Adapting a Task to a Junior High School (An Update)

In a previous post, I wrote about the how my graduate students and I were struggling to adapt a task to use at a junior high school. After a lot of negotiation, we were able to agree on a framework for conducting the task. The framework was based on the one in Jane Willis's A Framework for Task Based Learning . The task type was a Jumble. In a jumble, students have to arrange strips of text into its correct order. For the jumble, we used the story "Sylvester and the Magic Pebble" by William Steig. We made cards of the story (see below). Each card had a picture from the story and we rewrote the text using mainly words that the junior high school students had studied up to that point.




The graduate students taught a total of 4 second grade classes at the JHS, each class had close to 40 students. There were three graduate students and each class was taught by 2 graduate students; one would be the main teacher and the other would serve as the assistant teacher. The goals of the lesson were the following:

1. JHS students see the words that they have studied in a different context from the textbook and reinforce their understanding of these words.
2. JHS students use the language that they know to organize the cards with their partners. This will give them practice in using communicative strategies and it is hoped that this activity will make it easier for students to use English with each other the next time they do a similar activity.
3. Organizing the cards helps students understand how pieces of text fits together to make a whole.
   

Perhaps the main goal of the class was number 2. Although the JHS students had many opportunities to write English, read English, and use English in speeches, they had little experience using English in free, spontaneous speech.

Below is how the class was organized.

Pre Task

1. The teachers introduce the topic:
Teachers, "Today we are going to read a story about a donkey named Taro. Taro likes stones. In the story, Taro finds a magic stone but something terrible happens to him. What happens?

2. Teachers tell students the goal.
The teachers wrote the goal of the class was "To put the story together in English". This goal was a little difficult for the students to understand.

3. Teachers teach new words.
The teachers taught students new words that appeared in the story.

4. Teachers demonstrate how to do the jumble
The teachers demonstrates to students how to do the jumble and pasted phrases they thought would be useful for students to learn on the blackboard (See the picture below).
The teachers explained that there were two rules for jumble: 1) The students should read and understand the text first. 2) The students should use only English and they can use the phrases on the board.



5. The teachers confirm that learners understand the instructions
Actually, the teachers only did this in one of four classes. This class was the most successful class.

During the pre task stage, the learners were supposed to listen for useful expressions to use for the task. Learners were not given any time to plan for the task.

Task Cycle

Task
1. Students do the tasks in pairs
2. The teachers let the students do the task but offer support to those who need it. They also encourage pairs to use English.
3. At the ending of the task the teachers show students the order of the story.

Planning
1. Students write a transcript of the dialogue they had in the task.
The point of this is for students to be able to analyze the English that they used in the task.

2. The pairs make groups of 4 and each pair reenacts their dialogue. The pair that is listening is supposed to write down useful words and phrases.
The point of this was for students to hear the phrases their classmates had used for the task and learn about the variety of language that could be used.

Reporting
1. The teachers call on various students to perform their dialogue in front of the class.

Post Task (Language Focus)

1. The teachers give students metalinguistic feedback on the reports.
2. Students write a self evaluation

Positive and Negative Aspects of the Classes

I will start with the positives:

JHS students made a strong effort to use English.
One JHS student wrote the following:(Jimbo translation)
"I was able to confirm the meaning in English with my partner when I did not understand something. It was really difficult to use only English but I was surprised that I could do so by using such simple phrases as 'Yes' and 'This is'."

JHS students realized the importance of using English.
One JHS student wrote:
"Up until now I could not really use the English that I had studied, I was not so skilled at English. From now on I was to study 'English that I can use". (Jimbo translation)

The JHS students were able to learn from friends.
"Listening to other people's conversations, I learned a lot of new expressions and could use them. I want to use these expressions in the next class." (Jimbo translation)

The JHS teacher reported that students’ comments made her realize that her students wanted to try speaking more.

Here are the negative aspects:
After each class, students were asked to comment on how much English they used in the jumble. Here are the results:

How much English did you use during the jumble?
	Class C	Class D	Class A	Class B	Total
Almost all English	6	21	7	9	43
Half English and half Japanese	18	13	26	28	85
Almost all Japanese	14	5	4	0	23

Class D was the only class where the teachers confirmed that students understood the demonstration of the jumble task. The students said no and the teachers gave a quick explanation in Japanese. The students then said "Oh, I see" and most succeeded in doing the task mainly in English. In the other classes the students were not sure what they had to do for the jumble task and struggled to use English. Through this experience, we learned the importance of introducing the task well in the pre-task phase. One of my students wrote:

"Even if you have a good task, it will not work unless the teachers present it well.

