Dictogloss in the works

It's been a white since I mentioned dictogloss. Yesterday I did the research class for the dictogloss collaborative chapter for the TESOL Classroom series.

The group are 2 Jr high school boys and 2 Jr High School girls, all 2nd year students.

My aspect of the dictogloss for this chapter is the V-task approach, or collaborative learning in the classroom and creating student autonomy.

Although the passage I used for the class was long, and the approach I took was different from my colleagues, I was really impressed with the results.

My focus in my conversation class is on the use of interlanguage and using the language outside of the 'set phrases' taught in the textbook. The students responded really well to the conversation, often the discussion becoming very heated at times, one student having heard 'Well', another student having heard 'Wow', yet in context 'wow' just didn't fit. The discussion about the language becomes the most prevalent. The final conversation had 'good' mistakes, and there were some not so good mistakes, but the whole approach to the learning was a great experience for the students.

We've only got a month to get this chapter done!

culture day at school

Today I taught my elementary school classes, 3rd and 4th year students. I brought my cello today, it's been getting a little dusty, so I thought it would be good to have the students see and hear a real cello up close.
They all had a chance to play it for a little bit for those who wanted to, and even those who were shy at first got a turn.
I taught them about the bow, the horsehair, rosin, the cello, the donut so the cello won't slide around when you play.

I find it really amazing that there are so few violin, viola players and cello players up in this neck of the woods.

Music is so wonderful as a hobby and I thank my parents constantly for giving my such a gift when I was young. You can bet at that time I wanted to play outside and not worry about the cello, and I'm sure kids haven't changed these days. Now I barely get enough time to practice and if I do, its only for the orchestra. Oh well, once this MA is over, I'll get a chance to go out and give a few concerts here and there.

Thanks mom and dad.

Imogen Heap

I thought this was so amazing. What a voice!

Rostropovich

This is one of my heroes. I met Rostropovich for the first time in 1985 in Toronto. He had played the Dvorak Cello Concerto. My own teacher had studied with Rostropovich and sent me to the concert with a greeting to pass along. I met him again on several occasions after that, the most memorable being here in my own town of Hanamaki, Iwate, Japan, where he performed the Hadyn Cello Concerto in C and Tchaikovsky's Roccoco Variations, under Seiji Osawa. It was a private concert, only about 200 people attended, outside in the August heat.

The most memorable CD I have is his recording of the Dvorak with Von Karajan conducting. Powerful, astonishing, beautiful, breath taking...

His death, a few months ago, brings much sadness. From my childhood, he was the cellist to listen to.

I will practise more... I promise!

This year in Hiroshima

A few of my colleagues took the trip down to Hiroshima this year for the annual University of Birmingham seminars. I was unable to head down, much to my own disappointment. We want to start a new program called MASH, which Steve launched this year to the audience of new MA students.
MASH will assist students in their studies in their MA in TEFL/TESL and linguistics through the help of collaborative learning and podcast seminars. I've taken it upon myself to learn all about podcasting, .m4a and .mp3 files as well as enhancing podcasts, creating them, uploading them an publishing them. It was a five hour course, but I can now say that I'm a little bit more in tune with the new world of podcasts and the audience that they can reach. Still need to get myself in tune with the RSS feeds and such, but, little by little.

Sorry I couldn't make it down to Hiroshima to contribute to the launch seminar, but I'll be there next year!

Widening the ZPD

At first glance the title might seem a bit odd, it may seem the opposite of what we want to achieve and it is. This may be a greater issue than we think. Normally a student which can't do something may ask for help from a peer or a more capable peer. Or in the case of a question, the student who doesn't know the answer may take a while to process something to answer. As Sir Ken Robinson said in his speech 'If children don't know, then they'll have a go.'

If a student can't answer right away, it is our jobs as teachers to allow the process time to naturally occur or to evaluate the interaction occurring and perhaps elicit from another student. But not to provide the answer.


Why do so many teachers answer their own question for the students? This gets into the whole issue of display questions and referential questions, but I've seen many teachers as a student a question only to answer it for them a few seconds later, not even waiting for that process time to occur.

They are essentially robbing the students' of their journey through their ZPD.

What we need to do, is help students discover their own ZPD, discover their abilities and in doing so narrow their ZPD's to the point where the student can incrementally process his or her own abilities and discover their own limits. By knowing their own abilities they will be more likely to be autonomous learners and be able to stretch their imaginations and gain confidence in whatever they do. They will be able to challenge anything. We will have taught them that they can.

But, the most disappointing of all is the teachers who don't allow students to process. If a student is working through a problem, there is silence, which some teachers fear. Why?

This silence is necessary for students to work out an answer, so why do teachers intervene and answer for them to spur the class along? It doesn't do any good for the student and it teachers them two things.

