This blog is for PIGATE, a grass-roots pre- and in-service teacher development group in Kumamoto, JP. Our monthly meetings are every 2nd Saturday, usually from 1:30-4:30 p.m. For more information, please contact pigateadvisor01 (aT) Gmail (dOt) com.
Education Week recently showcased a series of four videos of Larry Ferlazzo and Katie Hull Sypnieski explaining ways for teachers to foster learner motivation:
The short videos covered "four specific ways to nurture a sense of intrinsic motivation in students" (¶1), namely:
Granting students autonomy,
Applauding effort rather than ability;
Cultivating interpersonal relationships, and
Helping students discover the relevance of learning activities.
A list of further readings followed the videos on the Education Week article, and Larry Ferlazzo linked to additional resources in a follow-up in an Education Week Teacher blog post.
The short (16 slide) presentation embedded in this blog post represents on-going endeavours mainly to recover from a massive setback in online resource curation. In a nutshell:
This presentation provides snapshots of an individual teacher's recent and ongoing professional development endeavours. It reflects problems of ICT use, mainly discontinuation of a free service for educators, and outlines strategies for addressing them with collaborative partners, tools, and venues of choice. It supplements a working paper submitted to PIGATE.
(Abstract, slide 2)
If you have comments or questions with regard either to the content of slides in that short presentation or the gist of the working paper (Beaufait, 2019) submitted to PIGATE prior to its Annual General Meeting last month (2019.09.14), please feel free to spell them out in threadable comments on this post.
Reference
Beaufait, P. (2019a). Reflection in action: An unavoidable IT transition. PIGATE eigo jugyou gaku kenkyuu-kai kiyou, 26 [English language teaching action research group working papers, issue 26], 32-42.
09:30Preparation and sign-in (30 min.) 10:00Opening remarks (10 min.): Paul Beaufait 10:10IPS, Part 1 (45 min.): English pronunciation challenges for English teachers 10:55Break (10 min.) 11:05IPS, Part 2 (45 min): Tactics for teaching oral expression 11:50Lunchtime (60 min.) 12:50CPS, Part 1 (45 min.): Favorite picture books and stories to share 13:35_Kitemiran_¹ and _shitemiran_² sharing time (15 min.) 13:50CPS, Part 2 (45 min.): Experience and tips for learning and teaching with stories 14:35Break (15 min.) 14:50Working Papers (_kiyou_) workshop (45 min.): Reflections, projections, & progress reports; Preparation and collaboration time; & Submission guidelines & deadlines. 15:35Session summary: Mr. Nobuyuki Takaki (15 min.) 15:50Closing remarks (10 min.) Membership matters Newsletter contributions Other announcements: Annual General Meeting (AGM), 2019.09.14 Other 16:00Clean-up (10 min.) 16:10 Steering committee meeting (20 min.) Presenters and PIGATE members are welcome to attend the committee meeting!
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¹ Why don't you come and see this?
² Why don't you try this and see?
If you would like to take part in this month's session, or to join PIGATE, please fill out one of our short online info. collection forms (https://goo.gl/Hpe9pd).
A Google Site that I'm using to reconstitute bits and pieces of new and previous online endeavours, the Beaufait Collaboratoire, grew new pages and subpages today.
Most notable was a new Educators' Corner, now a ProDev subpage. Other additions included a couple of Google Forms for surveys of EnglishCentral (EC) users that I have embedded in EC subpages. I'd linked to the forms previously from the Tech. Tools page to replace old wiki resources.
Please feel free to browse the Collaboratoire, and let me know in comments on this post if you have any questions or discover any incipient web rot (faulty links).
As I continue to build and update that site, I'm seeking a communication interface to include there. Something like the threaded comment functionality of Blogger blogs might be ideal. In the meantime, I welcome your suggestions in comments here.
In that post, Heck asserted that "there are dozens of theories that underpin what and how you teach already, and that the better you understand them, the better chance you’ll have to master your current approach and begin to bring new possibilities into your classroom..." (¶4).
Heck then posted brief additional explanations of the concepts in Millwood's graphic. The graphic itself is available ... [as a PDF]:
A follow-up comment by Millwood (2019.06.18) on his one of his own posts that introduced the map (2013.05.10) suggested that he was preparing a new version.
This hour-long recording by Dr. Kate Reynolds of Central Washington University's College of Education and Professional Studies[, Chairperson of the Department of Education, Development, Teaching and Learning,] came out about a year ago. It was from a TESOL Teacher Education Interest Section (TEIS) webinar on evolving theories and potential applications of a communicative competence framework for language teaching.
