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"Critical Aproaches to Teaching Writing: Mindfulness and the power of 'no.'"
Marlen Harrison presentation to Gunma JALT, 7 June 2008
reported by Barry Keith, Gunma JALT

Does a student feel rejected when told by the teacher that her written work is "wrong." That question is at the center of Marlen Harrison's presentation and workshop, "Critical Aproaches to Teaching Writing: Mindfulness and the power of 'no.'" Using Thich Nhat Han's 14 precepts of Mindfulness, Marlen offered insight to how instructors can provide more constructive feedback to students who may feel a deep rejection by seeing their returned work covered in red. Also very important is, why is some language considered correct, and by whose authority? Marlen described the difficulty of fulfilling his role as an academic writing instructor while respecting the student's voice, and how to effectively communicate his feedback. He introduced samples of student academic writing at an American university and candidly described his struggle with giving helpful input while not rejecting student work out of hand. Finally, participants were asked to consider how Mindfulness Training might apply to the Japanese context of teaching writing.

If you are free and in the Tokyo area March 9th, please come and join us for a chance to create and renew connections with each other locally and talk together about what all our different interests in learner development, learner autonomy and teacher autonomy are, and perhaps what they might not be - and bring a friend if you like. To get an idea of the kinds of discussions we've been having, please see participant reports in the Resources section on the Community Page.

Come join us for food and drinks after the get-together too!

Greater Tokyo Area LD Regional Get-Together Details:

Date: Sunday March 9th, 2008
Time: 2pm to 5pm
Venue: Teacher's College Columbia in Suidobashi
Mitsui Seimei Bldg. 4F
2-21-2 Misaki-cho, Chiyoda-ku
Tokyo 101-0061, JAPAN
Phone: 03-3221-9771 Fax: 03-3221-9773
Nearest Train Stations: JR Suidobashi (one minute walk)
Mita-line Suidobashi (three minute walk)
Jimbo-cho (ten minute walk)
Map and directions: http://www.tc-japan.edu/map.html

RSVP to stacey.vye@gmail.com (for those who have already no need to resend :)

Cheers!

Mike Nix, and Stacey Vye
LD-SIG Local Get-together Coordinators

PS: The May Get-together will be at TC May 11th from 2pm to 5pm

Richard Beal and Dwayne Cover from Kanda University of International Studies shared results of an exploratory study comparing teacher’ and learners’ perceptions of learner autonomy. Questionnaires were given to 10 new teachers at KUIS and follow-up interviews were conducted. 94 first year students completed the same questionnaires (in Japanese) and student volunteers participated in focus group discussions (also in Japanese).

The questionnaire was a modified version of one that Littlewood (1999) used in an Asian context. The 10 items on the questionnaire focused on assumptions about Asian learners, class activities and perceptions of students’ and teachers’ responsibilities.

The main findings were as follows:

The teachers assumed that students prefer student-centred classes.
The students viewed the teachers as the source of all knowledge.
The students indicated that they preferred to work with other students and favored small group activities over whole class activities.
The teachers tended to over-generalize and perceive their students to be shy.
The students themselves did not perceive themselves to be especially shy or typical Asian students.
The students’ main motivation for learning English was to get a good job.

The results suggest that there is sometimes a mismatch between what teachers and students think is happening in the classroom. Teachers were familiar with promoting learner autonomy, but were unfamiliar with a Japanese context. Teacher-training at KUIS could include ways in which teachers could employ reflective tasks in order to better gauge students’ thoughts and preferences. Richard gave an example of using online discussion forums in order for teachers to get feedback from students on how they felt about an activity.

I would be interested to hear about any follow-up studies. Richard and Dwayne mentioned further research which includes interviewing second year teachers and students, and also the participants of this initial study one year later.

Reference

Littlewood, W. (1999). Defining and developing autonomy in East Asian contexts. Applied Linguistics, 20, 71-94.

For the second year running I attended the JASAL (Japan Association of Self-Access Learning) forum at the annual JALT conference. Last year’s forum featured presentations about self-access centers at Akita International University (Sara Cotterall, Garold Murray and Ingrid Johnson), Sugiyama Jogakuen University in Nagoya (Juanita Heigham) and Kanda University of International Studies in Chiba (Lucy Cooker). This year participants learned more about the work going on in these centers plus two others.

(1) Juanita Heigham of Sugiyama Jogakuen University in Nagoya began with a presentation about challenging traditional assumptions about passive Japanese learners. Juanita told participants about an independent project course where 3rd year students planned and organized their own learning based on a needs analysis. They set goals and designed activities to complete alone or in a group. The students met with a teacher 3 times a semester. They struggled initially, but the project was a success and the students felt confident about future independent study. Teachers were pleasantly surprised by the students’ ability to take control and to make good learning decisions.

