That’s a great question! How would you approach it?
cmv: If you don’t speak the students native language you’re doomed for failure.
Generally speaking we’re beyond single methodologies now. Most educators are taking bits of the most recent methods and combining them together in their context while managing limitations.
If you’re talking no limits, perfect scenario, full institutional support, then it would probably look something like a group/speech community based communicative/task-based classroom with the teacher mostly being a facilitator and support with no/minimal grading and a lot of performative/demonstrative assessment.
If you’re working as an ALT or in an eikaiwa… your context is going to make the majority of that impossible.
ESID, as in most things here.
What level of students are you talking about?
You need to be able to create your own methods to deal with the random levels, situations, and limitations you will undoubtedly deal with.
I mean, depending on the situation, you may **have to** teach a particular way.
Depends on the age and level IMO. Also depends what their goal is.
– Beginner kids? Songs, games and a lot of repetition.
– Beginner adults? Teach sounds first then go straight to relevant sentences that they can re-use over and over.
– Intermediate/advanced adults? NFI! I feel like once people are at that level, it’s kinda up to them whether they can / want to take it further. I find most just need to travel and learn from actually using the language (and being corrected). Hence why eikaiwa fills a gap for those who can’t just take 12 months off work to travel.
This is a question with two answers. Do you mean in general or pertinent to TESL in Japan? Either way, there is far far far too much to say in one post. Here are just a few things kicking around in my head lately.
What you’ll find is that a lot of research and publications, as well as textbooks and materials themselves, have been developed in mixed-L1 classrooms.
Mixed L1 is a far different beast to a shared L1 classroom. Add in the normal Japanese reticence and you’ll find that a lot of the peer-to-peer activities that are *en vogue* in the industry in general need to be adapted for the Japanese classroom. It’s kind of a shame, because I like the hands-off, pair and group focused activities, but if you just try and just apply something you learned on a DELTA course here in Japan you’ll be wondering, “Why aren’t they talking? What’s wrong?” Like yes, I know I should elicit responses during a comprehension check, but if I have done that hundreds of times for a given class and been met with silence (despite them all knowing if I give it to them on a quiz), then it’s time to try something different.
For a lot of teens for example, getting them to do something without step-by-step “This is what you have to do” is like pulling teeth. Let’s say if I gave them all a post-it note and said “Write down the names of five foods you like. You can write the name in Japanese if you don’t know the English name.” about half the class wouldn’t have written down five things over five whole minutes because they spend too much time agonizing over writing what they think I want them to write. I get success from corralling them into structured output that acts like a funnel in reverse. That’s to say, I make sure that the earliest output activities are on rails with predetermined outcomes before I expect any real attempts at truly communicative activities.
No L1 in the classroom is, to my mind, a stupid rule. As is pretending that you don’t understand Japanese. I’m yet to see good evidence that limited L1 from the teacher is worse for students’ learning than no L1.
It depends on the students and also the teacher.
I found one of the most effective teaching methodology for Elementary school students is this one which has been used for decades, it’s worked for me everytime and i always go back to it. It’s from a company called Apricot which is supplied by one of the best dispatch companies in Japan. I don’t really want to share it with everyone because it’s actually THAT good but basically it goes something like this.
“Hello hello hello how are you? I’m fine i’m fine i hope that you are too”.
See if you can find it on google, it’s called the ‘Hello’ song.
Comprehensible input, words you use constantly yourself in your native language (teach “yabai” on day one), no stress (no tests or homework), only correcting the student when they said something incomprehensible, use of translations, LIVE through the language and don’t STUDY the language, teach what’s easiest (not necessarily most basic) to a speaker of that language first.
For example, young natives say “I digged” instead of “I dug”. Perfectly comprehensible mistake so no correction necessary.
Japanese doesn’t typically distinguish between singular and plural. Well neither does standard English in words like blood, milk, ice cream etc. so teach them those words first. “Is, am, are” are too difficult? Well various dialects of English don’t need them (“He be sick, They be playin'” is easier than “He is sick, they are playing”).
Bring in foreign kids (these days this can even be through video chats) and make the class something like 50/50 English and Japanese. Treat the classroom like an English homestay, not a classroom. The kids will naturally adapt over time.
Create a need for them to use the language. That’s the only reason why most ESL people ever do – they can’t get the games, movies, information, vacations etc they want if they don’t use English. If a kid likes Ultraman give him Ultraman stuff in English and find him an English native speaker buddy who likes Ultraman.
