Concordance Summary

Reinhardt (2010): Summary

This is a paper that reviews the theoretical debate behind the pedagogical applications of concordance such as the use of online corpora in L2 teaching with a mind to promote a wider spread use of such corpora. The first issue the paper tackles is some of the criticism directed at corpus use, especially in regard to the theoretical underpinnings of grammar learning or acquisition. At the core of the debate was weather or not statistical data such as what concordance typically uncovers is truly applicable to actual language learning. Some famous linguists such as Chomsky (1957) who where challenging the behaviorist model of grammar learning were promoting ideas of universal grammar or grammar construction theory which were processes that depended less on brute association and more on creation of subconscious rules in the learners mind. As a result the study of corpora was somewhat disdained for a variety of reasons of varying strengths. For example, one criticism was that the scope of a corpus is biased (weak). Another example is that native speaker language use is a unrealistic goal generally speaking, hence the L1 corpus is redundant or limited to students of the highest levels. (medium) Or an argument is that such conscious focused study is unnecessary if grammar is more effectively acquired rather than learned. (strong) Yet despite these arguments Reinhardt points out the value of such information, such as the notion that language is actually not as strictly rules based as it might appear. For example, we can see this with lexical chunks or phraseology. We can see the degree to which words are attracted to one another: a strong attraction is idiomatic while a weak attraction is open. The lines between grammar and vocabulary start to blur to the point where terms like lexicogrammar start making sense. It is here in this space that a corpus starts to show promise as a tool for learning. The second issue is to what extent can such data be leveraged in an L2 classroom. The idea that students can become autonomous researchers in charge of their own learning is one way this tool could have a powerful effect. Or even the idea of creating a corpus of learner data could bring about a much higher awareness of how each student uses language. Of course the tools seem to have a steep learning curve and a certain messiness that makes these tools hard to implement. The third issue is how to bypass these weakness and it is suggested that such tools be a bigger part of teacher training or SLA or simply be more widely used in teaching material or curricula. In fact Conrad (2000) thinks all these methods should be integrated as they are still very compatible with communicative and constructionist approaches to pedagogy.

Perez-Paredes et al (2011): Summary

This paper seeks to quantitatively investigate the claims that other researchers have made about the use of corpora. In particular, they want to showcase the new technology that has made their methodology more empirical than the indirect methods used previously. The research question they sought to answer is to do with whether or not instruction on the use of corpora would make a big difference in completing tasks that would benefit from the use of such a corpora. And how such instruction would affect students online behavior.

They set up 2 groups of university EFL learners: a control group and an experimental group. Each group were given identical tasks but the experimental groups received instructions on how to use a corpus. Both groups were allowed to use the internet as a resource to help complete the tasks and in both cases a plug-in called “fiddler” was used to track students activities including what sites where visited and input typed.

The results didn't show any particular benefit for using using corpus to complete the tasks as both groups had a similar completion rate. The most positive way they could spin this was that using he corpus didn't negatively affect output so it wasn't a complete waste of time. Along these lines it seems likely that Parez-Paredes et al decided to present their information in terms of the efficiency of their instructions in terms of how well students were able to use the corpus. (Not exactly a riveting or revealing topic.) They came to the conclusion that their instructions did indeed positively affect students use of the corpus, but it seems to me that this is simply an exploratory research for the purpose of showcasing the technical recording tools that are now available to researchers.

Compare and Contrast

I found Reinhardt (2010) to be a fascinating treatment of the theory, while Perez-Paredes et al (2011) presented research information that though in some ways useful was also rather disappointing in that they were not successful in showing corpora could have a measurable positive impact on learning outcomes. This seems to reinforce some of the criticism noted in Reinhardt. So even though both papers take a positive attitude towards this technology in neither case is it really clear that such positivity is justified.

In my opinion, in having some acquaintance in using corpora, I would say that the sites I've seen are very clunky and unintuitive. Most student would have a difficult time using such resource as is is both tedious and complex, requiring a lot of instruction and a task that couldn't be done more efficiently some other way. Two of students in Perez-Parendes et al's study (2011) were able to complete the tasks without any use of the corpus at all. Even the students who did use the corpus used it much less often than other websites. Google comes to mind as in many ways this search engine employs similar statistical matching with an considerably more convenient access to relevant information. (At least for the information students where looking for.)