In all the classes the students struggled with the "planning" stage of the task cycle. The reason for this was that the teachers told them to write down their conversation but did not say why they should do so. So, the students did not know that they were supposed to transcribe their conversation so that they could present it to their classmates and, so, in turn, their classmates could learn new words and phrases by listening to their presentation.

Students thought that they could only use the expression on the blackboard for the jumble when there were other expressions that they wanted to use.

There was not sufficient time to go through the task cycle and the class was rushed.

The teachers had a difficult time giving the students spontaneous feedback in the post task (language focus) phase. For example, the teachers heard the students say the expression "How about you" in the following way in the report stage:
Student: "This card is here, how about you?"
The teachers said this was a good expression to use for the jumble when in fact the usage of this expression was incorrect.

The teachers did not discuss how the sentences fit together after the task.

Implication for Using Tasks in Teacher Education

The teacher-educator should consider making the lesson plan:
I had the student-teachers make the lesson plan and they must have given me 5 or 6 versions before it had my final approval. I think that making the lesson plan was a good experience for the student-teachers but they spent so much time working on the lesson plan that they did not have much time to practice presenting the task, explaining the planning stage etc. In the future, I will consider making the lesson plan myself so that the student-teachers have more time to practice doing the lesson. If we do a similar practice a second time, the students can design the lesson as they will have a better idea what doing a task in a JHS entails.

If the JHS students and the teacher educators are doing a task for the first time consider an alternative framework to Willis's task cycle
Personally, the cycle has worked for me well. However, if teachers and students are doing the task for the first time it will take them longer to complete the task. Fifty minutes if probable too short. Thus, we should consider thess options:

1. They do the jumble task, reflect on it, and then move onto another activity. There is no planning or reporting.
2. Students do the jumble task, relfect on it and get feedback from the teacher, do a different jumble task, and see if their performance was any better.
   

The difficulty of adapting tasks to Japanese Jr. High Schools without destroying them

I teach a graduate school seminar on Task Based Language Learning. For the seminar we have read the Willis book, a Framework for Task Based Learning, and a chapter from the new Paul Nation book, Teaching ESL/EFL Listening and Speaking which gives a lot of good ideas for tasks. The class consists of 3 Japanese graduate students and a researcher from Pakistan. Next week, they will go to a junior high school (JHS) and teach a lesson that is supposed to feature a language learning task. Our goal (or at least the goal that I imposed) is the following:

"Design a task supported lesson that will encourage communication and interaction among junior high school students to reinforce their understanding of how to use the language they have studied up to that point."

Last week the student-teachers designed a lesson plan which consisted of a jumbling task, where the JHS kids would have to order a story, and then a writing task where the JHS kids would have to write the ending of the story. The problem was that the story was too complex for the JHS kids and the writing task was too long. We went to the JHS last Thursday to present the plan to the teacher and she rightly pointed out that it would take about 3 classes to do such a task. On the way back to the university from the JHS I reiterated to the student-teachers that they needed to drastically reduce the content.

Tonight I got the new lesson plan from the student-teachers and I was shocked. The lesson is only task by name. It changed to a typical JHS lesson. To make a long story short, they plan to read half a story to the JHS kids in English, have them write the ending of the story in Japanese, and then change the story to English. Last the kids will read their English story to each other. What is worse is that the JHS where they will teach did a similar lesson which the student-teachers observed. The lesson was actually pretty good. What bothers me is that the graduate students' lesson is like a bad imitation. If they are going to fail, I want them to at least fail trying something original.

After they made their first lesson I encouraged the student-teachers to "adapt" tasks to the JHS. By "adapt" I meant reduce the content and think about how they could change the task to encourage the JHS students' language use. For some reason, they seemed to perceive my "adapt" to be completely destroy. We have one week until the lesson and I will meet with the graduate students tomorrow. Let's see what happens.

A speaking task where students did not interact and an interesting discussion with my students

This is a follow-up to my previous post about a speaking task I did in a university freshman English class. In the previous class the students exchanged profiles. As a follow-up, in the next lesson we did if the "World were 100 people" activity (I admit that I am using task and activity interchangeably here) which I had used various times in other classes. In this activity, students filled out a worksheet (html version - some mistakes) (pdf version-some mistakes) citing statistics about the world if it were a village of 100 people.