1. That if they don't answer, the answer will be provided for them.

2. If they don't answer fast enough, then something is wrong. It teachers them that thinking through something is wrong and it isolates their disability to answer fast enough.

So, students who don't like to answer, get the answer provided and students who need a little more time get robbed of their opportunity to answer. No one discovers their own abilities and the ZPD widens.

The students who wait for the answer, don't learn to think and never discover their abilities. They are too busy avoiding them.

The students who need more time to process learn that they can't answer and despite the fact that they may really know the answer, may end up just giving up because their journey through their 'self' ZPD was interrupted.

I don't think this is what Vygotsky had in mind in his ZPD theory.
Students who may know the answer but are told the answer before the processing is finished learn a very great bad thing.
They learn that getting help from a more capable peer means that the answer is provided whether they want it or not. They learn that their abilities are limited and someone thinks that their ZPD is too wide to be able to process on their own. They learn that there is a teacher who they hold in high regard doesn't think they have ability. The ZPD is not just a concept, it is our responsibility to help students learn to process their way through it through scaffolding and through collaborative efforts. The ZPD is I think, directly linked to self worth and self recognition.

So for teachers who don't pause, who don't wait for that process time to occur are not helping. We need to challenge our students and help our students really discover their own abilities. Not provide the answers because we want to hurry the class along.

List of My Books - Mind in Society - the first entry

I have added a new list on the right hand page of my blog, called 'list of my books'.

This is my first entry. This book called Mind in Society is based upon the works of Vygotsky and covers his concept of the Zone of Proximal Development.

Vygotsky described the zone of proximal development as:
“…the distance between the actual development level as determined by independent problem solving and the level of potential development as determined through problem solving under adult guidance or in collaboration with more capable peers” (1978: 86).

Vygotsky adds:
“an essential feature of learning is that it creates the zone of proximal development; that is, learning awakens a variety of internal developmental processes that are able to operate only when a child is interacting with people in his environment and in cooperation with his peers” (1978: 90).

Michael Cole is one of the editors for this book.

Vygotsky, L.S. (1978) Mind in Society. Harvard University Press. Cambridge MA.

What we can learn from spaghetti sauce

When I watched this video I immediately thought of all the methodologies that we use in our classrooms to teach.
Which methodology and which approach, which textbook and which syllabus, and the list could go on forever, but what struck me the most was the thought about embracing the diversity of the students we teach.
We shouldn't be looking for the perfect class, we should be looking for the perfect classes.

But as I thought about this more, I thought to myself, why do we spend so much time teaching and focusing on the perfect method when we all know there isn't one.
We need to look for the perfect methodS.

More to ponder before I write more. I think I'm going to have spaghetti tonight.

Responsibilities of a Teacher

My colleague's blog contains this clip, and I have watched it a number of times and decided to add it to my own blog.

I've seen so many teachers walk into a classroom and not even look up to see who the students are. They teach the lesson, walk out and the is no connection between the students and the teacher.

So when there is talk of students who have become unmotivated, then my question lies with the methodology or the approach of the lesson. In other words, the teacher. We have all had our fair share of 'undesirable students' but I think those are the ones who can help us become better teachers... they make us study ourselves and our methods and ultimately help us change to become more aware.
The problem lies though I think is with the teachers who don't want to change and don't want to examine their own methods, it is at those times I think that the students suffer the most.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that, it should be our philosophy as teachers to not worry so much about the content of what we are trying to teach, but instead what we want the students to learn and how best to help them learn it. It has to come from them. They sometimes can't tell us what their needs are, but if we learn more about them, we can learn more about how to help them discover who they are. I guess what I really want to say is from the video and what Sir Ken Robinson taught me, was that I think if we focus on the students' needs and get to know our students more, then we can begin to understand that they can teach us to become better teachers, so that we can help them become more prepared for the future. Their future. And if we do that, everyone wins.

Questions from Universidad de Cordoba, Monteria-Colombia

A while back, I accidentally put my V-task paper out to the xmca mailing list. I thought I was replying to one person, but it turns out that the entire xmca community received it.
I sent out a message apologizing for it's release. One reply did come, apologizing for reading it, but at the same time asking questions. Here is the exchange of e-mails that occurred between Jose David Herazo Rivera and myself.


Mr. de Boer

I am aware that your research paper was not intended for everyone in the xmca-discussion, but I have not resisted the temptation to read it. Having done so, I have a few questions I would like to ask. It is no problem if you are too busy and cannot answer at the moment.

For sometime now I have been looking for a way to implement TBL as from the very beginning of a unit sequence. usually what I have done is some pre-task work, as suggested by different authors, consisting of controlled tasks or exercises. I think the V-task might be very helpful in this sense.