I would say that this technology is probably better used by teachers and material designers at this point though with a more refined interface it could become a tool as useful as a dictionary for students. Or perhaps the functions of such a tool could be more completely integrated into an online dictionary. In some cases the functions already overlap with lists of common idioms under entries. Therefore, it wouldn't be unreasonable for a dictionary to include a list of strong collations, or even the opposite, words that never collate perhaps as way to help learners avoid common mistakes.

Clarification Question

I would like to know what exactly is the difference between concordance and corpora. I couldn't figure it out contextually.

Application Question

The research presented didn't give a detailed account of how the corpus was used to resolve the learning tasks at hand. So I want to know exactly what information the students are able to get from the corpora and how that information applied directly to resolving a task.

References

Pascual Perez-Paredes, Maria Sanchez-Tornel, Jose Maria Alacaraz & Pilar Aguado Jimenez (2001):

Tracking learners’ actual uses of corpora: guided vs non guided corpus consultation, Computer Assisted Language Learning, 24:3, 233-253

Reinhardt Jonathon (2010): The Potential of Corpus-Informed L2 Pedagogy, Studies in Hispanic and Lusophone Linguistics, Volume 3, Issue 1, Spring 2010

Choamsky, Noam. 1957. Syntactic structures. The Hague: Mouton

Conrad, Susan. 2000. Will corpus revolutionize grammar teaching in the 21^st century? TESOL Quarterly 34,548-560

ICC Mini Lesson Reflection

As I consider our class teaching polterabend, I have observed both positive things and things that may need some tweaking. Because I'm a positive person I'll start with what I think went well. On teacher talk I felt we had a very dynamic cast. With Evalyn and Daniel as my partners, they both brought a very proactive mindset which went a long way in making up for some of the weaknesses in our implementation. I thought Evalyn spoke in a very confident and engaging way while Daniel was as entertaining as usual with very expressive body language. For my part, I thought I stayed focused, and remained cool even though I felt somewhat flustered by the time pressure I was facing when I finally started my set.

In terms of our cultural objective, I think we did quite well. Each of us presented our parts as stages of Moran's cultural learning pretty clearly. The information we presented followed the model predictably. The assigned homework was intended to cover the last stage (Knowing ones self) as you suggested.  In addition as the cultural event we were describing is a fairly specific take on a widespread tradition, there really wasn't much danger of stereotyping.  In fact, the reasons I gave for why Germans practice polterabend are all easy to relate to in a general way. (Well, from a from a western perspective at least.)

That said, there were some problems. In terms of how well we achieved our objective teaching the TLC, I would say that each of us achieved “an objective” rather than “the objective”. Each, of us took a different approach that I thought could be interesting in a real teaching environment. Unfortunately, none of us knew exactly what each other was going to do except in a general way. (In fact, we merged our ppts together just before ICC class) So in that sense I felt that each of us taught a lesson that was somewhat self contained with some unintended overlap. In the end, I think its safe to say that we each achieved a sub objective which may not have built on each other in a way that achieved our terminal objective. For example, neither Daniel nor I reinforced the vocabulary that Evalyn was focusing on. And neither Evalyn nor Daniel presented the exact same variation of the TLC that I did, which would have made a world of difference for the focused practice I had in mind for my pyramid activity. In short, a lack of cohesion may have confused our students. And I saw one comment to that effect in the feedback.

This lack of cohesion also created some difficulties especially for me coming in last. Our pacing definitely put me under pressure. With the TLC, we could have streamlined a lot of what we did to create more time. So that could have been better. And as I mentioned before, each of us almost taught an independent lesson, so overall it was quite unbalanced with a lot of overlap between stages of the lesson. Daniel's role play activity for example probably should have come at the end in the production stage where as I was still getting students to do controlled practice, in my set. But I consider these problems as stemming form a lack of teamwork rather than weakness in our individual teaching pedagogy. No doubt had any of us had the floor for the full 15 minutes, the lessons would have been much better organized. In short, even though we do each have pedagogical weaknesses, I don't think the problems we experienced in our demo reflects them in a entirely accurate way.

