●Date: August 2nd, 9:30-12:30 
Instructor: Kazuyoshi Sato (Nagoya University of Foreign Studies)
Title: Developing a New Course (Writing & Presentation)

Abstract: What if you became the coordinator for a new course? It happened to me. I will show you how we have developed the new course (Writing & Presentation) under the new English program (Integrated English Program). In this course, writing is integrated with speaking (presentation). Moreover, I will demonstrate several useful techniques to develop learners’ writing and presentation skills, including peer-editing, use of gestures, and voice inflection. In short, I would like to say that curriculum development entails continuous evaluation and modification.

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●Date: August 2nd, 1:30-4:30 
Instructor: Juanita Heigham (Sugiyama Women’s University)
Title: Finding the Balance

Abstract: Do this! Do that! Do you ever feel like your classroom is not your own? That administrative guidelines have a strangle hold on your curriculum? Choking the enthusiasm out of your students (and yourself)? If you do, don’t be discouraged because there is good news. Even within the confines of rigid requirements, with a little work, you can reclaim your classroom and bring it to life. Through creative curriculum development you can work toward finding a balance between what you must do and what you’d like to do. In this workshop, we will explore a variety of ways both to meet the administrative demands imposed on you and to provide your students with stimulating and exciting learning opportunities. (Please bring one of the the the the the textbooks you are now using to the workshop.)

1. Interesting activities you might want to use in your class: Why?

(1)
・ Peer-editing. It’s pleasant to have comments from others. We can improve our writing and also exchange ideas.

・ Peer-editing is a new idea to me. Not only writing but also reading others’ writing materials are very useful. We can learn more new expressions through them.

・ I’d love to use voice inflection & gestures.

・ Today I had a chance to give a short presentation, and I found if was difficult and I really want to try it again. It takes time and need to practice to learn presentation skills. Also, those activities for practicing voice inflection, gestures, and postures are a lot of fun.

2. What you learned from today’ workshop/general comment:

(1)
・ Students should have a lot of opportunities to use English. Output as well as input is very important and we should give them a lot of chances to output their thoughts or experiences.

・ I did a presentation in front of audience, I realized that how my students are always nervous when they do “Show and Tell.”

・ Peer-editing is very important because it can motivate students to do better and they’ll be more careful when they write an essay. It will improve their own skills of editing & correcting essays.

・ It is a very hard problem to evaluate and correct the students’ essays. In this way of writing essays, they can reflect their writing and notice their mistakes with each other. Using this technique teachers can save their time!

・ I think we sometimes don’t review the essay which we wrote. We have no time to rewrite it. But the good thing is to take time for students to improve their writing skills.

(2)
・ To share our ideas is very useful and important. We seldom share our ideas in our school. From now on, I will try.

・ I’ve learned I can start small. If I fail, I have nothing to lose.

・ As Juanita suggested, I would like to begin with small things without being afraid of failures.

・ It’s essential to work creatively & focus on what students can do.

・ Monbusho forces us to teach many things in limited period. I have decided to change my class thanks to Mr.Sato and Ms Heigham. All I have to do is set small but clearly defined goals and believe in myself—that is what I learned from today’s workshop.

・ I’ve got to know how little my students learn from my lecture (5%)!

・ I found my grammar lessons are just teacher-centered partly because I don’t want much time and energy to prepare for them, but I learned today students learn far more by practice-by-doing approach.

・ I started to think about the goals for students, the goals for myself. I should not forget to share the goals with students and other teachers.

3. Questions :

Q: In junior high school, I think it is very important to teach English with only English. But, it is very difficult and not able to do. I wonder I can teach with only English.

A (Yoshi): The ideal is to teach only with English, but it depends on the level of students. For example, when you start a new activity, you might have to give directions in Japanese. However, as students get used to these activities, you can increase the amount of use of English. Also, if you really want to say something important, it is better to use Japanese. The most important thing is to create time when students can use only English. The interview you did today is a good example. You interviewed five people using only simple English. If students experience such a successful experience, they will be motivated to try to use more English. Moreover, you can teach some classroom English little by little. Anyway, eventually, students will get used to being taught only in English.

●Date: August 3rd, 9:30-12:30
Instructor: Nancy Mutoh (Nagoya University of Foreign Studies)
Title: Extensive Reading in Your Curriculum – Many Forms and Uses

Abstract: In real life, 'reading' does not equal 'studying.' We read for many reasons, two of the most frequent being for pleasure and for information. How motivating for learners to encounter English reading that is both comprehensible to them and interesting or fun to read! Learners need this experience to increase their reading fluency, general language fluency, motivation and confidence. In this session, participants will first examine the WHYs of extensive reading and discuss to what extent their own curriculum currently meets the needs that extensive reading aims to meet. Most of the time will be spent discussing HOWs: how extensive reading might be introduced in participants’ schools and how various integrated-skills activities can be based on extensive reading.

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●Date: August 3rd, 1:30-4:30 
Instructor: Satoshi Hamashima (Nagoya University of Foreign Studies)
Title: The Rhetorical Structures of English Paragraphs

Abstract: What are easily comprehensible essays to native speakers of English? We will read and discuss some English essays written by students from various countries. Upon completion of the lectures, the participants will be divided into groups and given a task to discuss these essays. A representative from each group will then be asked to present their findings in front of the other participants. As an example, we will also view a video made by an Australian post graduate student concerning this topic. I will also address the appropriateness of Kaplan's ideas and methods for writing composition found in his cultural model.

1. Interesting activities you might want to use in your class: Why?

(1)

・ Extensive reading. It was first time to learn it but I thought it was really useful. So I will try adapt it to my lessons. But there are problems. We have to evaluate (Recently we have to clear the points of evaluation to everybody) and we have to use textbook. Anyway I will try to find the ways to let the students enjoy reading.

・ If I can find time, I want to start extensive reading. I was so much surprised to hear that there is a high school which started extensive reading.

・ Keiko sensei’s idea is very good. I will try ER class in my school. ER will motivate students to learn English more.

・ Fortunately I was in the same group with Ms Takahashi, who has already started extensive reading in her school. She was sure that extensive reading is really powerful for her students to improve their English ability. Her story encouraged me to start some small thing in my class.

・ I want to somehow apply the idea of extensive reading to my ordinary English reading class with ordinary textbook. Although extensive reading is meant to be conducted outside of classroom, I’m sure it would give me some insight leading to better and more enjoyable reading classes.

・ I might adapt some of Nancy’s ideas about extensive reading to my class. Actually some of the students borrow some easy English books from ALTs or some Japanese teachers, and they enjoy reading them for fun.

・ There are many ways of writing book reports. I’ve given just one kind of book report to the students, but I’d like to give them several kinds of book report so that they can freely choose their favorite style of book report.

(2)

・ I’d like to let the students analyze the essays. Both analyzing and peer-editing seem very good for students because by doing them they know what kind of essays are easy to read and understand.

2. What you learned from today’ workshop/general comment:

(1)

・ I always ask my students to translate into Japanese and the students ask me to give meanings in Japanese. But it doesn’t help to enjoy reading sometime. So I will adapt the extensive reading somehow.