The worksheet looked something like this:

If the world were 100 people
there would be ____________ Asians
there would be ____________ Europeans
there would be ____________ Africans
there would be ____________ from North America
there would be ____________ from South America and the Caribbean

___________ people would have no clean, safe, water to drink
___________ own 59% of the entire wealth of the community.
___________ would be undernourished
___________ would be unable to read
____________ would be educated at a secondary level

etc... There are a lot of items.

After going over some difficult words/phrases with the students, I asked them to work in pairs and guess how many people for each item. First, students worked individually and filled in the blanks, then they compared answers. When their answers were different, I asked them to explain to each other why they gave that particular answer. For example, if one student thought that 10 people would be unable to read and her partner thought that 40 people would be unable to read, both students would try to justify their answers to each other. In this class, there seemed to be very little interaction among the students. After the class I asked students whether or not they agreed with the statement that

"I was able to use a lot of English when comparing answers with my partner for if the world were 1o0 people activity"

Of 20 students, 10 agreed and 10 disagreed. Their primary reasons for saying that they could not use English was that 1) the worksheet contained too many unknown words, 2) they did not have the vocabulary to explain their answers, 3) they answered based on intuition (which I encouraged them to do) and could not give a reason for their answers. Those who wrote that they agreed with the above statement did so because they were 1) trying to make me feel happy, 2) enjoyed explaining their thinking to their partners, or 3) enjoyed learning and using new words.

After students had compared answers, they watched a movie called Miniature Earth which presents the "If the World were 100 People" data. Students then write the correct answers and I asked them how accurate they were.

Lastly, we had an interesting discussion - in Japanese. As a surprising amount of people in the world live without poverty, clean water, etc. I expected that a group of Japanese university students would feel pretty fortunate about what they have (a roof over their head, an education, the financial flexibility to pursue their dreams, etc.). I asked them if they felt fortunate after watching this video. One student started speaking in Japanese and said that compared to other people in the world she is fortunate but inside Japan she is not fortunate so she does not consider herself to be so. I asked her why and she said because she cannot do what she wants. I asked her what she wants and she said that she wanted to buy a lot of things that she could not. She knew a lot of rich kids who got whatever they wanted. The bell rang and I felt guilty about having this discussion in Japanese. Before students left I told them that I wanted to have a discussion at the beginning of the next class. I told them to think of an answer to the following question and we would talk about it in English.

Are you currently satisfied with your life? Why or why not?

The next class we went outside to have the discussion. We made 2 circles, an outer circle of 10 students and an inner circle of 9 students and 1 teacher (one student was absent). At first, I told students to only speak in English and gave them some communication strategies (How do you say ~ in English etc.). One student in the inner circle talked to another in the outer circle. First, they had some light exchanges (Hey, how are you? How was your weekend? etc.) After the pleasantries, the content became deep: "Are you currently satisfied with your life? Why or why not?". At first, students had 3 minutes to talk with each other. After three minutes, the inner circle rotated and each student had a new partner. Then the inner circle and outer circle students talked again.

For pair work to be effective, I read that students need to push themselves to produce language that is a little beyond their level or their partners level. If the partner does not understand she should ask for a clarification. When an interlocutor (speaker) reformulates his utterance he can either correct a misunderstanding he has about a particular grammatical item or lexical phrase or the listener can learn a new piece of language (if the interlocutor said something that was correct and the listener just did not understand).
I have no idea what the quality of the students' interactions was because I had to be involved in the activity myself and could not monitor the conversation. I can say, though, that I heard A LOT of noise and I am sure that we annoyed the other classes who left their windows open. Hearing a lot of noise in an English speaking activity is usually a beautiful thing.

At the ending of the activity, I asked some students what their partners had said. Then, I told the whole class that I learned that many of us have problems. However, our problems such as a long commute to school, not being able to buy what we want are much smaller than what many people in this world face; living on one or two dollars a day, etc. Maybe I should have encouraged students to come up with their own conclusions or at least asked them what their conclusions were. I didn't.

At the ending of class I asked students whether or not they agreed with the following question and why:

"I was able to use a lot of English when discussing whether or not I was satisfied with my life"

18 of 19 students agreed with this statement. They wrote that they were able to express their ideas in English.

So, why did the first speaking activity not work so well and the second activity work well? I have learned that these students like to talk about themselves and their own lives. It is a way that they can get to know their classmates and maybe even make some friends. It is also something that they can talk about with very little preparation because (as they should) they know a lot about themselves. As college freshmen, though, they are not so knowledgeable of global issues. Therefore, some students struggled to give a reason for their estimates in "If the World were 100 People activity." Thus, next time we have a discussion about global issues I need to make sure that students have enough knowledge of the content beforehand.