Finally, I would like to reflect on how our lesson catered to our student's need. The lesson plan we made was student centered in that we planned a lot of activities for students to participate in. On the other hand it was hard to see that because we had didn't really have time to implement the activities we planned. In my case I was hoping to actually do the pyramid activity rather than just to announce that that we did it. But the intent in our planning was certainly there. In terms of context, I thought that doing the role play was a great way of providing context... but maybe not for the TLC that we planned! The kind of TLC that would be useful at a wedding party is somewhat unrelated to the TLC needed to teach about Polterabend. So if we were doing this lesson in real life I think we would have taught the TLC necessary for this role play in the previous lesson.   

All in all, despite our difficulties I felt my team members did very well.  And would like to thank them for all the hard work they put into this lesson.  If you're reading this team.  Well done!

Class Journal: Week 14

There have been a few twists and turns as I consider my career in ELT. I will say that in my 10 years here the trajectory has generally been up. I started down south in Cheonan and pretty much got fired from my first job after 3 or so months. At the time my employers found me another place to work so that was fine. Though, I never did find out the reason why they let me go. Then I came to Suwon where I worked in various hangwans for about three years. Through this time I went with the flow. I had no ambitions about career advancement or anything like that. I was just soaking up the experience and learning about life. After I got married, the thought of my career became much more salient. So that was a major turning point in my professional life. Using my wife's contacts I got a job in a high school and then later in Hyupsung university. It was unusual how easily everything fell into my lap. I think in Korea having the inside running goes a long way to further your career. It's a lesson I took to heart. This is why I am deliberate in how I build my social network with my Korean colleagues and associates near and far.

So that's the “what” but I think that “why” is a very interesting question? Why be an EFL teacher at all. I don't know what to say but perhaps this saying is applicable. “Some are born great and others have greatness thrust upon them!” Now for the record, I'm not letting my ego run rampant. I simply think that sometimes through coincidence, fate, destiny or whatever, we find ourselves in the unlikely situations in our lives. And that certainly describes the reason for me becoming an EFL teacher as I originally came to Korea simply to get away from my life in NZ which at the time I thought was not going anywhere quickly. So the value that guided my original decision was “if you want a different life make a different choice.” After coming here I was lucky to fall in with pretty good people, Korean and foreign, I don't really recall ever being in a situation that I would constitute a serious conflict of values... except for being married but I'm not going open that can of worms!

In my teaching situation now, I have things pretty good. Every contract I've had has been better than the last. But I am worried that I've come to a point where there is a glass ceiling over my career trajectory. That is one reason, I'm doing this course. However, to be frank, I work with both Masters holders and Phd holders and get paid more than them. (Being the first foreign teacher in a university has it's perks I guess) This troubles me because even if I gain a qualification there is a one size fits all mentality here that actually marginalize people who are very qualified. As teacher who wants to improve his practice and become qualified at the same time there doesn't seem to be a path forward beyond here. Yes, I may get into a better university at some point but then what? Becoming a tenured professor seems to be off the beaten track. There are no procedures for us in that regard in my current university but who knows it may well be possible if you know the right people. If I think the best form of advocacy is to be a precedent. Once the door opens for person then it will happen for others much more frequently. So I would take that approach.

Class Journal: Week 13

This week is the last week of teaching.  I'm not sure who is more relieved me or my students!  But considering how things were last week I was able to keep things very light in terms of work load.  (My  policy of assigning grammar as homework pretty much allowed me to keep ahead of the schedule.  For the first time I can remember I'm not rushing through the last unit before the final test)

All my classes ended early as we finished off the last unit so students were able to concentrate for a shorter time which I think contributed to a better quality of classroom life.  There was also not much to talk about this week as I've been so busy with other things I didn't bother trying any different with my students this time around.

