The Objectification of English and L1 Use in the Japanese Classroom

I’ve got a fair bit of training to deliver over the next few weeks and I need to get some ducks in a row, so here are some thoughts on the above (which is basically just a glorified way of describing the inevitable ‘Can we use Japanese in class?’ question). Imagine it’s addressed to an audience of new or minimally experienced ALTs, and also bear in mind that I might cut and/or tone down a fair bit of it – writing this is part of the process of whittling it back to the core message (still need to provide enough explanation to avoid training by diktat, however).

I ATEN’T DEAD

This Functional Grammar module is slowly killing me, however. It’s not that it’s a grind (though it is); it’s not that it’s difficult to grasp (though it is that too); it’s that there’s a small, nagging, instinctive part of me that can actually see the value of this, but I can’t get that bit to function properly.

So many of the ideas present in SFG chime with weaknesses I see in my students’ work time and time again, but I don’t know how to make it applicable. And here’s the thing: I’m a pretty smart, well-educated, native English speaker receiving specific tuition in this from a top-tier institution and yet I’m getting almost overwhelmed by the detail. How are my kids meant to cope? How, more to the point, can I make it work for them? I’ve been plugging away in the hope that it’ll all come together when I actually have to apply it wholescale for the assignment, but the expected epiphany remains stubbornly unepihanized.

Gyah. Back to the grindstone.