1. Concerning the V-task parameter number 6: how is it possible that students decide the language they need or want if the task, to some extent, determines the language that is required?

My answer to his question:

Question 1:
The V-task parameter number 6 yes, states that the students determine the language they want or need through questions. You have a valid point in that the task in some ways determines to some extent the language required but this is not necessarily the case. As with TBL there always seems to be a central theme, having students ask each other questions etc, but with the V-task the work is individual. In some cases (and most of my students to this point have been children) the task is set so the language is less restricted, yet, as in our everyday life, if we are set out to do a task, then there is going to be some rigidity to the language involved. In this case the students made up their school schedules, which in the coursebooks they offer here in Japan, all the components of that V-task were all individual chapters focussing on one chapter a month, and through PPP.
The problem that we encounter here with TBL is that it is too vague and not specific enough in its direction. Students go home not knowing what they learned and parents also need to see steps in progress. One of the points of the paper was to show that TBL can be structured to some extent and still bring in the language needed to the lesson to satisfy the parents demands, yet, it is more real world use, the students don't get taught the material, they have to ask for it. In asking for it, we don't necessarily teach it to them, we use the classroom as the teacher, other students pitch in to assist each other and the classroom becomes a autonomous learning environment.
So yes the language required to some extent is determined, yet the student determines what components of that language they want.

For example. In a PPP environment, lets say that the lesson is to do with past tenses. So in the textbook they have the set question

Did you ..... on Saturday?
The preset vocabulary might be
bake cookies
brush the dog
watch TV
and so on.

So asking a student,
Did you brush the dog on Saturday?
the answer invariably would need to be Yes, I did or No, I didn't, since the structure of the lesson points students to those two answers.
But, many students don't have dogs, so the answer should be: I don't have a dog.

In a V-task setting though, without pairwork (that can come later) The students give me a list of 10 things they did on Saturday, then the lesson language is less restricted, but it focuses on the past tense. We all have our coffee time questions with other staff about what we did on the weekend come monday morning... how is my lesson different?
But the students need to find out what they did because they don't know it in English, they need to ask questions to get the information so they can write it down. They determine what they want to write, because it pertains to them, not to a textbook answer which may have no relevance. They may learn it from another student, when it comes time for pairwork. Hey, what did you do on Saturday? to complete the task.

2. We are usually tempted to believe that the creation and occurrence of ZPDs in the EFL class is a very complicated and complex event, and we feel kind of frustrated when we see that the act of giving help in spelling a word, like in your example, is accounted for as interaction within the zoe, or scaffolded interaction. What's your opinion about this? Do you have examples of other assisted or scaffolded performance that have occurred in your lessons?

My answer to his question:

Question 2:
Good question and valid.Yet, in this instance, the students are in the early stages of 'learning how to learn' and knowing how to get information is one of them. Learning how to ask for information here in Japan is a big step for some students. Its a very Confucius type society in its teaching methods. Students don't ask, and then certainly don't ask each other.
Yet in asking for spelling, there are a number of factors involved.
1. They may not have the confidence to spell the entire word, so instead of checking, they ask. My role would be to determine how much they know and to help them from there. So if they ask for spelling and it requires scaffolding then I will proceed in that direction. I have included an article in this mail which shows how scaffolding might help in the V-task, based on the levels of scaffolding that may be required from the teacher. These are valid scaffolding parameters as well. Now I must make it clear that the scaffolding and the zone which is discussed in my paper is still in its preliminary stages.

My main reason for writing this paper was to find a link between TBL and Vygotsky. In my initial research, there was no link, since TBL didn't take into account any Vygotskian type thinking at all. Which is why I revised the definition of TBL to bring in Vygotsky. You can't change Vygotsky, but you can change TBL. So by revising TBL, I was able to come up with a method (V-task) which seemed to satisfy the requirements of TBL and Vygotsky. Yet very importantly provide a learning environment which made students autonomous learners.

In my essay I cited Ohta: In the V-task, developing learner autonomy is a key issue and ‘increasing autonomy is evidence of increasing internalization’ (Ohta 2001: 74). Even something as simple as asking for spelling, which in my case with children is a very big part (EFL) and a necessary step for later on.

3. In the lessons you present students it is very clear the negotiation of meaning, or negotiated dialogue, as Swain calls it. have you tried this type of task in more complex settings where the task product is not linguistic?