Class Journal: Week 12

If you have ever heard the song Zombie by the Cranberries you would think that the song was written for my classes this week.  One of the lines of the song goes like this, "What's in your head?"  That's pretty much is the question going through my head this week as I consider my students.
So how can I explain this vegetative behavior?  At first, I though that it might have something to do with how I was teaching.  (I'll be frank, even though I'm learning a lot, I don't feel like I've had time to prepare my classes properly.)  But as the week limped on it was the same story in all my classes, and I know for a fact that there is no realistic scenario in which I could possibly suck that bad.
So I'm staring to consider some other possibilities.  Is it a general pessimism that students have coming up to the end of the semester?  Are my students under time pressure to cough up assignments?  (I feel them on that.) Or is it simply, the disappointing realization that university life is basically more of the same.  That is the initial excitement over coming to a new place has faded into boredom stemming from the fact that the teaching culture in university is just as banal as in high school... minus "baton based motivation" techniques.  (BBM, yes I just coined that.  You got to site me every time you use that now.)
These students came into class with their affective filters well up.  And I'm starting to realize that it is not enough to avoid interaction that raises a student's affective filters, (because I cannot count on anyone one the university to follow my philosophy) but I have to have a way to find a way to proactively lower that filter every time students come to class.  I shouldn't have to do that, but that is the reality that I face so I'm thinking about how to tackle that problem.

Class Journal: Week 10

This week, I read the readings focused on vocabulary and as it happened, this week's lesson had some good vocabulary exercises.  So I wanted to pay more attention than usual to how students dealt with the new vocab.  As a second objective I also wanted to stop repeating myself as I explained things in class.  (I was reviewing my module 2 assignment class videos and transcripts and I noticed that I keep explaining without first seeing if my initial instructions are understood.  I now believe that students find this more confusing because they have to find meaning in a barrage of words.  It's also probably the reason why some of my students don't listen and just memorize procedures.)

The vocabulary to be introduced were nouns depicting sports and fitness activities.  So the burden of learning these words were fairly low.  The meanings were all direct correlations to my students L1 lexicon.  And dictionaries were not required at all as they were all pretty easy to act out.  The only challenges where related to the verbs they collocate with.  But thankfully, in this case the verbs matched logically (though the L1 versions of the verbs grouped the sports and activities under differing subsets.)  Once I wrote the rule the students pretty much guessed the right verb for random activities I threw out there that weren't in their books.  So in the words of President George W., "Mission accomplished... heh heh heh"

In terms of my secondary goal.  I caught myself slipping into my old habits on a couple of occasions but I found it easier to stop my self once I adjusted my mindset.  Usually, I have a lot of enthusiasm about explaining stuff but this week I just imagined that I didn't give a shit and seemed to work like magic!  Habit flushed!

Class Journal: Week 9, Post-testitis and MIC

This week my students seem to be suffering post-testitis. Attendance was down, and the students who did show up looked like they wished they hadn't. It happens every year, so my goal for this lesson was just to nurse students back into the flow of study in a low key way. I tried to keep activities predictable based on what we have done in the past without introducing new procedures or tasks that would require students to lower their affective filter in order to function; with only one exception.  So I didn't try to push the envelope this week, as students are simply not game.

However, I was very surprised at the performance of my class 7 and 8 who are my Friday group. I got a lot of participation in terms of students volunteering questions and engaging in pair work. I think I'm starting to reap the rewards of the new approach I've been employing this semester. Student are really becoming accustomed to working together and it's taking much less effort now in order to get them moving. I quite pleased with that.

That said, I also noticed something that I haven't noticed before. That is, a lot of my instructions didn't seem to get through when I tried some variations on way I set up some of the production tasks. I was looking for that this week and I found it. The way I execute a task usually follows the same pattern week in and week out and students know this. It never occurred to me before, but yesterday I realized that the fact my students seem to follow my instructions may have less to do with understanding my input and more to do with remembering my procedures. It was an eye opener as I had just assumed they knew what I was talking about because they did what I was expecting them to do. This was clearly evident in one task I asked students to do this week that involved complex instructions. Instead of explaining the instructions like I usually do I asked students to tell me the instructions for the task. They had a hard time comprehending what I wanted them to do, I guess because it was something they didn't expect at all. It didn't follow from any of my usual procedures.

