Using Vocabulary Notebooks Part 5

Well, I just finished presenting about using vocabulary notebooks (VNs) at the annual Japan Society of English Education Conference in Aichi. I will summarize how I used vocabulary notebooks and what I learned from using them. Again, as I have written before, I introduced vocabulary notebooks as a tool for students to learn how to use the words they were exposed to in class.

First, I tried Process A for using vocabulary notebooks:

Process A

• Students record words into their VNs for homework→
• Students share their VN entries with each other at the beginning of class (They exchange sheets and quiz each other) → 
• Speaking, reading or writing activity using the VN words →
• Students update their VNs with new knowledge

Below is the sheet I ended up using. In "Using vocabulary notebooks part 3" I explained each item on the sheet in detail. 

As I explained in the last post, in the first quiz we did after Activity A a total of two times for 15 words in the textbook, students struggled to write important information and example sentences. In the quiz, students were supposed to choose 5 words for which to write "other forms", "important information," and "example sentences." I told students that they did not have to learn to use all the words productively. Rather, they should choose which words to use productively based on their frequency and whether or not the word is related to their fields. Below, is a student's quiz. I have written the overall class averages for each item. The student got the fourth best score in the class but as you can see even she struggled to write "important information". Additionally, she only used the "important information" to make one example sentence. Eleven out of the 21 students who took the test left the "important information" field completely blank.

After giving the quiz, I thought that students must not have written the "important information" into their vocabulary notebooks, but the student above actually wrote word information for 9 of the words. The word sheet from her vocabulary notebook is below.

What happened? Students wrote action logs about their quizzes and I categorized their comments into the following:

Action log comments about the quizzes N=19
Category	Number
Did not study	6
Confident with their performance	4
Could not write example sentences	3
Could not understand the English definitions in the quizzes.	3
Wrote comments, but not about the quiz	2
no comment	2

Obviously, one reason that students did not do so well was because they did not study. However, they also wrote that they could not write example sentences. No one said anything about important information. I decided to introduce a new vocabulary notebook process into the class and hope that students would do better on the next quiz after experiencing the first one.

For the next unit of the textbook, we did Process A and Process B. Process B was:

Process B

• Speaking/ writing/ reading activity → 
• Students record words that they learned in the activity → 
• Students change sheets and quiz each other →
• As a class we choose which words to have on the quiz

We had the following set of words from the two processes:

Process A: Textbook words (Theme = Landmines)	Process B (Words from class activities)
Words A landmine, ban, burn, poverty, explosion, victim, injury, medical care,  treaty, blindness, valuable, conflict, cluster bomb	present, distinguish, laziness, confidence, introduction, demand, aim

To make a long story short, the students did a better job using the Process B words productively in the test. However, one of the reasons for this was I had given the students "important information for words like "distinguish" (e.g, distinguish A from B). However, this got me thinking that maybe students would do better learning the words they chose to learn rather than the words. 

After the quiz, I gave students a questionnaire, where they had to write whether or not they agreed/disagreed with the below statements and why:

• It is easy for me to find a word’s “important information” (Agree/Disagree)
• Result: Agree 7/ Disagree 12
• It is easy for me to learn a word’s “important information”  (Agree/Disagree)
• Result: Agree 2/ Disagree 17

The students who disagreed with these statements wrote that there were so many kinds of "important information" that they did not know which to learn. For example, if students looks up the work "introduction," they will find the following collocations, "introduction of," "introduction to," and "make introductions." There is a lot of information and they do not know whether to learn all the information or which of the information they should learn.  

At this stage of the semester, we had about four weeks left. For the last unit of the textbook, we did "Process A" for using vocabulary notebooks and then I tried "Process C" two times:

Process C

• Students complete an adjective with preposition worksheet (1st time)/ verb with preposition work sheet (second time) → 
• Students write 4 words they want to learn in their VNs (students are instructed to make REAL sentences)
• Students change sheets and quiz each other

At the ending of this cycle I gave students one more quiz. For this quiz, students had six words from the textbook (land mines) and I asked them to write other forms, important information, and example sentences for two of the words. Then, they had to choose any 4 adjectives and 4 verbs they learned from the grammar practice and write all the information into their quiz. Here is one student's quiz:

	Other forms	Important information	Example sentences	Overall average
Quiz 1	54%	24%	59%	59%
Quiz 2	57%	35%	68%	63%
Quiz 3	47%	62%	68%	70%

I think students probably did best on Quiz 3 because:

1. They did not have to discover the collocations for the verbs or adjectives themselves, they learned the collocations from the grammar sheets.
2. The verbs and adjectives that students chose to learn were high-frequency, common words.
3. Students had written meaningful sentences about the verbs and adjectives and perhaps this left a bigger impression on their memories.
4. Students reported that they "studied hard" for this quiz because it was their last one.

