about various topics. I would appreciate doing this kind of exchange once a month.     Sometimes when speaking to my own classmates, I'm not inclined to utilize Japanese because English is easier to use. Speaking to Japanese students feels more purposeful.
16. I reall enjoyed it. I made some great new friends. I learned a lot of new language and improved my speaking ability. Fun and useful practice for everyone.    Improved speaking ability and new friends.
17. Very interesting. I want to talk to more Japanese students. We should have more exchanges. The more the better!    To utilize what we learn in class and apply it to real life situations / conversations.
18. It was a valuable experience. I've got lots of new idea from Japanese students, which I have never heard before. It is a really good practice for me in both Japanese and English.    Getting fresh ideas, speaking Japanese. Talking to Japanese people is the most effective way to enhance my speaking skill, as long as I assert.
19. It was fun talking to my Japanese peers. I enjoyed it very much.    Practical usage of Japanese and the comparison of cultures.
20. Today was fun. It was helpful for me to be in actual conversations and not only doing role play situations. Meet once a week!    Experience with talking and listeing. Also learning how others think.
21. It was very good.     I practiced how to paraphrase in Japanese. Even when we couldn't understand each other, everyone tried their best and explained it until we understood each other.
22. It was good vocabulary, conversation, and plain language practice.    Good practice for casual conversation.

From ELA Students
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1. I'm excited. We should exchange every day!  
2. I enjoyed this class. I never go abroad, so I never speak English with native speaker except ELA teacher, but it was so interesting!    Even if I mistake the grammar and words, we can communicate actively!
3. I had a great time! This is a great opportunity. I could make good friends and enjoyed. I can learn a lot of things.    "Don't be shy" is very important
4. とても楽しかったし、良い刺激になった。It was so fun and inspiring because we can experience "real" English/Japanese communication.    英語に自信がなくても伝えようとすれば伝わる。
5. グループの人々と楽しく話せた。頑張って日本語を話しているので僕も頑張ろうと思った。Very enjoyable. It is good for me to know another country's culture.    私たちがJLPの学生に分かり易く話すようにJLPの生徒も分かりやすい英語を使ってくれた。様々あn国から来ているので、いろんな考え方に触れられて勉強になった。
6. 本当に楽しかったし、英語を話しているなと感じた。    自分と異なる価値観を持っているので本当に良い！！今まで自分が気づかなかった視点から話してもらって本当に楽しかった。毎日この授業が良いです。
7. Very interesting for me. I could exchange opinions in the class.     I should get more strong opinion because my ideas are ambiguity.
8. I enjoyed the class! I want to take it again, every term. I could talk about my essay, so maybe I promoted my topic. ELA students are all Japanese so sometimes we talk Japanese. But in this class we have to speak Japanese all the time.     JLP students learn Japanese only two or three years but they speak Japanese fluently!
9. It was very valuable. I enjoyed it because I never had a chance to speak with JLP students before.    It was difficult to listen to English. To speak in English with JLP students was very difficult for me but I thought this is the best way to improve speaking skill.
10. I really enjoyed this class.    実際に話すのが一番英語が身に付くと思う！それはとても楽しいこと！
11. 同じくICUで学んでいる外国の学生さんと初めて話した。I can speak English with enjoy. It is nice plan.    自分の国のことや自分の意見をはっきり伝えたいと思った。
12. "いろんな視点でディスカッションができて有意義だった
13. Once or twice a term would be best."    "自分のスキルのレベルが分かった。英語も日本語 も同じだということ。I enjoyed, but I was frustrated very much. My topic was very difficult. I wanted to speak better! I felt I had to improve my English skills more. It was interesting that　each people has each opinion. I could think about my topic more deeply."
14. とてもためになったし、お互いに英語をしゃべりづらいStream4には必要だと思います。    もっとJLPの人達と仲良くなりたいです。
15. "いろんな人と話ができてすごく楽しかったです！We should exchange two times per semester.
16. "    みんなの興味とかが共通していることが多かった。アニメとか健康。
17. I couldn't speak English. I want to communicate in English! If we do it every term, or every writing essay, we will get more information about topic.    If language education in English is good, we can speak more good maybe. We should more speaking practice.
18. Very interesting. Once per term is good.    I talked about my essay. I could hear many opinions. JLP students' question was very interesting!
19. It is good opportunity! It is very fun and useful for me!!    It is very interesting that Japanese culture about hentai should be more hidden.