All in all, I think I've got to prepare my MIC techniques for new tasks in advance. I didn't think I needed to this week and got caught flat footed.   

Week 8: Test Week

There's not much class stuff to reflect on this week as all I've been doing is giving tests and interviews.  But this may be a good opportunity to reflect on my testing and grading policies.

My classes are much smaller this year compared to last year which has afforded me the time to test my students in a way more relevant to my teaching philosophy.  In my classes, I try to focus on productive skills but part of the challenge of doing that is actually making a test that is relevant to those skills.  One of the problems with testing speaking, for example, is that it is not something that can easily be set up.  It is simply not something that can be done together as a class, unless you have a lab with recording equipment (which I don't) and a computer system setup that is easy to use and troubleshoot (which doesn't exist).  So if I want to test speaking, usually I have to go through the time consuming process of interviewing students one by one.  This is possible with smaller classes, which is great, but on the other hand there is not much time to test each student.  And with a smaller sample of speaking it inflates the importance of even the smallest of mistakes.  This part is not ideal as some of those mistakes are random in nature.  In fact, I'm sure it affects the true accuracy of my evaluation.  (For example, if I happen to ask a question a student doesn't understand well they would get a significantly lower score than if I happen to ask a question that the student student happens to have a good understanding of.)  So on the one hand I have a desire to test productive skills in line with my philosophy but on the other I have time limitations that make it quite difficult to execute well.

You might ask, why test that way at all if it has a higher degree of inaccuracy.  Part of the motivation for me is that without a production based test to back up my production based lessons, students won't move outside their comfort zones in terms of class participation and practice.  If they think that the test is simply a listening and reading test then they would do what they always do in English class... listen and read.  Good skills, but not the skills they need to develop at this point to communicate effectively.  The best compromise I've been able to come up with so far is giving a short 20 minute listening and grammar test in conjunction with the interview in order to more accurately gauge student level.  But my fear even with this is that students focus on this part more than the interview itself.  Even if the interview has a significant portion of the grade allocated to it.

Perhaps the best thing I can do for next semester is to throw out the written test completely and assign less points to midterm and final interviews.  Then I could assign more points to in class work and participation to help mitigate the inconsistencies inherent in the short interview samples.

Class Journal: Week 7 "Input"

Reflecting on my module 1 assignment I've been conscious of how I make free style conversations with students.  Now, I've always been sensitive to student understanding when explaining things to a class.  (Usually because I have cater to the lowest common denominator to get things organized.)  But I've started to rethink how I talk to students who are of a higher level.  In particular, I want to reassess my habit of talking to them too quickly.  (Just like a native conversation.)  Not because I think they can't handle the input (in terms of basic understanding) but because of something I've read in SLA recently.  Drawing from Blooms taxonomy (the revised version from 2001), cognitive processes such as recalling words and meaning are much more difficult in a second language.  With that difficulty, the processing of information is slower and hence much more time is necessary for students to comprehend and reorganize information for more complex higher level processing.  If I want my students to produce higher level out put I think I need to restrain the urge to talk like I naturally do.
Reflecting on my lesson this week I've made an effort to be extra clear but I haven't consciously come up with a set procedure to ensure that my students have time to process the input I give them.  Neither have I come up with a plan to help guild students to higher order thinking.  My interaction with students, was as always, underwhelming. Students usually answer questions with the minimum they can get away with.  There is no elaboration, comparison, evaluation or creation.  Not spontaneously in any case. I think that is problematic.  Students, rarely use anything other than the bottom 2 levels of Bloom's model.  Perhaps, I should reassess my questioning style with the model in mind.  Better yet perhaps I could teach those kinds of questions to the students to use in pair and group discussions. Next week is the mid term test so now is the best time to recalibrate.

