Hayama Retreat June 18

Notes from Plenary Session

Needs

Computer access

Computer access in the Resource Center is currently for students only, and using the 2F computer room is inconvenient. It would be really helpful to have computer access in the staffroom, so that adjunct faculty could download from the web and prepare materials for classes, as well as be able to print out. Gaining access to the 2F computer room is difficult, and some teachers feel discouraged by the way current access is not automatic.

Action: Full-timers to pursue this and keep adjunct staff informed of developments.

Tutorials

Tutorial times for TOEFL, TOEIC, and academic writing were mentioned as something to aim for. How this might work in practice was not clear.

Action: Full-timers to pursue this and keep adjunct staff informed of developments.

Air-conditioning

Air conditioning in the staffroom and classrooms does not work well and this makes Building 6 an uncomfortable place for both teachers and students.

Action: The air conditioning is old and inefficient, and unfortunately there is not much that can be done about this. One improvement is to keep windows closed so that the little bit of cool air that does come into the classrooms is not lost out of the windows and doors.

Website use

Teachers using the website were concerned that some students (and teachers) might be duplicating work from one course to the next; there was also a concern that some students might be using their friends’ materials and notes from one class in another. This raised the issue of plagiarism. Andy M. pointed us towards a website called A Teacher’s Guide to Plagiarization with useful sections on summarizing and paraphrasing, and said he would send on the URL. The site might also be suitable for students. We seemed to agree that we needed to explain to students in all our courses what plagiarism is, why it is penalized, and why students need to be aware of it.

Writing courses

Concerning Writing courses, some students are coming through into the second-year Improving Essay Academic Writing course without having done any writing in the first year. This includes kokki students who have done just sentence level grammar translation through the first year, or 2^nd Law /Politics students opting for an Improving Academic Essay Writing course in the second year without having taken any writing courses at all in the first year. Full-time staff were asked to re-consider whether organizing writing courses by year was the only way to do things. Later, Yuri suggested that students should be required to complete an academic paragraph writing course before they take an essay writing course. Again, we would discuss this further and see what the options were for next year.

Second retreat

We discussed holding a one-day meeting in the fall. If it were to be on a Sunday and downtown, some teachers said that they would be interested in attending. We said that we could organize a second meeting in the year if there were sufficient interest, so please let full-time staff know what you think.

Feedback on the day

Very helpful and useful opportunity to get to know people, see what people are doing in their courses, and to share goals and ideas; people felt it was particularly useful to find that their own concerns were shared by others, as well as to see more full-timers getting actively involved.

Our Japanese colleagues’ reactions to the retreat were very positive; during the day, people repeated that they were strongly impressed by the commitment and seriousness of the teachers attending the retreat, as well as by their professionalism in wanting to keep making things better for the students’ English education.

Format

As for the format of this retreat, people felt that the switch away from using posters as a report back mechanism during the day had been a good change to make. (Thank you, Dave Berthiaume, for suggesting this in the brainstorming process before the retreat!) A few of the sessions had been a little short, but it had been good to have repeat offerings of focus during the day, too.

Thanks

We finished the day with thanks to everybody for taking part, for being so engaged in their teaching, and for being so eager to learn with their students and colleagues. Soon after, almost everyone travelled back by train, which was the sensible decision: The car ride back home took 3 hours!