The Uni-Files - Grammar and vocabulary Archive

A candid look at EFL life and lessons from a university teacher's perspective.

A. Grammar puzzles
Below are two structure questions/problems that came up in recent classes that I couldn’t explain succinctly to students. What would you say?

1. “I live in Saitama, which is next to Tokyo”.
Fine, right? OK- Here’s the student’s question- Why can’t you say, “I live in Saitama where is next to Tokyo?”. After all, we can use “where” in a similar structure: “I went back to Saitama where my parents live”- but not “which”. What are the underlying rules governing the relative cluses here and how would you give a quick outline to students who ask this?
(*note- I had originally written 'relative pronouns' above, which was clearly not an accurate description)

2. “I like action movies so I watch them as much as possible”.
This too is OK, right? But movies are countable, so why can’t we say “I like action movies so I watch them as many as possible”? And why is it that if we remove “them” from the sentence we can allow the countable “many”, as in: “I like action movies so I watch as many as possible”? What is the rule governing this and how would you explain it succinctly?

B. What’s so good about working at a university?
I’ve been very cynical in this blog recently and cynicism is just too easy, the official sport of people with an overwhelming sense of entitlement. So, in a positive vein, here are several things that make working full-time at a Japanese university (as an English professor) worthwhile.

1. You have your own office. What a blessing this is! You can hold private conversations. Take an inconspicuous break. Catch up on Stanley Cup playoff scores. Loosen your belt and let your stomach hang out. You can put on a Jaga Jazzist CD and nobody will be thinking that you must be screwing around (and I’m not- the music spurs me to do more). You can spread papers around wherever you please. After having my own office, I could never go back to a teacher’s common-area (the kind with partitions or cubicles) layout. I’d feel watched all day, under constant pressure, and probably achieve less in the process.

2. Nobody tells you what to do in your classes. It’s true that part-time university teachers often get told: ‘this is the system, we want you to use this textbook, teach according to this formula’ and the like. That’s understandable when Mr/Ms. Hijoukin is in and out of campus in half a day. But if you are a full-timer, the understanding is that you are almighty in your classroom decisions (including less and less pressure to pass very marginal students these days- often a problem at many universities in the past), that you were hired to make the educational and methodological decisions, and that it is really up to you to make something of your classes and not spend time trying to figure out what administrators want you to do. They have no idea what they want you to do because they are administrators, not teachers. It’s not their job. You make your job.

3. Many of the students are at an age where you can hold adult-level conversations with them. There is the somewhat justified image of the Japanese university student who is basically interested in some combination of drinking, sex, shopping, trying out new away-from-home hairdos, reading manga, and hanging out, but that is true of universities anywhere (except for you and I, dear reader, who were always impeccably studious of course). But many university students are curious, have developed sharp intellects that need stimulation, or crave in-depth discussion (we English teachers have a tendency to underrate student intelligence if their English skills are not consistent with their intellectual prowess). Many students offer interesting outside-the-box insights or ask probing questions, or simply know how to engage society in a refreshingly adult manner.

4. When you re-enter Japan and the ‘occupation’ section on your customs declaration card reads “University Professor” the customs guys become much more pleasant and malleable. “Did you bring any fruit or vegetables from abroad, sir? No? Then let me give you some! Bon appetit!”

5. At a lot of institutions the administrators-as-aristocracy, teachers-as-peasants meme is paramount. In fact, I worked in one place where it was so comically pronounced that it was almost a deliberate provocation. Not so at a university. Professors are, effectively, the management. Those who are in purely administrative roles tend to be far from imperious, almost obsequious. Now I don’t need anybody kowtowing to me but it feels good to have some status or at least respect for your position. Administrators administrate and professors proffer. They don’t give orders (they ask politely) or behave like they are holding my paypacket strings as a carrot. In return, I am polite and very hesitant before I question their office policies. It’s all about respecting territory.

C. The reason older Japanese professors (supposedly) teach teacher-centered lecture-type lessons finally revealed!

This notion of course tends to be a Western teacher’s self-serving conceit. I’m referring the stereotype that “they” Japanese teach teacher-fronted grammar-translation lessons to huge numbers of sleeping students, lecture-style while “we” non-Japanese teach highly interactive, dynamic, living English classes that our students love and adore us for. Actually, I don’t think I’ve met any Japanese teacher who admits to using the GT/TC method- every Japanese teacher I’ve met decries it as outdated. J students will often tell me that their J high school teachers taught GT but I think that this is something that needs to be researched a bit more. I’m a bit skeptical about accepting it at face-value. I suspect that even J students maintain the association of ‘Japanese teacher’ with ‘grammar-translation’ uncritically, just as many students will swear that my class was about ‘teaching technical terms’ when in fact only two such items came up tangentially in the lesson, a lesson that was actually about…oh… academic writing.

