Teacher-Student Relationship : How open is too open?

Hi everyone,

I’ve been thinking about something recently and would like to hear what you have to say about it.

Everyday we interact with our students in and out of class. Over time we may build relationships with some of our students, some closer than others. Some of us may even go out from time to time with some of those students and obviously discuss various topics, some of which may revolve around you, as some students are curious to know more about their teacher.

My question is therefore,

How open is too open?

What I mean is how much should we let our students know about ourselves as a person? Of course there is a limit, but beyond the obvious, how open should we be with our students?

Cheers,
eisensei

The ROBOT EFL Revolution?

Hi everyone,

I know I just posted not too long ago, but I was just taking a look at the David English House e-mail newsletter when I stumbled across the following article:

Robots to Replace Native English Teachers

What do you think? Can we be replaced?

Cheers,
eisensei

Discussing pragmatics now are we?

Hi everyone!

I just had my first official discussion meeting with a grad school classmate, and I think things went really well. We discussed a variety of topics including the dummy operator verb ‘do’, which Leech (2006) explains as follows:

"[T]he verb do, used as an auxiliary, is often called the dummy operator because it has no meaning of its own but exists simply to fill the 'slot' of operator when an operator is needed to form (for example) negative or interrogative sentences. In a similar way, it can be called a dummy subject when it fills the subject slot in sentences like: It's a pity that they wasted so much time."

We also did an analysis of a small dialogue based on the properties of everyday language as stated in Peter Grundy’s book Doing Pragmatics (2008). For those of you who are unfamiliar with these properties, there are nine in total:

1. Appropriateness
-Use of the most appropriate language for the given context
2. Non-literal or indirect meaning
3. Inference
4. Indeterminacy
-Ambiguous or unclear utterances, which leads the addressee to infer its meaning
5. Context
6. Relevance
-Understanding an utterance by choosing its most relevant meaning for the context in which it was uttered
7. Accommodation
-Background information, often cultural
8. Reflexivity
-Advice, or information a speaker provides to facilitate the understanding of his or her utterance
9. Misfires
-Misunderstandings

And here is the dialogue we used for the analysis:

A: Are you an exchange student?
B: No, I'm a teacher here.
A: Oh. Where are you from?
B: I'm from Canada.
A: Nice.

Although we have already discussed our own analyses, if you are interested in pragmatics, or if you happen to be studying it as well, just go ahead and leave a comment and tell me, “How would you analyze this dialogue?”

Cheers,
Eisensei

References:

Leech, Geoffrey N. (2006) A Glossary of English Grammar (Edinburgh University Press).
Grundy, Peter (2008) Doing Pragmatics (Hodder Education)

PS. Although I used Leech’s book as a reference, I actually found the quote for the dummy operator verb here on About.com, but was unsure as to how to make such a reference, so went with the original source. If anyone knows how to make such a reference, or if anyone knows of a resource for explaining such references, please let me know and I can make the changes.

Coming out of blogger hibernation

Hello, everyone! I hope you are all doing well. I can't believe that it has almost been a month since my last post. Why haven't I been posting? Well, honestly, my reasons are pretty much the same as those Martin Tuttle gave on his blog last month - except for the baby part. I was quite surprised to stumble upon his post yesterday when checking my Google Reader, something I need to do more, and see that there was someone else who felt the same way. So thanks to you Mr. Tuttle, I've decided to try to post more often despite not having classes. Of course, I will begin posting regularly again from April when my classes start, but until then, I will try to keep myself in the blogosphere as much as possible. So tonight, for my comeback, if you will, I have prepared, what will probably be my biggest post - I would like to present the self-access language learning center that I have set up at the university where I am currently teaching. I hope you enjoy it and I welcome all your comments.

Cheers,
eisensei

PS: Maybe I don't need to say this, but just in case, please click on the photos, graphs etc to enlarge them.

