The Uni-Files

This gap was teaching academic skills to 1st year university students. Yes, before this professor's arrival, the students here received no special training in skills such as carrying out research, writing a research paper, organizing case studies, debating, note taking, classroom conduct, critical thinking and the like. The course he established was originally called 'Japanese Communication' (some wisely asked why it should be called 'Japanese' since it was obvious that this was the lingua franca of the classroom for all students and teachers in the course- save yours truly- so it was recently changed to 'Freshman Seminar'). The focus in this course was/is upon how to operate and communicate appropriately within an academic milieu.

It seems to me that such courses should be obvious, mandatory, slam dunks. Now, please understand that this is not a Japan vs. everywhere else dilemma. I understand that some universities in Japan have treated this as standard fare for a long time, recognizing that high schools would not be focusing upon these skills. And in fact, in my own university days in Canada, I did not receive explicit instruction in such things, and had to live by trial and error. Looking back, I certainly would have appreciated- and most definitely needed- such a course.

These thoughts are inspired by comments based on my last blog entry, comments from Steve M. and Mark H. about the importance, roles, and functions of meta-cognitive skills and their development. Consciously learning how to learn, if you will. Certainly if students do not learn these skills even in their mother tongue, we can hardly expect them to do so in English without explicit teaching and practice.

The fact is, that if this Philosophy professor hadn't introduced this preparatory course we might still be floundering. Too often 'orientation' consists merely of data transfer: learning schedules, contacts and positions, calendar information, facilities, and, most importantly it seems, knowing where you CANNOT park your car. Learning how to function like a real university student somehow got lost in the song and dance.

So, I would modestly propose that EVERY university make the following learning areas mandatory for incoming students:
- How to carry out research
- How to write a research paper
- How to take notes
- How to carry out collaborative projects
- How to use several key computer programs effectively (MS word, Internet searches, Power point, Excel)

In short, how to start taking the reins of your education- to get out of permanent high school mode and become a real university student.

And this is where English teachers can contribute- by applying these skills in English classes. Offering a course in Academic Skills in English to, say, 2nd year students, as a required course would probably be attractive to the powers-that-be. These skills might include:

- How to write a research paper in English (formatting, organization of content)
- Basic rules of structuring written English (e.g., CAPS, using parentheses, spacing, commas and periods)
- How to use a dictionary PROPERLY
- How to make the best use of existing English resources and/or technologies
- International correspondence (Set/formal modes such as application forms, and/or informal modes such as email norms and netiquette).

My colleague (a fellow Canadian) and I have been chipping away at this in our regular English courses over the past few years, after previously having received all manner of reports, essays, and email that corresponded to no known norms of standard English (grammar and vocabulary skills aside).

You may be familiar with how they are typically written.
Each sentence is written on a new line.
It looks like a tanka.
There are no indentations
But suddenly one line might be pushed back for some unknown reason.
Punctuation is random.
so are capitals
It reminds me of the way non-Japanese use Japanese prepositions.
A shot-in-the-dark, hit or miss approach.

Random spaces occasionally appear too.
This may be because they tend to use Japanese fonts.
So the flow is choppy as well as visually unappealing.
This happens no matter what, the genre or register may be.
because there is little crossover concept of what sentences and paragraphs are
Between Japanese and English,
Unlike other European lan-
guages.

One result of which there can be no doubt is that the students are much happier to learn some rules and adopt some recommendations which allow their work, at least visually, to meet English norms. Among them is a palpable sense of having achieved something. After all, it should come as no surprise that Japanese students understand that there are places where propriety and correct form are to be observed and therefore absorb these guidelines pretty quickly. Almost immediately, those half-baked 'research essays', previously written in the last fifteen minutes before the deadline, in three different fonts plus a few unreadable scratches in pencil, with headings and paragraphs more or less randomly generated by the disorganization fairy- the type of submissions that will usually haunt you during the time you spend alone in your office- magically disappear.

For that reason alone, it is something that NJ university teachers should be looking into.

I wonder who the teachers are trying to impress with these insipid performances. Certainly not the kids. My son doesn’t want to be a soldier. Very few kids do these days. They don’t even play with toy soldiers anymore... or haven’t you noticed? My son feels stupid acting like Private G.I. Jackboot and rightfully so, as the solemnity of the display reaches levels of near self-parody. Not only is rigid symmetry aesthetically unpleasing but it actually belies what should be the joyous nature of a sports day. Why mark it with what amounts to a displaced military parade?

You might say that all students should learn about adherence to set procedures and selfless teamwork. Fine. But if I wanted those qualities inculcated in this way I would have sent him to cadet school. I didn’t. Yes, I understand that military discipline and team precision, even mindless adherence to regimentation, might be useful for soldiers, firefighters and the like but- and please read this closely- no one sent their kids to your school for that reason! It’s a basic educational tenet- match the practice with the purpose!

Perhaps you might think that the students’ order and discipline will impress us. It doesn’t. It doesn’t show us a sense of discipline as much as it indicates that the students can be manipulated into performing meaningless regimented activities by someone who is more powerful than them. It shows us that, like circus animals, people can be coerced into performing mindless routines. Strangely, I do not find that impressive.

