Jan. 13, 2008 Greater Tokyo Get-Together Reflections
This year’s first LD-SIG Greater Tokyo Get-Together was held on January 13th at Teachers College Tokyo Office. Nine members attended and discussed various issues - ranging from evaluation (self and peer evaluation, in particular), scaffolding, praise, teaching materials, to Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) - in a very friendly and open atmosphere for three hours. Here are the write-ups of reflections by the attendees:
John Curran
This is my first meeting with this group and thank you for your friendly welcome.
I teach all my own private classes, and student autonomy – students taking responsibility for their own study and progress does not loom as a big issue for me.
All of my students come once a week primarily to enjoy the ninety minutes and, at least half of this time is devoted to pleasant conversation. There are several more serious students who want to improve their English level and they write essays, send me emails and discuss books. I recommend books – usually Penguin or Oxford Bookworm Readers and they are often related to English literature or culture.
We talked about evaluation and I realize this is very important to most of you - having to conform to rigorous standards in your institutions. Happily I am not constrained by any regulations and I strive to give as much encouragement as possible and ‘excellent’ and ‘very good’ ratings are the norm. I mentioned that I was interested in the work of Professor David Rose of Sydney University. Following is a very very brief sketch of what I am thinking about doing in the near future: David Rose is teaching a group of Aboriginal children in a remote part of Australia. He is using a teaching model based on Systemic Functional Linguistics. His approach is influenced by the ideas of social inequality in schools and the difference between skills and ability and how the gap between weaker and stronger students is widened progressively. His teaching method is based on scaffolding, support and positive feelings – mainly from the works of Lev Vygotsky. David Rose has elaborated on the scaffolding method. Soon I hope to start teaching a small group of children in Fujisawa using Professor David Rose’s approach and he has given me his full support in this.
Tomoko Kawachi
Throughout the three hours, many interesting topics arose and we were able to bounce our thoughts and share our opinions in a very relaxed atmosphere. One of the topics that came up repeatedly and made me think deeply was evaluation. We talked about the importance of incorporating not just teacher feedback, but also peer-feedback as well as self-feedback in evaluation. In my class, whenever I have my students do a project or presentation, I try to have them reflect and self-evaluate their work, but I have had difficulty incorporating their self-evaluation into the final grade, since each student has a different criteria for evaluation, i.e., some students are easy on themselves while some are humble and tend to give them lower grades. A means to reconcile the discrepancy between teacher evaluation and student evaluation is still something I should look into further, but it was encouraging to hear others incorporating them in their classes successfully.
We also talked about the importance of providing positive feedback to students. One member highlighted the importance of providing specific, genuine praise to our students. I agree that giving positive feedback definitely boosts students’ sense of self-efficacy and confidence, and it creates a class atmosphere conducive to learning. It reminded me of comments given to me by the students at the end of courses, talking about how motivated they felt after receiving compliments by me. It made me think that perhaps I should be doing more of this – after all, providing positive feedback is free, and it makes both the teacher and the students feel good about themselves, so why not provide more?
Yoko Wakui
It provided a chance for eight attendees to share and discuss teaching experiences this time. I felt very lucky to meet teachers who are so concerned about how best to teach their students. Such a gathering is a chance for teachers to reflect on their teaching practices and to influence each other. It is necessary to have this kind of stimulation to replenish our energy for teaching. Teachers and students need to make constant adjustments to their teaching and learning strategies so that education remains a vital force throughout our lives (Fanselow, 1999).
Fanselow, J. F. (1999). Try the opposite. New Zealand. International Pacific College.
Joesph Falout
Teachers were interested in how to interact with students. Offering scaffolding, praise, and appropriate materials were our guiding themes. One member was interested in how to combine systemic functional linguistics (SFL) with the Vygotskian approach of scaffolding, where more able members of small groups help lesser able members to achieve a task. We discussed ways to give genuine, specific verbal praise in the classroom. Also, written praise on writing was thought to be important, and one member suggested setting aside graded papers for a few days and then going back to reflect anew upon student writing and your grades and comments. We also discussed how we select and incorporate authentic and simplified materials into our lessons.
Alison Stewart
The latest Tokyo get-together was another chance to air some ideas and concerns and to listen to and reflect on those of fellow teachers. As we were approaching the end of an academic year, evaluation was a common concern. There seemed to be a common agreement that, as language teachers, we are placed in an insidious dual role of being at the same time coaches and judges of our students. We want to encourage and motivate our students, particularly the weaker ones, but at the end of the day, should we give As to students who, despite their best efforts, are still struggling with English? Is this in their best interests? Or ours? Is it what our employers want or expect?
Another theme that got me thinking was 'scaffolding'. Personally, over the past few years, I've been moving towards more scaffolding, by which I mean trying to make my teaching more explicit - explaining why I use particular materials, how I evaluate etc, and also using more models (e.g. of texts, presentations) and encouraging students to notice what's good (or bad) about them. At the back of mind though I have a niggling doubt that this is somehow contrary to the ideals of autonomy. I can justify what I do by saying that my aim is to teach students a strategy of looking for models and exploiting them for their own needs, in other words, a strategy that they can apply outside the classroom, and perhaps in other areas of learning. But still, I wonder if it isn't taking too much power into my own hands, power which could be more usefully (or ethically) devolved to the students?
Naoko Harada
First, I'd like to thank those of you who inspired me personally to tryout the material I mentioned. It was interesting to experiment something I've never done before. Among the themes we discussed, I'd like to mention something about praise. As one member wisely described, even a small praise or a feedback could have an impact on the students, and it creates positive psychology in class. After the get-together, I decided to include a peer evaluation task in the course of returning essays with my comments in one of my classes. The students were asked to write a positive sentence after reading their friends' work. I thought everyone wrote more than one-line, and felt happy being praised by their peers.