Overall, based on my experience so far, I will end this post by making the following recommendations for using vocabulary notebooks:

• Understanding parts of speech, collocations, and dictionary skills is essential for effective VN use. This can take students a semester or more to understand, and teachers will have to vote significant and valuable time to practicing this. I realized that if I had done an activity like Process C at the beginning of the year, students might have learned how to write "other information" sooner. Nevertheless, on their evaluation of vocabulary notebooks, students wrote that "important information" was helpful to learn a word.
• Students should use the VNs to produce meaningful language (Having students write true example sentences about themselves is better) . Sometimes students copy sentences they don't understand from dictionaries. The drawback for having students write their own, original sentences, however, is that many times they write incorrect sentences into their vocabulary notebooks (approximately 25% of example sentences that students wrote in their VNs was incorrect).
• Students might do better remembering more frequent words or words that they choose. 
• In a questionnaire, some students wrote “The word sheets were too big to use in the train” as a minus for using vocabulary notebooks. This means that students were likely studying for the quizzes on their was to university right before class started. For remembering the breadth of information on the vocabulary sheets, some kind of learning schedule should be introduced so students can plan adequate time to learn the productive information of a word.
• Students should not learn the productive information for all the words in their vocabulary notebooks! They should choose which words they think they should learn to use! I think this is important for autonomous learning.
•  Notebook sheets can become disorganized. Have a place for students to write the topic on each sheet. 
•  If you require that students write certain words in their notebooks, it is best to post the list on-line so that students who miss class can catch up. 
• Quizzes motivate students to update their VNs but they can be time consuming to grade for the teacher and time consuming for the students to take.
• The teachers should periodically collect students vocabulary sheets to see whether or not they are writing them correctly. It is impossible to examine the sheets in detail, but writing a comment or giving the students a check I think will motivate them to continue to write their sheets.
• Students should also write their own words into the sheets and they should be evaluated on the words.

The following issues with using vocabulary notebooks remain:

• It is very time consuming to make and grade quizzes as well as collect vocabulary sheets. Is there anything I can do to speed up this process?
• Students only write words in their sheets because I tell them too. Am I encouraging autonomous learning?
• Students often write wrong information into their notebooks and it is impossible for the teacher to point out every single wrong piece of information.
• Vocabulary notebooks take time away from other activities we could be doing.
• I thought the averages for the quizzes, although improved, were low. Was the level of difficulty to high? Were the students not putting out enough effort? Or, is the VN program I have fundamentally flawed in some way?
• How can I introduce a memory schedule for learning words and would students really follow it?

Overall, I am glad that I tried it this semester and the students were generally positive about the intervention. I think that the students and myself learned how to use dictionaries better, what constitutes productive knowledge of a word, the importance of learning high frequency word, and strategies for learning to use words productively. I will continue this next semester, but from now on I should probably start blogging about what I am supposed to be researching full time: jr. and senior high school English teacher development in Japan.

Lastly, if anyone out there actually dared to read this monstrosity of a long post, I thank you.

Using Vocabulary Notebooks Part 4

Well, I wrote a somewhat positive post last time about students' reactions to the vocabulary notebooks (VNs) in the last post. Well, after the students' first quiz, strictly speaking from the standpoint of the results, the VNs appear to have been almost worthless. 

In the quiz, the students had an English or Japanese definition of a word in our textbook. They then had to write the English word and part of speech of that word. Then, they had to write "another form" and "important information" for 5 of the words and "example sentences" for six of the words. For other information, they were supposed to write information that would help them use a particular word. For example, for a verb such as "protest" the could write what prepositions go it, such as "against." For the example sentence they could write something like, "We protested against the new tax law." To find out this information, I was hoping that they would use a dictionary and had devoted quite a bit of class time to demonstrating such dictionary use strategies and made a rudimentary webpage that linked to various dictionaries.

I do not have the exact statistics with me but of the 21 students who took the quiz, only about 4 wrote five entries for "other information." Also, only four students could demonstrate that they knew how to use a word in the "example sentence section." Sentences such as "My brother is alcoholism" for the word "alcoholism" and "I protest to the law" for protest showed me that many students had no idea how to use the words.