9 comments
That’s a great question! How would you approach it?
cmv: If you don’t speak the students native language you’re doomed for failure.
Generally speaking we’re beyond single methodologies now. Most educators are taking bits of the most recent methods and combining them together in their context while managing limitations.
If you’re talking no limits, perfect scenario, full institutional support, then it would probably look something like a group/speech community based communicative/task-based classroom with the teacher mostly being a facilitator and support with no/minimal grading and a lot of performative/demonstrative assessment.
If you’re working as an ALT or in an eikaiwa… your context is going to make the majority of that impossible.
ESID, as in most things here.
What level of students are you talking about?
You need to be able to create your own methods to deal with the random levels, situations, and limitations you will undoubtedly deal with.
I mean, depending on the situation, you may **have to** teach a particular way.
Depends on the age and level IMO. Also depends what their goal is.
– Beginner kids? Songs, games and a lot of repetition.
– Beginner adults? Teach sounds first then go straight to relevant sentences that they can re-use over and over.
– Intermediate/advanced adults? NFI! I feel like once people are at that level, it’s kinda up to them whether they can / want to take it further. I find most just need to travel and learn from actually using the language (and being corrected). Hence why eikaiwa fills a gap for those who can’t just take 12 months off work to travel.
This is a question with two answers. Do you mean in general or pertinent to TESL in Japan? Either way, there is far far far too much to say in one post. Here are just a few things kicking around in my head lately.
What you’ll find is that a lot of research and publications, as well as textbooks and materials themselves, have been developed in mixed-L1 classrooms.
Mixed L1 is a far different beast to a shared L1 classroom. Add in the normal Japanese reticence and you’ll find that a lot of the peer-to-peer activities that are *en vogue* in the industry in general need to be adapted for the Japanese classroom. It’s kind of a shame, because I like the hands-off, pair and group focused activities, but if you just try and just apply something you learned on a DELTA course here in Japan you’ll be wondering, “Why aren’t they talking? What’s wrong?” Like yes, I know I should elicit responses during a comprehension check, but if I have done that hundreds of times for a given class and been met with silence (despite them all knowing if I give it to them on a quiz), then it’s time to try something different.
For a lot of teens for example, getting them to do something without step-by-step “This is what you have to do” is like pulling teeth. Let’s say if I gave them all a post-it note and said “Write down the names of five foods you like. You can write the name in Japanese if you don’t know the English name.” about half the class wouldn’t have written down five things over five whole minutes because they spend too much time agonizing over writing what they think I want them to write. I get success from corralling them into structured output that acts like a funnel in reverse. That’s to say, I make sure that the earliest output activities are on rails with predetermined outcomes before I expect any real attempts at truly communicative activities.
No L1 in the classroom is, to my mind, a stupid rule. As is pretending that you don’t understand Japanese. I’m yet to see good evidence that limited L1 from the teacher is worse for students’ learning than no L1.
It depends on the students and also the teacher.
I found one of the most effective teaching methodology for Elementary school students is this one which has been used for decades, it’s worked for me everytime and i always go back to it. It’s from a company called Apricot which is supplied by one of the best dispatch companies in Japan. I don’t really want to share it with everyone because it’s actually THAT good but basically it goes something like this.
“Hello hello hello how are you? I’m fine i’m fine i hope that you are too”.
See if you can find it on google, it’s called the ‘Hello’ song.
Comprehensible input, words you use constantly yourself in your native language (teach “yabai” on day one), no stress (no tests or homework), only correcting the student when they said something incomprehensible, use of translations, LIVE through the language and don’t STUDY the language, teach what’s easiest (not necessarily most basic) to a speaker of that language first.
For example, young natives say “I digged” instead of “I dug”. Perfectly comprehensible mistake so no correction necessary.
Japanese doesn’t typically distinguish between singular and plural. Well neither does standard English in words like blood, milk, ice cream etc. so teach them those words first. “Is, am, are” are too difficult? Well various dialects of English don’t need them (“He be sick, They be playin'” is easier than “He is sick, they are playing”).
Bring in foreign kids (these days this can even be through video chats) and make the class something like 50/50 English and Japanese. Treat the classroom like an English homestay, not a classroom. The kids will naturally adapt over time.
Create a need for them to use the language. That’s the only reason why most ESL people ever do – they can’t get the games, movies, information, vacations etc they want if they don’t use English. If a kid likes Ultraman give him Ultraman stuff in English and find him an English native speaker buddy who likes Ultraman.