F.I.A.

JALT REPORT

2010

“Creativity: Think Outside the Box”

36th Annual International Conference on
Language Teaching and Learning
& Educational Materials Expo
19-22 November, 2010,
Aichi Industry and Labor Center, Nagoya.

 

 

 

Introduction

JALT 2010 was held in Nagoya, Aichi Prefecture. This central and convenient venue was certainly conducive to a synergistic congregation of ESL professionals, while metropolitan Nagoya offered plenty of after-hours diversion for the attendees, whether hailing from near or far!

In this FIA JALT REPORT you will find individual reports by our participants, who chose to write about particularly interesting, useful, or innovative topics, techniques, and research encountered during the three-day conference. To deepen and broaden their understanding of the field, our attendees made the most of the opportunity, learning and improving as professionals. These summaries offer an exciting array of contemporary Language Teaching topics, hopefully encouraging further independent exploration and inquiry!

                                                                                                -Brian

F.I.A.’s 2010 Attendees

 

Brian        (DoP)

Chris         (DTO)

Dale          (CHCC)

Jenny         (SKYLD)

Jimmy         (HIB)

Zuri             (WHQ)

 

 

Brian

The Long-term Effects of Computer Mediated Communication on Anxiety and Willingness to Communicate
By Mills, Daniel J.

Recognizing the unique place Japan holds in the world of English language learning, specifically that Japan spends US$40 billion a year in commercial English Education (?!?), the highest in the world, yet TOEFL iBT scores in Japan are the third-lowest in Asia, only besting Cambodia and Laos, the presenter investigated the possible reasons, including linguistic distance, the Public Education System, and the culture. His goal is to further study the possible benefits of CMC in overcoming these obstacles.

To better understand and hopefully address this through Computer Mediated Language Learning, he identified Foreign Language Anxiety, Willingness to Communicate, and the cultural dimensions present in Japan.

Distinct from general anxiety, Foreign Language Anxiety is manifested differently depending on the speaking situation, whether friend to friend, on the telephone, in front of a classroom, etc. It can be measured by the Foreign Language Classroom Anxiety Scale (FLCAS), a self-administered, 32-Question survey using a 5-point Likert scale.

Willingness to communicate is the individual’s willingness to seek out or avoid opportunities to communicate. While interest in the new language, working / studying abroad, or an interest in other cultures is significant, in isolation these do not reliably predict the individual’s level of WTC.

Japanese language learners are influenced directly, even if subconsciously, by aspects of Japanese cultural heritage. Geert Hofstede’s cultural dimension measuring tools (bi-dimensional) and the following multidimensional models are useful in measuring differences and similarities between cultures.

Mills referred to the improvement of Korean Air’s safety record by researchers having correlated the incidences of that airline’s crashes with Korea’s power-distance ratio, as described in Malcom Gladwell’s Outliers.

In addition to Japanese culture also reflecting Confucian principles regarding relationships, a strong aversion to uncertainty as dame oshi (ダメ押し), and formalization of activities as kata (形) probably explain the preference for the ‘Grammar Translation’ method of language learning and the general lack of WTC and handicapping FLA. Mills referred to the series of videos Nihon no Kata 日本の形demonstrating the scripted nature of Japanese life and the emphasis on form over function (available on Youtube!).

The presenter investigated Computer Mediated Communicative methods of language learning, and identified several advantages. The environment for learning is often less stressful, and even sometimes anonymous. Written communication tasks are processed at a slower pace, which also decreases anxiety. Finally, he notes that students are better able to learn task-based vocabulary better by reading and typing than by listening and speaking (Chapelle and Jamieson, 2008).

Mills hopes to study this further and proposes a 15-week study of university classrooms, incorporating periodic FLCAS surveys and the data gleaned from their Language Education Chat System participation, which codes for length of utterances and turns taken in communication on-line, and in-person student interviews.

The principle reasons behind Japan’s lagging behind Asian peers in English competence are a central topic for F.I.A.’s staff meetings, as Soncho likes to pose “Why is English so Difficult for Japanese People?”. With the reasons thoroughly investigated, perhaps an important tool for addressing the problem in our programs should be more attention to Computer Mediated Communication, possibly even L.E.C.S.