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SAC - Introduction

Since the 1960s and 1970s, when the first resource centers and self-access systems were developed, the notion of self-access has prospered, both as theory and practice. Self-access centers are now common in many countries, and Japan is no exception (Jones, J.F. 1995; Gremmo, M., Riley, P. 1995). In order to clarify the goal of such a self-access center, Sheerin explains:

“The primary aim of such facilities is to enable learning to take place independently of teaching. Students are able to choose and use self-access material on their own and the material gives them the ability to correct or assess their own performance. By using such a self-access facility, students are able to direct their own learning.”

(Sheerin, 1989: 3)

The type of self-access system that I have set up is that of the ‘supermarket’ system, which offers the learner the opportunity to look around and choose what to study (Miller, L., Rogerson-Revell, P. 1993). Ultimately, I would like to have the students themselves organize, control, and maintain the center with the teacher’s role being that of an advisor or guidance counselor.

References

Gremmo, M. & Riley, P. (1995) Autonomy, self-direction and self access in language teaching and learning: the history of an idea. System, 23(2):151-164.
Jones, J.F., (1995) Self-access and culture: retreating from autonomy. ELT Journal, 49(3):228-234.
Miller, L. & Rogerson-Revell, P. (1993) Self-access systems. ELT Journal, 47(3): 228-233.
Sheerin, S. (1990) Self-Access (Oxford: Oxford University Press)

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History of SAC

June 2009
I distributed a survey to all my students to find out which materials they would like to have in the center.
Using this data, I proposed the idea of setting up a self-access center at the departmental meeting.

July and August 2009
A budget was created for the project.
I started discussing floor plans and materials with my student volunteer staff.

October 2009
The room for the SAC was renovated.
I ordered the necessary materials for the SAC, ie furniture, DVD players, books etc.
I presented the SAC to students at the department orientation and asked for volunteers.

October 2009 – February 2010
In one of my classes, I had students make supplemental materials for the graded readers available in the SAC.

January 2010
The materials arrived.
I started to get the room ready, ie assembling shelves, arranging materials etc, together with the student volunteer staff.

February 2010
We conducted trial opening of the SAC, which is still underway.
At the end of the semester, I discussed the SAC in all of my classes.
The staff and I made and put up posters to advertise the SAC.

March 2010
I presented the SAC to a group of professors.

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Plans for 2010/2011

I intend to re-distribute a modified questionnaire to all students.
I will try to recruit new staff including more exchange students.
I will announce via memo the opening of the SAC to all faculty members in order to request support and materials.
I will allocate two courses to SAC material preparation
Spring Semester - Audio/Visual
Fall Semester – Reading

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Survey for SAC and Survey Results (June 2009)

I used a bilingual survey with a 6-point Likert scale, with 1 being ‘No, not at all.’ and 6 being ‘Yes, I would really be interested.’ I also asked them to write their name, sex and age.

Key

Peach – 6 (Yes, I would be really interested.)
Purple – 5 (Yes, I would be interested.)
Pale Blue – 4 (Yes, I would be a little interested.)
Pale Yellow – 3 (No, I don’t think I would be interested.)
Burgundy – 2 (No, I wouldn’t be interested.)
Lavender – 1 (No, I wouldn’t be interested at all.)






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Floor Plan

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SAC Assistant Responsibilities

-tidying
-checking out materials
-answering questions related to the center/materials
-checking inventory
-selecting materials
-making displays/posters
-planning events
-inputting data
-peer exchange

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Materials Available in the SAC

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SAC Material Preparation - Activity Making Process

1. Choose a chapter. Any chapter is OK, but the first chapter may be the best to use.
2. Write out the chapter using Word.
3. Read the chapter.
4. Write down any words you don’t know or any words you think students may not know.
5. Use a dictionary to find out each word’s part of speech (noun, verb, etc), and meaning (Japanese, English or both).
6. Choose the order of the activities you will make, and begin making them.
7. Once you have completed the activities, read the rest of the book.
8. Write down any words you don’t know or any words you think students may not know.
9. Use a dictionary to find out each word’s part of speech (noun, verb, etc), and meaning (Japanese, English or both).

