Practice Lessons for Pre-service English Teachers

Today was our last day of classes at the university. In my English teaching methodology class I have been experimenting with different ways for students to do practice teaching in the class. It is extremely important for students to experience teaching because that is the only way they can link such theories as learning strategies, communicative competence, etc. to English teaching. However, practice teaching is not easy because I have 43 students in the class. This means that it is not feasible to have one or two students do their practice teaching in class and have the others pretend to be students. If we did this, then maybe each student would teach no more than one 10-minute lesson a semester. Therefore, I have decided to have students do their demonstration lessons in small groups. Here is what I did for our practice teaching day:

First, I chose four activities from the Internet TESL Journal:
Lesson 1: The Bragging Game

Lesson 2:  Verb Review Game
Lesson 3: (a) The Family (Worksheet)  (b) The Family (Text)  (c)  The Family (Teacher's Notes)

Lesson 4:  The Syllable Game

Then I divided the class into 5 groups of 8 students. Each group had 4 teaching pairs.

	Lesson 1	Lesson 2	Lesson 3	Lesson 4
Group A	Kota and Airi	May and Yui	Haruka and Emi	Miki and Saki
Group B	Mai and Chika	Kotaro and Shohei	Hiroki and Makoto	Hamaya and Matsun
Group C	Shunsuke and Hikaru	Masato and Tatsuki	Shunta and Satoru	Takumi and Eiki
Group D	Takahiro and Ai	Flowers and Machiko	Marin and Yurika	Yoshi and Ryouhei
Group E	Satoshi and Wataru	Ayu and Moe	Shiho and Kanako	Yui U and Takayuki

Then, each student was given the following blogging assignment (taken from our class blog):

I would like you to write the lesson plan in your blog specifying the following. Next week, you and your partner will conduct a 10 minute lesson based on your plan.

Activity:  What kind of activity is it?　Adjust the activity so that it encourages acquisition, interaction, or focus on form. Your activity can cover more than one of these.

Strategies: What kind of learning strategies does it encourage?

Learning styles: What kind of learning style is most appropriate for your activity?

Communicative competence: What kind of communicative ability does it encourage and why?

Procedures: Write the steps you will take to carry out the activity. At the ending of your activity, there should be some kind of reflection to help students realize the skill/strategy you wanted them to practice. 

See my sample lesson for an example 

Although you will be team-teaching, you should write the lesson plan in your own blog. It is ok to write the same thing as your partner.

The text books we use are the TKT Course and 新しい時代の英語科教育法と実践 . The items that I asked students to specify(Activities, strategies, learning styles and  communicative competence) were concepts that we studied in the textbooks. When we did the actual practice lessons, all groups did Lessons 1, 2, 3, 4 in that order. We were able to finish on time easily. What impressed me was that each pair of students taught their lessons differently depending on their goal. This meant that they were thinking very deeply about their teaching which I think is great. The problem areas were first, with five groups teaching at once it is hard to understand what each group is doing. I had two other teachers come to class that day to help me but I will not always have these kinds of resources. Second, I was not able to look at all the blogs before the class and give feedback on the lesson plans. I was just too busy. I was fortunate in that one of the other teachers volunteered to read the students' blogs. Third, sometimes when you are so busy orchestrating students' group work, keeping time, etc. it is hard to give students good comments on their lessons. Despite the problems, I am going to continue to use this format next semester. Although I need to think of ways that I can follow the students' lessons better, the most important thing is that the students, themselves, learn from this experience and determine themselves how they should improve.  

Impromptu Advising in "Class Conferences" and "Speech Contests"

The past few years I have been frequently asked to be a judge at a speech contest or an "advisor" for an "open class conference".  A speech contest is fairly self-explanatory. Judges will evaluate the contestants and before announcing the winners, one judge will speak for 5 to 10 minutes offering advice to the contestants about how they can improve their speeches. Occasionally, I am nominated to be this judge.

An open-class conference, on the other hand, might not be so clear to some of you. Schools in Japan will periodically conduct conferences for which they publish some kind of journal about their overall educational mission as well as the specific objectives and research agendas of each subject.  In the conference they conduct one open class per subject and this open class is then followed by a meeting between the class instructor and those who came to see this class. The meeting can last from 60 to 90 minutes. The instructors will present their overall objectives for their subject and then talk about their class specifically. This is followed by questions and opinions from the audience. Lastly, a university professor and/or a teacher supervisor from the Board of Education will speak for 10 to 20 minutes each offering their advice to the instructors.  They are fulfilling the role of an "advisor."Advisors' roles are usually to meet with the instructors a few weeks before the class to give them feedback on the lesson as well as speak at the conference. I am not a big fan of "the open class conference" because the advisors are treated as an authority and their opinions are never questioned (Of course, if people do not agree with the advisors, they can just ignore them). Nevertheless, if you work at a university or high school, at some point you might find yourself being asked to speak for 10 to 20 minutes in English or Japanese about English teaching or students' speeches. So, I thought I would write about my tricks of the trade.

First, my presentations are actually not impromptu. For open class conferences, I have seen the lesson plan and talked to the teachers beforehand so I already have an idea about the topics I can discuss: for example, teaching reading, writing, conducting group work, a specific grammar point, task based language teaching, etc. I also might think about the jokes I might tell or the analogies I might make before the conference starts. Before the conference, I will sometimes put information I have on these topics onto my IPad which I bring to the conference to use for recording field notes. With speech contests, usually I do not have this kind of luxury to predict what kind of topics I might discuss. 