Regardless, I’m starting to understand the attraction of allegedly Neanderthal teaching methodologies as my age advances and my body starts creaking and groaning. Why? Keeping a class of 30 or so not-always-so-highly-motivated students is tiring! Keeping up the pace of work, making sure everyone is following along and doing the correct activities, checking, monitoring, handling the classroom equipment, summarizing, dealing with problems (both linguistic and behavioral) is tough! After 90 minutes of politically-correct methodology I am exhausted! It’s funny how learner-centered methodology can be so tiring to the teacher, whereas teacher-centeredness is much more relaxing.

So, I can see why a teacher might go into the main lecture hall with his power point slides (updated a bit every year), turn off the lights, face the screen and speak on his topic for 90 minutes. Maybe students are bored shiftless. Maybe half are asleep. Who cares? He’s teaching to whoever may be listening. Those who make the effort will learn something, he knows. If students don’t want to attend or listen he doesn’t care. It’s university after all. It’s their choice- he’s not a babysitter and he’s not there to entertain. nd at the end of the semester he gives the big lecture hall a class a single paper test and fails the ones who didn’t meet the standards. He knows his content well enough- he knows that it’s sound- and he’s passing it on to whoever may be interested, even if that's only a few souls (like this blog, perhaps!). At the end of the 90 minutes he’s not tired at all. He heads back to the lab where he can do his REAL work with the select graduate students who he’s entrusted with on a day-to-day basis, students who are really into the topic. Where he really feels like an EDUCATOR!

Luxury.

Yeah, yeah, I know that this violates the “Good English” teacher code and that I should hand in my teaching license to the relevant authorities for even thinking of this etc. etc. and, true, I wouldn’t allow myself to actually ever do it. But I CAN see the attraction. Just sayin’.

1. Two more student-generated grammar puzzles

A few more classroom questions about English that have popped-up recently. (Note to readers- it’s not that I don’t have answers to these questions or am befuddled as to how to deal with them. The idea here is to throw out some oddities and ask how you would address or explain them):

A. I’m 18 years old.
vs. I’m an 18 year old boy.
The plural for years disappears in the 2nd case. Why? After all, the ‘18’ is still explicit.

B. I come from Oita. Oita is one of the prefectures in Kyushu
vs I come from Oita. Oita is a prefecture in Kyushu.
Why does the former seem awkward? (In Japan the former seems to be taught as a legitimate way of expressing the latter)

2. That Daily Yomiuri newspaper column I write

As some readers know, I write a monthly column in the Daily Yomiuri newspaper called ‘Indirectly Speaking’. The focus is on EFL learning and teaching in Japan. Since I get asked the same questions about that gig a lot I thought I’d answer some here in indulgent self-interview form.

Q- How did you get that gig with the Yomiuri?
A. Six years ago they were actively seeking articles on EFL/ESL for their Language Connection section. I wrote one about the importance of the awareness of pragmatic force in EFL classrooms. They seemed to like it and asked me if I wanted to continue to so on a monthly basis. They may still be looking for contributors- I haven’t checked recently.

Q- Why the title ‘Indirectly Speaking’?
A- Only because that first article was about pragmatic force and thereby, implicatures, which of course is an indirect way of communicating. I’ve wanted to change the title but the editor seems to like it as it is.

Q- Do you get a huge stack o’ money for these articles?
A- No. I get a very basic gratuity.

Q- So why do it? Do you get a publication credit?
A- It’s neither refereed nor academic so I don’t get a publication credit. It goes onto my resume and database as a kind of professional social service, flying the flag of the university I suppose. Basically, it’s a nice public format for self-expression.

Q- Do the editors impose a lot of rules and restrictions?
A- Not really. They want me to do op-ed/commentary articles so that’s what I do. As long as its connected to English teaching in Japan I have free reign. I’m pretty sure they don’t want the articles to be too vanilla so I try to say something a little offbeat each time but without being deliberately provocative or knee-jerk contrarian. I have to keep in mind that not all readers are teaching professionals and that over half are not English native speakers too. There is also a word limit of 1000-1200 words which is the hardest part for a bombastic, grandiloquent, blowhard like myself. The copy editors usually write the titles, although I might suggest something else if I’m not happy with what they’ve come up with.

Q- Do you get a lot of comments from readers about the articles? And what are these comments like?
A- I always get at least a few follow-up comments for the less controversial columns and quite a number for the more controversial items- about two-thirds of these are from native English speakers. If they write to my personal mail address (attached to the columns) they are usually positive. Japanese teachers are apt to ask more for clarification but can also be very critical. I give them credit for writing directly to me and questioning my positions though.