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The SAC

Is it the end or is it just the beginning?

First of all, just in case any of you was wondering what happened to me this past week, allow me to explain. There are two reasons mainly:

END OF SEMESTER

Well this does not really necessitate any explanation as I’m sure most of you are full aware how busy it gets at the end, preparing tests, collecting reports, marking and grading, both which I still haven’t finished, but will try to over the next two weeks.

SELF-ACCESS LANGUAGE LEARNING CENTER

It took me a year, but it’s finally coming to fruition – the university’s first SAC. Next week will be the trial opening, so a lot of my time was taken up with last minute preparations and meetings; actually, I’m still not quite ready, but tomorrow I will have one more meeting that should do the job. I will not really get into any detail yet as to what I’m doing because over the next two months I will not have any classes, so this will give me something to write about until then!

MONDAY’S LAST COMMUNICATION CLASS

This actually was my final class for the semester since the rest of the week was scheduled for tests. I started with the review as usual, and then did the listening comprehension with the textbook’s dialogue (the theme was leaving a party or a dinner). However, what I did next was different from what I had done in Friday’s class – I wrote on the blackboard the situation, ‘You are at a party or someone’s house for dinner’. I then wrote the following question, ‘What are some reasons you can give for having to leave?’ Now I chose to do the listening comprehension first in order to present the context more clearly, but also to give them some examples/ideas, unlike what I did in Thursday’s class, and which I should have done. I then gave them about 5 to 10 minutes to write down as many ideas as possible in pairs. As I walked around, I noticed that many students were using the same expression, ‘I have to’, so I wrote that on the board and asked them to think of different ways to say the same thing. When the time was up, I started asking students to write their reasons on the board, one per student. Once all the students had a turn, I went through the reasons correcting where necessary and by the time we finished this, the class was over. Now I corrected the sentences myself because this was our last class, but in the future, I could collect these and have them work on these sentences the following week. I was also thinking that using something like Facebook or Mixi could help facilitate the sentence collection as I could just have each student immediately post their sentence, something else to think about for next year.

MY TWO FAVORITE EXAMPLES

Although there were many different and good reasons, like feeling ill or an angry mother, the reasons that I liked were actually reasons that perhaps one shouldn’t use when a guest. These were:

I have to go because I’m bored.
I must go because there is a TV show that I have to watch.

Now, with friends, the second one could be possible, but I think for no situation would the first one be OK. These examples gave me an idea for next time – perhaps I could first ask them for good reasons, and then ask them for bad ones and maybe even ask them why those reasons are considered inappropriate. It may also be interesting to have students rank the good reasons in order from worst to best. Finally, I could have students make conversations based on these examples.

IT’S OK TO TAKE MORE THAN ONE CLASS FOR ONE LESSON

I think this is one thing I have learned from this class, and will try to consider in the future. Until now, I usually have one lesson for one class, with the exception of review which usually takes the form of a review test, but after this lesson, I realized that there is so much material and so many possibilities that it would be very difficult if not impossible to get through it all in a 90 minute lesson, and since I’m not under any obligation to finish a certain amount of chapters in a semester, I shouldn’t worry if a lesson goes over one class. Of course, I should probably avoid taking four or five classes for one lesson, but perhaps that could be possible. What do you think? Come to think of it, though, my composition class was something like that because students were continually working through the semester without really having a clearly defined end or beginning.

I think I will stop here because I really need to set a time limit for how long I write. Perhaps more shorter blogs might be the answer, but I really do have to organize my time or it’s game over. Next week I will talk about my impressions of my first year as a full-time teacher, my class evaluations that I received from students and the SAC. Until then, have a good weekend!

MESSAGES

Karenne, thanks for tagging me and your message about Martin's article, but I have question – for the tagging game, I am supposed to introduce two people I know, but I only know you and Darren, so what should I do? Can I introduce two people I don’t know?

Darren, thanks for the comment on commenting. I think my blog already has the functions you mentioned, but I will check again.