What happened?

I did not collect students' vocabulary sheets but I did ask students to write about the quizzes in their action logs. The majority of the students who did poorly simply wrote that they did not study. Others wrote that is was difficult to understand words that were defined in English. Lastly, others wrote that it was too difficult for them to write example sentences. Obviously, one factor is that students did not study. Even if they did not study, though, I would think that through writing their VNs and experiencing the words in class, they would still be able to make good guesses about how to use the words. This was not the case which means that another undeniable factor is that the students and I are not on the same page about using VNs as a means of developing productive knowledge of the language. 


Tomorrow, we will have class again and I will emphasize the following:


First, students might seemed overwhelmed by having to write so much information for every single word. However, they do not have to learn to use every single word that they encounter. Rather, they should learn to use words that they think are important for them to learn or that are frequent words in English. They will only have to answer word usage information on the words they want to learn to use. So, they do not have to write exhaustive information for every new word in class.


Second, I will go over why I think writing "How to use" information is important and show them how to do it again. Basically, in the end, I cannot teach them how to use English, they have to teach themselves and using dictionaries to confirm how to use a word is one way (of very many).


In a couple of weeks, I will provide an update. I will also collect their vocabulary sheets to determine what kind of information they wrote.  

Using Vocabulary Notebooks Part 2

This blog post is about Step 1 of my action research on using vocabulary notebooks to encourages students to use vocabulary learning strategies to write and speak more accurate and intelligible English. 

Steps in Action Research

Step 1) Identifying an issue, problem, or puzzle we wish to investigate in our own context

Step 2) Thinking and planning an appropriate action to address the concern

Step 3) carrying out the action

Step 4) Observing the apparent outcomes of the action

Step 5) reflecting on the outcomes and other possibilities

Step 6) repeating these steps again

As I wrote before, I had been teaching one general English class for a number at a university and felt that students were not making as much progress in terms of becoming more accurate and articulate users of the language as I would have liked. Before trying this intervention, my first step was to try to identify the students' problems in producing English. So I gave them the below task:

Please introduce yourself to me. Tell me why you chose to attend University X. What is your dream for after university? How do you plan to spend your 4 years here? What are your goals for this class? Also, please tell me anything else you think I should know. 

I then underlined their errors in their writing using the  error codes (I actually call them feedback codes) that I developed a few years ago. What I do is I underline errors and give them a particular marking. Students have a feedback code sheet that tells them the meaning of a particular mark and then they try to fix the mistake. Here is the abbreviated version:

Verb form (V): There are four types of V errors that mark errors related to verb usage or incompatible prepositions with verbs.

Noun Ending (NE): Errors in singular/plural or with apostrophes

Article (ART): Error in article usage.

Word Choice (WC): There are four types of WC errors which can indicate that the wrong word form, an incorrect preposition, or an unidiomatic word of phrase.

Sentence Structure (SS): There are 6 types of sentence structure errors. Sentences, phrases, or words labeled SS need more words, need less words, should be rewritten, should be moved to a different position in the sentence, or should be corrected with another sentence. 

There were students errors in their self introductions as well as the average number of words. By far the most frequent error type was SS2.

WC1	WC2	WC3	WC4	ART	NE	SS2	SS3	SS4	SS5	V1	V2	V3	Words
2	5	2	5	25	14	70	19	0	2	11	2	6	131.3

An SS2 is a sentence level error and basically means that the sentence the student wrote needs to be rewritten because there is an error in sentence level syntax or the phrases used do not have the meaning that the students intended. Here are some examples of SS2 errors:

• Because of I chose to attend University X is I want to study knowledge of information and software.
• Second is University has four major difficult each other. 

I returned the paper to the students with the handout that contained the error codes. I then asked them to fix the sentences marked with SS2 by doing the following:

1) Write the sentence  on a separate piece of paper.

2) Write what you wanted to say in Japanese (Often, I could not tell what they wanted to write so this was necessary.

3) Write the corrected sentence below the Japanese.

After they did this, I collected their work and corrected it if necessary.

Here is an example of a student's original error, the intended meaning in Japanese, their correction, and, lastly, my correction if necessary.

SS2	For example, they are thinking as important the cooperation with other medical fields and the nursing training
Japanese	X大学は、他の医療分野との連携と実習を重視している。
Student	University X is thinking as important the cooperation and training.
Jimbo	University X is placing importance on cooperating with other medical fields and nurse training.