My answer to his question:

Question 3.
Yes I have tried this in more complex settings. Initially, when I started this research I chose a lesson where the students used a set of components (called SciTek) similar to Lego, but much bigger and more centered around technology. The lesson was to work together to gather the inventory and using the V-task parameters (at that time the parameters of the V-task were not yet defined, but well on their way) were to build whatever they were building. In my case they built a car and an airplane. So they had to negotiate for parts, determine which parts they needed, what they looked like, etc and the final product was the car. The language used was free - but in this collaborative learning environment, simple phrases that one student knew, were passed onto other students.

I recently did a talk on this same concept in Sapporo in Japan and I'm due for a talk on this in November at the JALT national conference in Tokyo. I still use SciTek, but SciTek doesn't need to be used. The concept is what defines the task, what you choose to use to teach this kind of task is up to the teacher.

4. TBL has been criticized on the grounds that the communicative performance that occurs through it does not necessarily lead to acquisition. HOw does the V-task seem to overcome this critique?.

My answer to his question:

Question 4
TBL in an EFL setting is not effective as it stands. Yes, it teaches the students real world use of the language, but still, its focus on pairwork and figuring out something in pairs really doesn't help in the EFL setting, especially since there really is no target in a TBL lesson. Students still haven't been taught how to ask the questions they need to ask to understand what they are doing. TBL focuses too much on the use of real English, which understandably in an ESL setting might be ideal.
But TBL also assists in the development of the interlanguage, which in my setting is very important and necessary. PPP teaches structures but there is not allowance for interlanguage. TBL focusses on interlanguage, yet there is no structure and the students may not see the short term benefits after they have walked out of the lesson. The V-task, having a little more structure, yet focussing on interlanguage gives the students something to 'get' and as I mentioned, it gives the students the necessary skills for learning how to access the language they need. As stated above --- ‘increasing autonomy is evidence of increasing internalization’ (Ohta 2001: 74).

In Japan, this kind of lesson would be ideal, since still in many classrooms, PPP is widely used, and students don't learn really how to communicate. They learn set phrases, yet when they go to a different country, they haven't got the confidence to ask questions or speak the language because PPP is so rigid in its method, that anything outside of the set phrase taught to them is considered to be incorrect. The teacher focuses on the set phrase, and not the negotiated meaning. Pairwork also has its good points and bad points, but in the V-task it is not required, since the idea is for the students to get the language they want. In pairwork it is just the automatic gamesay of asking questions and answering them. The V-task goes beyond that, saying if you need information to complete the task, then learn how to ask for it and in doing so learn how it works. So to answer your question, TBL doesn't focus on the language that the student wants or needs at that particular moment. But in the V-task, the language that they want or need, needs to be accessed to complete the task, but the objective is not the final product, it is the language needed to get to the final product. In TBL, the focus is on the final product. Hence the acquisition rate is potentially higher for the V-task since the gap created using the V-task is a learning gap, not a task.

Please, there is no need to apologize to me about reading the article. Thank you so much for your questions. I hope I have answered them for you. This paper is due to be published in TESOL this year, in a TBL series they are producing. My dissertation is still a little ways away, but this will be the focus of my dissertation.

And in any future correspondence, please call me Mark!

I would finally like to apologize for having commented on a paper that was not intended for me to read.

Kind regards,

JOSE DAVID HERAZO RIVERA
Universidad de Cordoba
Monteria-Colombia

The V-task discourse analysis

Currently, I am working on my module 4 essay for the University of Birmingham. My question is to do with the discourse analysis of a class, using Sinclair and Coulthard's Model. My transcriptions are done and I'm ready to start typing and analysing.

The discourse to do with a traditional classroom setting much outlined in Sinclair and Coulthard's model are pretty straight forward. The teacher asks a question, the student responds to the question and the teacher acknowledges the response. But the classroom lesson I have chosen to analyse is a lesson based on the V-task parameters.

I have found that to analyse my lesson based on their model is virtually impossible. For the following reasons, I'm running into panic state!

I virtually have no IRF exchanges. I don't ask my class questions, and if I do, it isn't for the purpose of extracting information. The students themselves ask questions to access the language they need and in most cases, as even outlined in Kumaravadivelu's book Beyond Methods, my role as a teacher is to make sure there are learning opportunities made for each student in the classroom based on their needs. So if a student asks me a question, more often than not, another student will answer, or I will redirect the question back to the class to create a more dynamic learning environment.
In my classroom discourse, with 5 people present (myself and 4 students) there are at least 2 conversations going on simultaneously. Students asking students, or students asking me with me redirecting. My role of a teacher now has become one of not teaching, but creating learning opportunities and opportunities for sharing.