Charles, thanks for linking me. When I get the time I will visit your blog and link you to my site.

Cheers,
eisensei

A Dogme ELT Play in 2 Acts

Could this be my first step into Dogme ELT? – ACT 1

General English - Thursday



So Thursday is now officially over. Today we looked at hopes and intentions. First, I gave them a review quiz, which took the students some time to finish on account of its length – the students had to put 20 sentences in order to make the dialogue that we did last week. Once finished though, I did something quite different - I told them to put their books away. I then had them choose a color marker, but I did not allow two students sitting together to have the same color. Once everyone had markers, I told them to find a partner with the same color. After everyone had done this, I wrote hopes and intentions on the board and introduced the topic. I then asked them to think of ways to talk about such things, ie the future. Immediately, many students started asking one another what they had to do, meaning that they did not exactly get it, or rather I did not explain it well enough, so I wrote an example on the board; I chose ‘will’ first because I thought that it would make things clear for them, but also I expected that they would write this one first, and I really wanted them to think of other expressions. I gave them between 5 and 10 minutes to think of different expressions, but really I should have only given them 5 (I think I will be a timer for next year because this will make keeping time much simpler) because the more time students have the more they will speak in Japanese although students were speaking Japanese from the beginning, something that we all have experienced and struggled with I’m sure.

Intermission 1

Actually, if there are any blogs or articles on getting students to use English more – I don’t expect students to speak 100% of the time in class, although there may be some teachers who can get their students to do this, and if there are, I would love to hear from them – I would greatly appreciate any links to such sites. Anyway, let’s get back to the story.

Intermission 2

Actually though, one more thing I have to mention, and I would love to hear from other teachers about this, but I am considering making it mandatory to bring supplies such as notebooks, pencils, pens, erasers and especially dictionaries and that if students fail to bring these things, I am thinking of docking points or some other kind of punishment. I know, I don’t like the punishment word either, but each semester I tell students in the beginning to bring these things, but still I see students come to class without such things, and some students even seem proud to have nothing, and it always makes me wonder, ‘What are you intending to do here if you don’t have the necessities?’ because even with Dogme ELT, such things are necessary, am I right? I suppose I could remind students each week, but I am not sure if that would really work. Of course, it’s not everyone, fortunately, but I can’t help feel that there are more students like this than there should be.

Could this be my first step into Dogme ELT? – ACT 2

While they were writing, I walked around observing what students wrote, helping them when necessary. For example, some students had written ‘I wish’, so I explained that we don’t use this for future hopes and intentions. After their time was up, I had students come up to the board and write down the different expressions. Some of them were the following:

I’m planning to…
I’m going to…
I’d like to…
I hope to…
I want to…
I desire to…
My dream is to…
Etc

I then gave them another 10 minutes, although I think they had more than that (again, I need to buy a timer) to write down their hopes, intentions, and dreams for the spring break, for next year and for five years later. Some students could not think of such things at first, but after some support they were able to. One student was struggling to come up with ideas, but I told the student that one’s hopes, dreams and intentions didn’t always have to be big, but even the little ones were important, and the student immediately started writing many things. Finally, I had each student come up to the front of class to present what they would like to do for each time period. Again some of the hopes and intentions were on a small scale, such as learning how to cook a certain dish, and others were on a much larger one, for example one student wanted to stop war. Once everyone had finished, I praised them for their ideas, and I repeated what I had told the student earlier about the importance of all dreams and hopes, big and small, because they were their dreams and hopes. I was then going to finish with a short dialogue that focused on hopes and intentions when one of my students asked me what my hopes and dreams were, a question that I greatly appreciated because it showed the student being active. Here is what I said more or less:

I would like to learn Italian. Honestly, I don’t know why, but I love the way it sounds. However, between Japanese and French and other things, I am not sure if I have the time, but it would be nice to know even a few words. My dream is to be a musician. Yes, I’ve said it. A long time ago I played for 200 people, some of whom cried when they heard my song (I am not joking), and ever since, I’ve wanted, and still do, to become a musician. However, my immediate goal is to read more and learn more about teaching so that I can become a better teacher.