・ I could know the new way to use “extensive reading” in my class. I will try to get English books as many as I can.

・ I learned there are many ways to incorporate extensive reading into the curriculum. I want to find a way which is suitable to my school and students.

・ Extensive reading motivates students to read more and by reading more they will be more interested in English. Without studying by focusing on grammatical rules, they can get a feeling whether sentences are right or not, and I think this is very important for their future English proficiency.

(2)

・ I really enjoyed the analysis of some essays that were wrote by non-native English speakers. I want to be able to write a better essay in English, so reading many good or bad essays was really useful to me.

・ I wanted to know more about NZ English!

・ I know that ethnic differences affect the structures of paragraphs, but his is the first time I’ve analyzed the differences in the real essays. Nowadays essay writing in Japanese is required in entrance exams to college and American way of paragraph structures is introduced as an ideal and global standard. I doubt about trend.

・ Each country has each writing style. I’ve learnt it before. This is very interesting. We should learn how to organize the English essay. This is one of cultural differences.

・ The way of writing essay is very closely related to the country’s culture and history. We should respect the way of writing as well as the culture and history.

・ I think the afternoon session was very difficult. At first I didn’t understand what Mr. Hamashima explained at all. But gradually I could a little. To analyze compositions are difficult but it’s still interesting.

3. Questions :

Q: Is it possible to do ER every class in JHS?

A (Yoshi): Why not? There are many other easier books with a lot of picture for children. My daughters aged 12 enjoy reading picture books. I recommend books by Eric Carle.

Q: When we write an essay, is American style or British style recognized a fine essay? Is it better to teach students US/British way?

A (Yoshi): As I showed a model in my session, there is a style for an academic essay. As a teacher, it is a good ideas to show a model. Yet, there are some variations. As Professor Hamashima mentioned, one of his students wrote a wonderful speech essay by using her personal experience at the beginning of her essay. This is very effective to attract the audience in a speech. Anyway, be flexible! Students can learn a format to organize their ideas, but the most important thing is the content—their message.

●Date: August 4th, 9:30-12:30 
Instructor: Brad Deacon (Nagoya City University)
Title: Deep Impact Storytelling – One day…

Abstract: One summer day a teacher named Brad met a group of high school teachers from Japan to conduct a morning workshop on storytelling. They were all filled with curiosity and wonder about what they would learn together. After listening eagerly to a few stories, they then discovered why storytelling is a powerful way to motivate and engage their own students to learn more effectively. Next they experienced many useful tips and techniques for storytelling in their own classrooms. They grew even more excited and told some stories of their own. When they eventually returned to their own classrooms their students too grew excited as these teachers began, 'One day… .'

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●Date: August 4th, 1:30-4:30 
Instructors: Keiko Takahashi (Ikeda High School) & Kazuyoshi Sato (Nagoya University of Foreign Studies)
Title: Developing an English Curriculum in a High School through Collaboration

Abstract: What would happen if curriculum development were implemented in a high school? We will show how a high school teacher has been undertaking this challenge. Surprisingly, when teachers collaborated to improve the curriculum, students improved their English skills much better. We will demonstrate several strategies for making a difference in a high school English curriculum.

*Participants will write comments about the workshop at the end of the day. Yoshi will make a newsletter containing their anonymous comments and distribute it to everyone in the morning of the next day, and participants will also share their comments with one another at that time.

1. Interesting activities you might want to use in your class: Why?
(1)

・ I learnt how to tell stories to my students. I’ll try to do it!

・ Story-telling seems to be very interesting. When we use this “story-telling” at the beginning of lessons, students must concentrate on the lessons.

・ Story-telling. In it story-tellers can improve their “speaking” and “writing” ability, and listeners can improve their “reading” and “listening” ability. They can improve four important skills in English.

・ Brad’s French lesson was excellent. I’d love to learn some uncommon language and try to do the same way he did, in order to teach how much other aspects than language itself are useful and important.

(2)

・ Communicative writing seems to be much more interesting. I don’t know what will be in my class if I use this procedure. But I want to try some parts of this procedure.

・ Fun-essay. Because my students like to express themselves with pictures. If they are allowed to draw some pictures or stick some pictures, I think they feel free to write English because the pictures would be helpful.

・ I’d like to use peer-editing in my class. This is because the comments from other students must be much more interesting and encouraging for the students than those from the teachers. The comments will be helpful to improve the students’ writing.

・ Timed-conversation seems to be a good idea. I can encourage students to talk about themselves. It would be more motivating and it would make students speak English more actively.

・ Shadowing. Even low-level students can do easily and feel that they are really speaking English. I think this activity give students confidence in their English and motivation to speak more.

・ Portfolio. I know about this word, but I hesitated to make use of it. From the workshop of today, I think I’ll try to use “the portfolio” to trace the students and understand them.



2. What you learned from today’ workshop:

(1)

・ Story-telling is useful. When the teacher tells a story, it would be better for him/her not to tell the whole story. He/she should stop halfway and have the students imagine how the story will end.

・ The ways to improve teaching like making eye contact, using visual aids (realia), gestures, repetition, etc. are very important. Maybe I will make a large notice of these ways and put it on the back of the classroom so that I will not forget them.

・ As for story-telling, I felt how important intonation, gesture, visual things, speed of speaking, and repetition.

(2)

・ Comment from Brad Deacon: I reaffirmed the critical role of giving an audience various experiences in a workshop. People learn more by doing versus reading or hearing only about something. There was good balance in the afternoon. This is a lesson that hopefully the teachers will apply in their classrooms to let their students experience English rather than just hearing about or reading about the language.

・ Keiko is a challenger. Now I know how to make the English class with other teachers and students. So I’m going to talk and share with them certainly.

・ First, I was surprised to see the conversation of high school students (in April), because in JHS students can do or more, of course, not everybody. But gradually they improve themselves according to her very good curriculum systematically. I was surprised at her effort.

・ These days educational experts put high priority on ‘Learning Together” especially among students. Peer-editing is one of these activities, I think.

・ I had not come out of the old idea as an English teacher that grammatical knowledge precedes anything in learning English. However, through this seminar, I got something new. I learned writing essays many many times enables the students to improve even their grammatical competence. I’d like to change my class after August—No. “I” must change!

・ Some teachers think that passing entrance exam for university is the purpose and don’t change their old style even if the students don’t enjoy or they can’t improve their English ability. But I could learn good things about Ikeda HS. Their new trial also succeeded in such exam or STEP. This can persuade them. I will try to talk with them showing what I learned from this workshop to make better lessons.

3. Questions / Other comments:

Q: I wonder how English grammar can be effectively taught in communicative settings.