You might argue that it has some latent moral value- that it reflects concern for the other, submission to the group. But the moral message conveyed is actually quite the opposite. It tells students that if you have power you can, even should, harangue the less powerful with orders that serve no other purpose than to make them display submission. If that is the school’s notion of morality then I’m sorry but you’ve failed as teachers.

Morality is a matter of developing a set of principles that individuals can apply in ways that are ethically sound and harmonious. If your highest idea of ethics and social harmony is determining whether a child’s knees and elbows are symmetrical or not then your sense of morality is, frankly speaking, immature. Wouldn’t time be better spent having students work out thought-provoking moral case study dilemmas than forming lines in the gym and then marching rigidly in place for an hour?

In short, what students learn about morality from such displays is that morality is just an arbitrary force to be exerted upon others for the sake of exerting authority. Dog eat dog. Eat or be eaten. Is this the ethic you are trying to teach? If so, I don’t want you teaching my kids.

Now, you might think that I am one of those namby-pamby types who gets all misty-eyed about airy-fairy notions of self-expression and independent exploration (not that these are bad things). But you’d be wrong. I think discipline, order, and an active regard for others are foundations for a healthy society and that these virtues can be inculcated in microcosmic societies like public schools. But surely more thoughtful, complex, wide-reaching means of developing self-discipline exist than practicing rituals more suited to military service or disaster prevention units. In short, this stuff is out of place in a general education curriculum. And, if so, again the practice has not been suited to the purpose. As such, it represents a pedagogical failure on the part of the teachers.

I wonder about the grandmas and grandpas watching this spectacle and what they think. Does it bring back any memories of wartime? Do unpleasant associations with an unpleasant past arise? I also think about this society’s alleged valuing of the so-called ‘Peace Constitution’ and the aversion to almost anything that could even remotely look like an international military exercise. And when I think of these things somehow, these high school military parades seem very, ummm, un-Japanese.

That shouldn’t come as a surprise. Countries in which mass games, military parades, and rigid marching formations (not to mention local politicians haranguing the masses to ‘do your best’ over echo-drenched loudspeakers) are popular tend to be those whose regimes are hostile towards Japan. Why Japanese teachers would want to emulate societies whose values are antithetical to that of their own is beyond me. So, if you think these exercises are somehow related to ‘love of country’, well exactly which country are you talking about?

You might argue that this is a part of ‘Japanese culture’ and perhaps that as a non-Japanese I am not sensitive to such national cultural nuances but, as I’ve explained, there are significant sectors of indigenous Japanese society who equally loathe this type of display and don’t want their children to behave as if they are living in a foreign dictatorship or under a military regime. Something more, well, Japanese would be appropriate, don’t you think?

Also, while some appeals to culture can be substantial, if that appeal consists of little more than arguing, “Well, this is what we’ve always done” then that’s an insult to your ‘culture’. You’ve basically characterized your ‘culture’ as a product of mindless mimicry. Personally, I hold Japanese culture in higher regard than that.

You might wonder what concern this is to a university English teacher like myself. Other than the obvious fact that my own children are being educated in Japan I have very good reasons for questioning these goose-step routines. Universities should be places where students develop learner autonomy and take the bull by the horns, taking responsibility for their education, as they should be on the road to becoming independent learners and researchers, right? Except that’s not happening. Students arrive too passively, waiting for directives from the teacher. They are not prepared to take the lead, waiting for someone to give the orders, to show them the correct manoeuvres. This not only affects the quality of their education, but ultimately the quality of the product for Japanese society.

Here's the deal. It is widely believed that academic performance standards in all subjects for 1st year Japanese university students are dropping, which should not be surprising given demographics in which, due to a low number of 18 year olds, competition for university entrance is decreasing. Therefore, universities have to accept students of lesser skill than before in order to fill their quotas.

The most often cited basis for these claims are the results of the English portion of the National Center Examination. Now, you should know that it's not that the Center Examination English scores have dropped on average but rather, since the total number of candidates has decreased, universities not ranked at the very top now have to accept students who have lower scores than they would have even ten years ago.

Of course, one may want to argue whether the Center Test should be the main barometer of English proficiency since, although the test is quite well made, given its function it cannot really address wide-ranging aspects of English proficiency. With more students exposed to foreign homestays, ALT, Super-English High Schools etc. in recent years, it is arguable that a certain sector of the youth population has actually increased in English proficiency

This is something I have noticed in my own classes in recent years. I certainly cannot say that the students of 12 years ago were any better than my current 1st year bunch. In fact, the newbies might even be better. But one reason for my intuitions may be the emphasis and weighting put on English on our Faculty of Medicine's Second Stage Entrance Exam, which naturally attracts students who are good at, or interested in, the subject.

However, many universities and especially individual faculties do not have English as a Second Stage Entrance Exam subject and thereby will attract students with only rudimentary English skills. This is the case with some faculties at my own university and, having taught in those faculties for several years in the past, I can vouch for the fact that many students are pretty much non-functional in English.