Online, if you do the right word searches you’ll find some unflattering comments about the columns. Some are just downright weird- people with bizarre chips on their shoulders, those with a knee-jerk reflex to ‘take my uni big shot punk ass downtown’. Others clearly haven’t understood the article (and have obviously not even made the effort to try) but that doesn’t stop them from spouting off all sorts of nonsense. A few offer thoughtful and constructive criticism but the typical internet forums are obviously not great founts of such insight (‘You are a looser and a moran’). This is the price you pay when you have even the slightest public profile so I shrug it off and have stopped looking. The only comments I find frustrating are those that engage in unfounded speculation about my work or background (‘I heard that Guest didn’t graduate from high school and actually works part-time at a Mr. Donut and got this column through his family’s LDP connections’ ). That type of thing. Go figure.

Q- Is it hard?
A. Coming up with topics and ideas is not. The biggest problem is the last-minute editing. If you write much you probably know the feeling when you’ve stared at something so long you no longer see it objectively- when your eyes pass over an obvious problem. Or, you make one small change that demands a restructuring or rephrasing elsewhere. Then you have to change something else to avoid repetition but that throws the main idea out of order. So you start tinkering with it too much and, like messing with the intestines of the computer, there’s a good chance you’ll actually be making the whole thing worse.

With a blog like this I can re-edit without any concern but with a newspaper column, once it’s published any blotches remain blots forever. When I read the article on the day of publication I occasionally notice some sloppy stylistic problem or an out-an-out error which is now staring at me boldly in the face. It can feel a bit like looking in the mirror after you’ve been chatting up an attractive lady and seeing a big green chunk of spinach jutting out from between your teeth.

Q- Has anything strange happened regarding these columns?
A. One got reprinted in the China Daily so it was all over English-speaking China. Wouldn’t you know it- that column was about the difficulties that Japanese have with acquiring English. I had no idea that the Yomiuri let the China Daily copy it (I certainly wasn’t informed).
The Star (a Malaysian newspaper) ran the same piece which lead to a Japanese person living in Malaysia to write a baffling response (I'll post the link to this when I find it) accusing me of linguistic imperialism and generally a being bigoted know-nothing.

Some universities have also used my columns as texts on their entrance exams but they don’t tell me until the exams have finished (due to exam security). They have a deal with the Yomiuri such that columns like mine can be used without explicit written consent.

Anything else you might want to know?

1. What REALLY goes on in Japanese English teachers' classrooms?

Someone should do some fact-checking on whether Japanese English teachers really do teach largely grammar-translation classes, as per the popular NJ stereotype.

I ask this because I'm not so sure that we should believe the worst without reason. I sense that NJ teachers often spout the 'J teacher's teach grammar-transalation' line uncritically to uphold the rather smug (and often unfounded) belief that "we NJs" (apologies to Japanese readers but I think you know what I mean here) are invariably progressive teachers who have exciting, meaningful, and dynamic classes. On the other hand, the J teachers supposedly read the textbook and translate the English texts into grammar, putting everyone to sleep, and actually hindering the students' English ability in the process.

The truth is that I have never actually met a Japanese teacher who admits to teaching with a GT methodology. The vast majority that I've met certainly seem up to date in educational theory and practice and use what I would say, as a veteran teacher, are productive, progressive methods in the classroom. Of course, I tend to meet such teachers at conferences and training centers, so it is quite possible that the teachers who make the effort to come to conferences or training centers might be precisely the kind who tend to carry out more productive teaching methodologies in the first place.

But I've also watched several JHS sankanbi lessons (parent visitation days) and am familiar with some JHS and HS textbooks, none of which seem to focus nearly as much on discrete items or grammar or translation as most think.

Interestingly though, many J teachers I've met claim that while they don't personally teach that kind of content or use that kind of methodology, they believe that most others do. But if everyone is believing that it is only true of "others"...
Hmmm.

Now, here's where it gets weird: If I ask my university students what kind of English they studied in high school with their J English teachers, almost all of them will say something along the lines of "discrete-item grammar translation". Fine. Except that many of them went to high schools where I know with certainty that old-fashioned methods are not used, and in some cases I even know the individual teachers involved- generally very progressive, inventive types.

So, I can't help but think that most students are not a reliable source on this. They BELIEVE their teachers taught them GT-styled 'preparation for uni entrance exams' English because they believe that's what is supposed to happen in a J English teacher's high school classroom. Pre-conceived notions are automatically fulfilled.