After doing this, I also told them that having an SS2 error was not necessarily bad because often it meant that they were experimenting with new and challenging language. I added that those students who did not have any SS2 errors might not have challenged themselves as those who did. However, I also said that if their papers had too many SS2 errors that could also be a problem. It either meant that they used a translating program to do their paper or they could have been more careful about looking up how to use unknown words before writing them. I explained to them three possible causes of SS2 errors and possible measures to take to reduce these mistakes:

Cause 1: Confusion about sentence grammar. 

Measure to take: This often happens when students try to write sentences that are more long and complicated than they have to be. One idea is to try to write more concisely or simply using the English that you know.

Example of Cause 1: I want to become a teacher to engage in about the teaching of the elderly person in the future. 

A more concise sentence: I want to become a teacher for elderly people in the future.  

Cause 2: Confusion about the meaning of a word or phrase. 

Measure to take: If you are not one percent sure about the meaning or usage of a word or phrase, look it up in a dictionary and see if the meaning or usage matches what you want to say.

Example of Cause 2: I thought that the revival advanced more. (The learner is talking about recovery from the tsunami my prefecture experienced last year)

Sentence with more appropriate vocabulary: I thought that the recovery had advanced more. 

  

Cause 3: Confusion about the grammar or collocations of a particular word or phrase. 

Measure to take:  Look up the collocations or how the word works grammatically in a dictionary 

Example of Cause 3: But I will try hard as possible as. 

Sentence with appropriate phrase grammar: But I will try as hard as possible.  

In summary, here is what I think the problem is: Students' most common error were sentence-level errors not superficial errors. Most often, students themselves cannot fix these errors and I need them to translate the sentence into Japanese so I can know what they were trying to say. This indicates that students can become confused over sentence structure and proper usage of certain vocabulary and phrases. 

I want the students to use vocabulary notebooks to write down the meaning of a certain word/phrase that they want to learn and any information such as collocations, how the word works grammatically, example sentences, etc. that will help them learn to use the particular words or phrases.  I want students to become more careful users of the language so that they can be their own self-editors, improving their intelligibility in the language. In the next post, I will talk about Steps 2 and 3, planning and then taking an action.

Conversational Framing and Discussions in Japan

I have just read a chapter in Framing in Discourse edited by Deborah Tannen. The Chapter is called "Cultural Differences in Framing" and the author is Suwako Watanabe.

Watanabe compared the behavior in a group discussion of a group of Japanese students studying in the USA to that of a group of US university students. I thought that the results of her study have implications for holding discussions in the Japanese EFL classroom so I have decided to write about Watanabe's study.

First, let me explain to you what a frame is. Well, before I tell you what a frame is, let me warn you that there does not seem to be a simple one sentence definition. Both Watanabe and Tannen devote a couple of pages to reviewing related psychological and linguistic theories before defining what a frame is. Skipping all the theoretical background, I frame is defined as "sets of expectations about people, objects, settings and ways to interact." In other words are past experiences in interacting with people will have a significant impact on how we approach a communicative situation. For example, Tannen (1993) conducted a study where she had Greek EFL students and US university students watch and then describe a 6 minute silent movie. The US students interpreted this as being some kind of test and tried very hard to summarize everything that had occurred in the movie. The Greek students, on the other hand, focused more on relaying the message of the movie by trying to interpret the feelings of the characters and the reasons for their actions. Thus, it appears that both groups approached the same communicative situation in different ways.

In Watanabe's study, 4 groups of 4 US students each and 3 groups of 4 Japanese students each were given 20 (or 30?) minutes to discuss the following questions:

1. Why did you decide to learn Japanese? (or) Why did you decide to study abroad?
2. For Americans, it is said that Japanese is harder to learn than other European foreign languages, do you agree or disagree?
3. Discuss misunderstandings that are likely to occur between Japanese and Americans and give examples.

Watanabe found the following differences in the way both groups approached the discussion:

Beginning the Discussion: The Japanese groups spent time at the beginning deciding who would speak first, second, third etc. and the procedures of the discussion. In one group, the order of the discussion was decided by age with the oldest person speaking last. Watanabe writes that members of a Japanese group are conscious of the hierarchy of the members and this hierarchical order governs the behavior of its members.
In the US group, on the other hand, once the researcher, Watanabe, left the room they immediately began the discussion by saying "OK" and talking. There was absolutely no discussion on the order of which people would speak.

Ending the Discussion: In the Japanese groups there was a consensus that the discussion should be ended. In one group, the oldest member was the one who closed the discussion. In the US group, the discussion ended when the participants ran out of things to say.