My students have been studying plural forms. Their job was to design their own zoo, labeling all the animals and designing a layout for the zoo. They were to go home and draw the animals later.
Why I did this lesson;
1. I wanted them to create a zoo, based on the animals they wanted to put into the zoo. One of the students actually labeled his zoo 'My dangerous zoo' since he had a good variety of the more 'dangerous' animals.
2. I wanted the students to interact in the classroom, not go home and look up animals and write them out at home. I wanted them to share ideas, a student struggling to come up with animals for his/her own zoo, might get ideas from other students during interaction. The term for moment to moment learning in the classroom is microgenesis which from the interaction happening here, was happening.
3. I wanted the drawing to be done at home - why? so the students would have to remember the animals they wrote. One student wrote 'dolphins' and when he got home he couldn't read it. So he had to look it up again, in order to draw the picture of the dolphins. Reinforcement of the lesson.
4. The students needed to use plurals to create the zoo. A popular question from me was 'do you only have one monkey in your zoo?' with students realizing that -s needed to be added.
5. The variety of plural forms were addressed, adding an -s or an -es, and although this never came up, some animals the addition of -s or -es is sometimes not enough... wolf - wolves, sheep -sheep, but this was not important for this lesson,.
6. The most important part of this lesson that I need to point out, was every student was so excited about creating their zoo that they forgot about the English. Although they needed to use English to create the zoo and they needed to write, ask, converse, share ideas and so forth to come up with 10 animals for their zoo, they were more intent on creating a zoo that was their zoo, with the animals that they liked and wanted to use.

So with the lesson done and now transcribed (it really is a mess and I have no idea how to analyze it) I look back and watch the video, listen to the voices of the children and realize with a tear in my eye that these students really had a good lesson.

I wanted to name my essay 'V-task discourse analysis' but under the guidelines from the University of Birmingham, I cannot reference my previous essays and my previous essay was all on the parameters of the V-task and its workings. So I will call it something else and panic for the next two weeks on what to write.

Overall though, this kind of discourse analysis is useful for learning what actually happens in the classroom and discovering things we can do as teachers to change our roles to make learning in the classroom more student-centered and more enjoyable!

Mike Cole

I've been part of the xmca mailing list for the past few months and have encountered many e-mails from Mike Cole. His web site can be found under the links on the right of this page.

Not too long ago I was interested in what someone had to say about my research, and Mike being the 'main' on the xmca list, he seemed to be the best choice. He had encouraged me to 'not be the newbie' on the list but instead to add my thoughts and my comments on my own research. My initial posts were commented on by others and my thoughts were shot down by one or two, which left me wondering what the heck I was really doing. Mike was kind enough to look at my paper on the V-task and comment. Although the list for the most part is a little too esoteric for me, witnessing the communications between some of the greatest minds has been an experience in the least.
The amount of contributions Mike has made to the world of psychology and the world involving Vygotsky is astounding. His CV is 21 pages. I'm very embarrased to have asked him to read my paper. I simply hadn't done my homework to find out who the man was behind this xmca mailing list.
But putting that all aside, his warm nature, his vitality and support on the list has been inspiring and I look forward to many more discussions!
His link will lead you to many web sites, so I encourage you to look around!

Vygotsky

This is a picture of Lev Vygotsky, because of whom the evolution of this blog came to be.
In my quest as a teacher to make a difference, many of the lessons I have been doing of late have been a result of the theories of Vygotsky.
In the past, a teacher largely of the PPP methodology and yet unsure of why we taught this way, began an MA course through the University of Birmingham. After a year of the course and about halfway completed, my dissertation has been decided. I have decided to use the Vygotsky's concept of ZPD and social interaction to tie in a link to TBL. The current TBL concept is more of a communication based focus, but under my research I have decided to to a revision of the TBL methodology to make it fit with the concept of social interaction, scaffolding and ZPD. A recently submitted paper as part of my studies proposed a new type of task, called a V-Task, which the students in their efforts to acquire language need to access it first. But the accessing of the language would need to come from a type of task that motivated students to become autonomous learners, and realize that the best way to learn is through social interaction within the classroom. The teacher, also playing an autonomous role, is not the only resource in the classroom to get information from, but other students, books and dictionaries etc, are also available. The V-task, based around this concept differs from a procedural or a process type syllabus, where the task can still be centered around a certain target or theme, yet in order to complete the task, the students need to access language and the completion of the task is a by-product of language access.

Teachers, providing scaffolding, and also providing the means for students to understand how to learn the language rather than just learning the language, play a much different role in the classroom rather than the traditional one which we are so used to.

So the link between Vygotsky and this new type of task V-task, is a type of lesson which I will be focussing much more on in the future, already having many classes work with this type of task. The results are amazing and the students are putting more and more energy into their lessons.

If anyone wants to comment on the V-task, or would like to discuss it further, I would be more than happy to share or exchange ideas.