 

Chris

Are We Ready for 3D Games?  What Can They Teach Us?
By Cvitkovic, Robert – Cyber University (with Bovee, Nickolas – Kyushu Sangyo University)

This was a very interesting and informative presentation/discussion about how the theories and methods used in computer game design can be related to and applied in English education.

This was the second of three presentations given by the same team.  Their first presentation looked at a 3D role playing game they designed. The game allows learners to complete a quest style game through using English to interact with game characters and to solve puzzles.  Their third presentation, which I didn’t attend, examined how interaction and feedback in the game/learning environment can improve learner motivation.

When comparing the structure and goals of formal educational systems (school) and computer games, there are a number of corresponding structures.  Whereas the basic goal of school is to impart some form of knowledge using such tools as homework, tests, marks, etc., games lead the player toward a goal through structures of challenges, advancement, and rewards.  In order for games to be challenging yet enjoyable and able to maintain the player’s long term interest a balance or level of ‘optimal challenge’ needs to be established.  The same is true for a learning environment.

One of the key ideas that stuck with me was that in both educational and game environments, sustained challenge and relying mainly on extrinsic motivators eventually becomes exhausting and de-motivating to the player/learner.  Learners need to gain satisfaction intrinsically for engagement and motivation to be prolonged.  For example, after a new level of skill has been achieved, the player/learner needs a period where they are able to use and demonstrate their skill level mastery. 

I thought the ideas presented in these presentations were really interesting given that we don’t have tests and while our members all have a variety of reasons, both extrinsic and intrinsic, for learning English, maintaining motivation over the duration of the OJT year can be difficult even for the most enthusiastic members. 

 

Dale

Getting the most out of your textbooks

I attended various presentations at the JALT conference in Nagoya, November 20 – 22.  Overall most presentations were good to fair.  A few were not so good to put it politely.  But overall, there were two that were outstanding. 

One was by a textbook writer, David Paul.  I had used one of his textbooks in the past, although with limit success since I was unsure how best to use his textbook.  His presentation was on how to get a high-intermediate level or low advanced student to reach a higher level.  This is an issue that I have been struggling with ever since I started teaching ESL and also a personal dilemma in trying to improve my Chinese.  Over the years I have tried many approaches from reading articles to using more advanced textbooks.  But I have never felt that I had achieved any degree of high success.  After his presentation I now feel from hindsight that what was lacking was perhaps an overall strategy to systematically reach this goal.

Mr. Paul’s strategy is easy.  Find a topic, list the vocabulary associated with the topic, and then develop a series of exercises for the student to use the vocabulary.  He has written several textbooks which have outlined several general and popular topics such as travel, death, dating, etc.  His method, however, could be developed for any topic.

Many members at CHCC have requested to study business.  Most of these members level is beyond the Business Venture textbook.  Further Ahead is somewhat useful, but at times is too situational and too short.  Often when using the textbook I find it necessary to expand activities outside the book or use other textbooks such as New Interchange and Intelligent Business.  Even FIA’s syllabus recognizes the holes in Further Ahead and requires NIC or other texts at times. 

As before, however, I have felt that the text is not achieving the goal as well as it could in the syllabus.  For advanced learners, the exercise often seem too easy and to be a lot of busy work.  At times I have used Intelligent Business text mostly because it is the only other really effective text that I have that covers a topic using vocabulary exercises and articles.  My approach was still lacking, but I just couldn’t find what exactly was missing.  Mr. Paul provided me with the “lightbulb” moment that I always try to create for my members. 

Mr. Paul’s ideas can be molded to match FIA’s methods.  Trainer’s role is not so much of teacher – student, but more a partnership to work together, the member learning English and culture and the trainer learning culture and something about the member.  Each member is a different journey and a unique experience that often differs from other members, especially when getting to the more advanced levels. 