A (Yoshi): There is a study about grammar plus communicative practice (see “How Languages are Learned” by Lightbown & Spada, p. 121). In this study, the researchers compared a group which received a regular grammar-based instruction with another group which received additional communicative activities. The study showed that students learning English with additional communicative activities made greater improvements in accent, vocabulary, grammar, and comprehension than those who received only the required grammar lessons. Surprisingly, the greatest improvement was seen in grammatical accuracy. Keiko’s practice is a good example. Also, other researchers put emphasis on input in teaching grammar. Try to take a look at “Impact Grammar” (Longman, by Rod Ellis). Also, there are several books which collect communicative activities in teaching grammar, including games, interviews, and so on. For example:

・高橋 正夫 (2000). 『高校英語のコミュニカティブ・プラクティス』中教出版

・羽島 博愛、山岸 信義、三浦 幸子 (1995). 『コミュニケーション英文法』国土社

・Larsen-Freeman, D. (Ed) (1997). Grammar dimensions: Form, meaning, and use.

Series of four books. Heinle & Heinle.

・Rinvolucri, M., & Davis, P. (1995). More grammar games: Cognitive, affective

and movement activities for EFL students. Cambridge University Press.

・Ur, P. (1988). Grammar practice activities. Cambridge University Press.

・ We don’t have to pay much attention to “Grammar.” English is, of course, a language. So it’s very very important to communicate. For a long time I forgot it. The aim of the English lessons is that students can communicate, speak and listen to, in English. I want to be some help for them.

・ I confirmed that my English teaching ideas, philosophy, ways, etc. is not wrong. Communicative activities in well-designed curriculum are very effective for English education goals.

・ As Yoshi concluded, we need always questioning how we can improve our teaching style and take a risk and do whatever we can do. I really admire Keiko’s challenging spirit and her attractive presentation with lots of gestures and smiles.

・ I learned that collaborating with other teachers is very important to develop the curriculum. By joining the workshop for 3 days, I am motivated to change my classes and change our English curriculum better.

・ Collaboration with other teachers is really important and helpful. My colleagues often give me some helpful advice or suggestion. And I will share what I learned today and give some hint to my colleagues.

・ I think the cooperation between universities and HS is very important in changing the curriculum (probably between HS and JHS, too). We tend to think we have no power and just obey university entrance exams.

・ I learned a lot from today’s workshops as well as previous workshops!! I met wonderful teachers and professors and their experience meant me a lot!! Thank you very much for giving us this wonderful opportunity. I hope to join this workshop again and see you all.

（以下のワークショップの模様はDVDにて完全保存されています。貸し出し可能ですので、お問い合わせ下さい。問い合わせ先：杉浦）

●Date: September 24, 2005, 10:30-12:00, 13:00-14:30
Venue: Nagoya International Center
Instructor: Nancy Mutoh (Nagoya University of Foreign Studies)
Title: New Ways in Teaching Vocabulary

The number of participants: 11

Abstract: There are three areas to innovate in helping students a lot in vocabulary learning; multi-word chunks, memory aids and reviewing & recycling. Words are always in a context, and ‘go with’ certain words, but not others. Learning collocations (multi-word chunks) in the beginning, from natural contexts, develops ‘early accuracy’ and good language learning skills. ‘Learning shortcuts’ (memory aids), useful for faster learning and longer-lasting learning, can be built by using word families, images and loanwords. Revisiting vocabulary (reviewing & recycling) is beneficial if students ‘personalize’ context and elaborate word knowledge. In language learning, there is a time for grammar and a time for free talk, a time for new things and a time to re-visit old things, a time for fluency and a time for accuracy. We should try to find good balance and timing of these, help students integrate all the parts into a smooth whole, and help students desire to succeed in using this new language to communicate something real.

1. Interesting activities you might want to use in your class. Why?

* Teaching vocabulary in sets and related pairs. This is very creative work and learner can enjoy making an original sentences.

* Individualized List / Sentence List / Quizzes. This activity motivates students more than just memorizing words by writing only words and their meaning many times. This will help them learn the usage of words and phrases.

* Loanwords activity. Loanwords help students hook and expand their vocabularies. Students have less difficulties learning loanwords than unknown words.

* ‘Shadowing exercise’ is fun and using ‘image’ is interesting. Students don’t like to memorize English words because they try to memorize it by translating in Japanese. I’d like to show them how fun and interesting vocabulary learning is.

* To let students pick up their own new words in the words/sentences lists. Because they can think of their own life through learning English.

2. What you learned from today’s workshop

* ‘Personalize’ the words is very new to me. I’ve been thinking of ‘utilizing’ the words so far. But personalize is a much more suitable word for students. I’ll try to teach this word in mind: personalize.

* Usually I give students vocabulary homework. But I learned from today’s workshop ‘students learn vocabulary positively’. They make their original vocabulary notebook.

* Just remembering words with matching between Japanese and English is not good enough. Based on the context, words can establish its real meanings. It is quite difficult for us non-native speaker of English to grasp the actual meanings of the English words. But with the various usage examples of the specific word, we can clarify the definition of it. I would like to show my students more and more usages of words, rather than the equivalent of Japanese translation.

* Loanwords List. I was surprised at the number of the loanwords. Just showing students the list of loanwords will encourage them to learn English, because we can say they can somehow communicate using only katakana English!

* I'm teaching low level of students in high school. Nancy said, “When they can’t do by themselves, we can allow them to use the dictionaries.” I found that they will learn how to use dictionaries when they do interesting activities.



3. Questions and answers

Q: I'd like to use 'My list of sentences' & 'My list of words' technique. Is it effective for students to make the lists in the classes, or to tell them to do at home?

A (Nancy): I have students make their lists as homework. It was confusing in the beginning of the year to explain it to everyone and it took some students several weeks to catch on. But students evaluate it positively. I guess it made sense to them to prioritize the words that way.

Q: When I try 'Word list' & 'Sentence list' activities, I'll have many questions; for example, if students are not motivated... if students don't enjoy it...

A (Nancy): I suggest to teachers that they start out slowly, requiring 3 to 5 words per week. Maybe 1 phrase and 2 words the first week or two. Then when students are doing it right and understand the process, maybe 2 phrases and 3 words per week after that, at least until the teacher sees how it goes. For students who aren’t motivated or able to write sentences, the teacher could offer a list of 10 sentences with an underlined word or phrase in each. If the sentences are personalized to their school setting, it would be more interesting. Then students could simply choose the sentences they feel are most useful to them and copy them, according to the form, on the two lists. Then the teacher knows the sentences being studied are correct and the students’ load is lighter.

●Date: September 24, 2005, 14:30-17:00
Venue: Nagoya International Center, Conference Room #3
Participants: Chieko, Hiromi, Mikio, Seiji, Yasuhiro, Keiko, Reiko

(Action Research Group only)

Chieko: Many of her students think English is a subject to get a high score to enter universities. She wants them to be more interested in the topic of the lesson and to be more motivated to study English. So she changed grammar-centered method into communicative approach. After students read and shadowed the text four times, they recorded their reading on the tape. Then they made a conversation with their partners.

Hiromi: She has focused only on translating text. She’d like to change the teaching style and wants her students to know that English is a way of communication. Her goal is to have students express what they think and communicate with others in English. Before reading the text, she had students talk about what they knew and guess from the pictures. After reading and shadowing the text three times, they took a reading test. At the end, they wrote their comments about the story and they had a speaking test in pairs.

