Archive for the ‘Learner motivation’ Category

As mentioned in a comment or two below (and in every other sentence in my real life conversation), I am off on my reasonably well deserved hols from Friday and won’t even be looking at a computer screen for the next 10 days. For those of you who can’t live without an opinionated TEFL rant until I get back, I’m sure there must be something in my 458 posts over the last 14 months that you must have missed, so have a little trawl through the archives here- I’m sure there must be something there to entertain and/ or offend you!

For those of you still here for the serious stuff that I was supposed to have set this blog up for, here are the links to bits and pieces I have been involved in elsewhere in the world on TEFL. The top two are my own particular favourites from the last few months:

15 ways to help your students forget

15 ways to help your students dream in English

15 games for the language of describing people

15 real life situations for the language of describing people

15 typical textbook activities you can personalize

15 difficulties in teaching the language of describing people

15 ways to write a TEFL review

Office vocabulary compound noun stress

Why does my teacher make us work in pairs?

Talking about your job and company first class

Business English prepositions

Present Simple/ Continuous and Tense Review Guessing Game

Complaints prepositions practice

See if you can guess which one it is:

“For teachers who understandably rely on this skill of communication, it may be worth their while to consider the use of the varied styles that are available to them. To many, it will quite obvious that the monotonous tone does not achieve much success and leads to impatience, boredom, and irritability, both on the giving and receiving end. Such a tone is not result oriented. Rather, a more varied, creative and skilful approach to this art is recommended. This can be achieved through the use of interesting and atypical vocabulary, tone, and gestures. Analogies, similies, metaphors, rhyme, and rhytmn are also useful ways of (more…)

Although I often feel disappointed with the lack of any social value in my life of teaching adverbs of frequency to spoiled teenagers who want to be dolphin trainers and finding grammar points in Friends videos and typing up worksheets, it seems all English teachers must be on the side of justice and freedom after all. If you can’t judge us by our friends (because they are almost all TEFL teachers too and so not a good control group), have a look at our enemies:

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Apart from my attempts at investigative journalism for the EL Gazette (see below) and some writing work for Usingenglish.com (details soon), another thing that has kept me off my blog recently is trying to lose the beginnings of middle age spread before it gets too late. Unfortunately, the exercise options are limited…

Cycling in Japan is fun, especially dodging people while you ride on the pavements as most people do, and you never have to feel embarrassed about jow naff your bike is as even the trendiest of Shibuya teenagers has a shopper mama chari bike, just like their mamas. The problem is with them being quite strict about making you pay to park your bike near the station and not being able to take it on the train unless it is a Transformer bike you can stick in a bag, there aren’t really that many places to cycle to from here.

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The last of the zannshou (lingering heat) has sapped me of blog entry ideas today, but I have continued with the endless task of updating my list of publications. The latest to go up is an article from the now defunct teflfarm.com that I have managed to drag up from the depths of my hard disk and I now offer to those who weren’t around in the stone ages of TEFL websites… It’s on how to use graded readers (easy readers) to liven up your classes and how using graded readers in class can persuade students to use them at home too

http://www.tefl.net/alexcase/article-bringing-graded-readers-into-the-classroom/

Somewhere along the way I also wrote a game-based lesson plan on the same subject

http://www.onestopenglish.com/section.asp?catid=58136&docid=145128

And if you haven’t got any graded readers to try these with, there are plenty of reviews on

www.tefl.net/reviews

Another example of foreigners who come over to Japan and can’t be bothered making an effort because it’s just Japan, as also seen with many British and American rock bands (e.g. Supergrass- in it (Japan) for the money indeed!)

Rants aside, here is the next part of my serious attempt at examining why there might be so many bad teachers in Japan. Having already examined why worse teachers might come out to Japan, now it’s time to examine:

Why do good teachers leave Japan?

Note that this is now the new, improved version of this post, organised by categories and with the proviso (as demanded by the punters on Rave’s ESL Au Lait) that it is possible that some bad teachers leave for some of the same reasons:

Personal Reasons

• Women often leave because of the lack of dating opportunities
• Those that don’t have this problem still find they lack female friends due to female friends leaving
• Lack of progress with learning the language and/ or making Japanese friends makes people want to try somewhere “easier”
• The lack of a summer break like most schools in Europe take means, strangely, that people are likely to think their time is up after a year and leave at the same time as all their friends do- usually at the end of a one year contract
• The difficulty of meeting new people, especially in big cities
• Wanting to be accepted as a local but realizing it will never happen
• Not wanting your children to go to a Japanese school or university