By the time we finished, there was not enough time for the dialogue, so I talked about their test and then let them go.

Self-Feedback

One thing that I did not do was to note their mistakes. I think I did not do this because I wanted to focus on their ideas, and also it was the last class, but I think in the future, I would take in their posters, write out their sentences on a handout and the following week have them look at their sentences to see if they could find their mistakes, and then correct them together. Another thing I should have done was to ask them explicitly to try and use the new expressions because not many of them did so far as I could tell. Many used ‘want to’, ‘will’, ‘going to’ and ‘would like to’, but I think they already knew these, so unfortunately we missed a good opportunity to practice the new expressions. Of course, there were the time limits, too, which should have been enforced better. I probably should have been clearer about their posters telling them explicitly just to write the phrases because many just read their sentences straight from their posters. Another thing that perhaps could have been interesting was to have the students write an example for each expression as a way to practice the expressions before they presented. I’m also thinking that maybe I should have done the listening task first as it would have given them a better context for hopes and intentions. I’m sure there are many other things I could say, if I thought about it long enough, but I still have some work that I must finish for tomorrow, so I will have to stop here. I think in the end though, that this lesson went fairly well, and I think the students enjoyed it, which is important, but that there are some bugs to be worked out, but as with most new things, that is to be expected.

Cheers,
eisensei

What will the autonomous learner think of next?

Last Thursday Reading and Writing Class and How to Get Students to Ask Questions

Well, today was the last reading and writing class for the year, well not really the last because we have a test next week, but I never really count test day as a class. The activities for the lesson included a final worksheet on the indefinite and definite articles, a reading exercise, a sentence correction activity, a worksheet on ‘be going to’ and a writing task which asked the students to talk about what they would do during the break. After they students received their package and started working, I walked around telling them that if they had any questions, they could ask me; only one student did though. Of course I could add the adverb unfortunately, but the fact that one student asked me a question would be enough to end the previous sentence with fortunately, I think. Also, at the end, two students asked me about the difference between ‘a’ and ‘the’ and when it is needed. Now, this was written in Japanese on the handout, but as I’ve come to realize, perhaps a more direct approach to teaching the articles may be in order. However, that said, I think that students should try to ask more questions, even if it is after class. If I continue this lesson style next year, I will try a modified version of Karenne’s advice (again, thanks Karenne!) of having students ask me questions. However, as the students choose the order in which they do the activities, it may be difficult to ask students after each activity for questions if they don’t understand, especially if you have almost 40 students, so what might be a good idea in this class would be to have students email me, or write questions down and submit them before leaving (an idea that stemmed from Karenne’s advice). Perhaps in this way, students may feel more comfortable asking me things.



Was this really learner autonomy?

I am asking myself this question because it is a valid one, and perhaps some or maybe all of you are thinking that just giving the students a choice in what order to do the activities does not really constitute learner autonomy, and after conducting such a lesson for a year, I would probably agree with you. However, if we consider this as the first step to fostering learner autonomy, then maybe I shouldn’t be so hard on myself. Of course, I now have to ask myself, ‘Ok, if this was the first step, then what next?’ to which I do have some ideas, such as giving students complete freedom in what they write about or having students choose what they would like to focus on/review next class and prepare that for them. However, these ideas still seem to be teacher focused to me, the latter more so than the former I should say, as they all come from me and not from the students. The more I think about it, though, perhaps what is really needed is a compromise between complete autonomy and complete teacher control. I know that it is important for students to take control of their learning in order to become fully autonomous learners, but I also know that not all students are interested in such control, let’s be honest, so maybe giving them the choice, with the guidance of the teacher, of course, of what to focus on based on materials provided by the teacher may be an idea to try, and by encouraging students to make opportunities for learning such as going to a library/SAC, going on-line etc, might just be the next step needed for fostering more learner autonomy in this class.