Professional Development

Originated by Birmingham MA TEFL/TESL students

MASH Collaboration

With Steven Herder, Mark de Boer & Phil Brown

Seibo Jogakuin is a private Catholic girls junior and senior high school located halfway between Kyoto and Osaka. We haven’t used textbooks since 2007, instead using a task-based/project-based approach focusing on a balance of input and output. We also promote Extensive Reading (ER) and Extensive Writing (EWr).

The audio clips are by our OPINIONATED 2nd year HS students. Teachers simply wrote, “What do you think about studying English in Japan?” We told them to form groups of 2-3, make a plan in English or Japanese, then come up to be recorded in English (with or without papers).

They really enjoyed this project!

Just click on the following links to listen:
Chisato & Aoi; Kana & Sawako; Rie & Nanaka; Saori & Riko

Five easy steps:
There are countless ways to record students and send audio files. For anyone looking for an idea, the process that I used took under 30 minutes from start to finish with the following tools:
1. iPhone 3G to record students, using…
2. Recorder (version 7) from iPhone Apps store, then…
3. PhoneView, Version 2.1 (2.1), Copyright 2007-2008 Ecamm Network, to upload from iPhone to MACBOOK.
4. Playback and check on iTunes 8.
5. Switch Sound File Converter (Free download and the easiest software I've ever used) to convert giant-sized AIFF sound files into small manageable MP3 sound files

Steven Herder, Seibo Jogakuin
MASH

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I think this is admirable and inspirational except for the pronunciation. I've been teaching English in Japan for 10 years but the *huge* hurdle is pronunciation. I guess as an English narrator, I just can't get beyond this most basic of issues. I think it is an underemphasized skill and is prior even to communication skills. What can we do to get students to understand that if they don't pronounce words better all their great ideas are lost (case in point, when my parents visited Japan, they couldn't understand a darned word my students said :-(

Matt White | January 29, 2009 12:18 PM

Matt,

The first thing I'm going to do is to show them your comment. The way that you shared your comment - with admirable and inspirational - as positive lead-in remarks makes it especially effective to also show them the importance that other foreigners (and their parents) place on pronunciation. I've often said to students, "If people can't understand what you are saying, there's no point in saying anything".

Finally, your comment nudged me to bring up the pronunciation issue again... tomorrow. Thanks for taking the time to comment. We really get a buzz from other teacher's feedback.

Cheers,

Steve Herder

Steven Herder | January 29, 2009 2:35 PM

Matt and Steve,
It was interesting to hear students expressing why they wanted to learn English. It is awesome to hear a desire to communicate.

Regarding pronunciation ... talk of lack of pronunciation skills is important, but we also need to know how to address this issue. Have either of you found a particular good way that improves any area of pronunciation?

Colin Skeates | January 30, 2009 10:03 PM

I have to say I believe pronunciation to be an important factor in communication because as you said, if you can't be understood then there is little point in saying anything.

HOWEVER there are people in this world native speakers who can not understand each other because of an accent: Scottish, Newcastle, Liverpool accents, for example, can be very difficult if you are not used to it.

And surely the Japanese accent is just another accent?

It is important to speak as clearly as you can, but I don't think its worth the time to work on it until children are blue in the face.

My parents came to Japan last year and they could understand my students, but they can't understand anything the Indian call center people say, who work for banks etc.

One last thing, I thought your students pronunciation was perfectly fine, I understood them no problem at all.

Rob in Ishikawa.

Robert Walsh | February 10, 2009 3:53 PM

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