To wit- recently I asked several of my students what they were studying in my J colleagues' English classes. Now I happen to know that he is focusing upon discourse-based writing skills and developing their abilities in academic writing. Nevertheless, the students said that he taught them "grammar". There you go.

But of course the same type of uncritical prejudice may be applied to myself, as an NJ teacher. You see students are convinced, no matter what I actually do try to inculcate in my classes, that what I have REALLY taught them are "some new native-speaker words".
(I happen to know this because one program requires that students write up session reports after each class and I have to help fix them up, hence I see what they wrote regarding my own classes). So, even if I was actually teaching how to put medical data into a format in which doctors confirm or add data in collaboration with other doctors with a focus upon pathology, many students will remember primarily that I taught them: 1. "that the Japanese 'KY' can be expressed as 'X just doesn't get it' in English", because that item happened, by chance, to come up in that session, and 2) that I 'taught' them the words 'cirrhosis' and 'intubation'', although these were simply accidental items included among the data for carrying out the speaking task.

This reverse prejudice also seems to appear in many J teachers' and students' views of what NJ teachers are supposed to be doing in their high school classrooms. The stereotype here is that NJ teachers 'play games' and teach 'daily conversation'-. You know, Hello! How are you? English, regardless of what the NJs actually do (not that some don't just play games and teach 'Daily Conversation'). The unwarranted (and often self-serving) stereotypes cut both ways.

Anyway, it seems like refreshing, air clearing new research is in order to confirm or refute these stereotypes.

2. My problem with scholarly ELT Journals:

So, I've called for confirming research above but I do so with some trepidation.

I've written here and there on this topic before, but the reason why I feel uncomfortable with (many) academic ELT journals became clear to me while forcing myself through yet another such article (related to an upcoming presentation) the other day. Here's what I realized:

Articles in which there is too much quoting or too many references is BAD WRITING! It breaks the flow. It becomes, alternately, dense and jarring. It's thematically restrictive. It is rhetorical overkill. And most of all, it's boring. Having 80% of an article consisting of summarizing what previous researchers have said (and believe me they've said some quite contradictory things in our pseudo-scientific field) is simply a case of arguing that "somebody else said this so it must be true". Why write about what other people have said? It reeks of academic insecurity.

Yeah, yeah I know. It is expected that academics show that they have read the research, that they know the intellectual playing field, that they've done their homework. But why the apparent need to fill two-thirds of an article with this stuff?

Here's what I think. Many editors think they are dealing with papers from grad students- because that's what they actually do at their home universities. You know the situation- a thesis has to make clear what seminal works in the field the graduation candidate has read. So the candidate has to go out of his/her way to prove that they have read all the right stuff by dropping all the 'right' research names and dates all over the essay, like sparrow poop.

But we are not grad students anymore. Nor are the people who might read these journals reading them in order to grade or correct. So why demand (at least implicitly) that scholars write like grad students trying desperately to impress their thesis advisors? This has gotta change...

Editors work hard and perform a thankless service. But certain priorities and beliefs about academic and journal writing should be reconsidered.

1. The Popular Image of the MEXT Headquarters:

On Tuesday Nov. 3rd The Daily Yomiuri newspaper printed my most recent article in which I outlined some positives (and negatives) found in Monkasho (MEXT) guidelines. One of my reasons for writing that article was to show that a lot of typical criticism directed at MEXT policy is unfounded- although there are clearly still aspects of policy very much open to criticism.

However, it seems that some people don't like any mitigation in the negativity expressed towards MEXT as I found out thereafter (looking at some responses). Hmmm. I get the impression that some people's image of the Ministry of Education's home base is something like this:

MEXT is made up of a pair of greasy bureaucrats in blue polyester suits, with bad combovers, chain smoking in a poorly-ventilated Nagatacho back office, plastic bags of dried squid covering their cluttered desks. One, Ukon, can be assumed to be a rabid nationalist, whose main aim is to keep the pernicious influence of foreign languages out of the grasp of the natives, while the other, Makoto, is an uptight nerd from Tokyo University whose hobby consists of compiling obscure English minutiae to be placed into the national curricula or entrance exams. Oh yeah- and they harass the poor OL's in the office.

In fact, many of those involved in educational decision making are well-established professors and other highly-regarded cosmopolitan professionals in the field (including, at certain levels, native English speakers). Policy and rationale behind guidelines are freely available online, and many have English translations.

2. Getting Something Out of Conversation Tasks:

I've written and stated elsewhere on several occasions that the idea of 'teaching conversation' seems daft to me. Conversation is a social skill- if you are a skilled interlocutor in your 1st language you can usually carry over those traits to the 2nd. It's not like you have to learn again to be good at conversation when take up a new language (although it's true that you will need to gain awareness of peragmatic norms, discourse markers and the like- but that's not what people normally mean when they talk about 'teaching conversation').

