“[I]n the classroom
teachers spend most of their time asking questions and evaluating pupil
responses…”
I wish this were true. The following might
be a bit disjointed and ranty, but hopefully will come together to make some
sort of sense. Eventually. I highly recommend reading up on the CONDUIT metaphor I mentioned in WD2, it’ll help bring a lot of this into focus. Perhaps.
Dangerous ground, this. I’m not going to
get into Sapir-Whorf, but I think it’s fair to recognize that – very, very
generally speaking – teaching styles vary in different cultures. A broad
distinction can be made between the Western Socratic method – where teachers
ask leading questions of their students with the aim of guiding them towards
the correct answers – and the Eastern Confucian method – whereby teachers
lecture at their students who are expected to remember what is said.
I am not, at least here, all that
interested in the underlying reasons for this difference. But it’s important to
recognize it – especially in the Japanese context – in relation to the second question
in Activity 1: how does the language class differ from classes in which some
other subject is taught?
My working life, as an English teacher in
the Japanese education system, is a constant fucking struggle against the
conception of English as a ‘subject’. This is the answer to that question, and
I imagine it’s similar in most E2L countries but it’s particularly bad here.
English – or indeed any human language – is not primarily an academic subject
to be studied, but a communication tool to be used. Clearly they are not
mutually exclusive conceptualizations of the language, but the more strongly it’s
conceived of as the former, the harder it becomes to effectively utilize as the
latter. The binary notions of right and wrong (though perhaps correct and
incorrect) inherent in the Japanese system of lectures and rote memorization
make the messy and inexact business of language use and tuition even harder to
relate to for the students. Language is qualitative, whereas the entire system
is rigged towards a quantitative understanding of merit. Yes or no, right or
wrong, 100% or nothing.
So in answer to the activity question I’d
have to answer that it’d be easier to list the ways the language class is
similar to other classes, and the answer to that would be that there are some
desks and chairs.
2.
Content and Delivery
More specifically, the language classroom
is less concerned about content than about delivery. Or at least ‘content’ is
conceived of in different terms. Look at the dialogue in Activity 3. All the
answers the students give are factually correct, but I’d be willing to be a lot
of E2L teachers wouldn’t be happy with them as they’re just single words.
This is the flip side of the subject/tool
dichotomy. If we are looking to get the students to use English primarily for
its communicative properties then factually correct one-word answers should be
totally acceptable. But instead they’re seen as insufficient. We want them do
demonstrate a wider grasp of the language. Show that they understand and can
use the grammar and vocab. When I ask my students to tell me what they did over
summer vacation, I don’t care what they
actually did. In fact I actively encourage them to lie to me if they can’t
think of anything pertinent. What I want is for them to demonstrate they can
use the past tense correctly.
Content and delivery are fused in the
language classroom in a way that they aren’t in any other. The medium is the message. This can cause confusion
for both students and teachers. Especially in a system where content is king
and delivery is almost entirely neglected.
3.
Reading the Runes
I really must try and dig this up the
source for this, but at a training session I was part of not so long ago, one
of the other trainers talked about planning Teacher Talking Time (TTT) in the
classroom, and specifically the E2L classroom in Japan. There are two aspects
of this that are relevant here, I think.
The first is the claim he made that maybe
80-85% of TTT is preplanned. And not just in the ‘and know I’ll talk about subject
X’ sense, but that the teacher knows almost to the word what he’ll say and
when. When I first heard this claim I scoffed a little inside. I don’t plan my
speech. I’m a natural, man. I have a connection
with my students and my lessons are freewheeling cavalcades of spontaneity and
consciousness expanding novelty that make Robin Williams’ character in Dead
Poets’ Society look like Edna Krabapple.
I very quickly realized that this is
demonstrable nonsense. And more so in the E2L classroom than for other subjects.
The medium is the message, right? So you have to take particular care in how
you phrase things and, consciously or not, I rehearse pretty much everything I’m
going to say in class beforehand, either in my head or out loud. This also ties
in with student responses. You pretty much know exactly what they’re going to
say in response to your questions. Obviously you’re leading them (as with the
examples in the unit notes) and once again the English classroom in Japan is an
extreme example, but I can count on the fingers of one hand the number of times
I’ve had a genuinely unexpected response from a student in the last couple of
weeks. And that would be a hand that was previously involved in a nasty
agricultural accident, lost three fingers and a thumb, and is now predominantly
an angry red lump of unsightly scar tissue.
Once. It’s happened once.
The second point is, I think, an inherent
tension for any native speaker trying to teach their language to non-natives.
And one that is especially apparent with the ALT ‘system’ in Japan (I know, I
know. Let’s just tag that caveat on to everything from now on, shall we?). As a
general rule, the more the students speak the more effectively they’ll learn,
but for many students/employers the whole point of having a native speaking
teacher so they can ‘model’ the language. It’s your USP, and I’ve known a few Japanese
teachers to get quite irate when I try to reduce how much I say in class in
favour of giving the students more speaking time. It’s something they, understandably,
feel they could be doing without the expense and hassle of getting a native
speaker into the class. They won’t do it, of course, but they could.
I’m half tempted to try some of this analysis
on a Human Tape Recorder lesson. Nothing like testing something to destruction,
eh?
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