Class Journal: Week 6, Warm up reflection

I planned my warm up activity with a couple of goals in mind.  First, I wanted to get students quickly and comfortably interacting with me and each other.  And secondly, I wanted to establish a pattern of resolving problems of CI.  As always I made my plan roughly and fine tuned it over the course of the week.  By the time I got around to class 6 I think I had it pretty well worked out.  I started with introducing the expressions I wanted students to use this week when asking for help or checking meaning.  (The expression used is different every week to keep thing interesting)  Then I employed choral repetition to make sure they are comfortable saying it, and just to be sure they would be able to use it in class, I left the 2 expression written up on the WB for the entire lesson.  Then I wrote up the first warm up question.  (Referential and open in this case.)  Read it aloud and briefly explained one or two words I had pre-identified as problematic (from previous classes) to make it comprehensible.  In hindsight, I think it also helped them to activate their schema.   Then I elicted possible answers from the class.  Calling on individuals when volunteers were not forth coming.  When students where gave one word answers I would call on them to make a sentence.  If they got stuck I would try to mime the words of the sentence I was looking for one by one.  If that didn't work I might say the same sentence in Korean and ask them for a English translation.  Finally, if that wasn't working I would remind them to use the "asking for help" expression to call on a class mate.  Once I got a couple of answer I would write them up as general sentence structure they could use to form many sentences.  Then I elicited a follow up question and answer for that in the same way.  By then we've collaboratively constructed a mini-dialog.  I then modeled the dialog by getting a student to ask me the questions and then answering, following the structure I had just written up.  After that it was pair practice to get people talking and after that I would do it together with the class TSST style, just to hold them accountable and to catch out slackers in the pair work.
I think I achieved my goals for this activity quite well, so I was pleased.  This is the second time I've done something like this so they seemed to understand what I was expecting this time around.

The Cellist of Sarajevo

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HvsNU4eEt74

Class Journal: Week 5

This week I tried out a new lesson plan this week.  I felt much more organized than usual so writing it down did make a difference for me.  This week, I tried to get students to work in groups though out the class rather than just in the group work activities.  In fact I tried to set up my lesson with that in mind.  For example, I started with a warm up activity asking about the students Membership Training last week but instead of going TSST and chaining it like I usually do, I wrote up the question to dual code.  Then I elicited possible answers from students and used that to write up the structure of possible answers.  Then I got them come up with an appropriate follow up question and an answer to that.  Then I modeled it with a random student once and then turned it over to the groups to practice the structure together.
In other activities, I had students rely on each other to find answers to questions.  For example, I took questions about the dialog we were studying but instead of answering the questions myself, I simple wrote them all up and told the groups to find an answers among themselves.  I then had each group to answer one of the questions they had posed.  They also had to explain it in English rather than give me a Korean translation which I would normally accept if I knew the word.  (Which I often do, because when you repeat a lesson as often as I do, you pick up the Korean translation of trouble vocabulary pretty easily.)
All in all, this week the lesson went quite well.  I had good participation, a little bit better than last week, so I feel like the classes are getting used to my style and are making steady progress.  The one problem, I noticed this week was how much the class schedule depends on student efficiency in interaction activities.  About half my classes couldn't finish the final activity because of time pressure.  In 2 cases, I had to skip the final activity because the previous activities went on too long.  Perhaps, with more practice lesson planning I can avoid having this happen in future, though to tell you the truth I didn't actually include timing in my original lesson plan which I probably should do next time.

Class Journal: Week 4

This week one of my goal in addition to my regular ones, was to explicitly talk about the unspoken rules of classrooms here in Korea. So I started the lesson with a 25 minute lecture drawing from the Xie reading we did recently. So I drew 5 roughly allegorical class rules from the cultural obstacles Xie talks about.

1. Avoid mistakes.
2. Do not disagree with the teacher.
3. Don't interrupt the class with your question.
4. Be modest.
5. Ignore the mistakes of seniors

I talked about how these rules while useful in some contexts is problematic for a language practice class. And then I presented what I called “anti-rules” to show what I would consider useful rules of conduct for our classroom and why.

1. Do not avoid mistakes.
2. You can express a different opinion.
3. You should ask questions in class.
4. Express yourself.
5. Help seniors with mistakes. (Including the teacher)

I realize that speaking about this takes time away from class language practice but today I thought it would be worth the investment of time if students are consciously aware of cultural differences between Western and Eastern classrooms. I was also thinking about the culture shock issues we all discussed in ICC.