以上、簡単な国際交流授業の報告でした。 -Mark

The joys and surprises of teaching kids...

This summer, I'm teaching English to kids for a few weeks.

It has been quite a while since I taught English to kids, and it has been fun but full of a few surprises, both good and challenging.

I have two classes 2nd graders and am almost done with the first two week and will be finishing up with a performance for the parents on Friday. By my request, I have the lowest two classes in terms of English learning experience. Some have a bit of English background (in school or conversation classes, I suppose - hope to survey that)  but most could not respond to "What's your name?" or "How old are you?" when they started.


The Good

• Students have had good reactions to most of the songs, games, storybooks and thematic project activities I've tried on them. For most of my ideas, I'm indebted to my sempais in the program, especially my fellow 2nd grade teachers. I learn so much from talking in the teachers' room and observing their preparation and classroom setup. 
• I love the look on the kids' faces when we do storybook time. Their eyes wide and curious and reacting (not all, but most). That is really something.
• The natural communication effort. The program has an all-English policy, and I only use English and don't let on that I speak Japanese. I love the effort that the kids make to understand and communicate. They are confused at times, but it forces them to make use of the natural communication strategies that they have, and they DO it. We do fine in class, and don't worry about the small things. It is amazing how much they pick up when they need to come to me and ask for things they want for their craft project "Mark, may I have a piece of purple paper please??" This is from kids who have basically never studied English ever before. In 10 days, they learn to get what they need with short phrases.
• The openness to try to use English pronunciation as it is, even if they can't do it so well. In songs and in our simple interactions, the use English as they hear it. This is the way all foreign language learners should ought to start to study. They have trouble saying my name, for example, because the /r/ phoneme in /Mark/ eludes them. I get a variety such as Makku, Maku, Maakru, but none of them are Japanese. They are trying to approximate the English sound, and with enough input and practice, I am certain they will internalize it. Along the same line, they struggle with the word "girl", with some saying guru, some gulo. That variation is a beautiful thing because they don't take the short-cut and Japanese it as "ga-ru". I hope to get some of this on audio from their final presentations.

The Challenging...

Of my two classes, one group is a teacher's dream. Very cooperative and eager and work together well. My other group...has issues, mostly due to one single student who is disruptive. I won't go into too many details, but I've had to remove the kid from the classroom and send him to the director. The saddest part of this is that the kids who want to have fun and learn English suffer because everything is interrupted by a need to intervene in trouble happening. The good side of this is that I'm learning how to head off such problems with classroom management and discipline systems such as a yellow/red card.

From next Monday, I'll have two new groups and I'm sure I'll have new discoveries of the wonders of helping kids realize that learning a foreign language can be fun.

Reflection on Winter Term, 2012 - AE TOEFL

My main new challenge this term was teaching a TOEFL iBT preparation class.

I had taught TOEFL Prep for the paper-based TOEFL many years ago, but teaching the iBT involved becoming familiar with quite a different combination of tasks. In addition, the course titled 'Advanced English: TOEFL" had no method of screening what level of student could take the class and that led to having a mix of different types of students with different expectations among the 20 who enrolled. Most were first year students finished with Program C, which meant their TOEFL was already over 550, many close to 600, and good enough to study abroad almost anywhere with just a few things to polish up--mostly in terms of academic language, logic and vocabulary. Mixed in with them were some juniors and seniors who had lower proficiency and less confidence especially in their speaking and listening skills; and paradoxically, the lower level older students were more in need of TOEFL score improvement for going to graduate school while the first year students, who were at a higher level (many as returnees) had enrolled for...it seemed just a vague sense that they wanted to keep studying English. It was a strange situation made worse by the fact that it was a once-a-week, two-hour evening class and energy levels were notably low after attending classes all day, and it was difficult to communicate with each other because I chose to use a computer classroom to do iBT activities on the computer. And we only met once a week, often interrupted by holidays, and it was even hard to learn names. Weird situation.

As it turned out, it was one of the weirdest courses I ever taught, and one of the least satisfying. It is an interesting one to analyze in retrospect, with hopefully some lessons for avoiding similar difficulties in the future.

So...to cut to the chase, what made it strange and how can I change or avoid that in the future?

