Using Vocabulary Notebooks Part 3

Well, I have now finished one cycle of my action research into using vocabulary notebooks. I have lots of data: students' word sheets and quizzes, students' comments on in-class work, and students' questionnaire results. I have not really had the time to analyze it but I will give a rough account of what has happened. I do not know how much I will be able to prove whether students' improved in any way, but I think I can at least give some ideas for using vocabulary notebooks (hereafter VNs). Today, I will talk about steps 2 - 5 below:

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

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

As I said before, the main problem with the class where I would use the VNs is that they really struggle to express themselves in English. It's not because they are 'shy', rather many of the students do not seem to have the basic knowledge necessary to put a sentence together (See my last post). I thought that I could get students to reduce their global errors and write cleared English is students got into the habit of confirming or looking up word usage in dictionaries when they were confused about how to use a word or phrase. I also thought that the VNs could be a means for them to record this newly learned information. Basically, I was hoping that students would develop the kind of skills necessary to enable them to be their own teachers of English. Students VNs were binders which consisted of vocabulary sheets. Below is a sample entry, it is a little different from the one I posted a couple of weeks ago (Click on the image to enlarge).

Parts of the word sheet:

Pronunciation: I told students that they do not have to memorize how to write phonetic symbols but they should know how to read them. I also gave them an easy to read IPA chart. Sometimes there are words in English that even I can't read and this section was designed to encourage learners to confirm the stress placement and pronunciation of a word they were not sure about.

Part of speech:  This might seem a little too grammatical but part of speech of the word helps students understand its basic usage. 

Word/phrase-frequency: Here, learners write not only the word they learn but also the frequency of the word, because the learning of high frequency words should be prioritized. If a word is low frequency and they might rarely use it, then maybe only passive knowledge of the word is necessary. 

Other forms: I wanted students to write the word if it had an alternative part of speech or the word with its prefixes or suffixes. An important part of vocabulary knowledge is understanding how other words can be derived from one base word. 

Important information: Here, learners wrote the collocations of a word, for example, if the word is a verb, they would write the prepositions that occur together with it. If the word is a noun, they would write which adjectives appeared with it. They also wrote such information as whether a verb was transitive or intransitive and whether a noun was countable or uncountable. I think this section is most related to the goal of having students look up word usage in their dictionaries.

Example Sentence: Students here are encouraged to write their own original sentences based on what they had written in Important information. In the past, students would copy sentences from dictionaries and memorize them but I was dubious about whether this could really help them learn how to use a work.

Japanese of English Meaning: I have actually found that online English to English learner dictionaries such as Macmillan Dictionary and Thesaurus have very easy to understand definitions. So, I have told students to try to use the English to English definitions when possible to broaden their vocabulary.  Lastly, students could write the Japanese or English meaning of a word. 

(3) Carrying out the action

Students have weekly assignments to fill out their VNs and I also have tried to utilize their VNs in class activities. Here are two frequent patterns of VN use in the class:

First pattern of VN use

Record words into VNs for homework (Before Class)→ Students share their VN entries with each other at the beginning of class →Speaking, reading or writing activity using the VN words →Students update their VNs with new knowledge → Quiz on VN words (After Class)

Second pattern of VN use

Students participate in a discussion or read an authentic text in class → Students write words they learned in their VNs

(4) Observing the apparent outcomes

Ok, now this is going to get messy.; To observe the apparent outcomes, I am using a pre and post dictionary strategy use questionnaire, students' action logs, anlysis of students' VNs and quizzes, and a pre-and post writing task. Right now, I have about 4 classes worth of action logs, two quizzes, students' first VN sheets, and thei pre-test results. I am still thinking about how the hell I am going to analyze this. For the time being, I think the best thing to do is look at: 1) What kind of words they are writing into their vocabulary sheets; 2) Their quiz performances; 3) Reactions to class activities.

(5) Analyzing the outcomes

 (Class work from the teacher's perspective)
I have been pretty successful with the first pattern of VN use. For example, here is one class activity: Students write six words into their notebooks for homework → 
Students quiz each other on the words, important information, etc. at the beginning of class → 
Students have six pictures and have to write a story using the pictures. Students write the story and end up using most of the new words. → 
Students update their VNs.→ 
Eventually students have a quiz.

However, I have not had much success with Pattern 2. Students will not write anything in their notebook that they are not allowed to. It seems like they have a high incentive to write what I tell them to because they will be tested on the words. However, the ultimate goal is for students themselves to choose words/phrases that they need to learn and use VNs as a tool to help them learn. 

