brain...kinda.....need...food.

[parasitegirl]

I am starting to prepare for a two-day seminar in late August (when I get back from Turkey) to help teachers and administrators understand what communication style language activities are and how we want to integrate them with the English text books we will all have to use for 5th and 6th grade students starting next year.

This is going to involve a general talk about what communication style is, what are goals are, how this differs from just teaching language, how to start thinking about constructing lesson plans, and how to integrate it with the text books...then I'm going to talk about how I worked with a local teacher to create a lesson plan that was half text-book based and half communication activity and the thought process behind creating it. Last will be group work where different groups get different textbook chapters, some ideas about possible activities to use with them, and time to create and present a lesson plan for it..which we will watch and all discuss. This last part is a work in progress.

This is kind of a fuck-ton of work. It gets to the heart of what the most challengeing and most rewarding non-classroom-related wonky part of my job is. It also forces me to realize that they do take me seriously and seem to think I know what the fuck I am talking about.

Mr. West gave me four points to adress at the start. I am writing in English and having Farasha translate it so that I can focus on the information I want to transmit. It is starting to sprawl and I haven't reached the final point yet. I will edit it before sending it off to Farasha and I will also ask Mr.West to edit the final product for clarity, brevity, and to make sure it conforms my department7s way of thinking..if they have one.

I need to take a break before I start cleaning up question three and starting four.
What I have so far:

コミュニケーションスタイルの外国語活動とはどのような活動か？(What kind of activity is a “communication style foreign lanaguge activity?)

 

Communication is about exchanging information. Language is part of communication: talking, listening, writing and reading. We also communicate in other ways: drawing, mimicking, nodding, pointing, body language, gestures. When we watch two people talking, we get more information than if we read the same dialog. We know this, but when we teach communication we often focus only on the language, in part because we can easily test for basic language skills. Luckily, at the elementary level, 外国語活動　(Foreign language activities) is part of 総合(general education class). We can teach broad range of communication skills without always focusing on test scores. We believe that these skills will help students better learn languages and other subjects later on when they are tested.

 

Communication style activities develop a student’s cognitive skills. It teaches them how to take new information, to make hypothesis about what it means and how to respond. This is a skill they can use in all subjects. When we enter a place where a foreign language is being used, we become more aware of visual information and cues. We use those cues to figure out how to crudely communicate with gestures, single words, and drawings, over time we figure out what the words we are hearing mean and how to use them. Communication style activities teach students new ways to think and act effectively. It gives them the tools to more easily learn new things. The fact that the 文部科学省 (Japan’s board of education) uses the name 外国語活動 (Foreign language activities)　instead of 英語活動　(English activities) is important. The primary goal isn’t learning English, the primary goal is doing activities in another language.

 

2)コミュニケーションスタイルの外国活動に必要なファクターは？(What factors are involved with a communication activity?)

Most people think that learning a second language is a good idea, but they never do it. Learning a second language isn’t usually enough motivation to get people through all the hard work it takes. Students are the same. If the only thing they get from English class is English, this isn’t enough motivation for most or them. They need to get something more. Language is a tool to get and give knowledge. It’s important that communication activities promise, and give, new knowledge about something they are interested in: a new game, world music, different countries, making a toy, meeting a new person, learning about their classmates. Communication activities have to contain something new that most of the students are interested in.

 

Not understanding what is going on can be scary and frustrating. A communication style activity has to challenge a student but can’t be too easy or too difficult. If it’s too easy it means the students already understand the material being taught and aren’t learning anything new. If it is too difficult students will give up and probably learn to resent English and be less likely to try the next class. There needs to be a balance between visual and oral information so the students don’t have to rely only on one method of information. The activity needs to have an end point, goal, that can be reached. Without a final goal, it is impossible to evaluate if the students have accomplished or learned anything.

 

Because a new language is scary, there needs to be a sense of safety in the classroom. Students need to feel like mistakes are part of learning and that they will not be humiliated or punished if they make them. This is also why communication activities can get very loud. When we allow students to all shout out the answers it provides a safe space for less-sure students to try in a way that making student raise their hands and answer one by one doesn’t. This is also why communication activities use a lot of group work, so confused students can be helped by those who have a better understanding.

 

3) 活動案作成で配慮することは？ (What should be taken into consideration when making the lesson plans?)

 

There is pressure to teach English grammar and vocabulary earlier. It is easy to create a lesson plan that introduces an English grammar point, drills it, and makes an activity that forces students to use it. It is easy because that is how you learned English. You know the pattern!…but most of you are proof that this is not an effective way of learning and retaining English and is probably part of why many of you dislike English. This pattern-based style of teaching English also demands that you, the teacher, have very precise pronunciation and grammar skills. Communication style lessons use new English points in the process of learning or doing something else. The new English point is not the primary goal, but is part of the communication process. This makes creating communication activities harder at first, because they are very different from how you learned, but over time they become easier. Because communication styles activities also use visuals, gestures, and very simplified words instead of perfect English drills teachers who don’t have always perfect grammar or pronunciation can teach them.

 

Things you need ask yourself what are you being asked to teach and what your students are interested in? What other school subjects can you connect with? For example colors: older students won’t be interested in identifying basic colors or singing songs about them, they know that’s what little kids do and it will just remind them how low and childish their English skills are. But these same students are learning about other cultures in their social studies class and have become interested in knowing more about colors while learning about world maps, or flags, unfamiliar fruits and vegetables,, or traditional costumes. You can bring in science and art classes by getting students to try to remember the colors of a rainbow, by mixing water colors to create new ones, by making a byunbyungoma to mix colors for them. You can do P.E Activities where teams need to race to different colored cones, or gather a certain number of colored balls, or do ring toss on pet-bottles painted different colors with different point values.

 

Once you have an idea of an activity that uses your English teaching goal and is interesting to your student, start writing a lesson plan. You can write the spoken parts in easy Japanese at this point to help you concentrate on the activity. Now you need to make sure each of your activities has a general goal and end point. Once you have a basic structure for the class you can start to think about the visual information. Imagine you are watching the lesson plan you’ve created, but there is no sound. How will you give visual clues about what you are saying? From there you can make teaching aids, think about gestures. When all this is done,your finalstep is to return your focus to what you will say in English, figuring out first the most basic way to communicate in English, and then using support staff and peers to help you make more challenging English sentences.