Second, when I am watching the speeches or classes, I am not only concentrating on what I am observing, but in the back of my head, I am also thinking about possible talking points for my impromptu presentation. If I think of a talking point, I will immediately write it down. I try to write various talking points throughout the class or the speech. For example, the awful handwriting below shows the talking points that I wrote while watching an elementary school English class. I ended up discussing the HRT/JTE/ALT role, how to encourage more authentic communication in the class, and pronunciation tips. 

Third, after the class, I will try to speak to the other advisor to find out what he/she plans to discuss. The reason for me doing this is that one, I do not want to talk about the same thing and two, if my opinion is different, I want to consider how to present my perspective in a way that contrasts with that of the other advisor but does not put us in an awkward situation. In a speech contest, after the judges have decided the winners, I will ask the other judges what they want me to say in my feedback to the contestants. I will either add the other judge's advice to my talking points, make new talking points, or not include the judge's advice.

Fourth, in a speech contest, I speak soon after talking to the other judges. In an open class conference, I have more time to consider what I will say. I am usually adding smaller details to my main talking points while listening to the discussion in the meeting following the open class. If I hear a teacher speak his or her opinion and find it interesting, I might try to incorporate it into one of my talking points.

Lastly, when I speak, I sometimes tell the audience how many talking points I have. It makes it easier for the audience to take notes, of they so wish. I might say something like, "I want to talk about four conditions necessary to conduct group work smoothly" or "I want to discuss 4 areas of pronunciation that are difficult for Japanese students" etc. 

I should add that when I speak at elementary schools I usually do my presentation in Japanese and at junior high schools or speech contests I give my presentations in English. If I am to speak in Japanese, I find that I have to prepare more. When I speak in English, I find that I can make more rudimentary notes and get away with ad-libbing. When I first started doing this I was REALLY awful at it. I still do not consider myself that good, but I have found that I can, for the most part, give acceptable presentations. Maybe the most important thing is to smile, look like you are happy to be there, be in good spirits, and try your best to say something that will hopefully be useful to the people who have the unenviable task  of listening to you.

Learning Styles of Japanese JHS and SHS according to the Teachers

Today, I held a two day workshop on Task Based Language Teaching with 2 junior high school English teachers and 5 senior high school English teachers. For one of our activities we read an article by Jerry Call called "Expanding the Learning Styles of Japanese Analytic Learners" in the book Understanding Learning Styles in the Second Language Classroom by Joy M. Reid. As a task, we made a list of the characteristics of learning styles Call had given for Japanese learners and then discussed whether we agreed or disagreed. We ended up discussing about not only the characteristics that Call gave but also many other characteristics the teachers themselves gave. It was an interesting discussion. The main reason why was that each teacher worked with learners of differing learning characteristics. This reinforced my belief that it is difficult to make generalizations about a society of learners; even one as homogeneous as Japan. Below, I have written some of the characteristics Call and the teachers gave as well as the teachers' opinions.

Characteristic 1: Japanese learners are quiet

Opinion: The teachers were not sure about this characterization. Teacher M, a junior high school teacher, said that her students were not quiet and were especially enthusiastic about speaking English with foreign teachers (ALTs). She added that girls at her school tend to be good at writing but they cannot speak well while boys tended to be stronger at speaking.
Teacher C, a high school teacher, said that her students were quieter but it depended on the situation. In interview test students are very quiet but in class they are very noisy and like to imitate the ALT’s or Ms. C's English.
Teacher Min, a high school teacher, thought that Japanese learners, especially young learners, are very energetic to learn English. However, she said that in Japanese settings, students are supposed to be quiet and listen to the teacher. So, she believes tha that Japanese think that they are supposed to be quiet in class always.

Characteristic 2: Japanese learners are reflective, not impulsive (They tend to think things through carefully before they speak.
Opinion: Teacher K, a high school teacher, reported that an Canadian ALT at his school understood the phrase “The noisy whale gets the oil” but not "The peg sticking out gets hammered"(出るくいが打たれる）. He added though, it is hard to know whether Japanese students are really quieter than western students because he has never been to the west to compare.
Teacher R, a high school teacher. said that her school divides their English classes by student ability. In the higher level classes, students are more reflective but in the lower level they tend to be more impulsive.
Teacher Min concluded that Japanese people try to avoid risks, especially in public. They do not want to be embarrassed.

Characteristic 3: Group work tendencies - boys and girls in JHS and SHS do not work well together (Thought of by us)
Opinion: When Teacher E, a junior high school teacher, makes pairs she makes either boy/boy or girl/girl pairs. She said that to communicate fluently, boys cannot talk to girls and girls cannot talk to boys. I, JH, added that I have had similar experiences. Teacher MI, a high school teacher, said that she is very careful when making groups because the wrong combination of learners can have bed consequences for the class.
Teacher K said that in his school he has not seen such problems between boys and girls (except for one class). Teacher Min said that there was not so much tension between boys and girls at her school. She said that one reason could be is that when teachers read classlists or take attendance in some schools, they call boys names and girls names together. In many schools, boys are called first and then girls are called (or vice versa) when attendance is taken.
Teacher C said that she teachers a class where there is only one girl. She commented that the boys behaved differently when the girl was present compared to when she was absent. When the girl was present, the boys tended to be more reserved.

Characteristic 4: Japanese learners are Reticent
Teacher M (JHS) said that she does not think so, because students at her school like to speak English. In JHS, the like to play games. They speak English naturally when ALT comes to the classroom. But, in writing they don’t try to write. I don’t think they are good at making sentences.
Teacher C (SHS) said that her students like to read English or repeat after her but when she gives them activities where they have to write about themselves they do not want to do it. She concluded that students can write about other things but not about themselves. She added that maybe JHS students are not reticent but as they become older they become reticent.