Teaching conversation spawns images of Cyrano De Bergerac coaching the inarticulate Christian in his attempts to seduce Roxanne. This is surely not what ELT educators have in mind.

The other aspect of 'teaching conversation' that comes to mind is that of inculcating formulas and mantras to be learned. Highly instrumental ready-made samples of how to order a hamburger or what to say at immigration. This is not language teaching. In such cases you might as well just use a Lonely Planet guide as a textbook.

Yet I do carry out conversational tasks or activities in my classes. Why, you might well ask? One reason is quite obvious. Students can feel constrained if too many activities are limited in scope and teacher or text controlled. They do not feel that the language being used belongs to them, they are not really actively producing communicative content, they are detached from the communicative process.

It's like being a sport coach. Yes, you have to work on muscle training and technique but sometimes you just have to let the athletes play too.

But the big question has always been: How can students learn from an open-ended conversation activity? Won't they just be using the same language forms that they already know, making the same mistakes and basically driving in the same linguistic ruts that they always do?

Maybe. But they can get better from conversation practice if you do the following (which obviously I try to):
After the open conversation section students should be aware of which words or ideas they could not express well in English, which grammatical or lexical patterns did not communicate well, where they got bogged down.

These must be fixed. Students should study precisely these areas after the activity (or ask a teacher). In other words, the goal is to learn from your weaknesses. Once you know your weak points you can focus on them and polish them for the next round. I tell my students to make notes on these points immediately after any and every open-ended conversation-based task.

Another thing students can do to learn from conversation tasks is to note vocabulary or structural patterns that were used well and succesfully by their partners. We've all felt the 'Yes! That's the phrase I often forget' moment of recognition and inspiration when talking to others in our L2. But if they are not explicitly noted these useful tidbits are likely to fade from memory quickly.

So, students can learn from conversation practice (which is, of course, very different from the notion of 'teaching conversation') but it must be done using explicit conscousness-raising and note taking in order to be effective.

Sorry the lack of an update recently- it's presentation season.

First today, some thoughts about grammar, plurality, and agreement:

OK. You'd say "The Beatles were great" right? After all, the word "Beatles" is explictly plural. Now what about King Crimson or Genesis? King Crimson were great or was great? (By the way, Fripp and co. are still active). Certainly both answers are possible and acceptable although I'd lean towards "was" myself. It seems that our ultimate choices will be informed by how we percieve a rock band in our minds- as a set of individual members or as a collectiive singular unit.

But let's take the same equation and apply it to sports teams. The Detroit Red Wings are really strong. OK- like The Beatles, there is an explicit plural so there's no controversy here. But how about the Tampa Bay Lightning or the Minnesota Wild? NO ONE would say "The Wild is struggling" or "The Lightning has improved this year". Now, like King Crimson, sports teams are collections of individuals and could thus be viewed collectively or as a plurality right? Yet there is little doubt that we would use plural verb agreement ("are" "were") for the sports teams.

So, what's the basis for the difference? It is true that grammatical norms are often determined by perception (i.e. when to deploy the perfect tense) but how/why are the rperceptions of rock groups functionally any different from those of the hockey teams?

Any ideas out there?

Second on today's menu- a beef. The hassles of classroom 'brainstorming'.

You know the scene. You want to start your class with a 10-minute warm up designed to get students focused, talking, on topic before launching into the main teaching task. You want it to be quick, sharp and clear. Except that your students make it laborious and time-consuming. Here's how- or at least here's how it happens in my case (using my most recent example):

I have pre-written on the board in black the following-
Today- first (10 minute opener):
my last visit to a doctor/hospital/clinic
when
department/specialty
reason
symptoms
duration and/or frequency
treatments and/or medications
examinations
results

Next to each category is blank space in red.

I tell the students they have six minutes to think of their own 'last visit' and to write down their answers in the blank spaces. "Write only your answers for each of these on a piece of paper" I say. "Fill in the red blanks according to your own case". I also add that if they don't know the word or phrase they want to write in English, they should look it up in a dictionary (although they are quite familiar with all the categories listed above).

The goal is to then have them tell partners the above information in full sentence form. While I presume they are writing their lists and/or looking up the any new words I write my own answers on the board in the red spaces. I then say them in full sentences as a model. My plan is for this to segue into a section in the textbook about giving data in medical referrals.