Frames and Reframing:
Recent Discussions on Communicative Competencies
In that webinar, Dr. Reynolds surveyed "recent developments on the model of communicative competencies and [began to] facilitate an interactive conversation on how teacher educators can use this information" (Abstract, 2018.06.26). Though the webinar chat is invisible in the recording, live discussion opened about 33 minutes in. Dr. Reynolds read and summarized chat entries aloud. She then reflected on contributions and issues that arose, and asked clarification and follow-up questions.
At the end of the webinar, Dr. Reynolds highlighted one of over a dozen selected references for further reading. She also offered to share her PowerPoint slides, and expressed desire to continue discussion in audience-initiated TEIS discussion list posts. That's a TESOL members-only venue, so I (Paul) would be happy to see comments from PIGATE reviewers here [on this post].
Reference
Reynolds, K. M. (2018, June 26). Frames and reframing: Recent discussions on communicative competencies [Video file]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qs1aRTjnwAY
[189 {+ 36} words]
Monday, June 17, 2019
Linguistic paranoia – why is Australia so afraid of languages?
For most other countries speaking more than one language is the norm.
Image from www.shutterstock.com.au
About 20% of the Australian population speaks a language other than English. In fact, around 250 languages are spoken in homes around the country. This would seem to be cause for celebration. After all, successive governments have spent millions trying to increase the numbers of students studying languages in schools. However there is little connection between the languages taught in schools, and the languages spoken in homes.
Foreign language learning in schools
In 2001 the Howard Liberal government set a target of 25% of Year 12 students studying a foreign language. The same target was set by the incoming Rudd Labor government in 2007. In 2014, the new Abbott Liberal government upped the ante to 40% of Year 12 students studying a foreign or classical language within the decade. This was ambitious given that the previous targets of 25% had never been reached.
Barely 10% of Year 12 students study a language. Yet 20% of the population speaks a language other than English in the home. How does that add up? The answer is governments pay little heed to the languages spoken in Australian homes; they prefer “foreign and classical” languages to “local and community” ones.
Not all languages are equal
There is a clear hierarchy of languages in Australia. English is at the top. Next are the “classical” languages like French and German, particularly when learned at school. These are followed by languages deemed useful for Australia’s economic prosperity - e.g. Chinese, Indonesian and Japanese - but only if they are being learned as “foreign” languages. Because that is quite clever, learning a foreign language.
But if they are languages already spoken in the home, they slip down the hierarchy of languages, into the community languages pile along with about 245 other languages. Somewhere towards the bottom of that community languages pile are the Indigenous languages of Australia, about which most Australians know nothing.
The chances of those 245 community languages surviving in Australia are remote. Australia is remarkably adept at wiping out languages. Of the 250 Indigenous languages in existence at the time of British colonisation, only around 20 remain viable today. The languages immigrants bring with them are usually dead within two generations.
It seems remarkably odd policy to pour millions of dollars into setting consistently unachievable targets for learning foreign languages at school, while simultaneously watching community languages slide into oblivion.
Is it just linguistic snobbery?
We always seem more impressed by a native English speaker who has managed to learn another language at school than we are by those who learn their languages at home.
Everyone was quite impressed by ex Prime Minister Rudd’s proficiency in Mandarin, but I expect Senator Dio Wang’s Mandarin runs rings around Mr Rudd’s. I’m guessing Belgian born Finance Minister Mathias Cormann speaks German, Flemish, and perhaps also French. I suppose Senator Nick Xenophon speaks Greek, but perhaps he doesn’t. Maybe his Greek language heritage has been lost, which would be ironic as his surname means “foreign voice”. Does Deputy Opposition leader Tanya Plibersek speak Slovenian? Does the Malaysian born Leader of the Opposition in the Senate, Penny Wong speak Malay and Mandarin or Cantonese or Hakka?
I don’t know. I’ve never heard any of them speak another language, or be reported admirably in the press for their linguistic prowess. They don’t note their bilingualism in their biographies on their websites. Perhaps they’ve lost their heritage languages - or perhaps it’s just not “Australian” to say you speak another language in your home or to your mum and dad. Either scenario is a sad indictment.
It seems, in Australia, if you learned your second language at school or at university - that’s clever and admirable. If your bilingualism comes from your heritage, we’d prefer to ignore it.
Multicultural but monolingual
Australia is generally happy to be multicultural, as long as that just involves some tasty food, and a bit of dance and music at an annual festival. We are definitely not comfortable with being multilingual. We are a country where you are free to speak another language, but preferably in the privacy of your own home or on an overseas holiday. It seems we like our foreign languages to stay that way - foreign.
Australia is currently in a social and political space where “unity” has overtaken “diversity” as the preferred political discourse. A country that speaks multiple languages in its everyday life seems somehow harder to manage. After all, who knows what they’re saying? A community that speaks foreign languages to foreign people in foreign lands is much more secure.