Mikio: His goal is to change the students’ attitude toward English from passive to positive. In his class of ‘English II’, he divided the lesson schedule into two parts; the first round and the second round. After learning basic grammar in the first round using English and Japanese, students reproduced the contents of the text only in English. Then they got Q&A without looking at the text. They also learned the meaning of words by the definition in English. They got used to using only English.

Yasuhiro: As students have only three classes of English a week at junior high school, it’s difficult to have them enjoy learning English. However, he wants to have students express their feelings and communicate with others. Before starting with the textbook, students had interests in the topic by listening to their classmates’ experience. Then they made sentences by using the key sentence pattern.

Seiji: In his English grammar class, he doesn’t want to teach just sample sentences in the textbook. He tried to have students personalize the sentences by expressing themselves or interviewing others. After listening to the explanation of several key phrases in the lesson, students made sentences about their real life using the phrases. Then, they interviewed other students about their sentences, wrote them down and did peer-editing.

Keiko: Her goals of English Reading class are to build a learning community in a classroom and to cultivate students’ interest and broaden their views through communicative activities. While students were reading the text, they got several discussion questions about the topic and thought about it deeply. Then they made their original poems based on “Imagine” in English, expressing their real feeling, and a comment in Japanese. Then, their classmates wrote comments in Japanese about them.

Reiko: She wants students to step forward from passive attitude by using English. After understanding vocabulary and grammar, students made a pair with one person reading aloud while another translating it into Japanese. They also shadowed the text in pairs. Then, they wrote their comments about the topic in English.

●Date: October 15, 2005, 10:30-12:00, 13:00-14:30
Venue: Nagoya International Center
Instructor: Michael Cholewinski (Nagoya University of Foreign Studies)
Title: Improving Students’ Writing & Presentation Skills

The number of participants: 15

Abstract: Teaching writing and presenting together provides students with complementary activities in which to learn two very important English communication skills – expressing information in coherent compositions, and orally presenting this information to others in an effective, professional manner. We will examine the basic goals behind the development of single and multi-paragraph compositions and fundamental presentation techniques through hands-on creation and evaluation of classroom activities. We will pay particular attention to ‘scaffolding’ and ‘recursion’ techniques that help learners build upon personal and peer experiences in the classroom.

1. Interesting activities you might want to use in your class. Why?

* Peer presentation feedback sheet is useful. I want to use Presenter Feedback Response by letting them use cell phones, because most students have cell phones.

* Peer-check. The students should share their ideas much more. By doing this, I guess, the atmosphere of the classroom changes from stiff situation to soft and warm one.

* I think that the ‘One-paragraph compositions’ booklet is very helpful material for both students and teachers. I always use peer feedback activities after presentation, but I had never asked the presenters to respond to their audience’s feedback. I should try this additional activity to my lessons.

* The first self-introduction presentation, because of well-organized form but can teach a lot; gesture, audience connection, also the script card for the speech, too.

* I would like them to show their opinions, create something, because they don’t create anything, they just listen and write down from blackboard.



2. What you learned from today’s workshop

* Writing is really difficult, but at the same time, fun. Sometimes we teachers let them write about something. But in many cases, it’s not a real writing of their own idea, but the translation from Japanese to English. I strongly felt the importance of letting students acquire the skills of creative essay writing.

* I'm very lucky that I could review paragraph writing. In my writing class, students had several chances to write about some topics like ‘My favorite places to visit’ or ‘My roles at home’. But I haven’t taught them paragraph writing. I’ve been wondering how to do it. Thanks to this workshop, I can proceed the paragraph writing little by little.

* “Manageable responsibility” made me wonder if I really give my students truly proper kinds and amount of responsibilities. I'm afraid I have given them more than they can handle, and I did not doubt that I gave them work properly. Today I learned how to assess the responsibility I give to my students.

* Maybe we teachers shouldn’t correct students’ writings right away. We need to give students some time to think themselves.

* I always think that I want to make my English class better than ‘yesterday’s one’. That means I should improve day by day. The idea and way I experienced here today will surely work when I think about my class.



3. Questions and answers

Q: In your writing class, do you explain the different style and organization of Japanese writing and English writing? If so, how?

A (Michael): If you mean by 'style' the logical thought patterns/structures of Westerners and Japanese...I never discuss this point. I focus on what I have to offer, and 'sell' its benefits in practical terms (communication, thinking, analysis, criticism, etc., skills), which may be used in any thinking/communication situation (western or Japanese). Yes, those styles are part of that, but do you think about the fork when you use it (vs. chopsticks)? No, you just use it and maybe think about how it suits what you are doing right now. Same kind of thinking, in my mind. But that's me.



Q: When we exchanged my writing with other people, I felt uncomfortable. How do you avoid it in your class?

A (Michael): I have learned to accept the fact that you cannot avoid it. I try to create an atmosphere in the class where students can feel/believe that by working together they can benefit each other in the experience. That doesn't erase the fact/reality that people will 'naturally' feel uncomfortable, but it does make the experience a more readily acceptable challenge/chance in life. I think the analysis 'guides' reduce the tendency to judge, and when everyone realizes this they feel a bit more at ease.



Q: AET is very helpful in checking students' sentences and many other things. If JETs and AET cooperate, many fruitful results will come out. What kinds of cooperation do you think is important?

A (Michael): Any interaction/cooperation that builds students' understanding that this is all about communication not just taking a test and getting a score. Tough to do in a prescriptive curriculum. I guess I don't have a specific answer for this rather open question. I mean, the goal is to get students to cognitively interact with the task and material so that they can own it, appreciate it, grow from it. The teacher needs to go from those principles and think it through themselves...I cannot offer much without understanding that teacher’s mind or context, right?



Q: I don't let my students do peer correction now, thinking of their English ability. But I wonder if I can let them do that even though they have very low English ability...

A (Michael): One, In my mind it's not really just about correction...it's about recursive noticing (for both parties). There are many more things in writing than just grammar and mechanics that peers can observe or check for each other. If you as a teacher focus on one kind of expression, or a range of adjectives for an expression, or a range of prepositions (etc.) and then let peers interact on just these points...that, I think could be useful peer feedback (and recursive noticing by both parties) and still stay inside the prescriptive curriculum one might have.



(Michael) Thanks to everyone. I learned a lot in that presentation, too. I was also once again aware of the very genuine interest and professional development that exists among many Japanese teachers. I wish that all foreign teachers in Japan had that same drive.

●Date: October 15, 2005, 14:30-17:00
Venue: Nagoya International Center, Conference Room #3
Participants: Chieko, Atsushi, Mikio, Ben, Keiko, Miwako (Action Research Group only)

Chieko: She introduced (1) reading test through tape recorders, (2) writing their opinions about the topic of the textbook and (3) conversation in pairs. She wanted them to read the textbook many times after understanding the content of the story, but she found that they aren7t confident about their pronunciation. As for writing activity, she found that most of their opinions were similar. She will give a lot of information about the next topic of the textbook to motivate the students. They didn’t have any troubles finding their partner to have a conversation. They enjoyed communicating with their partners.