1) Filter out students who are too high or too low, or a least define what kind of test prep will be done in the course description in advance so that those students can avoid enrolling. This was my first year, so I had no way to control the content of course description given to students in advance of registration. But for future years, I think a new description is needed. With test prep, a class with mixed levels and varying need-profiles really does not work well. In the case of AE: TOEFL, my preference would be that the "returnee type" students be filtered out and moved to College Composition or Presentation Skills or some other content-based class somehow.

2) Set up a better cycle of weekly homework to identify weaknesses and needs, and then in class addressing those needs with explanations and strategies. Lacking experience with the iBT format and how students should do homework to practice the skills, I wasn't able to take control of the homework cycle and assign work that would lead to active discussion in the next class. This time, I used one week per skill -- Speaking, Writing, Listening, Reading, and then Speaking, Writing again -- because I wasn't sure what students would benefit from the most. Next time, it would be ideal to spend the first two weeks flushing out levels and needs in each area before setting up the schedule. I need a clear profile of the students' weaknesses and expectations and motivations before deciding how much time to spend on what. Also, the first two weeks should be used to get some kind of score indication for all students that can be used as a benchmark of improvement to compare with in the final weeks. Doing a full TOEFL iBT takes 4 hours, so that is not realistic, but in retrospect even doing a two hour "half test" in the first or second week would help me see where they are with taking the test under time pressure. For writing, a 30 minute typed timed writing, with submission by email would be good for starting off. For speaking, one or two 1 minute recordings to see whether they are. For listening and reading, 30 minutes each or so to see how well they can get through the questions and formats. Then, possibly require them to self-score by working through that question and model answers step by step.

3) Set up a running TED based journal as well. TED is ideal for all skills - listen / read transcript / pick up new vocab / write a summary and reaction / and finally record an audio summary reaction of 1 minute or so. This can be easily posted on Moodle as a record of week to week effort to improve English, and can be done on top of practicing the textbook exercises and preparing questions for class.

YOU: A Course of Personal Writing -- My Reflection

After autumn term, the break flew by with various conferences and family obligations. I wanted to look back at my new course for ICU 2nd year students called YOU: A Course of Personal Writing.

Here's the link to the course blog.

http://you-personal-writing.blogspot.com/

It has the various course materials and links to student blog and writings.

This was a very fun course to teach, and I learned a lot. There's a saying that "the best way to learn something is to teach it" and this was very true, once again.

Basically, I allowed students free choice of topic, genre, and deadlines, and they just had to complete 20 blogs of free personal writing, and 3 published pieces that were drafted, revised, edited, and published on our blog.

The creativity of my students was very impressive. I also wrote a few pieces for practice, but since I have done very little creative writing since...high school, it was a very new and anxious process for me. I was very honest about that with my students, that I am not a professional creative writer in any way, and I was just one of the writers in the class trying to discover what is meaningful to me in terms of themes, and trying new genres.

How can the course be better? Students made excellent suggestions in their final reflections including adding a group project, introducing more examples of good writing, and ways to evaluate more transparently, and ways to help them squeeze out their creativity a little more efficiently with deadlines of some sort--so that not everything will be done at the last moment just before the end of the class.

I'm looking forward to teaching it next year!

Looking Back on ARW Autumn 2010

This was another very good term with two wonderful ARW sections, BB and BH.
Thanks students!

Below are my reflections and some pondering of issues for future courses...

Reading Skills: I required submission of reading notes (summmary, critical reactions, and discussion questions) for every text we read, and almost all students kept up with submission. Ideally, this should be done on a class blog so that all students can see each other's ideas, but I did not require that because I wanted students to bring their ideas to every class and have the ease of just writing their ideas anywhere without having to go to a computer. Last Winter term, I did blogs, and students kept up with them, but complained about inconvenience for having to go to a computer...

So, what is the best balance? A paperless system (at least in terms of not having to collect notebooks) would be ideal...perhaps with annotation in the textbook to prepare ideas for discussion followed by a blog update on what was learned in the discussion? Also, should I designate some students as being in charge of preparing summary/reactions/discussion questions in advance of class? That would ensure that at least some students are well-prepared for discussion while for other students it will be up to them to prepare.