Partly based on the success of this project, the learner training curriculum for 1st year students was revised to include more opportunities for the students to think about their learning, more activities were made available for students to chose from, and more opportunities were given for students to talk about their learning.

Juanita came to understand that Japanese students are often used to playing a passive role in a classroom, but this does not mean that the students are passive. Teachers should remember that “classes are filled with individuals” and if those individuals are guided, they can become active independent learners.

(2) Ann Mayeda shared an encouraging story of the setting up of a self-access facility at Osaka Shoin Women's University. Ann was initially employed in 2002 to team-teach and to be a "lounge teacher." As a lounge teacher she led optional group and independent study activities in a small room. As the informal learning centre became more popular with students, she got a bigger room and began to stock it with materials donated by teachers. There were no staff allocated to the centre initially and Ann would do what she could during her lunch hour and during free periods. Soon afterwards, she started to get some help from students acting as peer counselors and teachers. They requested a budget to remodel the room and create a proper learning center. The money was obtained (unfortunately half of it was needed to fix the air conditioning unit) and the result was a small, but beautiful self-access center run by volunteers.

The center was a success due to three main factors. Firstly, it was a bottom-up change and all the suggestions came from the students. Secondly, the timing was right because the university was moving towards a stricter grading system and the English program needed a way to give weaker students extra help and to give more advanced students more challenges. Ann's colleagues were open to change and were very supportive. The center is now staffed full time and is developing its range of activities and materials.

Ann gave four pieces of advice for those hoping to start a similar center:

1. aim high
2. talk to colleagues
3. be persistent
4. listen to students

(3) Robert Croker from Nanzan University in Aichi talked us through a “resource-light, activity-heavy” center where the students themselves are the main resource. The center is called “World Plaza” and was created because teachers and students realized that there were not enough English speaking opportunities. World Plaza is defined as “a space on campus outside the classroom where the focus of activities is on students interacting in the target language.”

Students become members of World Plaza by collecting stamps in a passport. To get stamps, they need to arrange an event, lead a discussion or give a presentation. World Plaza welcomes around 120 students each day and is staffed by one full time and two part time employees. The activities are described as “pull” and “push” activities.

Pull activities are ones which attract students into World Plaza. For example, they could be activities arranged at lunchtime by students on various topics. Other activities are led by teachers, foreign students or guests. More examples of activities include TOEIC workshops, travel English workshops, an English advisory service, English news and DVDs, or general English chit chat.

Push activities are ones which require students to attend in order to fulfill a class assignment and might include interviewing another students in World Plaza, practicing for a speaking test, making a voice recording or completing homework with another student (or alone).

Robert told us that there was evidence that students (even those with a pre-intermediate level of English) at Nanzan University were moving along the continuum from the Instructor-led end to the learner-led end.

(4) Garold Murray (also presenting on behalf of Sara Cotterall) discussed how commonly held assumptions about language teachers are problematic. The context being discussed is the Akita self-access centre which is open to the general public. 30% of the visitors are business people, 30% are retired, 30% are housewives and 10% are students. The centre offers them four things; a learning environment, a learning plan, ongoing support and access to a community of learners. It does not offer language lessons and there are no teachers at the centre.

Sara and Garold have been conducting a study over the past two years which investigates the experience that visitors to the centre have through interviews, portfolios, observations and e-mails. They draw on the literature in the area of social identity constructed in and through discourse (Riley, 1999) and explained the term “membershipping”. Membershipping is categorizing people or assigning identities to them and expecting them to behave in certain ways. A problem that occurred in Akita was that learners incorrectly membershipped the learning advisors as teachers. Garold suggested that the discourse needs to be clarified so that learners can see themselves as more as independent learners. Perhaps new terms are needed to define who learning advisers are and what they do.

(5) Lucy Cooker (straight off the plane from London!) questioned how learning in self-access environments is assessed. She began with some very good questions: should we attempt to assess such a difficult concept as autonomy? If we are promoting autonomy in order to further language learning, then should we only assess language learned? Sometimes administrators of universities need justification for continuing to fund a self-access centre, but how can we show that self-access centers are advantageous for language learning? Barbara Sinclair addressed this slippery issue in her 1999 paper and approached the topic by attempting to comment on how autonomous learners by identifying their probable stages of metacognitive awareness.