Then I check on their progress (the full six minutes have almost passed). About one quarter of the students have jotted down their words appropriately. A few more are looking up words to add to their lists. OK. More than half have spent the time copying down only the categories I have written on the board including "Today- first (10 minute opener)". Several have just finished writing their names and student numbers on the paper. A few are still getting a piece of paper out of the depths of their sports bags.

Damn! The students are all over the place! Now, this used to make me angry and I would let students know so but I have since come to see that what was making me angry was the fact that my tight 'n sweet lesson plan wasn't going to form, that the students were ruining my pretty picture. Figuring that my anger was self-indulgent I have since decided to focus my complaint elsewhere.

I focus it here: When I give the students their partners (3 per team) only one is ready to do it properly, one is half-ready and will therefore stumble and stick Japanese in, and one is still wholly unprepared and will be thumbing his/her dictionary while the other students tell their 'stories'. This is rude! Listen to what your partners are saying, I tell them. And you can help do this by BEING PREPARED!

But what I really want to get off my chest, but don't, is the following. I know that no students read or know of this blog so I'll just vent here...
STUDENTS! WHY CAN'T WE START A SIMPLE WARM-UP ACTIVITY WITHOUT A LABOURIOUS, FORMALIZED PREPARATION OF PAPER SHEETS, SHIFTING POStURES AND PENS, WRITING STUDENT NAMES AND NUMBERS, AND COPYING EXACTLY WHAT I WROTE ON THE BOARD (INCLUDING MY WORDS "10 MINUTE OPENER") WHEN I EXPLICITY TOLD YOU NOT TO (AND MODELLED IT TOO!).
AND DON'T KEEP WRITING THE DAMN THING WHEN WE ARE IN THE TELL-YOUR-PARTNERS STAGE. IT'S NOT A TEST PAPER OR A FORMAL ESSAY THAT YOU'RE HANDING IN, IT'S JUST A LITTLE HELPFUL PREP SO YOU CAN TALK TO YOUR PARTNER ON TODAY'S TOPIC!!!

Apologies to those students who got it and complied right away.

There, I said it. Take a deep breath and relax, Mike.

I wonder if readers have similar experiences and how you may handle it. And trust me when I say that I outline everything clearly and comprehensively in advance.

I've attended a few conference sessions on feedback (for EFL students' written assignments) recently and have found many comments, research and positions both interesting and useful.

In a nutshell, most EFL research seems to show that a lot of typical feedback given by teachers on student writing is ineffective and therefore largely a waste of the teacher's time (and if you have typically large HS or Uni. classes you know it takes a LOT of time).

Here's a summary of what I've come across recently, with some of my own observations included:

The type of feedback in which the teacher more or less corrects everything for the student doesn't work because the student hasn't engaged any challenging area of the language for themselves. Nothing much will be internalized. This type of correction should only be carried out when a pristine sample is needed soon for real-life purposes.

The type of feedback in which the teacher points out all grammar mistakes (even with the plan of having the students revise the draft, as in process writing) is ineffective. Not only can students feel overwhelmed, but internalizing a grammatical form is a delicate, lengthy, and often hierarchical, process. This is because learners absorb grammatical minutiae best when they are on the cusp of acquiring that form. It has to be reinforced around the time of internalization, often explicitly. In short, they'll learn it when they're ready to learn it, not when the teacher's red pen points it out. (This is why students can, and do, make the same mistakes over and over again, even within the same sentence).

If a student's essay is covered in grammatical correction notes they will unlikely to be able to focus on any one key form well enough to acquire or internalize it for future usage. In other words, any learning that occurs will be instrumental (meaning that fixing it will help them get through the present assignment) rather than instrinsic (meaning that it fits into their holistic understanding of English as a system). In short, correction categories should be limited and supported in the classroom outside of teacher notes on their papers.

Using a code to give corrections and feedback can run the same risk but at least forces the student to think about the type of mistake by themselves and thereby offers a slight improvement.

General 'suggestion-type' feedback, as opposed to discrete-point feedback, seems to be slightly more effective. Suggestions as to a preferred rhetorical approach, topic, organizational strategies, introductions/endings, and suitable content (relevance and even register) seem to have greater appeal to the student reviser.

Personally, I have always thought that holistic, organizational feedback should precede grammatical minutaie. Choices of content, style and purpose trump syntax. As many of you will know, you often can't really 'fix mistakes' until you've helped them organize a meaningful communicative goal or strategy. If the language and/or the communication point is convoluted and the communicative purpose unclear from the outset fixing syntactical details is not going to help. It may not even be possible to start. To me it's a bit like putting blemish ointment on someone suffering from 3rd degree burns.