The strategy begins with listing topics which the member is interested in.  If they cannot think of topics, the syllabus provides a list of ready made topics.  For each topic, the trainer and member brainstorm together to think of vocabulary words.  This is useful because it reinforces words that they already know, teaches them words that they may know in Japanese but not in English, and introduces new words provided by the trainer.  After that a series of exercises can be developed to get the member to use the vocabulary, such as:  Question and Answer, matching, discussions, stating an opinion / making an argument, solving a scenario, reading articles, etc.  Exercises can be crafted to match the level and the abilities of each member.  At a future meeting I hope to present on this and create a lesson plan with the other trainers. 

 

Jenny

Google as corpus and concordancer

This was an exploratory study of Google, consisting of 22 students, to identify phrases reflective of a naturalness of speech. The idea presented was based on using Google as a tool for English learners to check the naturalness of their writings and eliminate sentences and phrases that were dramatically incorrect or could trigger alarm to a native speaker. In accordance with this methodology, it is quite applicable and is applied in a similar fashion by proofreaders and editors.

The concept is based on focusing on sections of sentences that feel clumsy or unnatural. The key here is to not use the entire sentence.  Then, using quotation marks to search for the particular phrase in question, Google has access to billions of terms and applies a logarithm to capture the frequency of phrases (Another tool is Google Fight). The height of frequency determines how “natural” that phrase or a similar but varied version is in comparison.  This method identifies tightly bound phrases. However, with this in mind, Google is not subjected to an editorial process and can make mistakes, hindering it as only a step towards improving the writing and editing process.

An example shown in this study was a sentence written by one of the students evaluated, “I want to work with other country people”. The underlined portion was inserted into Google and searched under quotation marks. The results are as shown below:

 
The study looked at the new writing by students that used this process compared to the old writing. Evaluation was performed based on a change for the better (50%), no change (43%), or a change for the worse in sentences (7%). Students also evaluated this methodology based on their own experiences: using Google helped improve my sentences (36% strongly agree, 32% agree, 9% strongly disagree, etc.) and I enjoy using Google as a step in editing (50% agree, 9% agree, etc.). The negative aspects of using Google was that it was time consuming, sometimes it was difficult to identify which was a better phrase to search for, and Google does make errors.  The positive aspects appeared to outweigh these as students were able to discover other sentences using a particular phrase or word, it was a good editing tool, and students could learn good sentences that were not in a dictionary.

This lecture was of particular interest to me, as in the editing process, I use Google on an hourly basis to check and tweak unfamiliar and often clumsy sentences or words in writing. This is a process of elimination and allows an editor to identify the most commonly used terms in writing. It also helps improve the naturalness of the writing and contributes to a greater success rate in the publication of works, as often the search engine reflects what has been published or what is acceptable by journals and standard sources of scientific, mathematical, and medical works. 

 

Jimmy

Getting Creative:  Pecha-Kucha In The Classroom
By Rory Davies and Jack Ryan

This presentation was one that I had not intended on attending in the initial planning of my schedule while at JALT, but at the last minute, I decided to go check it out, and it ended up being one of the best presentations I had seen at the conference.

Mr. Davies and Mr. Ryan are instructors who work at Aichi University Toyohashi and have been teaching and using Pecha-Kucha in their classroom as a way to not only teach students how to do a presentation, but to also use it as a tool in the classroom for their English lessons.

In summary, Pecha-Kucha (ぺちゃくちゃ), which literally means “chit-chat” or “chattering” in Japanese, is a style of presentation that is based on a simple concept of showing a set of 20 slides with each slide shown for 20 seconds.  Using any type of presentation software, such as Powerpoint, each slide runs automatically based on the 20 second intervals and are out of the presenter’s control, so basically, a 20 slide presentation with each slide running for 20 seconds comes out to 6 minutes and 40 seconds, and forces the presenter to explain their presentation in as simple, direct, and creative as possible.  Say what you have to say and then sit down.

This presentation style originated a few years ago in a company in Tokyo where the manager felt his workers were spending too much time explaining too many details during their presentations.  He decided to set a time limit on their presentations to force his workers to be more direct and efficient.  The result came out to be Pecha-Kucha which has now become a popular way to do presentations, not only in Japan, but internationally around the world.  It is so popular, that it has spawned beyond the use in offices and into big events called Pecha-Kucha nights where people get together at nightclubs or restaurants and show off their Pecha-Kucha skills.