(One way to encourage autonomy in my primarily teacher-controlled class)

One way I have tried to encourage students to choose which words they will need to learn is, for example, on a quiz of 15 words, they choose 5 - 6 words for which they will write "other forms," "important information" and "example sentences." In other words, they will choose the words they think they will need the productive knowledge for.

 I gave the above quiz last week and I have only taken a quick look at them, but it seems that most students wrote original sentences for the example sentence section. A lot of students could not write pieces of information for the other forms area and their example sentences were incorrect. This leads me to believe is that all they studied were the meanings of the words. When I analyze the quizzes, students' action logs, and their vocabulary sheets, I will better be able to explain their quiz results and how they used the VNs.

(6) Repeating the steps again

Here are the issues I have to improve on:

1. Students write their own words into the VNs. These words can be words they encountered in their homework, from class activities, or any other English-use experience.
2. To learn to use the words they feel are important, students learn to make use of word usage information in their dictionaries.
3. Time spent on VN notebooks should start to decrease as students know how to use them.
4. Students should not write all the word information at once. Students should write the word information as their understanding of the word evolves.

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.

Using Vocabulary Notebooks to Promote More Accurate Use of English Part 1

I teach a general English class to freshmen once a week at a different university to where I usually work. The theme of the class is "Global Problems" and I would call it content-based where students are reading, writing, speaking and listening to English. In years past there has been some explicit language focus but content and promoting students' communicative strategies was prioritized. This class is a one-year long class and for the past couple of years I have enjoyed a close relationship with my student and have seen them grow intellectually and increase their confidence in using English. Some students, also demonstrated improvement in their writing and speaking but actually there were too many students who, to be frank, began the class as lousy writers and speakers and ended the year that way without demonstrating much improvement.

Throughout the years I have used vocabulary notebooks in the class to encourage students to use vocabulary learning strategies. Here is an example of an entry (Click on the image to see an enlarged version):

Example entry for the vocabulary notebook

The vocabulary notebook is designed to help students learn the necessary information to be able to use a word, not just understand it. Nevertheless, looking at students' past writing, I do not think that they used the notebook the way that I intended. They recorded word information for the sake of recording it but for example, but they did not apply any of the good habits they were supposed to develop in their real-life English usage. For example, when writing a word they did not know well they did not confirm beforehand things like what prepositions could be used with the word, what the word means and when it is used, or what collocations the word has. I wanted students to become their own editors when using English. This year, I have decided to make more of an effort to encourage students to use vocabulary notebooks as a way to improve their written and spoken English. This is what you would call action research which consists of the following cycles:

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

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

3) carrying out the action

4) Observing the apparent outcomes of the action

5) reflecting on the outcomes and other possibilities

6) repeating these steps again

In my next post, I will talk about the issue or problem more specifically and then action I plan to take using the vocabulary notebooks.

The past couple of years

I really have all but given up posting to this blog but surprisingly it still seems to get some hints and occasionally I will receive a comment that is actually not spam. For about a year, I have honestly wanted to post but these days I am a zombie after 9PM which had been my time for blog writing. Two kids and advancing in age will do that to you I guess. 

I am involved in English teacher education in Japan. Basically, I teach aspiring junior and senior high school teachers in Japan the ropes about teaching English. Sometimes, though, it seems that after 10 years here I myself am still learning the ropes. In addition to the teacher education classes, I also teach general English classes at a nursing school, a night school for nurses, and another university in my city. Japanese universities are fairly liberal about letting their staff work part-time at other places. 

Anyhow, last year I was teaching at the night nursing school I had a bit of a revelation. I had a class of 20 students who had full-time jobs and were absolutely exhausted by the time they came to my class. They had to study to pass their nursing exam and nursing English was not a priority for them. My goal for the class became not to necessarily teach them English but show them how to learn a foreign language so that maybe when they had the time or the need, they would have some tools to help them learn English. I poured an immense amount of time into this class thinking about how I could reach every individual student. One day, I was lamenting a little about my class on English teaching methodology and students' apparent lack of interest. Then, I thought about the nursing school class and asked myself if I was as dedicated to the students at my full-time job. I realized that I was neglecting a lot of students who were actually interested in English and losing students who had still not made up their minds about whether or not they wanted to be English teachers. I did not want to abandon the nursing students who I had grown quite attached to, but I decided to really devote more energy to my teaching methodology class. I doubled the amount of work, gave them long reading and writing assignments - commenting on the content of the writing assignments as well as having them correct their English, and completely overhauled my lectures. By the ending of the semester, I felt that the students were giving me more effort and showing more interest in teaching English. 