Giving Reasons for Question 1: Members of the Japanese groups tended to give detailed, chronological stories on why they decided to study abroad. Members if the US groups tended to give brief reasons about what they decided to study abroad.

Argumentative Strategies for Question 2: Members of the Japanese groups spoke once each about their opinion on question 2. Their opinions tended to be long and cover multiple perspectives: discussing the easy and difficult points of learning Japanese. There was no disagreeing among the participants. Members of the US group tended to either be on one side (Japanese is easy) or the other (Japanese is difficult). Usually, they would give a single reason and then add another later on. Thus, participants spoke multiple times, in addition there were many disagreements.

Watanabe concludes that while the Japanese participants in this study were very conscience of establishing the hierarchy of the group members and maintaining group harmony the US participants tended to see themselves as 4 individuals gathered only for the purpose of the discussion.

Implications
My experience as an American is that when I participate in discussions with people I do not know well, I do not worry so much about the other participants. Rather, I say what I want to and then listen to what other people have to say sometimes agreeing or disagreeing. In the classroom or workshops I have conducted, however, students/participants tend to exhibit behavior closer to the Japanese participants of Watanabe's study. I think that there is a danger of US teachers in Japan misinterpreting their students' hesitancy during a discussion. For example, they might believe that their students are too shy to hold a discussion or that Japanese students just don't like to talk. I think for group discussion to work in a US-teacher fronted classroom, it is important for the teacher to understand that the participant's expectations as to how a discussion should be held might differ from their own.

Let me give an example, last month at my university we held a public debate. There were about 40 people who attended, all of whom were local elementary, junior and senior high school teachers. The topic of the debate was

"English should be taught to all elementary school teachers"

One group of 5 brave students from the English department argued for and another even braver group of 5 students argued against the above statement. The audience were divided into groups before the debate began. After the "for" and "against" team made their opening statements I asked each group to take 10 minutes and prepare questions to ask the "for" and "against" team (During this time the "for" and "against" team prepared to cross-examine each other. Most groups were not able to think of questions as a group or discuss the opening statements. Beforehand, I had assumed that when I would ask the groups to think of questions to ask the debating teams that they would dive into the task as they were all teachers. However, this was probably my cultural bias. In my own experience when participating in group discussions I focus more on the task than the other group members. However, in the Japanese context, knowing the other group members and one's place within the group seems to be important. Thus, next time I coordinate a similar event, I will 1) provide time for self-introductions, 2) make sure that each group has a moderator (one of the people helping me to coordinate the event) who will be able to help the group break the ice and determine who speaks in what order etc.

Above is a picture of the debate teams and their proud advisers.

An Experimental Task at a High School

Next week (October 1) I will be doing my annual Kenkyuujugyou (open class) for 20 jr. high school students I have never met and then I will give a 90 minute lecture to English teachers observing my lesson about Task Based Language Teaching. It just so happens that last week I was asked to give a 90 minute lecture in Japanese about "university life" to two groups of 87 and 29 high school students, respectively. The first group consisted of first and second year students (US equivalent is sophomores and juniors) and the second group consisted of 3rd year students. As a warm-up for my task-based lesson at the junior high school, I decided to give a 20-minute "mini demonstration lesson" at the ending of my lecture at the high school.

The task that I had students do was similar to the global education activity I introduced a few months ago. After doing the task, I gave students a short questionnaire to fill out. Through giving this questionnaire, I wanted to know why students who talked to their partner and completed the task were able to do so and why students who could not communicate with their partner were not able to do so. I was hoping that identifying some factors of why students failed and succeeded in language learning tasks would help me plan my task-based lesson for next week.
---------------------------------------------
Here is what I did for the task:
A. Pre-Task: (Preparation for the Main Task)
Step 1. Students were given page 1 of the following document. In the document the world is divided into 11 regions. It asks students "if the world only had 100 $1 bills, how many dollar bills would be in each region? " The teacher explains in English to students what they should do.
Step 2. Students individually write the number of dollar bills that each region should have. (5 minutes)

Step 3. Students watch a video of the teacher and a colleague doing the Main Task (see below)
B. Main Task
Step 4. Students compare their answers with a partner and agree on how much dollar bills should be in each region They do this in English. (7 minutes) . The outcome of this task is a completed chart whose figures both students can agree on.
C. Post-Task
Step 5. The teachers calls an pairs to give their answers and ask why they gave such answers. (5 minutes).

I knew that step 4 would be very difficult for students to do, so I had them watch the below video of me and a colleague doing the same task before doing pair work.