Lucy drew on her work in the SALC at Kanda University of International Studies where students can take a module on learner training. They are evaluated on evidence of reflection on learner diaries and verbal interviews, on their ability to plan learning activities and produce a learning plan. The evidence is assessed according to grading bands, but questions arise such as what is it that learning advisors are assessing? Is it really learner autonomy or is it the ability to use the right language to give assessors the impression that reflection is occurring? Are the learners really taking the concepts on board? Lucy suggests that the process should be more learner-centered. She even questioned whether or not it should be assessed at all.

There was some time at the end for questions and answers and then Garold closed the meeting reminding us to join JASAL. Their website is http://www.jasal.net


References

Riley, P. (1999). On the social construction of ‘the learner’. In S. Cotterall & D. Crabbe (Eds.), Learner autonomy in language learning: Defining the field and effecting change (29-42). Bayreuth Contributions to Glottodidactics, Vol 8. Frankfurt am Main: Lang.

Sinclair, B. (1999) ‘Wrestling with a jelly: the evaluation of learner autonomy’, in B. Morrison (ed.) Experiments and Evaluation in Self-Access Language Learning, Hong Kong, HASALD, 95-110.

Hi, everybody. Sorry for this, but , just testing to see how this works ! Masuko

Wheeeeeeeeee! Just got back from the JALT conference and am still on a post-conference high. I’ve been trying to figure out what the highlights were for me: amazing plenary speeches, great new ideas and directions from speakers in workshops and presentations, the LD party, passionate conversations (!), meeting up with old friends, making connections with new… I can’t decide.

My conference started with coffee in the Friends café on the second floor with Hugh. It didn’t take long to get onto Hugh’s passion for jazz and poetry. We both agreed that there is something special about musicians and their devotion to continually improving their ability to perform, and I was wondering whether and how this relates to language learning. Intrigued, I went along to Hugh’s presentation ‘Poetry in language classes: Whys and hows’ the following evening. Now, I must confess that I have never used poetry in any of my language classes, although I often use film and have this year been teaching a class on contemporary British fiction. I do read poetry, but for me, it’s a solitary, intellectual, meditative exercise – not something I can imagine putting out there and messing about with. In fact, I’ve come across articles that have described using poetry in ways that are not only creative and fun, but also darn good pedagogy. And yet, I still hesitate… Going to Hugh’s presentation not only confirmed the whys and hows of using poetry to teach English, but, perhaps more inspiringly, put me in a room with a number of people, apart from the speaker, who were clearly passionate about poetry and pedagogy, and I could see (or rather feel) in an instant how that kind of energy can light up a whole class of students.

That same evening, I had several more inspiring conversations. Over mountains of turkey and mashed potato, I got talking with Naoko about her idea to base an article for Learning Learning on Harry Potter, and Stephen Davies about another article idea, which would entail a complicated plot involving a research student and supervisor at a University of the Galaxy several thousands of years hence. Neither of these ideas that I would have thought of in a million years. But they are certainly exciting, and far be it for me to block such creative energy. Moving over to the bar for my second drink, I found myself talking to Tim about his research area of teacher motivation. Somewhat to my surprise, he told me he’d stopped finding the term ‘motivation’ useful, and now prefers a concept of ‘energy’ instead. Well, that works for me too. I don’t how you would go about observing it empirically or measuring it, but energy is exactly what seems to make the difference between a good class and a bad one; it’s something that I try and bring to every class, and I can feel it when students respond and contribute their own. That’s why the best classes generate so much energy that you leave the room more wired that after ten cups of espresso. Thinking in this way makes me realize that we often tend to focus on either learner autonomy or teacher autonomy, which means we are missing a crucial co-dependence that perhaps is a necessary component of learning. Or is it?…. Hmmm…

Still on the subject of highs, I must mention the three plenary speeches I managed to attend, all of them absolutely brilliant in quite different ways:

Ron Carter gave an amazingly polished speech on differences between written and spoken language and how corpora have uncovered frequencies of certain lexical items that rarely, if ever, appear in textbooks and other learning materials. I liked the fact that the top 40 most used items include things like: ‘mm’ (no. 15), ‘er’ (no. 17) and laughter (somewhere in the 20s). Mind you, I’m still not convinced that this means that these items should all be taught as a matter of priority. I’m a big fan of Henry Widdowson who has said in various publications that linguistic description isn’t the same as linguistic prescription, and so with him, I think that the priority for learners should be the written or formal mode. But I also think that learners could benefit from being exposed to more varieties of the language and being shown alternative (formal and informal) versions of a single text.