So did it make a difference? It's hard to say. But looking at faces I'm sure a few of them took what I said to heart. I think that can make all the difference in classes where the balance of proactive and passive students is close. I have found that once a class gains a critical mass students one way or the other it drags all the other students in that direction.

The other activities I did went OK but I our group work activity was too restrictive. I'm starting to think that our students may be able to handle more free flowing group discussions focused more on content rather than form. I plan to make sure our next group work discussion more like that.

This week I also tried out much more pair activities following the logic that the more people speaking simultaneously the better for students. However in my classroom group work seems to work better for me. Here are the advantages of group discussion vs pair discussion.

1. There is more context with more participants. (More interest)
2. There is a higher ability to deal with language problems. (There's a greater chance of peer error correction.)

The only disadvantages I could see is that each person would have less speaking time. And depending on the task the group may over rely on a single member to get the “work” done without processing things themselves. For my students having a social interest in each other seems to make a big difference to how they perform.

Class Journal: Week 3

Class 6 is an afternoon class so usually students are awake which is good.  The only problem with afternoons is that usually after a busy morning teaching I could almost fall asleep mid lecture.  However I was able to hold off the sandman today so I was actually able to "teach" them something this time round.
My objectives in this weeks class was to get students acclimatized to being called on and giving students the tools needed to respond when called upon.  In terms of goals it seems a low bar but I unlike in the past when I've been frustrated with how passive students are, I have decided meet this years students where they are at. I've been planning to set regular modest goals to work them to a point where finally they can communicate as openly as students in the west.
In terms of implementation, I spent most of the first hour doing basic things like TSST, using the WB to give structure to their basic answers, and role playing the dialogs in front of the class to get them to see that there is nothing to be afraid of when it comes to speaking.  (My usual tactic is to choose someone who seems shy to go first and once they do it everyone else feels like the task is not as threatening as it first seems.  Can it backfire?  Sure, but you got to judge character to make the right call.  It is also very helpful if the teacher is very supportive, which I am.)   I also did some grammar work with students but that was more of a filler activity.  I had them read the answers out instead of listening to me.  I would only moderate turn taking and comment if I caught a mistake.  If students read too quietly I would ask the class if they heard it and I would let them decide if the student in question should repeat it because I certainly wasn't going to.  In this way I was hoping to encourage them to take more control of the classroom discourse.
In the final 30 minutes we did a group discussion activity.  One of the problems with dong T-fronted activities is that no matter how engaging you are you can only actively communicate with a few students at any given time.  In an EFL class this means that the opportunities for language practice is extremely sub-optimal.  So a group discussion activity is a great way to get multiple students speaking at the same time to smaller and more intimate audiences.  This actually went a lot better than I thought it would and even though the T-Fronted activities took up most of our time I think it gave students the tools and confidence to front up nicely.  I didn't just give them a set of questions either.  I laid out some guide lines for the discussion activity.  These were the 3 rules.  1)  Use English first.  2)  Only use Korean to clarify misunderstandings  3)  If a member is having problems expressing themselves, help them!  My general philosophy for this activity is that communication and feedback should be constant, and at no time should a student feel like they are helpless to contribute to the discussion.
Finally, I assigned the next weeks grammar as homework.  I was worried that student might find it difficult to get a handle on the grammar so I also uploaded a more detailed grammar explanation onto our university's website.  We'll see next week if they actually do it.  But I have feeling that most of them will.  When classes go well students tend to respond positively.
There was only one thing that was negative about this week's class.  That was just how long students took to reply to questions.  Waiting for answers was like waiting for Windows to boot up!  I believe that this is due to social pressure rather than stupidity so I think once they loosen up it'll quickly turn around.  I reckon it will happen sometime before midterms.  So we'll wait and see.

