Kitakyushu JALT Meeting Reports: Archive for 2001
Our meeting reports archive contains reports of our meetings from 1999 to June 2008.
To see reports for later events, visit the reports page.
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15 July 2001
Miki Niiyama
Collaborative, student-centered activity: Does it work in language classrooms in Japan?
Miki Niiyama reported on action research done with a 17-member class in a private women's college. The focus was upon students' perceptions of peer feedback, difficulties encountered and insights gleaned.
Prior research indicated that students sometimes felt they could not trust peers to give useful advice, preferring to receive it from the teacher, and that students generally favor negative over positive feedback. Niiyama found these conclusions borne out in her study.
Written questionnaires with open-ended qualitative questions to elicit feelings about various aspects of the activity were given twice during the project. (Although time-consuming to administer, it was felt in retrospect that oral feedback might have been more beneficial in understanding students' perceptions.)
Generally, students were receptive to peer responses; most incorporated changes based on the feedback-- although many felt uneasy about identifying errors in others? work. While feedback was mostly seen as surface error correction, students enjoyed reading other writing and began to recognize the need to negotiate meanings. This made them more sensitive to the needs of the reader, helping them in turn to write more coherently themselves. Realizing that it was easier to spot other mistakes than their own helped students reflect on their writing. Overall, student feedback was perceived as effective, though it appeared to the researcher that they could have benefitted from the use of more specific techniques.
Niiyama wrapped up her presentation by inviting discussion from the audience. It was pointed out that a greater sense of responsibility seems to come from peer feedback. In a teacher-centred classroom, it is too easy to simply cast the teacher in an all-powerful role, and relinquish any sense of personal responsibility for learning. Ideas for ways of encouraging written dialogues between students and teachers were shared to finish an informative and enjoyable evening.
Reported by Dave Pite
8 September 2001
Joe Tomei
Project Work for the University-Based Classroom
Before demonstrating how he uses project planning in his classes, Mr. Tomei mentioned a very pragmatic rationale for its inclusion into EFL curriculum. Students are encouraged by peer pressure to participate in class work in a cooperative rather than competitive environment. In the process they learn to correct each other, and ask for clarification and reinforcement in a manner not unlike real-world communication where English is the medium for often disparate linguistic groups of non-native speakers. A further benefit is that the variety and scope of student participation in project work keeps classes fresh and stimulating for all concerned. Administratively too, groups are easier to deal with. (Posting projects outside the English classroom helps keep other teachers informed and aware of what's going on within.)
With the aid of a comprehensive outline and several examples of student work, Mr. Tomei walked us through a process that spans about five 90-minute classroom sessions. Except for the last one, the initial part of the classes are taken up with regular curriculum, with the final half-hour devoted to project work. This helps to provide continuity between what are sometimes isolated language lessons. Class time focuses upon organization, with research and writing done as homework.
Students soon realize that the more work they do at the beginning means the less they are left with at the end. They usually tend to commit fully to the projects, making the teacher's extra effort worthwhile. All projects are presented on the same day (last class of the session) to keep students on track. Groups evaluate each other.
Various examples of student work, including administering surveys (which mirror conversation by going from general to specific topics), designing a country (from flag to package tour), investigating handicapped access (a wheelchair and crutches were borrowed for research), planning weddings (for girls' classes) and simulating restaurants were exhibited to finish this very useful presentation.
Reported by Dave Pite
13 October 2001
Ian Nakamura, Hiroshima Kokusai Gakuin University
Looking at Asian EFL Students' Silent Actions
Ian Nakamura, of Hiroshima Kokusai Gakuin University, began his talk by outlining the format he wanted our discussion to follow. He requested lots of input from the audience, invited us to jump in at any time we felt we had something to say about what we saw or heard (or didn't hear.)
Mr. Nakamura showed us a videotaped interview he had conducted in English with one of his Japanese students. In small groups, we shared our reactions to what we saw of the student's speaking style, focusing on gaze (eyes), hands, voice and smile? "to start thinking about these things." We then watched various videos of student interviews and class presentations?conducted by himself in Japan and a Thai teacher with her class in Thailand, to introduce a multi-perspective discussion of silence in the EFL classroom, relating specifically to Asian EFL students.
After watching students present topics such as "How can I contribute to the future of Thailand?" and "How can I help Japan?" we were invited to analyze each discourse in the context of verbal and non-verbal indicators. It was pointed out that Asian students may appear to feel less urgency to articulate their thoughts and feelings than their Western counterparts in the same situation.
The evening finished with a viewing of final scenes from the "Seven Samurai" and "The Magnificent Seven" movies. This helped to further highlight the contrast between "high context" language in Japan and Thailand (where centuries of shared history and understanding render less the need to articulate) and "low context" cultures (where immigrants and new arrivals want to talk about every little thing.)
Throughout the presentation and discussion, Mr. Nakamura's relaxed demeanor and specific focus on his subject made for a stimulating evening of analysing linguistic interaction.
Reported by Dave Pite
8 December 2001
Craig P. Lambert, Kitakyushu University
Reverse-Engineering Communication Tasks
Craig Lambert reported on his current research into the effectiveness of a task-based approach to teaching second languages, focused upon designing materials. 'Reverse engineering' is a term borrowed from technology that describes taking apart a finished product to see how it works, then redoing it from the beginning. After providing a model of a typology, outlining four types of communicative task: descriptive, instructional, narrative and opinion, he showed how they could be "re-invented" by the students themselves.
The divided information task is an effective descriptive exercise. However, Lambert says, just because it is good does not mean students will want to do it. While a teacher may spend a great deal of time and energy devising it-- it may not work as well as the same one reverse engineered by the students themselves, something they have already 'invested' personally into. In a pilot study, students engaged in more voluntary exchanges when working with their own materials.
Another benefit is that it keeps students talking in the classroom by providing a means of interaction, he claims, and notes the importance of recycling output to maintain a good level of comprehensible input. A downside to this type of exercise is that it may be overused, without taking the students anywhere, arbitrarily inserted into a course for its own sake.
As well as an introduction to this specific research, there were many ideas from Lambert's extensive range of experience for the audience to take away.
Reported by Dave Pite