I am supposed to be a researcher. However, I think an important job of a teacher is to give students as much one to one help as possible because I think the feedback a teacher can give, if done right, will scaffold the learners growth. Also, if learners know that the teacher is constantly checking their work, monitoring their progress, and actually cares whether or not the learners are making progress, it will be very motivational for the learners. Spending a lot of time on classes though can limit the amount of research I can do. No matter what though, I do not have the heart to go through the motions with my classes; I think that teaching is what I like to do the most.

The late Randy Pausch gave an amazing lecture on time management. He was able to be a successful teacher and researcher as well as watch his Pittsburgh Steelers play every month and spend time with his family. His secret seemed to be that 1) he was incredibly organized and 2) he made a schedule every day of exactly what he would do and when he would do it. So far, I have partially succeeded with 1) but for me to balance my life better, I have to become better at 2).

The Problem with PPP

PPP stands for Presentation, Practice, Production and it is perhaps the dominant teaching method in Japanese junior high schools. PPP means that teachers will first present a grammar point, for example, present perfect, have students practice it, and then give them some kind of activity where they are expected to produce it. This way of teaching is efficient because it is easy for students to follow. Although I would probably use this method sometimes if I was a JHS teacher, I think it is important to recognize the problems of this method.

First, although a lot of teachers say that the field of Second Language Acquisition is completely useless for teaching, it does reveal a limitation of PPP. That is that learners acquire grammar structures (for example, the regular past tense) gradually after passing through various developmental stages. PPP might give the learners and teachers the false impression that learners should have mastered the particular grammatical structure after the presentation, practice and production. It is only through constant exposure and use that learners acquire a grammatical structure though.

This leads to the second and in my opinion the biggest limitation. In a PPP lesson, Learners and teachers might think that the goal of using English in class is to show that they know a particular structure but this could be counterproductive to their language learning. In my opinion, the most important goal for language use in the classroom is for learners to learn how to build their fluency in English and learn the communicative strategies necessary for them to make the best use of the knowledge that they have. As teachers, we also want learners to make the effort to learn from their miscommunications and errors to become more accurate and effective communicators. In other words, the major limitation of PPP could be that it leads learners and teachers to ignore the most important goals of communicative activities.

What the heck do I want learners to get out of my classes?

Recently I have been reading a lot of books about new teaching methodologies or new activities for listening, reading and grammar teaching. I have been doing this because I thought I needed to expand my repertoire of teaching techniques and activities. One of the books I read mentioned that if teachers do not have some sort of overarching goal for which their activities are conducted, then what they do in class is meaningless. This got me to think about my rationale for conducting the kind of classes I do, so here it is:

I do not think there is much I can teach students. I do not think I can even get students to like English (By English, I mean the language, the English speaking culture, etc.). In fact, I probably do not care whether or not they like it. Learning a foreign language is an active endeavor which involves listening to it and using it. Learners can learn to listen through repetition and eventual understanding of the meaning of what they heard and some of the unknown grammar and words. Learners can improve in speaking and writing the language through activities that involve memorization and others that involve communication. Getting feedback is also an important part of the learning process.

I do not know how "communicative" a teacher but my mission is to keep learners as busy as possible listening to the language, using the language and analyzing the language. Sometimes their language use is mechanical and sometimes it is what might be called "communicative". From my classes, I hope learners "learn" how to learn English, and I hope they come to my classes looking forward to working with their classmates and a willingness to try. Language learning in the end is something that will be accomplished by the learner and not the teacher.

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.
   

What do kids get out of listening to English picture books? An update

A few months ago I wrote a post about up and coming pilot lessons using picture books that would be conducted at a local elementary school. The project which is overseeing this endeavor is called the Working with Picture Books Project.

In late June, teachers at the elementary school conducted 12 classes using picture books. Classes were conducted for 1st through 6th grades and a total of 4 English picture books were used.

Here is a list of the Picture Books we used for each class.