Positive feedback seems to be more effective than a focus on the negatives (key point- one shouldn't identify feedback with 'correcting mistakes'). No surprise here. If you tell people what they are doing right the positive reinforcement creates a deeper memory synapse. When you tell small children that they are good boys/girls for getting the spoon into their mouths they are going to do it again willingly and thereby master it sooner.

Face to face feedback seems to be more effective than teacher notes (which students often can't read well anyway) precisely because it is more visceral and directly impacting. It also allows the student to respond in turn. Of course it is not always physically practical or possible.

Peer feedback seems to be more effective than teacher feedback. Further, providing models of successful peer work can be both motivating and allows students a clearer look at (high) standards. On the other hand, some peer feedback can be as goof as useless, being mere uncritical (and unhelpful) mutual congratulations. Peer feedback needs to be guided, monitored and formalized.

Asking students themselves what they feel they did well and what they think they could improve on before offering your ideas is more effective. Self-monitoring is a big part of developing learner autonomy so why not help get them on that road? Getting learners to reflect on their own work engages them more deeply and allows them to feel like they are in control of corrective changes- that they are not just crossing T's and dotting I's because of the pressure of an authority.

If you are looking for the research on this it's pretty easy to Google 'ELT feedback effective' or some such thing (there's too much stuff on the topic out there to post meaningful links here but I can point you to Ross, Robb, and Shortreed [1986] for starters) and you'll get dozens of interesting responses- many were in fact Japan-based studies. And it's very interesting how many deny or strongly question the efficacy of the more popular and common methods of writing feedback.

I'm interested in hearing your thoughts on all this in the comments section.

Today's post marks a sharp departure from previous entriess.

It connects to my Daily Yomiuri article of May 03rd. The article I originally wrote was much too long and therefore I had to cut a series of reflective questions which had punctuated each section. So now, the original article is in italics below whereas the original commentary is bolded.

What I'd like to propose today are several scales that may help teachers decide which vocabulary items might be prioritized for teaching. I'm going to start with a sentence I came across in a medical drama as our model: "What's the matter? Look, if you want to get used to using the defibrillator, you've got to keep working at it or else." Now, which three items from this sample would you be most likely to focus on for teaching intermediate-level post-high school aged students?

I'm assuming that the answers will depend upon your perceived level, needs and experience of your students as well as, to some extent, your understanding of what intermediate level means. But I'd like you to justify your choices even further. What was the rationale behind them? Were they based upon a sound understanding of lexis or merely the fact that your students don't know that word yet? If you've employed some of the following scales in making your choices you have probably made wise decisions.

1. Teaching vs telling
I've often been confused as to what teachers mean when they say they "taught" a word. Was it just that they told learners what a word means? Or was some kind of deeper explanation and subsequent practice required to absorb it? It seems to me that "telling" refers to cases where you translated, used a picture or some visual prop, or otherwise provided a quick gloss of the word. "Teaching" would seem to imply a more indirect process, perhaps one where learners gradually notice how an item works within a text and have their consciousness raised about it.

Question- For which items and on which occasions might you choose ‘teaching
’ over ‘telling’? And when might ‘acquisition’ of an item be preferred
to ‘learning’? (keep in mind the old maxim that that which is taught is not
necessarily that which is learned)

Scale 2:Meaning vs function

Some words don't have meanings but rather, functions. Think of modals such as "would" or "may." They don't mean anything but they add mood. Think of grammar words like the perfect tense "have." Think of prepositions. Other words have very specific meanings, with clear real-world referents.

A large number of words run between these two categories, items that we might refer to as being semi-lexicalized. "Get" or "keep" are good examples. They may appear to have core meanings (corresponding to the notions of "receive" and "possess," respectively) but they also serve grammatical functions and notions, making them rather difficult to master. Both learners and teachers often mistakenly think these words have been learned or mastered when in fact they haven't.

Question- Which would you say is the more frequent usage of ‘get’- meaning
‘receive’ or ‘become’? How about ‘keep’, ‘possess’ or
‘continue/repeat’? Are your students aware of all these senses?

Scale 3: Frequency

It might seem obvious that we should "teach" the most frequent items first (based on a large and balanced corpus), but it's not quite as simple as that. Generally speaking, the most frequent items are function words that can be hard for beginners to grasp fully. They need constant scaffoldlike reinforcement. Such items tend to be the workhorses of the language and since many of them have both lexical and grammatical functions, it is the mastery of these items that leads to not only understanding of how English grammar works but also an awareness of how vocabulary can affect grammar and does not merely fill in lexical slots.

Question- Do you really think your students know, or have mastered, the most
frequent items? Or do they have an inordinate knowledge of infrequent items
that they can’t put together into cohesive English communication? If the
latter, it could be that there is not enough focus upon mastering frequent
items. The student knows a lot of words but they don’t know English.