Mr. Davies and Mr. Ryan has used Pecha-Kucha with their own students in presentation projects where the students had to learn to be very creative and thoroughly think about how they are to do their presentations in the most efficient and simplest way in English.  In addition, besides teaching how to do presentations, they have used Pecha-Kucha in their classroom lessons such as teaching students how to quickly react in explaining topics, for example, telling a story, or giving directions to somewhere.  And learning how to scan and skim text quickly using TOEIC-type questions which helps the students get familiar with the test.  Overall, they have been using the method to have students learn how to quickly focus and concentrate on what is important when analyzing English in everyday situations.

It was a great presentation that provided many new ideas in a way where it can not only help improve in what we do in class for our students, but also help improve ourselves more professionally.  If you are interested in learning more about Pecha-Kucha, you can find tons of information both on Google and on YouTube where there are many examples that can be seen.

Zuri

Keeping it Real

The most interesting lecturer that I saw at JALT this year was a lady from Cambridge University Press named Leslie Anne Hendra.  She had three lectures that were based on learner centered teaching that is more useful than standard textbooks.  In other words, she said that teachers need to “keep it real” in the classroom.  With this “keep it real” theme, she specified that teaching language itself rather than focusing on the technicalities of grammar is more important for a learner.  This is all part of the Common European Framework or CEF.  The concept of CEF was first thought of in the late 1980s and finally came into practice in the mid 1990s.  This was established to make a standard teaching style for all the European languages.  What makes CEF so special is that it does not go by the original function of straight textbook exercises and the use of language that people do not use all of the time. Instead, it focuses on purposeful, real life objectives that prepare learners to use a language independently for global communication.

Many times, textbooks give examples of how grammar is related to the language, but it doesn’t necessarily go over how language relates to communication.  One interesting fact I learned is that there are 500,000,000 native English speakers in the world and 1,500,000,000 non-native English speakers who use English in their every day lives.  Why do they need English?  They need it for work related activities, such as travel and tele/virtual communications.  The importance of teaching English should not be focused on grammar but how to use the language in everyday life.  Since it is better to go with real situations, classes should be more focused on the goal of the language.  This is very similar to how we at F.I.A. use performance goals.  We use them as a basis of teaching certain kinds of language with the phrase “Student will be able to…” Another problem that arises when it comes to textbooks is that the language that it provides is sometimes outdated or not commonly used.  Languages are always changing and new technologies and ideas are increasing the amount of vocabulary in many languages.  Instead of following things from old school textbook, it is best to use two different methods when it comes to learning a new language.  One method is through others’ own experience.  How one uses language in everyday life is more important than what is in the book.  The other method is by looking up inside of a corpus for the most commonly used words in certain situations.  Corpuses are a good way to find common words for language use and helps learners get familiar with the more popular words used in English rather than learn words that people do not use everyday.  This is also useful for international communication. 

Since there are a wide variety of languages in certain parts of the world, English provides a common ground for communication between people.  Ms. Hendra brought up the four skills of language learning in her presentation, which are reading, writing, listening, and speaking.  She said that those things are important, but it is also important to learn about the “fifth skill”.  This “fifth skill” she refers to is intercultural awareness.  This is very important for learners who are interested in travel or speak regularly to people who do not share the same culture.  One example was the concept of time.  In Costa Rica (and other Latin American and South American countries), there is a concept of Costa Rican time along with normal time.  When dealing with international partners, they must establish whether or not a meeting will be conducted at regular time or Costa Rican time.  Costa Rican time is usually about thirty minutes after the time that they announced for a meeting or a dinner.  Knowing this will avoid confusion for travelers going to this area and places around it.  Making lessons that have an international basis can help learners with things like listening to other accents and understanding backgrounds to societies.  The last thing a learner wants to do is offend someone by accident due to not being aware of another culture.

 

 

See you at JALT 2011!!