Grades 1 & 2: Suddenly by McNaughton, C: 165 words
Grades 3 & 4: Tulip Sees America by Rylant, C. and Desimini: 362 words
Grade 5: Nana Upstairs & Nana Downstairs by Tomie dePaola: 403 words
Grade 6: Yoko by Rosemary Wells: 508 words

I rewrote the text for all the picture books expect for Suddenly. I also scanned the books into my computer and gave the teachers a laminated A3 sized copy of each page. Lastly, I gave the teachers a CD of me reading the books so they would have a model (albeit not a very good one!)

Most of the picture books were read in less than 10 minutes. The teachers who read Nana Upstairs & Nana Downstairs and Yoko read about two third of their respective books and continued the stories for the next lesson.

Below are the results of the questionnaire given to the children. Under the question, I have written the result and what I found out.

１） Did you understand the story? (Students write a circle next to the answer they agree with)

Results: (N=251)
a. I understood it well (115 )
b. I understood it a little (97)
c. I did not understand it well (33)
d. I did not understand it at all (6)

What I found out: The majority of children felt that they understood the story. This is notable because question 3 will reveal that teachers used means other than translation to help children understand the meaning of the text.

２）Did you try hard to understand the story? (N=251)
a. I tried very hard　　　　　　（140 ）
b. I tried a little　　　　 　　　（97）
c. I did not try so hard　　　　（10）
d. I did not try at all 　　　（ 3 ）

What I found out: After observing the classes, it seemed that most children listened to the story attentively and made great efforts to understand it. The above responses seem to substantiate this.

３）How were you able to understand the story? Please write circle next to what was useful
a. The teacher’s facial expression when he/she was reading　（109）
b. The teacher’s voice would change from loud to soft （83）
c. I heard words that I recognized 　　　　　　（112）
d. I would think about what would happen next while I was listening to the story（79）
e. The picture　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　（141）
f. Asking the teachers questions　　　　　　　　　　　　　　（22）
g. The teacher using Japanese　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　（76）
h. I did not understand the English but I could follow the story 　（89）
i. The teacher’s talk before reading the book 　　　　　　（35）
j. Other：　＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿　(a few)　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　

What I Found Out: I was pleased to learn that children used a variety of means to understand the book in addition to the teacher using Japanese. What was surprising is that more the books' pictures, hearing words they recognized, and the teachers' facial expressions helped more children understand the story than the teacher using Japanese.

４） Was the story interesting？
a. It was very interesting　　　　　（145）
b. It was a little interesting　　　　（68）
c. It was not very interesting 　　　（33）
d. It was not interesting at all 　　（5）

What I found out: Most of the responses about the book not being interesting came from the sixth grade. Many students felt that the book was too childish or did not like the fact that the main character, a Japanese cat, was teased for eating sushi by her animal classmates.

５）What was the most interesting part of the story? Please write it below.

What I found out: Most classes only did questions 1 - 4. Also, since each book is different it is hard for me to generalize the results for all the classes.

６）What did you enjoy most about today’s lesson?

What I found out: Many students did not write the storytelling part of the lesson but rather "the interview game" they played before or after the story or the song they sang for warm-up. In the "interview game" students have predetermined questions they must ask each other and then they must write down their classmates' responses. In some of the "interview games" I saw, the children spoke in Japanese and copied each other's worksheets. They seemed to be having a good time socializing.

７）Did you learn any new English words today? If you did, please them below. You can use katakana to write the words. Do not worry about writing the words correctly.

What I found out: Interesting results. In the 1st grade class students wrote many of the words the teachers wanted them to learn from the book. In the sixth grade class, students tended to write words they had learned from the Assistant Language Teacher's talk about people extracting maple syrup from trees in Canada rather than words they were exposed to in the book.

８）Today, if you learned anything about the USA, please write it below.

What I found out: Not really conclusive. Although in the sixth grade class students wrote things like "Americans don't like sushi" or "Japanese are made fun of about their food." Hmm...

９）Today, did you learn anything about Japan? If so, please write it below.
What I found out: Very few children wrote a response to this question. The teachers tended to address the culture portrayed in the book but did not compare it to their own culture. Part of learning about different cultures is getting to understand your own culture better. This is something we should probably address in future lessons.

Overall: The majority of the children enjoyed the experience of using storybooks in their English activities. It is my belief that if children associate the pleasant experience of enjoying the story with the new linguistic or cultural knowledge that they learned, then this content is more likely to remain in their long-term memories. I think the results of these pilot lessons show that if teachers conduct the proper pre-storytelling activities and practice the storytelling beforehand, then they can read English storybooks to children without relying on Japanese. Children, in turn, our likely to enjoy the experience and maybe even learn something from it.