For the first group of 87 students, we had little time to do the task but for the second group we had more time and also the number of students, 29, was much fewer so I was actually able to help students that were in trouble. Anyway, after the task I asked students to write whether they strongly agreed, agreed, disagreed or strongly disagreed with the below statement. I was interested in learning why students were either able or not able to interact with each other in English for the Main Task (Step 4).

I talked to my partner about how many dollar bills should be in each region.

In the first group, 25 students wrote that they either strongly agreed or agreed while 3 wrote that they disagreed.

In the second group, 45 students wrote that they either strongly agreed or agreed while 35 wrote that they strongly disagreed or disagreed. You can see all the data here. I was surprised that so many students were able to do the task successfully.

I then asked students to give reasons why they agreed or disagreed. I organized the responses into categories. Below are the categories, the number of responses that fell within a category, and a description of the category.

Categories for Responses of Students who were able to communicate in English

(Please click on the above link to see the actual responses)

Attitude (10 responses): Respondents were positive about doing the activity and did not feel any anxiety.
Effort (10 responses): Respondents communicated meaning by any means possible: gestures, words etc.
Fun (2 responses) : The activity was fun and the respondents wanted to participate
Knowledge (11 responses) : Respondents were able to use the English that they knew.
Motivation (3 responses) : Respondents had a strong desire to speak in English
Pre-task (13 responses) : The video demonstration of the task was helpful
Teacher (4 responses) : The teacher's explanation was easy to understand or the teacher helped individual students

Teamwork (17 responses): Respondents were able to work well with their partner to complete the task.
Japanese (1 response): Respondents used Japanese to complete the task.

Categories for Responses of Students who were not able to communicate in English

Attitude (1 response): Respondents were not positive about engaging in the task.
Cannot understand the activity(19 responses): Respondents did not understand the English directions, the activity was generally too difficult, they had no idea what to do, or the chart was confusing.
Knowledge・ability (8 responses): Respondents felt that they lacked specific knowledge or ability to do the task
Performance Anxiety(9 Responses): Respondents were embarrassed about speaking English or just shy in general, they did not know how they should speak during the speaking activity.

My Analysis
The Successful Students
Students who successfully communicated with a classmate to fill out a chart were able to do so because they did not feel much anxiety, had a good working relationship with their partner, communicated their thoughts by any means possible, were able to use the English knowledge that they had, or took advantage of the video demonstration to help them do the task. These students were able to accomplish the task with their friends, using clues, relying on their own knowledge or communicative strategies. In other words, these students found a way to get the job done by themselves in a variety of manners rather than relying on ad nauseum explanations from the teacher. I think that an effective task enables students to use the knowledge that they already have but also try to experiment and use new language like the language that they saw from the video. It is ideal for students to be interested in the task, have enough confidence in their English ability to use it, have a good working relationship with their peers, and be willing to use communicative strategies.

The Unsuccessful Students
Most students reported that they were unable to do the task because they were lost from the beginning. Students also reported that they were not successful because they lacked the abiltiy to do the task or felt nervous or awkward using English with a peer. It was my impression that many of the unsuccessful students froze and felt very anxious from the beginning. They felt awkward asking for help or asking their peers what they should do. In the second group, I was able to help some students who were in trouble and they were able to complete the task. In the group of 87 students, I was too overwhelmed.

Many of the students wrote that they were not used to this kind of activity and I believe that a lot of students who have been able to do a similar task if given the opportunity to try again. Usually, the first time you try a new activity with students, many do no understand what is going on. When they have the opportunity to try the task again, though, they usually do much better the second time. Thus, I think that experiencing success can help relieve students of the anxiety and stress they feel when doing tasks that require them to follow directions in English and work with a peer in English.

Concerning group work and pair work, I think that the teacher has to a little careful in putting students with peers who they will be comfortable working with or whose diverse abilities or personalities would make the group dynamic and exciting.

When I teach my class in the junior high school next week I have decided that I am going to take my time introducing the task and making sure that students understand what they are supposed to be doing. Last week, I rushed through the task because it was just supposed to occupy the last few minutes of a lecture. I think that if I do not hurry learners they will do better and be able to overcome the anxiety they feel.

Lastly, a lot of students answered "I just didn't know how I should speak English" during the communicative activity even though I showed them the video beforehand. I think that many students are not familiar with using communicative strategies. so, when I teach at the jr. high school next week one of my goals will be to help students learn communicative strategies.

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.