A Simple Speaking Task where students actually interacted!

The other day I did a simple speaking task that worked very well with college freshmen who are novice English speakers. There are 20 students in this class and they are a little reserved but very considerate and copperative young men and women.

We are using the textbook Global Issues by Tim Grose. The text book has a profile of a boy living in India talking about his family, school and future dreams. This boy has to drop out of school to support his family.

Class 1: I asked the students to write their own profile in the 3rd person. I asked them to talk about their family, their school history and their future dreams. I asked them to use the profile in the textbook for ideas on how they can write their profile.

Class 2: Students handed in their profiles. Some tried hard and others simply wrote 8 - 10 sentences with no real coherence. I took their papers home and underlined mistakes or parts that I could not understand. I also wrote comments such as "connect your sentences" or requests for students to add more content.

Class 3: First, I put students in pairs. I handed back the papers to the students and asked them to revise their papers. I told them to consult with their partner or me if they were not sure how to revise their papers. I realize that this was not real pair work, but I have found that it is best to make peer feedback optional among students if they still do not know each other well. It took them about 20 minutes. I walked around the class and ended up helping each student individually.
When they were finished revising, I told students to read their paper to their partner (without showing the paper!). The partner would write key words. After each student read their profile, pairs joined to make groups of 4. Students would then use their notes to tell their new group members their partners' profiles. I made this activity "English only" and encouraged students to ask each other about words that they understood. I was surprised about the amount of English use and interaction in this activity because usually these students were very hesitant to interact with each other in English.
When the groups of 4 were finished, I asked various groups interesting things they heard about their classmates.
At the ending of the class I asked students to answer the following questions on their response cards
1) What did you learn today?
2) Do you think that this activity is useful? Why or why not?
3) I could introduce my partner to other people.
a) strongly agree b) agree c) disagree d) strongly disagree
4) I could understand other people's profiles.
a) strongly agree b) agree c) disagree d) strongly disagree
5) I asked questions when I could not understand.
a) strongly agree b) agree c) disagree d) strongly disagree
Many of the students wrote various phrases or vocabulary they had learned after writing their profiles and getting feedback. Other students wrote vocabulary they had learned from listening to other people's profiles. Two students wrote that they learned about how to connect sentences. Four students wrote that they learned nothing but that they thought the activity was useful! (In hindsight, question 2 was not a good question.)

Class 4: I found that the previous week's task gave us a good reason to study conjunctions and I gave students a conjunction worksheet to complete for the next week. We did a follow up task where we did the if the World were 100 Peopleactivity. There was much less interaction among the students during this activity. In my next post, I would like to talk about why this was so.

Why Tasks are not incorporated into many Japanese secondary school English classrooms (Part 2)

This is a continuation fo my last post. Today, I read a great article that attempts to explain problems that teachers have with adopting communicative language teaching (CLT) and task-based language teaching (TBLT) into East Asian classrooms. The article is Communicative and task-based language teaching in East Asian classrooms by William Littlewood and appeared in Language Teaching (2007), 40: 243-249.

Littlewood gives 5 concerns that teachers have with CLT and TBLT
1) Classroom management: Students misbehave or slack off
2) Avoidance of English: Students and teachers do not use English during the task
3) Minimal demands of language Competence: Students use minimal language or non-verbal communication to complete a task; they do not challenge themselves to experiment with new or complex language.
4) Incompatibility with public assessment: Task objectives are inconsistent with standardized tests or university entrance examinations
5) Tasks conflict with educational values and traditions: TBLT and CLT are based on western conceptions of learning that might differ from that of countries in East Asia.

Littlewood argues that a solution for these problems is for teachers to "adapt" rather than "adopt". He argues that no single set of methods will fit all teachers in all contexts. Thus a teacher should probably attempt to adapt the strengths of multiple methods to their respective contexts to maximize their students' learning potential.

Littlewood's last argument is that many teachers have misconceptions about TBLT and CLT. For example, many teachers believe that in CLT students only speak and do not study grammar. Regarding TBLT, there are various definitions for "task" in the literature and many educators have different ideas of what a task is. He argues that if teachers have a better understanding of CLT and TBLT it will help them adopt these approaches into their teaching.