Amy Tsui was another star turn, showing us how students collaborating together to create an alternative ending to a story suggests that language learning – by which she meant mediating or reconstruing experience – can take place through the discussion process alone. Which led her to the quite radical idea that ‘scaffolding’, something that most of us probably feel we should be providing or at least thinking about most of the time, really isn’t necessary. Well, I’m not sure that I would agree with her there. But what really got my attention was her video footage of four sixth graders working together to produce a story. Amazing to see their confidence and commitment to working entirely in English. I’ve always thought that I’m pretty lucky with the students I get to teach – they’re generally motivated and able. But I wondered how they would react if they were to see Amy’s video too. Not that I blame Japanese students in the least. Wouldn’t it be amazing if Monkasho had the same level of commitment to English language education as the Hong Kong/Chinese government?

Paul Nation was the last of the star speakers and unlike the previous speakers I’ve mentioned, conducted his whole talk without the aid of power point or any other visual aid. I for one was riveted the whole hour. Also unlike with the previous speakers, I don’t know so much about the field he was discussing – vocabulary - but what he said made perfect sense to me intuitively. Daunting as it is, it is good to hear about the research findings that prove that to become fluent readers students need to know eight or nine thousand words. It’s good to see support for the idea that explicit vocabulary teaching is perhaps the only way to achieve that goal. I give my students vocabulary lists before listening activities and I ask them to keep vocabulary logs. I also test vocabulary in one of my classes. But I don’t think I have ever had a particularly principled approach to teaching vocabulary. From this speech though I feel that I can develop one and I’ve already been thinking of some ways I can address this from the moment I go back to the classroom.

… Which happens to be first thing tomorrow morning. Monday morning I expect my feet will be back on solid ground. It’s approaching the end of the academic year, so there aren’t too many major adjustments that I can make. But JALT 07 has left me with enough energy to make some small adjustments and to really do some serious thinking and planning for next year.

I’m looking forward to more opportunities to share energy with you all again soon!

Alison

Blackwell Synergy is offering complimentary access to “The Concept of Fundamental Educational Change” by Leonard Waks in Volume 57, Issue 3 of Educational Theory. From the abstract:

In this essay, Leonard Waks contributes to a reconceptualization of "fundamental educational change." By distinguishing sharply between educational change at the organizational and the institutional levels, Waks shows that the mechanisms of change at these two levels are entirely different. He then establishes, by means of a conceptual argument, that fundamental educational change takes place not at the organizational, but rather at the institutional level. Along the way Waks takes Larry Cuban’s influential conceptual framework regarding educational change as both a starting point and target of appraisal.

I just wanted to test if everything works.

Hughが作ってくれたパスワードも試してみたかったので。代々木で皆さんに会えるのを楽しみにしています。

Greetings all,

Guess this might be a good time for a fall back to the "Hello, world!" test post of now mostly greying programmers. After a few scuffles, it seems I may be on the road to the creation of a mostly trouble free bilingual blog for Learner Development members and friends.

Here again, is the Japanese text for the Conference party this year: last I heard from Stacey, only eight places left, and we need to confirm our numbers this coming Friday, 16 November.

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JALT ２００7 にて素敵なディナーと楽しいひとときを 学習ディベロップメント研究部会（LD)、学習・教授に関するイベント、東京   2007 JALT 大会の際、懇親ディナーを計画しています！ パーティーは The Pink Cow(ザ・ピンク・カウ)で開催されます。 七面鳥のローストのコース又はベジタリアンの方用のコースからお選びいただけます

日にち : 2007 年11 月23 日( 金)
時間 : PM8:30 ～PM10:30
会費 : 5,000 円
地図 : http://gmap.jp/shop-911.html?&uid=197621
住所 : 渋谷区渋谷1-3-18 ビラモデルナB1
電話番号 : 03-3406-5597
ホームページ (日本語 ): http://www.thepinkcow.com/NewHome_j.htm
Website in English: http://www.thepinkcow.com/NewHome_e.htm
お食事のメニュー : 七面鳥のローストの料理、ベジタリアンの方用のコースあり!
お飲み物のメニュー :２フリードリンク付き：ソフトドリンク、ビール、ワイン、カクテルを含む
定員 : 先着 4０名様

人数に限りがございますので、参加ご希望方は下記までご連絡ください。
Stacey Vye (stacey.vye AT MARK gmail.com) まで

ベジタリアン用のお料理をご希望の方はお知らせ下さい。 レストランの地図は会議の際、学習ディベロップメント研究部会受付にてご用意しています