It is odd we should be so determined to keep our multilingualism in the closet. For most other countries speaking more than one language is the norm. With so many economic, cognitive, social and political advantages to multilingualism it seems simultaneously extraordinarily wasteful and absurdly paranoid to not celebrate and nurture the languages spoken in homes all around the country.
Fumi Takegami has extensive teaching experience in schools ranging from elementary to secondary levels, mostly at high school. She is now teaching in the Faculty of Letters at the PUK. Terry Laskowski also has extensive teaching experience, in his case at university. He now teaches in the Faculty of Letters at Kumamoto University. Together Terry and Fumi will talk about the relationship between theory and practice in teaching. Linking theory to practice helps teachers to better understand why they do what they do in their classrooms. Having this knowledge will better inform teachers regarding their instructional practices. During their workshop session, Fumi and Terry will talk about learning theories going from behaviorism to social constructivism and complementary teaching methods. They will focus in particular on social constructivism and related teaching methods and techniques. Participants will take part in classroom activities. Through active involvement, i.e., active learning, participants will understand the purpose of the activities by experiencing them themselves. They can expect to take part in a jigsaw activity and a task-based problem solving activity.
Let us know you're coming!
If you would like to take part in this month's session, or to join PIGATE, please fill out one of our short online info. collection forms (https://goo.gl/Hpe9pd).
Screenshot of PDF at ceu.edwebpd.net (https://goo.gl/K19W66)
EdWeb is a free professional learning network. Its Browse and Search edWebinars pages listed 1564 webinars today (2019.03.06 [JST]) in, just a guess, hundreds of communities.
Screenshot of Select Community menu
Please check it out, and leave comments on this post to let us know what you think.
The Japanese Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT) has been promoting various English education initiatives to coincide with the Tokyo Olympics in 2020. New English curricula will see 5th and 6th grade elementary school students nationwide studying English as a mandatory subject with double the previous number of allocated classroom hours. Third and 4th grade students nationwide will study English as an ungraded foreign language activity. To be sure, many school districts and individual schools have already made significant increases in the provision of English education for their students.
Alongside these reforms, however, there is concern that many current and future elementary school teachers may lack sufficient proficiency and/or confidence to most effectively lead students in English language activities. Our app (see: Project team members, below) is an attempt to help teachers learn, practice, and become confident in speaking very basic classroom English language.
As we were already using the Moodle Learning Management System (LMS) at our institution, we decided to use this platform to create both a website and an app. We applied in 2014 for a MEXT grant and were awarded funds to begin our project in the following year. The process began with a needs analysis. We made observations at several elementary schools, recording and transcribing teachers’ use of Japanese and English. Based on analysis of this data and current teaching resources, we determined what language would be of greatest benefit to users of our app.
The next steps involved creating, piloting and revising content. Groups of teachers, administrators, and teachers-in training (PIGATE attendees included) provided us with valuable feedback that has influenced the final product. Several computer programmers have created and adapted plug-ins specifically for our app. There have been a lot of technical hurdles to overcome, too many to note here, but we are ultimately pleased with our product.
Some of the noteworthy features include animated videos with language in context, drag-and-drop interactive exercises, shadowing practice, and timed and recorded responses (see: Screen snapshots, below). Our greatest hope is that this app will be useful to teachers.
Screen snapshots
Animated videos
Drag-and-drop exercises
Shadowing practice
Timed and recorded responses
Project team members
Rob Hirschel
Jon Rowberry
Elton LaClare
About the author
Rob has had experience teaching English in elementary school, junior high school, university, and in specialized programs both in Japan and in the US. His research interests include computer-assisted language learning (CALL), vocabulary acquisition, and affective factors in the second language classroom.
Don't miss it!
Rob will be presenting the EIGO app. for elementary school English teachers at the PIGATE English language teacher development group's March Session:
Ever wonder how to handle individual differences within a single class? In the first of these EdWeek videos, "[v]eteran teachers Larry Ferlazzo and Katie Hull Synieski offer [a few] quick tips...."
In the second, Larry offers more ideas for differentiating instruction by adjusting content, processes, and products to suit learners' abilities, interests, and needs.
In that post, one of the main points that Caroline Knorr (2019), Common Sense Media's parenting editor, made was that technological interventions work best in conjunction with ongoing conversations with young learners.
That post is just one of the Must Read items displayed in the For Parents section of the Common Sense Media website, which you can personalize to suit your family or the ages of students you teach.
There also is a For Educators section of the website that is worth exploring for additional age-appropriate recommendations and resources as well.