Mark

Learning through songs

Here are some students studying the song 'I can see a Rainbow' from the Finding Out Series. (Finding Out 2)

I leave the students alone and they practise the words first. Then I let them listen to the CD and then they practise some more this time practising the melody as well.

The students more often than not help each other with the words. In the second video (the actual performance) you can see two of the students.




I stress that it is best to leave the students to teach each other. Questions do come, like 'what's this word?', but most of the students now know that I encourage them to ask each other questions before asking me. I'm the last resort. I'm giving them a valuable lesson in how to become interdependent learners. The scaffolding that happens in the classroom is fantastic and the students are much happier learning this on their own. Who would have thought that a ten year old 'bully' would put so much passion into singing the rainbow song? He loved it!

Mark

Dictogloss

Here is a group of students doing a dictogloss exercise. We did a song from the SuperKids 3 book, the 'Did you play baseball yesterday?' song.

The students responded much better than I thought they would and I tried to do as much scaffolding as I could; for example getting them to spell a word as much as they could before I helped them the rest of the way, rather than me just spelling the word for them when they asked. Of I redirected the question back to the group to see if anyone else could help spell the word. This was the first dictogloss that I did with them and I did end up playing the song about 6 times. (I also played the last part of the song once as you'll see in this video).

Overall the dictogloss was a surprise success, the students had a slow start, but to be expected having never done this before, but the students ended up doing a lot of communicating amongst themselves to get the words all down. In the end, I let them check their version against the version in the book. They were almost all perfect.

As you will see in the video too, the Did you....? version was OK, but when it came to the simple past sentence, they couldn't catch the -ed on the end of play, or paint.
This was only their second week on this chapter - simple past with regular verbs adding -ed only, so I will try something different next time to see how much they were able to notice.

Running Dictation

A favorite lesson for students is always the running dictation game.

In this class, there are 4 students, all aged 10, and they are studying from the SuperKids 3 textbook. Since I don't like to follow the PPP method, I use the text mostly as a guide for the students to get a jist of what we are doing in the class. We still do a bit of the pairwork but mostly it is learning on their own and if they have questions, please ask me sort of lesson.

This lesson was all about learning some of the skills, the students did them all, reading, writing, listening and speaking. But they also learn other skills such as understanding, expressing, indicating, recognizing, learning the elements of sentence structure and using punctuation. (see White, R.V. (1988) The ELT Curriculum. Blackwell Publishing. Malden, MA. pp. 70-71)

Not only did they have to find out spelling, but they also had to find out where the beginning of the sentence was, capital letters, the comma, period, question mark and even the apostrophe.

They learned that the beginning of a sentence always starts with a capital, it ends with a period and 'it is' is abbreviated to 'it apostrophe s'.

The way the lesson goes;

Students are in pairs. One student writes, the other runs. In this case, the paragraph the runner had to dictate to their partner was in another room. They run to the other room, memorize as much as they could, then come back and tell the writer - who then writes it down in their notebook. 'How do you spell...?' 'Once more please.' are popular phrases they use to be able to correctly write down everything they are told to write.

When the paragraph is finished, then the students switch and a new paragraph is started. I don't use the same paragraph for all the students, it's too easy for them to copy from each other. The point is that they listen and write. And if they don't understand, then they have to ask to get the correct spelling and punctuation.

It keeps them busy and occupied and it's great exercise for the students too! I only do this lesson once every few months with a class.

It's great for all ages. I even do it with the little ones, but with words only, like cat or dog. They get so frustrated after only remembering the 'c' or the 'a' and having to run back to remember the word again, but they remember their letters and they have so much fun! And they get to practise their writing too!

Mark

Fumiaki-san is one of my adult students. He comes whenever he can, as he's very busy, but his keen interest in English and his perseverence make him a joy to teach.

He has his own blog, which he faithfully keeps everyday; http://blogs.yahoo.co.jp/fumiaki_sasaki38

In his class we cover so many different aspects of English.
We read numerous books, he has had his favorites (The Firm) and his not so favorites (1984) but currently we have switched to movies. We did study John Grisham's 'The Runaway Jury' last year and now we have switched to an all movie mode studying the nuances of the English language through Mission Impossible 1. It's amazing how simple the story becomes when you actually sit down to teach it, the scenes are short enough for a 90 minute lesson, we can cover a 8-10 minute scene every week. We look at different nuances between words that are used versus the ones he already knows, but his interest lies mostly in the interesting phrases that are used in the movies. They differ so much from books in the language they use that despite books being more descriptive, the movies have the language which I think is much more effective for studying conversation. Not to say that extensive reading is not important; it is, just that movies have a different language about them and the language that is used can be used to teach things like collocations, concepts like overgeneralization and just plain natural ways of saying things.