Two questions naturally follow. The first is, since the students have had six years of cumulative English study at the JHS and HS levels why can't they even master the very basics? After all, these discrete points of grammar and vocabulary would have appeared on tests in class, high school entrance exams, would have been a basic element of the more detailed HS curricula, and would have been a necessary element for any kind of success on the Center Examination.

The second is, given this state, how can university English teachers best address and correct it?

Let me answer the first question as a means of addressing the second.

Most of the 'academic' university-oriented JHS and HS classes focus upon English as a series of discrete points to be learned independently of each other, somewhat abstracted from larger contexts. The mode is almost always receptive, not productive. Student cognition is engaged only at the lowest levels.

The cognitive level is known as recognition. At this level, students know the item only in a passive, receptive way- for example, being able to identify it as the correct choice on a multiple choice question where text and potential answers are provided by the materials writer.

Higher levels of cognition, such as 'recall', 'retrieval' and especially, 'reproduction' are rarely engaged in JHS/HS. So, while the students 'know' the items in a certain sense, enough to complete receptive-focused tests, they don't know them in terms of any higher cognitive plane. This explains how they could make it through HS and all the entrance exams but still have only a tenuous, nearly unconscious grasp of all these discrete English items in vivo.

Let me give two examples here. If you have students of the caliber I'm referring to you probably often see student-generated texts such as, "University can join club" or "I borned in Fukuoka". (By the way, although Medical students are generally more proficient than others, a few come in to this faculty at that level too. And most of the Nursing students I teach- which has no English on the entrance exam- fall into this category)

Now, if you placed these two sentences on a multiple-choice type test, I believe 99% of these students would identify the forms written above as incorrect, and that most would choose the correct answers. To wit:
Q1. How should you express your birthplace in English?
A. I borned Fukuoka
B. I was born Fukuoka
C. I was born in Fukuoka.
D. I had born in Fukuoka.

The students thus, in some sense, know the best answer or at least, recognize some of the faulty ones. But they can't reproduce it in writing or speaking within meaningful contexts. Will having them do tests like this really help them to internalize the correct form? It's highly doubtful.

After all, they all know how to form a passive from an active sentence but are not cognizant of the fact that their own birth demands the passive. However, if you allow for meaningful and productive contexts in which they can see the correct form and be allowed to generate it themselves, with it recycled or revised in extended classroom tasks as necessary, they can- and do- get it. Higher cognition is engaged.

Let's look at...
Q2. How can you best express (Japanese phrase here) in English?
A. University is a join club
B. At university, we can join a club
C. University can join club
D. At university, can join club

Again, I'm confident that 99% of those who might write (C) above when trying to write a 'report' in English would NOT choose it as the answer in this question. So, again, in a sense, at some level they know it's wrong but only on a passive, recognition-based level. Therefore, 'teaching' how a prepositional phrase is needed since 'university' is not the direct subject of the verb, and that a personal pronoun is also subsequently needed to be the head of the clause, will not aid in them being able to reproduce the correct form but will simply reinforce a latent understanding at the level of recognition only.

Rather, to fix this, imagine nursing students generating lists of functions of different hospital departments and then, with revision, making posters to present them to other students. In it would be the formula:
"In the ___________ department, we ____________________".

Having used this repeatedly in a meaningful context that relates to their own interests and demands their own cognitive input and is largely self-generated, does anybody NOT think that they would internalize the form at a deeper cognitive level- and certainly one that is more in keeping with the notion of getting a university education?

So here our second question is being answered. Since we see that the cause of the problem is that their comprehension exists only at the lowest levels of cognition, a product of teaching English as an accumulation of discrete items through a receptive mode, the very LAST thing one should do at university would be to teach them this content again- as discrete items, in a receptive, de-contextualized mode.

After all, if the students didn't 'get' them in any holistic sense before this why expect that, using the same faulty methodology, that they will suddenly understand them now? Until higher levels of cognition are engaged, their knowledge of English will remain latent, fragmented and non-extendable beyond passive test-taking skills of the Center Examination variety.

It also means covering JHS content at a university, which simply obviates the whole point of being a university. Lowering the bar like this is unlikely to spur the students on to a deeper, more widely-focused grasp of English. For these reasons, remedial, review programs, especially those found in much E-learning, with it's generally de-contextualized, receptive, discrete point focus, will simply perpetuate the problem.

Instead, what is needed is the engagement of higher levels of cognition in students, such that latent knowledge becomes more conscious (and ultimately, productive) and fragmented understandings begin to take on a more holistic shape. We have to coax out that latent ability by giving it voice. This means allowing productive, meaning-based English learning to occur. And since students enter specific universities faculties from day one in Japan, contexts are ready-made. Not only that, but it more accurately meets the idea of what a university should be- a place of higher learning.

My expectation, in fact I should say my experience, is that by raising the bar, and in expecting that the students have the latent knowledge/ability/interest to engage the topic, they can and will do it. The passive turns to the active, the receptive to the productive, the discrete item finds a meaningful context for expression, content becomes more interesting, self-generated as it meets students interests, and cognition of the topic is increased.