Atsushi: His research field is ‘reading’, especially reading speed. Many students and teachers think translation is all necessary to understand English. He is forced to adopt the grammar-translation method all the time. But he wants to introduce ‘scanning’ and ‘previewing’ method to improve their ability of rapid reading. Students tried to guess the whole story from the fragments of the story, and they tried to compose their own story. Some of them wanted more time to do that, Next time, he should improve the introduction of this kind of materials.

Mikio: He believes making a summary of the lesson is very meaningful. At the end of each lesson, students are to summarize the story with their own words. It is the process for the manipulations of the words they have learned and arrange the story with the words they have learned. With this practice, students seem to become so much familiar with the structure of each sentence. Also with recycling the words they have learned so far, they look like happy to get the pleasure of making the sentences by themselves. The target he has in mind for this practice is that students are to keep the general image of the article in mind and try to reproduce the story with their own words. It is just like the first stage of impromptu speech. However, for the preparation of this summarization, many students make a memo for their summarization first, and then try to remember it. Gradually he will give different tasks such as plain impromptu summarization (Just after reading some plain article, they are to immediately start its summarization).

Ben: His goal is to implement activities and the beliefs of cooperative learning in his classroom on a daily basis. He will focus on my 2nd year eikaiwa classes in each of which there are 20 students (all boys). One of his challenges is that the textbook is designed for individual study and focus on the teacher as the sole source of knowledge. He would like to develop and use materials which are directly related to the textbook grammar and vocab AND which concentrate on cooperative learning as a way to learn. Possible solutions are: 1. Use existing materials, 2. Explore new materials, 3. Create cooperative learning tests (tests in pairs and small groups).

Keiko: She found that if students are not interested in the topic of a lesson of the textbook, they lose their motivation for English. She introduced brain-storming about the topic, describe the picture, and pre-reading questions. Students didn't know much about the topic: Philippines, when she asked to do brain-storming activity. Most of them wrote one word - banana. She was also very surprised to find that they had little interest in the Philippines. She had planed the following post-reading activities, but she was very afraid that they could not enjoy theses activities. Pre-reading activities should be finished less than one period because it is not main reading activities. She tired to build the background knowledge and interest of the Philippine, and she tired to do all the activities in English in class. She should choose the one or two activities in class and give them other information as their bedtime reading.

Miwako: In her writing class, her goal is to have students write a passage to ask friends out on weekend. She introduced various activities such as brainstorming, prewriting interview, analyzing sentences, learning about organization, writing, peer-editing in pairs and rewriting. Most of the students seem to be enjoying utter English to their classmates. However, there are some students who feel awkward in speaking in English and making eye contact with their peer. In this lesson, she changed the way to conduct grammar practice. She wanted to expose the students to as many target expressions as possible. In general, they seem to enjoy this practice. They also seem to work on this practice, thinking of the meanings of the sentences. This practice is conducted in pairs, which lets the students have more chances to speak English. The students do not translate Japanese sentences into English in this lesson. They are supposed to write about their own ideas although they depend largely on the teacher's model writing. By working on this kind of writing, all the students somehow work on their writing. The number of the students who just do not do anything until correct answers are given seems to have decreased.

●Date: November 12, 2005, 10:30-12:00, 13:00-14:30,
Venue: Kanayama Plaza Hotel, Conference Room #7
Instructor: Mathew White (Nanzan University)
Title: Extensive Reading and Listening: Maximizing Comprehensible Input

The number of participants: 9

Abstract: The aim of this workshop is to provide educators with practical applications of extensive reading and listening. Many resources can be found on the Internet, as well as directly from your own classroom and teaching environment. We’ll explore various ways to maximize student exposure to comprehensible written and spoken English. Come experience some of the ER/EL activities and tools currently being used in English classes. Find ways to tailor them to your own teaching contexts. See video of some reading circles in action along other methods of encouraging associative thinking, and examine additional ways to help your students learn efficiently and enthusiastically.

1. Interesting activities you might want to use in your class. Why?

* Extensive Listening. Just as extensive reading, the method and theory of extensive reading is true of listening. Combining extensive reading and listening is pretty beneficial in helping students to understand the material.

* We have a computer room where 44 students can use computer connected to internet. So I want to have students experience learning English in a good web site introduced by today’s workshop. Then maybe some of the students will have fun learning English through the internet at home.

* I got interested in the internet web sites. I’ve never known that I can use them not only for reading but listening. Some of them have visual aids, which helps us to understand the reading materials. Luckily we have computer rooms which have many computers. We can use internet there.

* I’m excited about going home and visiting the site of ‘Elllo’ this weekend. The method and activities I’ve learned in workshops are sometimes difficult to adjust to my own class. But ‘Elllo’ site looks like a treasure box and fits the teacher like me who wants to ‘start small’. I’m going to use ‘Children’s story’ or ‘Poetry’ as a warm up activity on Monday. (Elllo site: http://www.elllo.org/index.htm)



2. What you learned from today’s workshop

* ‘Parallel reading and communicative reading’. Several ways of after-reading activities in a group will encourage and motivate students to read, first, fixed amount of reading material and then expand to read more than students are required to read, I think.

* Extensive reading and extensive listening are effective because they give students more chances to read or listen to English. I’ve been looking for ways to make students read and listen to English outside the classroom. Today’s workshop really helped me.

* ‘Reading and listening’. To keep the students active, we have learned several strategies. Summarizing and dividing the students into several groups, and each of them is given a specific role. They can be actively involved in the class.

3. Questions and answers

Q: I'm curious how to use these websites effectively, i.e. relevant vocabulary plus grammar plus use of time.

A (Mathew): If you've been to Marc Helgesen's presentations, you might be familiar with the phrase, "Don't think of a pink elephant". Basically, the idea being that once your attention has been brought to something, your mind often thinks about it whether you want it to or not. For me, I think of "the new car syndrome". I never noticed how many cars like mine were on the road until I bought it. Then I started noticing them everywhere...

My feeling is that if teachers have really drawn students attention to some particular grammar or vocabulary, learners are much more likely to notice the same vocabulary or grammar when they are exposed to it elsewhere. So, while it would be wonderful to go through and note down which vocabulary or grammar each song, book, or website link has, I don't think it would be an efficient use of time. I suggest letting the students choose which books, songs, websites, they read or listen to, and maybe have them write down examples of vocabulary in use or grammatical structures they noticed in a reading or listening log (journal). For example, they might write the entire sentence containing vocabulary they learned in one of their lessons. This reduces the burden on the teacher, and allows students to do the hunting/learning. It will also help teachers understand more about what their students are learning.

Q: I have an AET from England and she is very helpful. I heard that you have an experience of teaching at a junior high. How do you think we can get a prosperous result through team teaching in class or in discussion?