Another issue in reading is that "understanding the text" is taking too long in our discussion time, both as a small group and as a whole group. I want to spend more time on critical reactions and open discussion of opinions and related issues, but...it seems that students' grasp of the main ideas (or at least their ability to summarize them orally) is not at a high enough level to do a coherent critical discussion. The solution? Cut the number of required reading pages (as a whole ELP decision) or use texts that can be more easily grasped by our students.

As an example for readers who are not familiar with ICU's ELP, "RACE WITHOUT COLOR" is a text our high intermediate (TOEFL 450 to 500ish) Japanese 1st year college EFL students at ICU would be required to read for homework over 4 to 5 days and discuss in one or two class periods of 70 minutes. In their notebooks, they would need to summarize and react and prepare for discussion as follows:

1) What is Diamond's thesis and supporting evidence?
2) What are the weaknesses of his argument? How could it be stronger?
3) What ideas of the text do you want to discuss? Prepare two stimulating discussion questions for your classmates.

Not an easy task. The idea is to make sure our students are ready to take college level classes in English, and this level of work will surely be required by non-Japanese professors who they take courses from at ICU or overseas schools...but are they really thriving on this type/level of assignment and class content? More examination seems needed. Perhaps a Focus Group interview would be enlightening.

Essay Writing Skills: Students wrote two research documented essays of 800-1000 words on any issue broadly related to "communication, culture, ethnicity, or race," with many students going over into 1200 or 1400 words. Most students made very tangible progress from Essay No.1 to No.2, so I was very happy to see that. I think almost all got a pretty good idea of the process of selecting a key word of interest, developing a meaningful research question such as "Why has Christianity failed to become popular in Japan compared to Korea?" and research and organize ideas into an introduction, thesis and supporting paragraphs.

Some students had difficulty, but my feeling was that those were the students who underestimated(perhaps?) the time they would need to spend in the library to find sources and develop a supportable thesis on the topic. Students who started early were able to visit me, get advice in tutorials (one-on-one conferences), and develop their paper further. Students who started late often had very little to show me or discuss with me when we met for conferences.

So...what is the solution for helping the students who had difficulty? More examples of how an essay develops? More warning that research takes time and creativity and endurance?

In any case, I hope all of my students can say they developed their confidence as a reader/writer of academic materials and their ability to research, react to, and discuss critical issues. Is my hope real? Students did student evals, but I wonder if those will really show how they feel.

Need to do a focus group interviews!

Building Better Teachers (New York Times 3/7/'10)

Very interesting article on "What makes a good teacher?"
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/07/magazine/07Teachers-t.html?pagewanted=all

Are good teachers just magically "good?" or does well-designed teacher training make a significant difference?

An educational consultant named Lemov did a video-recording project of several hundred "good" classroom teachers to find out why they are good, and he seems to think one of the most important elements is classroom management techniques. In other words, a good teacher (or primary and secondary schools) needs to know how to get the attention of the students and hold their attention to the task at hand. Apparently that makes a big difference in whether a teacher can help the students excel in standardized tests compared to their peers.

Lemov's taxonomy of teaching techniques is going to come out as a book: “Teach Like a Champion: The 49 Techniques That Put Students on the Path to College" Seems interesting, especially if it comes with videos.

Check out the video section:
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2010/03/07/magazine/20100307-teacher-videos.html#/readingaloud

This will include techniques such as:

No. 43: Positive Framing, by which teachers correct misbehavior not by chiding students for what they’re doing wrong but by offering what Lemov calls “a vision of a positive outcome.” Zimmerli’s thank-yous and just-like-you’re-doings were a perfect execution of one of Positive Framing’s sub-categories, Build Momentum/Narrate the Positive.

No. 45: Warm/Strict, in which a correction comes with a smile and an explanation for its cause — “Sweetheart, we don’t do that in this classroom because it keeps us from making the most of our learning time.”

No.??: What to Do. The clip opens at the start of class, which Zimmerli was teaching for the first time, with children — fifth graders, all of them black, mostly boys — looking everywhere but at the board. One is playing with a pair of headphones; another is slowly paging through a giant three-ring binder. Zimmerli stands at the front of the class in a neat tie. “O.K., guys, before I get started today, here’s what I need from you,” he says. “I need that piece of paper turned over and a pencil out.” Almost no one is following his directions, but he is undeterred. “So if there’s anything else on your desk right now, please put that inside your desk.”