This year, I hope to offer some solutions for the issues raised in my first and second post through working with secondary school English teachers in my community. Hopefully, I will have some solutions posted in a couple of months.

Why Tasks are not incorporated into many Japanese secondary school English classrooms

I just read an interesting chapter and article about problems that teachers encounter with Task Based Language Teaching (TBLT). In this post I will talk about the chapter. The chapter, "Pedagogic Perspectives on Second Language Tasks" is from Tasks in Language Learning by Virginia Samuda and Martic Bygate (2005, Palgrave Macmillan) and it attempts to explain why TBLT is not adopted in many educational contexts.

First, Samuda and Bygate argue that the three primary reasons that teachers do not use TBLT is the following 1) The decision to use tasks is a top-down decision made by people sitting in high places who are far removed from the teachers' daily grind. 2) Teachers are pessimistic about the potential pedagogic value of tasks. 3) Unrealistic demands are placed on teachers to dramatically change their way of teaching instantaneously. I think that these reasons show that change in education must also be a bottom-up process. Just telling teachers what they should do will not convince them to adapt new teaching methodologies into their classrooms.

Samuda and Bygate also list the following logistical issues that teachers have with tasks:

• Using tasks in monolingual classes
  
• Matching tasks with skill levels
• Integrating tasks with a prescribed syllabus
• Viability of tasks with beginning students
• Using tasks in mixed ability classes
• Using tasks to introduce new language
• Giving feedback on task performance: how and when
• Fitting tasks with other kinds of activities
• Tasks and grammar learning
• Motivating students to engage in tasks
  

The issues that are in red I think need to be discussed with Japanese secondary school teachers if they are to incorporate tasks into their classrooms. Hints in how to resolve these issues will give them a foundation necessary to start experimenting with tasks.

I do not think "using tasks to introduce new language" is a relevant issue. Samuda and Bygate make a distinction between Task Based Language Teaching (TBLT) and Task Supported Language teaching(TSLT). In TBLT, the task is the central component of the syllabus while in TSLT tasks are used with a pedagogic purpose to help accomplish some of the goals of the syllabus. Tasks themselves in TBLT or TSLT are not different, but the ways in which tasks are used is different (Being the central part of the curriculum vs. helping to realize the learning goals of the curriculum). In the Japanese public secondary school which is based on a nationally approved structural syllabus and students have limited time to study English, I do not think that TBLT is viable. Thus, I do not think that the issue of using tasks to introduce new language is relevant.

Samuda and Bygate argue that tasks can serve a variety of purposes (provide students with an opportunity to use language that they have studied, give them an opportunity to experience real-world language use for a situation they might find themselve them in, learn communication strategies, enhance students' motivation - these examples are mine) and that teachers should not equate tasks with TBLT. I agree that teachers should adapt tasks into their current teaching (TSLT) rather and that expecting teachers do adopt a whole new teaching methodology (TBLT) is not feasible. The next article I will write about, addresses this issue.

A Task Based Lesson at a Junior High School

On October 1, I gave a task based lesson at a junior high school in an Iwate city. The following definition of "task" guided my lesson planning:

" A task is an activity in which a person engages in order to attain an objective, and which necessitates the use of language."
(Van den Branden, K. (Ed.) (2006). Task Based Language Education: From theory to practice. CUP.)

The goals of the class were the following. You can see the lesson plan here (in Japanese).

1. Listen to an easy speech (actually, it was more like an interview) and understand the general meaning without worrying about words that you do not understand.
2. Give a simple speech without memorizing every word but by using key words to recall the content.

Description of Students and Class
This was a kenkyuujugyou or open class. I taught 20 first grade students (12- 13 years-old) who I had never met before. There were also 30 English teachers watching. I was asked to do this by the municipal board of education. They asked me to teach page 55 of the New Horizon text book. It was a listening exercise where students had to listen for the nationality, age, residence and other information of 2 fictitious foreigners living in Japan. Another teacher did a demonstration class after me using the same page of the textbook with different students. The objective of the 2 open classes was to compare and learn about different teaching styles.
Before I had met the students, their homeroom teacher had told me that they were hard working and motivated to study English. They had all been studying English for about 6 months, or since entering junior high school.

The Class
I decided to make my own content for the class rather than use the textbook page, because I did not think that anybody cares about fictitious foreigners living in Japan. I decided to introduce to the students a real non-Japanese person (other than me) living in Morioka.

