Professional Development

Originated by Birmingham MA TEFL/TESL students

MASH Collaboration

With Steven Herder, Mark de Boer & Phil Brown

I was teaching a low level Chu 2 class. They had to brainstorm lists of summer words (in pairs) under the following summer topics: My club, the sea, festivals, homework, and fun. After they had long lists, I told them we were going to practice “output” by producing sentences using their summer word lists. If their sentence had 8 words, then they got 8 points for their team.

Just as they got started I offered a twist. I told them that, similar to speaking, writing was also a kind of “output” and if they were more comfortable, they could call me over to their desk and I’d read a sentence they had written. After about 5 minutes of recording each team’s points on the board, the tiniest, quietest girl in the class raised her hand. I went over to her desk to see the following sentence:

“I went to London, England, with my mother, my father, my grandmother, my grandfather, my uncle, my aunt, my cousin, my big sister, my little sister, my big brother, my little brother and my friends to play tennis and do swimming.”

The room erupted when I added 41 points to her team’s score, and of course, she couldn’t hold back a small smile.

Comment:
Motivation is often immediate. In a split second right after you explain a task, students decide whether they can succeed or not. Find ways for them to succeed, and you’ll all be happier.

A thought or idea in progress

A colleague and I recently decided to send out our first call for submissions for a book proposal. We were talking intensely about the differences between ESL and EFL with some visiting professors from England. They asked us why there were no books defining the nature of the EFL context in Japan through research-based writing. We couldn’t really answer so they challenged us to either write one or edit one. Two days later, my colleague had a draft proposal sitting in my inbox. We sent it out and have already gotten many positive reactions: the project continues now and if you are interested, click HERE

Comment:
If we wait for more outsiders to write more books telling us how our students should learn English in the unique EFL context, we won’t grow very quickly.

From teacher to teachers

Take a chance and go deeper: get more out of teaching by better understanding the perspective of your Japanese students, and by learning more about the learning process. If you are sincere about wanting to improve, good people always make time to help; and there are countless good teachers in Japan now.

Other ways to go deeper include starting an MA program in TEFL, TESOL or Applied Linguistics; joining a professional group like JALT, ETJ or JACET; and maybe the best idea is to find like-minded teachers and start collaborating in person or online.

Steven loves to talk about life in Japan and teaching EFL. He can be reached online or at steven[dot]herder[at]gmail[dot]com

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Thanks for sharing your story Steve. It's very important for teachers to share their success stories. So often we hear about what students can't do. We need to stop talking about that and start talking about what they can do. When teachers focus on the negative it reinforces the defeatist attitude so many students have. Sometimes our only real job is to demonstrate that the impossible is possible, to coax our learners to achieve beyond their expectations. Sometimes they give us five times more than we asked for, like the little girl in your class. Thanks again Steve.

Michael Stout | January 18, 2009 7:03 AM

the link for the researching asia book is wrong. it is either an email address, or an email link... (no "@" in an http)
Please let me know! Thanks.

Hi Rob,

Thanks so much for the heads up. Here is the correct E-mail address: researchingasia(at)eltresearch(dot)com

The book is titled "Innovating Teaching in Context: Asia" We have already received an enthusiastic number of submissions from 7 countries. The submission deadline is February 28th, 2009.

Cheers,

Steven Herder

Rob Dickey | January 19, 2009 9:07 AM

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