A (Mathew): It's been quite a while since I worked as an AET. One thing I do remember was the disappointment I felt when the teachers failed to let me know the content of the lessons well in advance. For example, one time I didn't find out that I'd be asked to talk about my experiences with Halloween until I arrived at the school. If I had known in advance, I could have brought pictures of my different costumes over the years, and really prepared an interesting talk. Communication is the key. Both the teacher and AET should share ideas about the lesson plans well before setting foot in the class for that lesson. I also think that students can learn a lot from observing the teacher talking in English with the AET. The teacher and AET can model activities, do role plays, and participate with students in activities. In addition, video taping lessons is very effective and powerful. A self-access library of videos with the lessons in which the AET was present would allow students to review these lessons at their leisure, and they might enjoy seeing themselves on tape. Teachers and AETs would also benefit from being able to review lessons and see how they might be repeated, improved, etc.

●Date: November 12, 2005, 14:30-17:00
Venue: Kanayama Plaza Hotel, Conference Room #7
Participants: Seiji, Yasuhiro, Mikio, Ben, Hiromi, Keiko (Action Research Group only)

Seiji: The aims of his writing class is to have the students write one paragraph through brainstorming, peer-editing and other activities and to have the students use English as much as possible by using the integrated method of language learning. First he showed a model dialogue with AET, and then students started writing sentences about the thing they bought recently. After that, they moved around the classroom and interviewed three classmates and wrote down what the partners said. Teaching points is that the AET and the JTE check to see if the students are using English during the activities and encourage them to use it by helping them find suitable words and phrases to express what they want to say.

Yasuhiro: He found the students became passive except when students played games or activities in lessons. So, he decided to change his lesson style and introduced pair work and group work in each class. The good point of this lesson is that there was a good atmosphere in class because pair students have a good relationship. Also most students have to make skits and role-play and they enjoy making skits and presenting role play. He also introduced ‘puppet play’ activity. He found students study positively if they make their original puppets.

Mikio: His classes focus on summarization and reproduction practice. At the end of each lesson, students are to summarize the story with their own words. It is the process for the manipulations of the words they lave learned and arrange the story with the words they have learned. With this practice, students seem to become so much familiar with the structure of each sentences. Also with recycling the words they have learned so far, they look like happy to get the pleasure of making the sentences by themselves. Now that the students are getting familiar with the reproduction and the Q&A session without taking a look at the text. However, concerning to the summarization, it still looks difficult for them, as it requires so much attention and concentration on listening to the story of other students. To follow the summarization requires the listening of other presentation. It takes time, but gradually as the time goes on, it is getting improved.

Ben: The activity in his class is brainstorming and answering set questions. Students numbering off into groups of 4 discuss the answer and respond to the questions the teacher asks based on a topic already studied. Most students actively participated in their groups discussion. Students who had an answer shared it with the group because they knew they might not be called on but one of their teammates would be. A student who didn’t have an answer was motivated to listen in case his number was called on and he was responsible for the groups answer. Each student who was called on by the teacher had to be individually accountable for his groups answer whilst standing and answering. This class was full of positive interdependence between students. A few students weren’t concerned by the type of assessment he was using. A few students are unfortunately only motivated by tests and therefore made little efforts. How to modify the activity is not sure yet. Maybe more questions relevant to student’s lives and based on the same theme as the topic being studied in class.

Hiromi: Her classes focus on reading and English speaking activities as before. She explained grammar points and did shadowing four times. In pre-reading, students, in pairs, looked at three pictures in the textbook and talked about what they thought about them. Then, they read the textbook silently and answered questions. After that, they practiced pronunciation of new words and gave their meanings in Japanese. After students grasped most of the story, they took the first reading test. They marked the last word that they read after one minute. Then they read the textbook four times, shadowing with the instructor twice, the tape and a partner. Then they took the second reading test. It was the same as the first. Subsequently, students realized that they could read faster than the first reading test. At the end of the class they wrote their impressions of the story. She told them that she would evaluate them when they wrote more than 5 sentences; a sentence must consist of more than five words. In the next class, they will perform a speaking test. They are evaluated in 3 respects – fluency (4 points), asking questions (3 points) and volume and eye contact (3 points). She found that many activities, such as pair work or shadowing, keep students working and help them concentrate in class. After having read the textbook, students now have confidence in pronunciation which has encouraged them to talk with native speakers of English. They don’t hesitate to speak with our ALT.

Keiko: She focused on shadowing and summarizing as one of the conversation strategies. Students in pairs explain three reasons in two minutes about one opinion, while others summarize it. Then students had ‘ping pong debate’. They made two groups of four; one for smoking and another against it. The first one who is for smoking gives his/her opinion plus three reasons, and the second one who is against smoking shadows them and states his/her opinion plus three reasons. This is repeated four times, and the last two students summarize what each of their groups said,

●Date: December 10, 2005 14:00-17:00
Venue: Nagoya University of Foreign Studies, Room 322
Instructor: Tim Murphey (Dokkyo University)
Title: Community Identity Motivation

Abstract: The three concepts in the title are essential for understanding learning and growth in any language learning classroom. We will look briefly at the very practical aspects of group dynamics and ways of intensifying interaction among participants so that they identify with the group and can be motivated to contribute to each other's learning and the growth of the group.

The number of participants: 25

1. Interesting activities you might want to use in your class. Why?

* I’d like to try ‘mistake story’ on Monday. While I was listening to the mistake story from my partner, I felt very close to her. ‘Mistake story’ makes a good atmosphere and relationship.

* I’d like to do ‘one word conversation’, because I teach 1st graders of JHS and they like to say something. And some students are afraid of making mistakes and couldn’t say many things.

* Shadowing. I thought shadowing was difficult way, but after I listened to Mr. Murphey, I changed my mind. I will try to make students shadowing before I ask students to read sentences. And I’d like to try to speak ‘mistake story’.

* Action logs. I have used them in the past with successes, but have shied away from them as my work load increased. Next year my workload is decreasing so I can check them again.

* I want to try ‘mentions’ right away on Monday. This idea has made me realize that I expected my students too much from the beginning. Right now, I’m working on students’ pair conversation, but in most cases, students stop talking after one or one and a half minutes pass. I think they need well-organized scaffolding until they reach the level of free conversation. ‘Mentions’ give students not too much pressure and make students feel relaxed and have fun.

* Shadowing. Mentions. In my school, most students study English in order to enter prestigious university. So they don’t like reading text in a loud voice. But mentions (short sentence or a word conversation) will make them speak. It will not take long and also there is little possibility of making mistakes, because they will not have to speak on a complete sentence.

* Having students talk each other in a few words without making a complete sentence. I’m always trying to make them say a complete sentence and it might make students hesitate to speak out.

2. What you learned from today’s workshop

* Becoming a good model of students. Making good environment where students can make mistakes easily.

* Physical activities in the language learning is very effective. Sometimes in class, I let my students keep standing for the reading and shadowing. I might include more games or some physical movements in class.

* I learned today that teachers should help their students to achieve the goals and for that purpose, we should make the students participate in class activities. Today I learned many ways of participation precedes learning so that I would like to reform them in my classes next week.

