Introduction to Communication Skills Discussion
Participants: Yuriko Ishizaka, Mike Nix, Jean Pierre Chretien, Saeko Nagashima, Masaaki Okamoto, Robert Russell, Carl Adams.
Speaking and Listening
We began by saying what we do in our classes and a popular activity both with students and teachers was where students throw a ball back and forth as they take turns to say words, make sentences or ask a question. It was generally agreed that this helps to build fluency and confidence and that students often mention that they enjoy this activity. Another speaking activity, which Jean Pierre uses, involved students talking and the listener giving either a green card (for something good) or a red one for something they didn't like and having to explain their choices at the end.
Carl said he concentrates on listening as this is often neglected by students. He designs activities where students give book and film reviews and they have to listen actively to each other. He also uses a CD for language input, as again this requires the students to listen actively. Sometimes Carl uses a game called 'run dori' taken from judo where students have to face each other in lines and speak for thirty seconds before changing partners. Jean Pierre said he had had a very lively class using the News Tapes series as a split listening and that when the students were faced with the task of explaining their half of the report to others that they had come to him asking about how to say things. This lead on to the idea that the teacher can be a valuable language resource in the classroom.
There was some discussion about whether free talk was sometimes just noisy and disorganised and involved a lot of Japanese speaking. The consensus seemed to be that although this was sometimes the case, the benefits of free talk outweigh these downsides, especially if it managed effectively.
Graded Readers
Everyone uses graded reader libraries in these classes, though it seems they are all different depending on when they were acquired. Typically students read one book each week, eight in the first semester and four in the second. It was felt that this 'quota' approach was an improvement on the old, less organised system. Jean Pierre mentioned that his students tend to ignore the more difficult Oxford books, but that they really enjoy them when he encourages them to make the effort and read them. We talked about giving feedback on book or film reviews / reflections and Mike mentioned that it is easier for students to think about what they can learn for themselves, for example, "I would like to organise my notes as well as you do", rather than having to make a recommendation like "You should organise your notes better." There was also some debate about whether reflections should be given orally or should be written. Some teachers do them orally in class and it was mentioned that students enjoy being put into groups as it takes the pressure off them having to decide who to work with and gives them an opportunity to talk to different class mates. Yuriko mentioned that she has students write a reflection at home and that she collects and reads them each week. This effort, on the teacher's part, was widely applauded, but it wasn't clear whether anyone intended to emulate it.
There was broad agreement that the main goal of the first semester should be to build fluency and competence. It was agreed that students can take a very long time to become confident using the language they know already and Mike mentioned that research shows it's not until about eight books have been read that the language absorbed begins to have an effect on output.
There was a general feeling among teachers that, valuable as it is to get students using what they already know confidently, they would like to add value to this base. The idea of introducing grammar points to boost speaking skills was raised, but not really taken up in any specific way suggesting that most people feel that structural competence can be improved through exposure to good quality input at the right level (graded readers, CDs, teacher talk etc.). Mike uses learning diaries to help structure studentŐs progress and tries to get students to make their book report a little longer each time. It was also mentioned that getting students to make notes of phrases and longer chunks for their books was a good way to help them move beyond merely picking up isolated words.
There was some discussion about how far it is possible to structure the whole class around the graded readers. Rob said he had attempted to get together students who had read the same book, so that they could talk through any parts that were unclear or which they were particularly enthusiastic about. This had proved to be difficult to organise, but was worth the effort. It was mentioned that an attempt to build the whole class around the graded readers had gone badly in one case, but Mike said one of the things he had taken from the discussion was that it was worth the effort to try and make this method work.
It was mentioned that students could do projects based around books they had read and liked, for example watching the film and comparing it to the book or following through on a theme by doing further research. Building presentation fluency was mentioned as a possible goal for the second semester. Also, getting students started on learning how to do basic research processes for example by looking at famous people had been tried successfully.
Mr. Okamoto said that, although he doesn't teach this class he had learned a lot from the discussion particularly about ways to integrate listening and reading. Mike reiterated that he wanted to work harder to integrate the reading into the whole class and Rob mentioned that basing some of the second semester classes around topics connected to the reading might help with this. Jean Pierre and Yuriko said that they had begun to think more about the role of listening in the class and wanted to do more of that in the future. Saeko also said that the discussion of listening had been useful for her as she does some listening work in her reading classes. It was mentioned that the resource centre has the tapes for some of the graded readers and these could be used as part of the homework for note taking and shadowing.
(Summarized by Robert)