Another interesting idea was MKT, by a Professor Ball of...Michigan? Math Knowledge for Teachers. In other words, only having deep content knowledge of math or only having classroom management magic does not make a good teacher. What makes the difference is the ability to know what "only teachers need to know, like which visual tools to use to represent fractions (sticks? blocks? a picture of a pizza?) or a sense of the everyday errors students tend to make when they start learning about negative numbers. At the heart of M.K.T., she thought, was an ability to step outside of your own head. “Teaching depends on what other people think,” Ball told me, “not what you think.”

For teacher training of teachers for EFL like I do, I think there definitely is a need for E.A.K.T - English acquisition knowledge for teachers. I also think having a good basic training program in classroom management makes a big difference, especially if it is done on-the-job with the mentorship of a more experienced master teacher. I had very good mentors in my MA program for teachers of ESL, and working with them during my TA-ship teaching hours made a big difference in my confidence for classroom management and planning when I started teaching. I still had a lot to learn about managing a classroom during my first few years on the job, but I had a pretty good image of what I wanted based on observing expertly managed classes taught by my mentors.

Hopefully the video project that Lemov did and other video-based projects will become available to teachers to learn from!

And I should consider doing my video project -- recording my own classes to identify what went well and what didn't as well as the classes of my colleagues. I want to be able to confidently do teacher training the future and having a record of how my own teaching evolved would be invaluable. Hmm...if I could work together with some people on this, that would be even better.

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.

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

To give a choice, or not?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Teaching Naked in the Classroom (from the Chronicle of Higher Ed)

I liked the article "When Computers Leave Classrooms, So Does Boredom"
http://chronicle.com/article/Teach-Naked-Effort-Strips/47398/

Don't worry. The "naked" here means without the security of PowerPoint to help you drone for an hour.

Here's a good quote that articulated what I've felt about college lectures and conference presentations recently:

"...the information delivery common in today's classroom lectures should be recorded and delivered to students as podcasts or online videos before class sessions. To make sure students tune in, he (Mr. Bowen, a lecturer of Jazz History) gives them short online multiple-choice tests.

So what's left to do during class once you've delivered your lecture? Introduce issues of debate within the discipline and get the students to weigh in based on the knowledge they have from those lecture podcasts, Mr. Bowen says.

'If you say to a student, We have this problem in Mayan archaeology: We don't know if the answer is A or B. We used to all think it was A, now we think it's B. If the lecture is 'Here's the answer, it's B,' that's not very interesting. But if the student believes they can contribute, they're a whole lot more motivated to enter the discourse, and to enter the discipline.'

In short, don't be boring."

ICU needs to move in this direction. My EFL reading and composition classes are already discussion-based to a certain extent, but I can do it more by moving explanations about essay writing techniques or reading techniques or projects to the web.

Presentations at conferences should be the same. Going to listen to somebody lecture live in a one-way style is often boring, completely unstimulating. If you have something valuable to say, you should write it online or record your lecture on video or online slides with voice over. Then, people who have listened to it should go to your interactive session for questions and discussion.

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。

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

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

Fall Term AASP

What was good?

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

What needs work?

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

Winter Term AASP

What was good?

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

What needs work?

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

Reflection on Winter term 2009 - Theme Writing

1. What was good about TW this term?

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

2. What needs to be improved?

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

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

Reflecting on ICU's Winter term 2009 - ARW

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

Academic Reading and Writing-Winter:

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

A. Reading Skills

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

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

B. Writing Skills

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

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

C. Winter Project

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

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

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

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

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

What do you do with a presentation team that fails to prepare?

I just finished a presentation "rehearsal" meeting with a group of 4 students who are on the same team to prepare a presentation for my academic reading/writing class. The team was created over a month ago, and this afternoon is the presentation time, but they still have very little prepared. No visuals, no organized argument, very little research to support what they seem to be arguing.

Ahhh! Makes me want to scream, mainly because I don't know what to do with them. I was about to say "Get out of here and don't waste my time" because I can't really give any advice unless a presentation is more or less prepared. I also was tempted to say "You can't present" because the whole class is going to have to endure a sloppy production. But of course, being the kind, helpful teacher that I am, I listened to them stumble through a completely fragemented and incoherent presentation that showed no coordinator or thought on their part and then let them know that they need to figure out a thesis and organize their presentation around it--in 2 hours.