* ‘Participation precedes learning’ is what Japanese teachers of English (including me) forget or don’t know. I learned the importance of teaching English based on this idea, combining different skills. This gives me a great amount of hints and encouragement for organizing lessons.

* My school is known as one of the busiest and strict schools in my prefecture. Teachers are very strict and students are quietly sitting and learning. We teachers tend to ignore what they really want to learn. Smile and let them have some ways to ‘Happiness’ are very important. That’s what I learned today.

* Participation is very important. Learning by doing a certain activity is really effective. I enjoyed all of the demonstrations at today’s workshop. I’m sure I’ll try many of the methods at my class.

* I learned that it’s very important to communicate what I know with others and that sort of activity might be useful for my students. Some things you mentioned I realize I already do, but I wasn’t sure why I was doing it. (I teach about self-talk, I use music in my writing class, etc.)

3. Questions and answers

Q: I guess the 'Conflicts' section wasn't very clear to me. Also, how to use the 'Convey boxes'. Could you explain that?

A: (Murphey) Three points: First of all, conflicts are normal and can actually help the group building process when they are resolved well. Secondly, the number of conflicts is usually greatly reduced when we pay attention to good group formation practices (letting participants get to know each other and become friendly). That is why it is more important to pay attention to building a good group rather than listing possible conflicts - that is, most will not happen anyway if you have done a good job of building supportive relationships among your students. Thirdly, when conflicts to happen, relax. Too often teachers can make bigger problems jumping in to solve small conflicts when they may have resolved themselves naturally. Also, letting participates handle it shows you trust them.

The Covey boxes were to show that if you do more professional development (not urgent but important training) that you become a better teacher who can build better groups and won't have many conflicts to worry about anyway. If instead, you put all your energy into the conflicts area, you may solve a lot of conflicts, but you will not change the conditions that create those conflicts so they will continue to manifest themselves.

 

Q: How do we teachers control students group activities when they are out of control? How do we draw the positive participation of every student?

A (Murphey): First, even the best of teachers does not "control" ALL students and some students may NEVER participate positively. Teachers do no control everything. However, many good teachers do increase positive participation through showing respect to students and treating them as valuable participants, by getting them to like the subject and themselves. Not all students will follow, but when a few do, many others probably will. It starts off slowly and then builds.

 

Q: If there are many students who are not motivated in class, they cannot easily find a new peer role. In such a cases, how can I build a learning community with those students?

A: (Murphey) Teachers can help them find peers by telling them stories (or giving them ones to read) of people like themselves who have changed and become motivated and learned a lot. The teacher can build on this when she notices other students getting motivated and showing positive behaviors. Near Peer Role Modeling is affective and goes on all the time, but it can also be enhanced by the teacher's input.

 

Q: Group works are really effective in classes, I find. How can I make my students work as an individual? They are active in groups, but very quiet when they act individually.

A: (Murphey) First, I think, students when they are active in a group, they are active individually within the group. I think what you mean by your question is that sometimes, you want an individual to speak up alone to the whole class group. That is a much scarier thing than speaking to just 3 or 4 group mates, and especially in Japan, where perfectionists think you must not make mistakes, this can be a very dangerous situation in the minds of most students. So quite understandably they reluctant. I have found it useful to let groups nominate two or three people to report what they have found or decided in their group work. Generally psychology now tells us that we actually learn very little alone and that we do learn the most in groups socially interacting. So I am not sure I would want to have my students acting individually at all. Also, you want to look at how safe they feel in your classes. Students who do not feel safe, are reluctant to speak up and show what they know.

Hope these answers are useful to you in some way. Remember I may have misunderstood the question and I might answer differently on a different day. All the best to all of you in 2006!

●Date: December 11, 2005, 9:00-13:30
Venue: Aichi Kenko Plaza
Participants: Seiji, Mikio, Miwako, Yoshiko, Seiko, Reiko, Atsushi, Keiko, Ben (Action Research Group only)

Seiji: He reported how students felt after he had them do peer editing and ask questions in the writing class. He made questionnaire to 85 students, and found that more than half of them are favorable to his method. He also found that some of them think peer editing is not useful because they are not sure if the editing by their peers is correct or not.

Mikio: In his reading class, he made a questionnaire to his students about ‘reproduction and summarize’ method. He found that students are getting used to doing this activity and having shorter time for preparation. He also found that they are getting to notice that this activity will improve their listening and reading ability.

Miwako: In her writing class, she combined one-paragraph writing and speaking activity. Students made several sentences of their opinion using comparison pattern, then they had shadowing practice in pairs. She thinks teachers should not want students to write sentences without any mistakes, but short and easy sentences can be acceptable, as Mr. Murphey told us.

Yoshiko: In every part, she decided the topic for discussion or presentation related to each part. Students research the information as homework. Students have a ‘talk’ with pair for 2 or 3 minutes. At the end of the lesson, she decides the topic for writing essay which is related to the unit. She gives comments and corrects some grammatical mistakes. And then students made a speech of the essay with pair.

Seiko: In her oral communication class, she had students have interview test with their classmates and recorded it on the video. The check points of the test are; content, shadowing / question & answer, eye contact / gesture / volume / pronunciation and grammar. She found that more than half of the students think that their English ability has improved thanks to this interview test.

Reiko: She gave students a chance to use English as much as possible by using the integrated method of language learning. (listening, reading, writing, speaking) This time is especially focused on making a one-minute speech in the presence of the whole class in post-reading and videotaping it. After this activity, she found that though students were so nervous and tense, their comments showed that this activity threw a vivid impact on their motivation to use English.

Atsushi: Many of the students in his reading class think translating English into Japanese is important in studying English. They also think intensive reading and grammar points are necessary to get high score in English exam. He wants to have them understand English by rapid reading without translating it and use English to express themselves.

Keiko: She showed what she did as pre-reading activities for the lesson (‘Gandhi and non-violence’) in the textbook. She had students do brainstorming and think about Gandhi by using DVD. She found that brainstorming activity helped share the background knowledge of Gandhi and find some key words. However, showing ‘Gandhi quotation’ and ‘his first interview’ was not good, as students were a little confused because they had little knowledge about him. She thinks she should keep pre-reading activities more simple and limited.

Ben: He introduced Dr. Kegan’s four principles of a structure; positive interdependence, individual accountability, equal participation and simultaneous interaction. When they are embedded within an activity, learning, retention, social skills and other positive outcomes are the likely the result. If, however, these principles are absent such positive outcomes might not occur. The existence of each of the four principles can be evaluated by asking a simple question examining the presence or absence of each principle; Does a gain for one student result in a gain for another? Is individual, public performance required? How equal is participation amongst classmates? What percent of students are overtly, actively engaged at any one moment? Kegan highlights simultaneous interaction as a critical element in building a truly cooperative learning activity.