Task 1
The objective of the first task was to watch an interview of a researcher at Iwate University and learn 1) where he is from, 2) his occupation, 3) the languages he speaks 4) and his likes. I tried to chose someone with an interesting background: he came from a country that students did not know well, spoke 5 languages etc. After watching the interview, students were then asked to confirm the answers in English. The real world language use necessary to attain the objectives was 1) listening for specific information 2) using language that you hear in your speech and 3)confirming the answers to a problem with a partner. The interview that students watched is below. I had videotaped the interview the day before and burned it onto a DVD.



The handout that students used is here. In the handout (see exercise A) students attempted to circle the correct answer for each question. Because the students were not familiar with the a lot of the vocabulary, (Slovakian, chemistry, etc... ) the multiple-choice questions were in English and Japanese.

After introducing the video to the students, I played it for them twice. I then asked them to make pairs and confirm their answers in English. I knew that students had the ability to confirm the answers in English but they did not know how. So, before they confirmed the answers, I played them a video of a colleague and myself doing a similar task and using English that was at about the level of the students. I told students that they should watch the video carefully and write down any English they think would be useful for confirming the answers with their partner. In the video, I used subtitles so students would know exactly what was being said.
The video is below:


Overall, most of the students got all the multiple choice questions correct and 11 the 16 students who completed a simple questionnaire after the class reported that they were able to use English to confirm the answers after watching the above video. I had originally budgeted 20 minutes for task 1 but ended up using about 26 minutes. This meant that I had about 20 minutes to do task 2. This would mean that I would have to make some modifications so that class would finish on time.

Task 2
I asked the students to write a simple speech using part B of their handout. To write the speech they simply had to fill in the blanks of a prewritten speech. The objective of this task was to say a simple speech in English using keywords to recall the content rather than memorizing every single word. The real world language use was giving a monologue in front of people using key words to give. After students wrote their speech, I put the following key words on the blackboard (in Japanese):

1. Name (名前）
2. Residence　(住まい）
3. Age　(年齢）
4. likes　（好きなこと）
5. day (you do what you like)　(何曜日に好きなことをするか）

I asked students to prepare to give a speech in front of the whole class. I told them that when they give the speech, they should not read their speech from the handout. Rather they should look at the keywords on the board and use it to give their speech. I added that quite often when we are asked to do public speaking we do not have time to memorize a speech. So, one thing we can do is use keywords to organize the speech in our heads and then we can give a speech. I told students to take 5 minutes and practice their speech by themselves. After the 5 minutes, I had originally planned for students to give the speeches in pairs and then have individual students perform their speech in front of the class. Unfortunately, because time was limited students did not give the speeches in pairs. Rather, I called on students to give their speech in front of the whole class. A total of 8 students gave their speech in front of the class and they were all able to do it without looking at their prints.

Wrap-up of my experience: Considering how to facilitate task based language learning more smoothly and the use of the L1 in a communicative class

This was my 5th time doing this kind of "open class" in the past 2 years. My first open class was a miserable failure, my second open-class was a failure, my third open-class was mediocre, my fourth open-class went fairly well but students did not speak, and this class went well and students DID speak! The reason why my classes have improved is because I have slowly learned to put myself in the shoes of the junior high school students and imagine how difficult they might find certain activities or the anxiety they might feel. I think the key to planning good language learning tasks is to give students a task that is challenging so that they have to overcome a little anxiety to succeed but not too easy. I also think that when conducting task based language teaching, a key to having a successful class is to be able to change the lesson plan as the lesson proceeds depending on how the students' are working. In other words, to attain the learning objective of a task, teachers might have to add an activity, take away an activity or modify an activity as the class progresses. I have become more comfortable with this.

After the class, the teachers who observed me commented on how much I used Japanese. I explained the rationale of each activity in Japanese, gave tips in Japanese about how to do activities, introduced the rationale of the class in Japanese, and helped individual students who were stuck in Japanese. If I had done the class only in English we would not have been able to finish the lesson. Using Japanese saves time because you only have to explain something once or twice while in English in can take a lot of effort on the part of the students and teacher to understand one particular point. If I had not been under so much pressure to finish the demonstration task in the 50 minutes of class time, I would have used more English.

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.
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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.

Doing Task-based Teaching: A Book Review

I recently read Dave and Jane Willis's "Doing Task Based Teaching" and found it immensely helpful in getting me to generate a lot of different kind of language learning tasks. They divide tasks into the following categories based on a classification of cognitive processes
1) Listing
2) Ordering and sorting
3) Matching
4) Comparing
5) Problem solving
6) Sharing personal experiences
7) Projects and creative tasks
and also give concrete examples for each kind of task.