Career Advancement and Personal Development

• Many Japanese institutions have a visible or glass ceiling at how far non-Japanese can climb up the ladder, meaning people leave after reaching a certain level or don’t bother sticking around to get promoted because they know it can only lead so far
• Lack of opportunities to take further qualifications in Japan, e.g. even people in Tokyo who want to do a DELTA must do so by distance learning, inconceivable of in any other capital city I know, there are no CELTA courses available, and the local MA in TESOL courses often demand some level of Japanese and/ or don’t have a good reputation abroad
• A lack of people, even DoSs, with a DELTA who can help you when you take a distance course
• The lack of opportunity to become a trainer on such courses
• Workshops you can go to are often aimed at a very basic level of teaching knowledge and therefore unlikely to be of interest to experienced and qualified teachers
• The lack of a clear, obvious career path into other, better schools etc. University jobs, for example, are usually not advertised, the well respected chains like Bell and IH they people sometimes move up to elsewhere do not exist, and the British Council is shrinking its operations.
• One of the steps forward in terms of pay can be to take an Assistant Language Teacher job, but as this means teaching with another teacher it often doesn’t feel like a step forward in terms of your career
• You can earn and/ or save more elsewhere
• The lack of opportunity to teach exam classes other than TOEIC or to become an examiner (for example, the British Council in Tokyo is not accepting applications for IELTS examiners)

The other staff

• The negativity of the other teachers
• A feeling that “If all these people can do this job without complaints and/ or and get paid the same, maybe I should be doing something else”
• Managers who are younger and/ or have less experience and qualifications

 Not feeling at the centre of the “TEFL world”

• The materials used by schools are often 5 or more years behind those used in Europe
• Because Japan is not a big market for the UK and US ELT publishers, work like pre-publication testing is not often available

The students

• The fact that the students don’t seem so seriously interested in learning the language and so make limited progress- only studying half an hour a week, using company classes as a chance to relax because they are overworked, not doing homework or anything else in English outside class etc. etc.
• If students are happy just to be entertained you don’t feel like you are being pushed to improve

The materials and other resources

• The lack of teaching technology such as Interactive Whiteboards, or even sometimes OHPs and photocopiers
• The lack of quality of the locally produced textbooks etc. that you sometimes have to use
• The idea that even while your ability to teach Japanese students is improving, your ability to teach other nationalities is possibily getting worse

Not matching your training

• A lack of groups of 8 to 12 students that people are usually trained to teach on their CELTA etc.
• Very few classes with even one student who doesn’t have Japanese as a first language
• A lack of flaps
• A lack of preparation time or rest time between lessons
• A lack of a range of levels
• Having to teach a mix of ages

Miscellaneous

• The difficulties of working in a Japanese office
• Good teachers leaving becomes self perpetuating- because some good teachers leave the other good teachers don’t want to stay

Standard of living

• The chance to live in a more beautiful city elsewhere
• The chance to afford a bigger and/ or otherwise better flat outside Japan
• Being able to afford the time and money to fly home more often from other countries
• Lower tax and medical insurance in some places
• Not wanting to pay into the Japanese national pension system
• No high interest local accounts to pay your savings into
• The falling yen
• The difficulties in getting mortages (especially joint ones), credit cards etc.
• Because wages have been static at best for years, people who might have wanted to stay in teaching end up applying for management jobs to keep their wages climbing and then drop out completely due to the difficulties of being a manager and/ or not really wanting to be one in the first place
• The expense of exploring further afield in Japan and flying to elsewhere in Asia
• Although it is also experienced by most Japanese, the commuting, long hours, cramped accomodation etc. can be avoided by moving to another country
• Lack of provision for working mothers

If anyone has any suggestions on anything else I can add, please let me know. I should also point out that it isn’t as bad as the list above could make it appear- I am, after all, still here teaching in a big chain of language schools after 4 years!

According to this Daily Yomiuri article, 40% of new Japanese university students surveyed only reached the English level expected of 15 year olds! There is hope, though, and it comes from the fact that the university mentioned realises they have a crisis on their hands and has been forced to employ someone who can teach rather than just someone with a string of letters after their name. And she really does seem to know her public, because low level Japanese adult learners do love miming. They really can’t get enough of it, which is why I have a miming worksheets bonanza tried and tested in Japan over the years for you here:

 http://www.tefl.net/alexcase/worksheet-air-travel-mimes-collocations/

http://www.tefl.net/alexcase/worksheet-body-idioms-mimes-pictionary/

http://www.tefl.net/alexcase/worksheet-food-and-drink-mimes-present-continuous-culture/

http://www.tefl.net/alexcase/worksheet-medical-english-mimes/

http://www.tefl.net/alexcase/worksheet-noises-mimes-linking-words/

http://www.tefl.net/alexcase/worksheet-technical-english-mimes/

http://www.tefl.net/alexcase/worksheet-travel-english-mimes-past-continuous/

http://www.tefl.net/alexcase/worksheets-business-english-sounds-and-mimes-present-continuous-present-simple/

So many uses for TPR, so little time…

After training, recruiting, observing and chatting with English teachers and students in Turkey, Thailand, Spain, Italy, the UK (meaning teachers and students from everywhere) and spending 4 years in Japan, I have come to the conclusion that the average level of teaching ability of native English speaking teachers is lower in Japan than almost anywhere. Evidence:

• The lack of materials written by teachers based in Japan published by international publishers, compared to say teachers based in Spain
• Lack of progress and high drop out rate of Japanese students
• My language school in London had a system of taking ten points off the written test score of only Japanese students before they placed them in classes, as they had a special lack of ability to turn theoretical knowledge into a practical ability to read, write, listen and speak. Other nationalities lacked some of these skills, but rarely all four!
• Classes I have taken over in other countries have often known the basics of how to do pairwork, classroom language in English, the phonemic script, word and sentence stress, listening and reading micro-skills, and/ or understanding unstressed forms. That is rarely the case in Japan.
• When I have done teacher training INSET workshops in other countries I have always had to add an original twist, such as “How to use songs in new ways” about not always doing gap fills. When I tried that in Japan, I always had to go back to absolute basics- using songs at all is the original twist!
• The comparative lack of interest in learning Japanese, shows a lack of understanding of what the students are going through trying to learn a language and means the teacher can give no advice to students on how a language can be learnt well
• Student comments such as “You are the first teacher in this school to use the phonemic script, I haven’t seen that since high school”.
• Lots of other subjective feedback and feelings

Am I wrong? Do you know other countries where it is just as bad? And if it is true, why is it so? (Have just realised that is my original question which I haven’t answered at all, coming up in Part Two…)

Originally inspired by this post on My So Called Japanese Life blog.

New article of mine on www.developingteachers.com

How the future of textbooks has to be

Looking back on my 12 years of teaching English, if it is not just old age speaking I could swear that the first couple of years after I did my initial certificate (CELTA) were a golden age for EFL textbooks. It’s not that they made your lessons any easier or taught the learners the language any better than the textbooks coming out now, but there was just a feeling in the air that books like Cutting Edge and Innovations were the beginning of a new wave of books that was going to fundamentally change the way we teach forever. You could call that period the Modernist Age of Textbooks.

But modernism leads inevitably, it seems, to post-modernism. Since those optimistic days the ELT publishing industry seems to have given up that radical mission as if changing the world was just a hippy dream. Not that the world of textbooks has entirely stood still, but even the most different-looking of the new bunch (e.g. Natural English) only concentrate on what we should teach rather than how we should teach it- which is strange, because the conclusions that lead people to look for new ways to teach have been backed up by more and more research and have gone from controversial to commonly accepted during that time.

The three most fundamental parts of our newly certain knowledge are:

-What we teach is not the same as what students learn

-There is a long delay and many stages between coming across the language for the first time and mastering it

-People learn differently and so learn different things at different speeds

Until a textbook deals with the points above (and I have yet to see a teacher’s book that even mentions all three in full), whether we teach more natural English, more collocations, more international English etc. is not really a question I can get excited about. The question is how we teach any of these points.

Below are my initial ideas on how to create a textbook that takes the three factors above into account…

Read the rest of the article here and maybe another interesting article about teaching in Japan here, and then comment here:

This is the one simple recipe that teachers all over Japan are using to raise the level of their students’ English:

• Take one copy of the Japan Times that you were going to read anyway
• Cut out one topical and/ or cultural article that might interest your students
• Photocopy
• Make up some comprehension and discussion questions, either before or on the spot
• Explain the 20 or 30 pieces of vocabulary you think they don’t understand while they tap away at their electronic dictionaries at the same time
• Send them home happy that they have ’learnt’ said vocab and read a real newspaper article
• Repeat next week

And really, the punters do love it- because they get the impression of having done something authentic and difficult. However, due to the fact that there are no real comprehension or vocabulary questions and that they can talk about the article using as easy language as they like, they haven’t actually been pushed at all. Just like watching an educational programme on NHK television, the illusion of learning is complete and the actual learning is almost zero. Evidence for the prosecution:

• Students who study this way get no practice of day to day functional questions and linked speech, and so whatever their level they will need to ask a native speaker to repeat social chit chat questions several times before they can reply
• Students almost never use the vocabulary in the texts in that or subsequent lessons, and even less in the rest of their lives
• Such as lesson covers almost none of the language and skills needed to move up to the next level as described in the Common European Framework
• Any approach that is being used a lot in Japan obviously isn’t working, or the Japanese wouldn’t have such a low level of English

Maybe these joker teachers don’t care. Maybe they are just looking for a justification to read the newspaper (I’ve found mine- start a blog!). I do care, and for a perfectly selfish reason. I am sick and tired of getting a student or class of students in Japan that I have to teach pairwork, phonemic script, linked speech pronunciation, basic chit chat and functional language questions, basics of telephoning and emailing, classroom language questions etc. etc. from absolute scratch. And there is only one solution. I hereby ban the use of authentic newspaper articles in class in Japan- no exceptions! And that includes Breaking News English!

Rant over