●Date: January 14, 10:30-12:00, 13:00-14:30
Venue: Nagoya International Center, Conference room #3
Instructor: Eiko Ujitani (Nagoya University of Foreign Studies)
Title: Raising Cultural Awareness in the English Classroom

Abstract: Learning language is learning culture. They cannot be separated since language represents the perception and thinking of the language users. However culture is not often taught explicitly in language class and this lack of cultural instruction can create "fluent fools" who have problems in cross-cultural communication despite their fluency in the language. How can culture be taught? What aspects need to be taught? In this presentation, these crucial questions will be discussed. Most of the time will be spent having participants do several cultural awareness activities that have been successfully received by students in my intercultural class.

The number of participants: 11

1. Interesting activities you might want to use in your class. Why?
* ‘Guess Who They Are’. Pictures are very useful to stimulate students’ imagination. Today, I enjoyed the participants’ stories very much.

* ‘Colors and Meaning’ ‘Visible + Invisible Cultures’ ‘Guess Who They Are’. These activities were very informative and highlighted interesting aspects of culture.

* ‘Describing Film Activity’ ‘Guess Who They Are’ ‘Visible and Invisible Cultures’. I want to let students listen to others explain about pictures and ask them the reasons for their explanation while understanding cultural aspects/difference.

* ‘Movie Activity’ – It was very interesting to observe a video clip in terms of cultural aspects. I’d like to try it in class. ‘Guess Who They Are’ – It was a good exercise to be aware of ‘stereotype’ we have unconsciously. Also it was good to have different perspectives.

* Guessing the situation from pictures. Various ideas might be coming from the students. I guess students can find some cultural differences from the discussion or the brain storming by themselves.

* Have them decide the people’s nationality, job, residential place in the pictures and/or the situation of the picture.



2. What you learned from today’s workshop

* Generally speaking, from every activity, there was something to learn. The list would be too long to include everything. The workshop will definitely aid me in teaching cross cultural awareness in the classroom.

* I learned to look at things from the view point of anthropologist. Knowing cultural differences through today’s activities help students to avoid stereotyping and evaluating other people or culture just by finding some difference.

* We don’t have any international students in our school, so I thought it was very difficult to teach culture or differences in different cultures. However, I learned that we can deal with culture in English classroom even if we have only Japanese students. I should try to introduce these activities in class.

* Stereo-type ideas might cause problems. We teachers are expected to give the instructions of it to the students for the smooth communication with the people from other cultures. My knowledge and experience concerning to the cross culture is limited, and I’ll try to learn more in addition to the language itself.

* Even the same sub-culture group (school English teachers in this case) show or have various interpretations on the same thing.

* Unconsciously we look everything through the perspective of our own culture. It is quite interesting to find our or any other culture’s points of views.

* Not only surface but also invisible things are important when we think about culture.

 

●Date: January 14, 2006, 15:00-17:00
Venue: Nagoya International Center, Conference Room #3
Participants: Yasuhiro, Seiji, Mikio, Keiko (Action Research Group only)

Yasuhiro: He thought the students’ attitude became passive except when students played games or activities in lessons. He made pair work and group work in each class. He thought it’s very convenient when students make skits and role-playing. Moreover, it’s useful for them to support each other, he thought. To make students study positively, he had them make their original puppets to present a play. After these activities, he found that about 60% of the students thought it was good and interesting, because they could understand its story and subject and devise their pronunciation. He also found that about 40% of them didn’t think group work was good, because many girls were active in play while many boys were passive and that boys and girls couldn’t cooperate each other.

Seiji: In his writing class, he wanted the students to write a paragraph. First he showed them a model passage. Then he gave them several questions that can lead them to write a passage. But they are supposed to include some sentences using grammar point of this lesson (the subjunctive mood), so it was hard for them to write a passage. It means this was half-free and half-controlled writing.

Mikio: He introduced his class with video viewing. He let the students watch the first three chapters and try to understand its English without subtitles. Then, students had Q and A, picked up the important parts of the story and tried to summarize the chapter in plain English. The main objective of this lesson is to let the students enjoy English. It seems that the students are interested in viewing the animation, and with the help of the motion pictures they can visualize the image and understand its English with ease. In general summarization itself sounds very serious and difficult, however, here they are just supposed to pick up the key elements of each chapter and make them up into a simple story with their own words.

Keiko: In her pre-reading activity, she had the students draw a picture of a key word. And the students also drew a picture to visualize the story of the lesson. But she found that there were some problems in this activity. She thinks she should have given more time to read the lesson to make this activity useful.

1. What do you think of the action research project you have participated in? Did it help you to improve your teaching skills?

 * 英語を教えるのにこれほど多様な方法があるのだと知らされ、毎回自分の不勉強さを思い知らされます。柔軟な発想力と、常に効果的な学習方法はないかと回りに目を光らせ、さまざまな人の実践を知ることが大切であるということがわかりました。やるべき事がとても多く、何から手をつけて（実践していけば）いいのかわからなくなるほどで、人のaction researchを見て勉強させていただきました。少しずつではありますが改善していかなければと毎回思えます。

 * この会に参加していなければ授業改善を効果的に続けていけなかったことと思います。参加された先生方の実践から自分とは違う角度からのアプローチ、佐藤先生からは専門家の目からみたアドバイスといただき、自分の授業を客観的に見直すことができました。講義をしていただいた先生方からは貴重かつ、なぜかいつもタイムリーなヒントをいただき、本当にありがとうございました。

2. How was a monthly report and presentation?

 * 忙しい時期と重なると少し「きつい」と思うときもありますが、定期的というのは自分の目標にも励みにもなり、いいと思います。

 * 一ヶ月に一度振り返らなくてはいけないので授業を分析することができて良かった。（授業があまりないときは発表することが十分にないような気がしてプレッシャーになりましたが。）発表しないと日々の授業に追われて自分のやっていることをどのように修正していくべきが考えることをしなくなると思います。

3. How do you feel of a monthly workshop? Did you learn any good ideas from the instructor? Which one(s) did you like the best? What kinds of topics do you want for future workshops?

 * 体験的に学べたworkshopの内容はそのあとすぐに学校の授業の中で取り込み、生かすことができたのでとても良かったと思います。ほとんど全ての内容が素晴らしかったと思います。

 * マンスリーワークショップは大変刺激になります。ただその場で良いなあと思っても、それを実際に使ったりストックして繰り返し目に触れないと宝の持ちぐされになってしまうため、自助努力が必要だと感じています。

4. How can we improve this action research project? Please write your comment/advice.

 * 基本的には現状のままで良いかと思います。プレゼンをする私たち参加者の側が内容をもっとorganizeしないといけないな、と私自身のプレゼンをはじめとして思いました。問題点や最も伝えたいことが明確になっていれば自分のプレゼンがしっかりしたものになると思います。ひいてはそれが自分の授業の改善点を明らかにすることだと思います。

 * 月に一度のレポートは厳しい場合があります。しかし何か形にしなければこの研究会の意義も半減してしまいます。もう少し回数をげんていしてみるのはどのようなものでしょうか。あと、できるだけたくさんの先生に、講演やワークショップだけでも参加していただけるといいのですが。