So far, I have found this taxonomy helpful for planning tasks with advanced learners (high school and university). In other words, I think that their tasks will work well with learners who have some linguistic knowledge but do not know how to use it.

I have even found this taxonomy helpful in planning workshop discussions in Japanese. Today, I went to a high school and gave two 1.5 hour workshops in Japanese to 87 and 29 students respectively about "University life". We had a discussion about effective language learning methods where I had the high school students do a listing task and then discuss the results with each other. I think discussions work best when participants have some kind of concrete outcome to attain (for example an individual makes a list, he then compares his list to another person's list, they then make a new list and then share their results with the rest of the class).

I also found their suggestions for how to facilitate certain tasks as well as accounts of real tasks from teachers across the world to be very helpful. For example, one thing that I learned is to always have students do a task individually at first and then work with others after they have made some progress by themselves and understand the task.

For me, one drawback of this book is that Dave and Jane Willis fail to show that their teaching methodology can be used with beginning learners in EFL contexts who have very little knowledge of English or exposure to English outside of the classroom.

Trying a Task-Based Lesson at a Japanese Junior High School

This week I was invited to a junior high school in rural Iwate to give a demonstration lesson (a 50-minute lesson). I taugtht 35 second graders (8th grade US - 14 years old) and there were approximately 30 local teachers and officials wathcing the lesson. I had never met these students before and had not developed any kind of working relationship with them. This was also my first time going to this school. To top it off, the students seemed a little nervous about having 30 onlookers watching them.
I was asked to teach a page of the textbook. Below is the text of that page. I have changed the content slightly. The students had not studied this page before

"A New Parking Area for Bikes " Lincoln Park will become a parking area for bikes. People complained when a bike fell on a little girl (Jasmine Kuroda) near the station. They asked the city for a new parking area. But some people are against the plan. They think we should keep the park. A park or a parking area - that is the question.	New Words become, complain, little, girl, boy, against, for, should, ask...for
Key Sentence People complained when a bike fell on Jasmine.

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I am now going to write the Task I decided to try, how I went about doing it, and the successes and failures of the lesson:

Here were my goals for the lesson.
1. Do 95 % of the class in English with the students understanding.
2. For the students to experience and enjoy group work.
3. Reading Strategy: Students make use of their background knowledge (what has happened in the chapter up until " a new parking area for bikes") to understand the text.
4. Reading Strategy: Students use the outline of the text I gave them to understand it and put it together.

The task I picked for the lessons was an "ordering and sorting task". I divided the above text into 6 parts (sentences) and gave each part a letter (A - F).

A: They think we should keep the park.
B: Lincoln Park will become a parking area for bikes.
C: But some people are against the plan.
D: People complained when a bike fell on a little girl (Jasmine Kuroda) near the station.
E: A park or parking area - that is the question.
F: They asked the city for a new parking area.

The Task
For the lesson, I printed each sentence onto a small piece of paper and placed them in an empty classroom (Click here). The objective of the task was to go to the empty classroom, find and memorize one of the sentences, go back to your classroom, write down the sentence, and then recreate the whole passage with their group.

Preparing for the task
The class of 35 students was divided into 6 groups. Each group had 6 students (one had 5). Before the class, I asked the teacher who usually teaches them to made sure the students were sitting in groups. Each student in each group was assigned a letter(A~F). I asked the teacher to make sure that each group would have 2 students who were very good at English, two students who were average, and two students who struggled with English. Students who struggled with English were assigned sentences C or B. Students who were average were assigned sentences A or F, and students who were advanced were assigned D or E.
These students had little experience with group work so I brought 4 graduate students from my university to help the different groups because I imagined each group would struggle mightily with the task.
Students also wore nametags which in addition to their names had their sentence letter and group number. By the letter on a student's nametag, I could tell whether or not she struggled with English or was pretty confident in it. I still called on students indiscriminately because I do not believe on only calling on the "good" students. However, it is nice to have an idea beforehand about the likelihood that a student will respond to a question.

Doing the Task and the Class
Here is what we did for class:
Note: When the class began, students were already sitting in groups of 6.