Class Journal: Week 2

I chose class 6 as the one I would do my regular write up about.  What I set out to teach this week was basic introductions from the first unit of our textbook.  But I also had another objective.  I was hoping to teach students some new rules of class interaction.  For example, I had always taken for granted things that westerners commonly do in a classroom.  Such as asking questions unsolicited or contributing to a discussion on the fly.  Today, I thought I would start creating that culture by doing something that Tom has shown us in class.  That is to encourage students to call on each other if they didn't know the answer to a question posed to them.  So I wanted to defuse the stress associated with T-S interaction right from the get go.
In terms of achieving these goals I will say that I did get students to ask for help but I usually had to remind them that they had that option so we will have to wait a couple of weeks before knowing if students create this habit or not.  In terms of introductions, I got them to introduce a friend to the class so that was positive but they were still very nervous about it which is understandable considering the classroom culture in Korea.  But I thought it was great that students could see how I operate.  I took an interest in what they were saying.  I used prompting and cuing when they got stuck.  And when I heard mistakes I took note of them but I did not interrupt their speech.  I went over the common mistakes once everyone was done as not to single anyone out.
So these were the positive things that happened in my class.  But of course not everything went the way I was hoping it to.  With my new focus on trying to get students to communicate as much as possible I found that I couldn't cover as much material as I usually do.  So this week all my classes are slightly behind schedule.  Also I found that the text book we use is very ill suited to group work activities.  Frankly, the activities in the book are not appropriate to EFL classrooms they were designed with ESL classes in mind.  For example, There was one group work activity where students where supposed to discuss people names together which is interesting in a truly international class but rather limp in a classroom where 30% of student are named Kim!
I ended up skipping that kind of material.  If I were to teach this lesson again I might well assign grammar as homework to create more time in class and so students can prepare for class practice.  I addition I would work on my own group work activities instead of relying on the book.  I will have to assign that homework from next week so I won't see extra class time until week 4.  But its good to look ahead.

Class Journal: Week 1


This semester I asked the dean to give me classes all of the same subject to help maximize the time I could spend studying TESOL.  So I'm teaching 8 classes of introductory English.  This is a mandatory class that every freshmen in Hyupsung University has to take.  So the sample of students is very well distributed.  The interested and the disinterested, the good the bad and the ugly are all in it together.  As a secondary benefit of having multiple iterations of the same class is that I can trial different techniques with the same content concurrently. So I plan to focus the journal on one of these classes while occasionally comparing to other classes I use as control or with a class I try using a variation on.  I will also take a look at some of my private tutoring, not systematically but for the sake of contrast because what I can do in tutoring is a lot more varied than what I can do in a university class.  For example, at the moment my oldest son Scott joins me on one of my private lessons as a kind of TA/trouble maker.  My relationship with my son changes the tone of my lessons so drastically it's truly fascinating to me.  It's kind of an experiment that I sometimes try just to see what happens, the kind of experiment that would land me in hot water at Hyupsung!
Ok, well lets get down to brass tacks.  This week all my classes are basically introducing the course so its a 45 minute lecture not a class per se.  But I find that the first class is very important in setting the tone for the semester.  What I focus on when I'm speaking to my students is channeling an identity that is antithetical to the common stereotype of what a Korean High school teacher is.  In my view most freshmen are emotionally scared by their secondary school education and they usually project a negative image of what a teacher is upon their teacher and fall into a predefined relationship with that teacher based on that image.  And I find the default T/S relationship in Korea to be highly counterproductive to creating free flowing student participation.  So I consciously try counteract their preconceived notion of who I am and by extension who they are in relationship with me.  So does it work?  Well, to be frank I'm not sure but I enjoy teaching much more when I'm being myself!  Hopefully this journal will help me assess the actual value of expressing one's identity in the classroom as opposed to expressing an identity that is censored by social or institutional expectations.
I don't really have any specific comments on my classes this week but I will say they all went as expected.  I perked the interest of some of my morning zombies and got a lot of active listeners when discussing my educational philosophy  and reasoning behind it.  Next week is going to be more of a challenge as I attempt to lift the level of my implementation from previous years.

This is my first ever blog.  It's a little weird getting accustomed to everything but I'm excited about trying something new.  Moving out of one's comfort zone and tackling new challenges is one of the reasons I'm studying TESOL.  And I think that is what that what life is about.  Getting out there, getting involved and being who you are.  I believe that life itself is the ultimate classroom, hence the name of this blog.  So welcome everyone, let's take the journey together.