The next movie we will do in conjunction with the book 'Snow falling on cedars'. We are about halfway through MI1, but we'll finish it within the next few months.

Thank you Fumiaki-san. I really enjoy our lessons!

Mark

This is R-chan.
She is currently in SuperKids 4, yet, most of the lessons we do are from a variety of sources, as well as from whatever R-chan wants to do. She pretty much decides what she wants to learn. She has gone from a student who followed the PPP method to one of now who much prefers learning things on her own using a much more holistic method. So the SuperKids 4 book isn't followed from the traditional PPP format it was designed for, but instead we move around a lot, covering things from the book but in a TBL format.

The picture here was taken after we played 2 games.

The first game was based on the lesson in SK4 making comparisons between 2 animals.
We played the memory game. But when two cards were turned over they had to be compared in some way.

So I went first.
I turned over the ostrich and hippopotamus cards. I said 'An ostrich is faster than a hippopotamus'. Her response was one of '???' So I said the word 'fast' again and then repeated my sentence. This time going slower and emphasizing the faster.
She agreed and then it was her turn.

She turned over the lion and the elephant. 'Elephant big is lion.' Far from a perfect sentence, but the word order was correct.

The game progressed to the point where she heard enough of my language so that she could begin to create the comparisons herself with much more sentence structure.

Then came the moment that defines the new v-task. She asked me to help her with a new word so that she could make the sentence.

She turned over the elephant card and the bear card. She could have said bigger, but she asked me 'How do you say 'omoi' in English? I replied 'heavy', I didn't want to give the comparitive form, she didn't ask for it. Her sentence 'A elephant is heavier is than bear.' Her interlanguage was working its way through and she was discovering that the adjective -er form was used for comparisons. The word order remained correct and the emergence of the -er form told me she was on her way.
The rule she then applied to the peacock and snake card which she used the word beautifuller.

The next game we played was designed to reduce this simple form to something more applicable. In the picture, on the table you can see all of the cards face up. The object of this game was to choose an animal and the other person had to guess which animal it was.

I went first. I chose 'elephant'. She guessed lion. I said 'it's bigger'. She then said 'rhinocerous'. I replied 'It's heavier'. So every animal she guessed I used her new guess to compare it to my animal. She was pretty much in tune with this game. It was simpler, the language was simpler and it allowed me also to focus on the 'more' structures, although these structures were not part of her ZPD on this day. She wasn't able to distance this zone.

It came to the point in this game though that she could guess my animal within 3 guesses based on the clues I gave her. Also using the idea of the v-task, I added new adjectives and in order for her to guess the animal, she needed to know what this new adjective meant. She was allowed to ask me. I used slower, more beautiful, taller (she got the word longer, but the concept of taller wasn't there until I had picked giraffe as my animal to introduce this new adjective). She immediately guessed 'giraffe' and then turned around and used 'taller' herself in her next turn.

Having a student by themselves at this age can sometimes be very tedious, but R-chan has the personality and the motivation to be able to learn on her own.

Other things we do in class;

She does 10 minutes of reading out loud, from Penguin Readers 'Anne of Green Gables' level 2 book. At the 10 minute mark, I stop her and we look at the progress she has made based on previous week's readings. She can read a little over a page in 10 minutes, as opposed to 3/4 of a page from when she first started.
She also signs out a book a week from our library, she picks it. She has read over 50 books since the library began.We have a variety of readers from various publishers, so there is a variety for her to choose from. She has no favorites, but she has read a lot of the Story Street series from Longman. She is reading level 5 of that series. Sometimes she chooses a much lower level book than she is more capable of, but it is her choice.

We also do a lot of writing in class, she does study a little grammar when the need arises, or when the homework dictates that grammar needs to be covered, but I design the lesson around a more 'noticing' approach. For example when we covered past tense. I laid all of the cards on the table, so she could see the words. I asked her to point out similarities between the cards, and she immediately pointed out the -ed ending.

A pleasure to teach. Her dream is to work at Disneyland as a guide.

Good luck R-chan!

Mark

Here is Y-kun, recently he joined our school in Shiwa.
He is going to be in grade school starting next year and well, he's the blog of the day article.

His perseverence to learn English is amazing. Today he walked in to the school and said, Mr. Mark? Excuse me, Mr. Mark? So I replied, yes? There was no reply after that, but his mom explained that he learned a new phrase and wanted to use it.

He refuses to speak any Japanese in class, and to all other students his favorite phrase is 'no Japanese please'. Of course when he says it, he isn't sitting down, he is standing on his chair, shaking his finger and demanding.
Today, in class, we didn't do any TBL lesson, we did some phonics, they use the reading rods to match the letters and then we did a small science lesson, learning about planting seeds, giving them water and seeing the plant grow, flowers blooming and then turning into tomatoes. 'I don't like tomatoes! Yes!' was his reply.