1) Greeting and Review: The guest teachers introduced themselves. I then asked students "How're ya" (intentionally using a strong American accent) and told them they could answer by saying "Great", "Good", "OK", "Not so good". I then had all the A students from each group stand up and ask "How 're ya" and answer around in a circle. I called some other letters too. I did not plan this but the atmosphere was so tense that I wanted to try someting to loosen things up.
For review, I reviewed what had happened up until "A New Parking Area for Bikes" reading. Usually, I would ask the students questions but I knew in such a tense environment students would not want to raise their hands so I summarized what had happened. The purpose was this was to get them thinking about what "A New Parking Area for Bikes" was about

2) Task

Pre-Task
I told students our goal for the day was to write the newspaper article from the text titled "A New Parking Area for Bikes". First, I said that we would have to learn the new words. I introduced the new words using word cards the graduate students made. I first used the new word in a sentence and then asked the students what they thought the word meant. I wrote the sentences on the blackboard before class to save time (Please click here to see what the blackboard looked like). Of course, the students did not answer and I should have known better. Afterwards, a teacher advised me that I give the students a multiple choice answer. That would have been much better rather than directing a question to the whole class.

Task
After introducing the new words, I gave students the instructions for the task. I spent a lot of time thinking exactly how I could give them instructions in such a way that they would understand. Below is what I told them:

We are now going to make the newspaper article. The article is divided into 6 sentences. Sentence A, sentence B, sentence C, sentence D, sentence E, sentence F. Each sentence of the text is in room _________, but it is in a secret place. Each of you has a letter on your name tag. The letter is your sentence. People with sentence A, please raise your hand. Each person with Sentence A will go to room _____ and fins sentence A. When you find Sentence A, please memorize it. Then return to your group and write your sentence on Sheet 1. After your group has written all the sentences, use the sentences and make the article. The sentence order is not A, B, C, D, E, F. （文書の順番はA,B,C,D,E,Fではない）. Use the hints, to help you put the article together.
You have 20 minutes to finish the task. In other words, you have 20 minutes to make the article.

Students quickly found their sentences and were able to write their sentences on their respective sheets (Sheet 1).
I had written an outline of the article on the blackboard to help them put the sentences together:
1)There is a plan.
2)Why?　
3)There are some problems with the plan.　
4)The conclusion.

Time started to run short and 4 of the six groups were unable to put their sentences in order. Students were confused by the outline and they had not learned the phrase "There is" to my chagrin.

I realized that had I written the outline as below maybe the students could have put the article together:
Hints
1) A plan
2) Why? (2 sentences)
3) Problems (2 sentences)
4) The conclusion

Post Task:
We read the actual article in the textbook out loud. I made the mistake of calling on a group who had successfully put together the article to read their version out loud and they were too shy to do so.
I gave students the following evaluation sheet. I wanted to know which of the words we had studied that they understood. I also wanted to know which parts of the task they could do and which they could not do. The purpose of this task was to think of the main ideas of the sentences and how they fit together. One teacher told me that perhaps my evaluation sheet was a little ambiguous. Maybe I should have written something like this:
(1 = Strongly Agree; 5= Strongly Disagree)
1) Today I understood the main point of the sentences 1-2-3-4-5
2) Today I understood how the sentences fit together: 1-2-3-4-5

My Reflection: Doing a research class in front of many onlookers is an incredibly humbling experience. It would have been nice if I had known the students beforehand but oh well.

Good points: I did a class in mostly English and it almost worked. Students understood the task and the new words.

Bad Points: Students were unable to put the sentences together and perhaps thus the lesson did not accomplish its main goal. Furthermore, the evaluation was a little ambiguous.
When I gave a question to the entire class, it was never answered. This is common in Japan; I should know better than to direct a question to an entire class of students that I do not know, but I cannot help it, it is my nature and the way I was educated.

Overall: Unfortunately, I fear that a lot of teachers watched my class and it might have reinforced their belief that English classes in English only do not work and children must be spoon fed everything to learn. My opinion is that doing something new in the classroom never goes smoothly the first time. As time progresses and the students and teacher get used to the new activities and working with each other, the class will go smoother.. For students to become good English learners, they have to learn how to read English by themselves. On November 7, I will have another opportunity to go to the junior high school and teach. To be honest, doing this on top of my university work is incredibly burdensome, but I will give it another try and hopefully do better. Trying new ideas at the junior high school level has given me the opportunity to understand the students better. I must further think about how to adjust the class plans to be more suitable to the needs and abilities of the students. I have a feeling that no matter what I do though, classes in this kind of high-pressure setting will never go smoothly. The reason is that students will be trying something for the first time and they need the opportunity to get stuck on a task or make mistakes. This will help them learn how to do the task in the future, I believe.