All other groups have created an interesting and organized presentation about a global issue and solutions for it. The team presentation at the end of the year is a requirement in my course and is 20% of the evaluation. Doing at least a satisfactory effort to present the problem and possible solutions is an important part of finishing the course. In the past, I have never had a group fail to prepare to this extent.

So...what went wrong?

One problem was how the team was formed. The students had a sign up system to get together with people of the same interest. The four students, who all tend to have relatively low attendance (but not low aptitude), were the last to sign up and ended up getting stuck with each other. Because of absence problems and generally low engagement by all of them, they were rarely all in attendance and could not agree on a topic or outline or other requirements. To some extent, I knew they would have trouble, but I didn't expect they would struggle this badly.

Also, perhaps I should have set a stricter minimum preparation requirement for allowing the rehearsal and presentation. Something to the effect of: If you don't have a topic, thesis, and visual materials by this date, your team will lose its right to make a presentation. Would that be effective? Possibly, but not necessarily if they really struggle to put things together.

But do you give those students a "0" score for the presentation then? Or, perhaps an alternative is to say they must find a video camera, tape their presentation and submit it. In any case, if they are not prepared, the other groups in the class should not have to suffer through 15 minutes of unprepared communication.

Another possibility is to dismantle the team and ask for individual presentations at a lower evaluation. They can't work as a team, so show me what you can do individually (on video?).

Why couldn't they communicate with each other outside class and move the presentation preparation forward? I want to ask them when they do their self-reflection. I hope I never have a team end up like this.

But who knows? They may put together something doable in two hours final preparation? I will keep my hopes.

Mark

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.

Making essay peer reviews work: one win, one loss?

Last Friday and today Monday, I had two in-class "peer review" classes, one for my freshmen and one for my sophomores. Both classes were reviewing drafts of about 800 words. The in-class peer review is one part of the draft review process, including in addition an online written review that students have to do for each other and a conference with me to discuss my reactions to their draft.

So, below is how I set the in-class peer review exchange up (copied from my handout). My personal impression is that this works quite well as long as I avoid some pitfalls. In my Friday freshmen class, I had some groups where the exchange of ideas did not really seem to be working, and I guessed it was due to two problems. After anticipating those, my Monday class went very smoothly.

The first problem you always run into to is people with no drafts finished. On Friday, I asked them to join a group anyway and read and give comments, but I have come to the conclusion that it is better to let them go out of the classroom or do their own work. The pair exchange between two persons with drafts works with a good balance of time and having a third person just does not seem to work logistically. On Monday, that was what I did and all pairs hummed along very smoothly.

Another problem is what to do with an odd number. On Friday, I made a group of three, but the three struggled because they had to read two papers to have a coherent discussion and ended up running out of time in our 70 minute period. On Monday, I decided to fill in the gap and be a partner to ensure all students were in pairs. If you have ideas for making a group of three work, please let me now.

Other problems....students who come in late, students who match up with different levels (usually by asking students to say how long their drafts are and matching up same lengths of drafts, the level gets matched too, but not always.).

Overall, students seem to enjoy their exchanges very much. I allow use of their first language if they feel it is needed, and a few took advantage of that while most groups stayed in English.

2. Peer Review of 1st drafts

The goal is to help you receive some specific ideas for improving your draft as well as give you a chance to practice reading critically and giving constructive feedback.

1) Find a partner who has a draft of about the same length. Sit close in pairs.

If you have no draft, you can read/write quietly or go to the library.

2) Ask Can I write comments on your draft? -> Exchange papers and read.

If the writer allows comments, feel free to annotate with ? or other comments.

3) After both have basically finished reading, discuss one essay first, then the next.

Use 3 steps: 1. Confirm Main Point, 2. Give Positive Feedback, then 3. Give Suggestions

Writer: So...Did you understand my main point?

Reader: Well, I think your main point is... (summarize your understanding briefly)

Writer: Right. What do you think about the draft so far?

Reader: I really like the point about.... (start by giving much positive feedback!)

Writer: Do you have any suggestions?
Reader: First, what's your feeling about your draft? How do you plan to improve it?
Writer: Well...I think the biggest need for change is... (do self-critique first)
Reader: I think those ideas are good. In addition...you could consider adding/changing...
Note: Try to give suggestions about main ideas and evidence, not technical things.