His greetings and his funny character make the class so fun to teach, and due to his love of copying everything I say, he is so fun to teach! Recently I bought colored pencils from Canada, and they all have unusual names, there are even metallic colors. He has them all memorized. If the children want to color in class, they have to ask for the color they want before taking it. He loves the metallic colors, maybe not so much because of the color, but because he loves saying the colors. 'metalllllllic purrrple please!'


I don't have to teach anymore. Not this class. He makes sure everyone knows what the new vocab is, or the new activity is, before we move on.

He will be in my next research group when I start to link Vygotsky to TBL. It will be fun to design a lesson around Vygotsky's ZPD and keeping him in mind, see how I can have him teach others through scaffolding and through his world of social interaction.
He will be learning to read soon so his demands will increase I'm sure.

Thank you Y-kun!

Find the Differences

In today's lesson, with four Jr. High School Students we did a 'Find the Differences' lesson.

Students were put in pairs, and one person from the pair was given Sheet A and the other was given Sheet B. They were not allowed to show each other their sheets and they were only allowed to talk to 'find the differences between sheet A and sheet B items.

Not all items are different. One pair was done relatively quickly, within 30 minutes and when I asked them how many of the items were the same, they replied 'ten'. At that point I wrote on the board, that only the gloves, key and the wallet were the same, all others had some sort of difference.

Now, this class has had experience in the past with being able to ask for meanings, or ask to acquire new language, this kind of task is ideal for that. Yes, they need to use language that they already know, but they need to ask for more. I sometimes answered, but most times, I redirect the question to the rest of the class.

Finding the differences is not the point, the point is being able to communicate what you see to the other person. Confusions were mostly on the jeans or the suitcase.

The jeans drew confusion from the students in one case saying the 'happy face is on the left' vs the other student 'the happy face is on the left leg'.

The suitcase drew confusion, since they were all able to tell that the arrow was pointing up, but no one was able to determine that one arrow was short and the other was long.

The writing colors threw them off as well. All of the pictures were discussed diligently, the point of the lesson being just that. I didn't want them to feel that they failed in the lesson if the differences were not discovered, but I wanted them to be able to be able to discuss the pictures in detail, or most importantly ask for new language when needed.

At the end of the lesson, when the students were able to see the differences, groans and laughter filled the classroom.

The last 10 minutes of class was to discuss the various lexical items or chunks that they learned during the task.

At the bottom, at the top, left leg, facing, long, short...

but in asking about the lesson itself, all students agreed that this kind of lesson is useful just about in any situation, and although one of the students is not as grammatically advanced as the others, he was very good at being able to communicate exactly what he wanted to say.

How was the lesson?

fun, useful, difficult to explain the pictures but I could use my English, I learn how to say more English when describing things.

Great lesson and great student response.

Mark

A Sample Communicative TBL

Today I had a class with 4 Jr. High School students.

I wanted to teach them simple present and have them use it.

On the board, I wrote the following 9 questions;

1. Where were you born?
2. When were you born?
3. Where did you go to grade school?
4. Who was your favorite teacher?
5. What was your favorite subject?
6. Where do you go to Jr. High School?
7. Who is your favorite teacher?
8. What is your favorite subject?
9. What is your future ambition?

The idea being that I wanted them to notice the difference between Questions 4 and 7 and Questions 5 and 8. I wanted them to be able to make the distinction that starting question 6, the tense changes and becomes present.

The first 5 questions went rather smoothly, questions did arise, such as 'How do you spell September?' or 'How do you say 地理学' in English? (Geography).

One student raised his hand and inquired about the question 4 being repeated again in question 7, but he immediately withdrew his question when he noticed for himself that the question 7 pertained to Jr. High School. The others were listening to his question and at that point they all realized that the part starting at Jr.High was in the present tense.

We had covered the past tense in a previous lesson, but we hadn't really covered the 'be' verb past tense to any great degree. But no questions arose about this and they had completed the task by the end of the lesson. They had to ask all other students, all of the questions.

They communicated pretty much in English for the most part, but this kind of lesson raises the same question as outlined Hobbs, J. 2005 'Interactive Lexical Phrases in Pair Interview Tasks' in Edwards, C., Willis, J. (2005) Teachers Exploring Tasks in English Language Teaching. MACMILLAN, Hampshire, U.K. pp. 143-156. There needs to be some focus on helping students become less stilted in their language and more smooth in their interactions. By introducing students to lexical phrases as suggested by Hobbs, it could help the students use more peripheral language and less of their own Mother tongue.

A definite case for action research on how we could do this within the school as a whole and not just for this class.

Mark