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