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.

What do kids get out of listening to an English picture book? Developing a questionnaire

At last, tomorrow the picture book pilot lessons will begin. Altogether we have conducted 2 workshops and held 2 separate meetings with teachers. I have also received some phone calls and e-mails from teachers asking for help with finding teaching materials or advice on their lesson plans. I am not sure how the lessons will go, but I can say that I have enjoyed very much working with the teachers. I think that English picture books are a great means to help children learn about language and culture but I now have a full appreciation of the time and effort necessary to make the use of English picture books possible at Japanese primary schools.

Over the past couple of years we have conducted numerous pilot lessons using picture books but this is the first time where we will be giving a questionnaire to the children. We are giving the questionnaire to find out the following:

1. How many children were able to understand the story?
2. How were the children able to understand the story?
3. What did the children enjoy about the story?
4. What kind of activities during the lesson did the children enjoy?
5. What English words did the children feel they were able to learn?
6. Did they learn anything new about the USA or Japan from listening to the story?

The questionnaire was written in Japanese by me. I then asked the elementary school teachers for their feedback. They gave me advice on how to reword the items so that the children could understand and recommended a could of additional items. After that a colleague of mine at the university rewrote the questionnaire. I showed it one more time to the teachers and they gave me their approval. This questionnaire will be given to children in grades 1 - 6 after their picture book lesson. I have just translated the questions to English for this blog but the questions do not seem to be as clear in English. Here are the questions and what I hope to find from each question:

１） Did you understand the story? (Students write a circle next to the answer they agree with)
a. I understood it well ( )
b. I understood it a little ( )
c. I did not understand it well ( )
d. I did not understand it at all ( )

• What I want to find out: This is pretty straight forward, I want to find out how many children understood the story (or at least thought they understood it)

２）Did you try hard to understand the story?
a. I tried very hard　　　　　　（　 ）
b. I tried a little　　　　 　　　（　 ）
c. I did not try so hard　　　　（　　）
d. I did not try at all 　　　（　　）

• What I want to find out: If children did not understand the story, I want to know if they made the effort to understand or if they just decided not to pay attention

３）How were you able to understand the story? Please write circle next to what was useful
a. The teacher’s facial expression when he/she was reading　（　　）
b. The teacher’s voice would change from loud to soft （　　）
c. I heard words that I recognized 　　　　　　（　　）
d. I would think about what would happen next while I was listening to the story（　　）
e. The picture　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　（　　）
f. Asking the teachers questions　　　　　　　　　　　　　　（　　）
g. The teacher using Japanese　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　（　　）
h. I did not understand the English but I could follow the story 　　　　（　　）
i. The teacher’s talk before reading the book 　　　　　　（　　）
j. Other：　＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　

• What I want to find out: I want to know HOW the students were able to understand the story (What listening strategies they used).
  

４） Was the story interesting？
a. It was very interesting　　　　　（　　）
b. It was a little interesting　　　　（　　）
c. It was not very interesting 　　　（　　）
d. It was not interesting at all 　　（　　）

Why do you think so? Please write a reason below.

• What I want to find out: This is pretty self-explanatory too. I want to know if the children found the story interesting. Four different types of books will be read and it will be interesting to find out which type of book captured the students' interest.
  

５）What was the most interesting part of the story? Please write it below.

• What I want to find out:The particular part of the story that the children liked.
  

６）What did you enjoy most about today’s lesson?

• What I want to find out: Did children like the pre or post-storytelling activities more than listening to the story or was it vice versa?
  

７）Did you learn any new English words today? If you did, please them below. You can use katakana to write the words. Do not worry about writing the words correctly.

• What I want to find out: Were there any particular words that stuck in the children's heads?
  

８）Today, if you learned anything about the USA, please write it below.

• What I want to find out: Three of the four books are from a previous project, Cross-cultural Understanding Using Picture Books. In this project the English picture books were used to teach about aspects of the US culture, so I am interested in knowing if children thought they were able to learn anything about the USA.

９）Today, did you learn anything about Japan? If so, please write it below.

• What I want to find out: Part of cross-cultural learning is making discoveries about your own culture. People say that it is impossible to understand other cultures without understanding your own. So, I want to know if children were realized anything new about their own culture in this lesson.