Scale 4: Meaning range (low density vs high density; valency):

"Defibrillator" might look like a difficult word, but it really isn't. It has a specific, singular meaning making it very easy to translate across languages. The technology behind a defibrillator may be complex and it may be hard to spell, but the item the word represents is itself very precise. In other words, it is a high-density item and as such has a narrow meaning range. Lexically dense items tend to be less frequent, and are generally related to more specialist topics or subjects.

However, "get," being a low-density item, is hard to pin down. It can mean receive, become (get cold), arrive (when we get there), must (got to), begin (get going), movement (get in; get back), and appears in numerous phrasal verbs. It has what is known as wide valency, the ability to attach itself to many forms in many environments. Mastery of such items leads to mastery of a language as a whole.

Question- Do you focus as much upon low density items as you do upon high
density items in your classroom, as befits their frequency and utility? Yes,
new, unknown words will often be high density items but how often will these
consolidate overall second language acquisition (for non-specialists)?

Scale 5: Intrinsic vs instrumental purposes

We might want to ask ourselves why we are teaching certain words. Is it for the short term only, for recognition or immediate recall (instrumental)? Or as part of the learners' overall, holistic second language system development (intrinsic)? "Defibrillator" is almost certainly an instrumental item; it won't stay in the active lexicon of anyone who isn't involved in cardiology

Question- Do you change your teaching method according to whether an item is
considered intrinsic or instrumental? Connected to this is…

Scale 6: Decoding vs encoding

Are we noting an item only to help students get through a single text or a section where the item appears (decoding)? Or do we wish the item to become a part of the learners' intrinsic overall vocabulary--something that will be entrenched in long-term memory and be readily retrievable for production (encoding)?

Question- Are you actively aware of dealing with vocabulary for both
encoding and decoding purposes, and do you change your method accordingly?

Scale 7: Single words vs chunks (set phrases)

So far we have talked as if each word is a separate entity, that vocabulary teaching is a matter of mastering individual words. Not so. Single meanings or usages are often applied to groups of words. Idioms and proverbs are one type. Phrasal verbs are another. (think about how much you use phrases like ‘shikata ga nai’, ‘so desu ne’ or ‘ii ja
nai” in Japanese without noticing the individual ‘words’ involved).

Prefabricated set phrases (or "lexical chunks") are perhaps the most interesting for our discussion. Note items like, "what's the matter?" "work at it," "get used to," and "or else." We process these as singular units, as if they were one word run together. (Think how much you use phrases like "shikata ga nai" or "so desu ne" in Japanese without noticing the individual words involved.)

Question- There are thousands of phrasal verbs and idiomatic expressions in
English. How would you go about choosing which ones students to make the
effort to master?

Scale 8: Denotation vs connotation

Lexically dense items generally have clear real-world referents. Lexically lighter items often both denote and connote, in which case simply applying a headword from a dictionary does not make for a suitable translation. Understanding the connotations of an item, how it is actually used and understood in discourse, is just as important as knowing a "core" meaning. For example, "working at it" connotes a continuous application of diligence, and does not merely denote "doing a job." Some such items also have important signaling or rhetorical cohesion functions; "Look," for example, often connotes a follow-up explanation.

Question- When helping students to master new items do you help them to
become aware of connotation as well as denotation?

Now let’s put all this together. Can you see certain common denominators
running through these scales? Although it is not entirely uniform or
consistent I think we can patterns like these:
1. low frequency- high density- narrow meaning range- meaning based-
instrumental purpose- denotative- telling
2. high frequency- low density- wide meaning range- function based-
lexico grammatical- valent- intrinsic purpose- connotative- teaching
(consciousness-raising; noticing)- acquisition

Question- In which of these two groups have your emphases and priorities in
vocabulary teaching been?

And given our discussion above, would you change
any of the choices you originally made regarding our sample sentence?

Note to self-

Do something about the following student habits. You see these year after year and at some point you are going to have to address them directly:

1. Those cases when you give the students a homework assignment that includes a few concepts or vocabulary items they are not familiar with. Then, most students come to the next class with it incomplete (or worse, not completed at all) because they 'didn't know' certain items.

Figure out why this is happening. Is it because they see homework not as a preperatory research or study but as some kind of achievement 'test' to be immediately handed in and graded and therefore if they don't know it- they don't know it?

Teach/tell them that it is common sense for a university student to research that which they don't know. Look it up in a dictionary (duh!). Scan the internet to understand that concept or designation which you find troubling. Or utilize that age-old J university standby- your senpai (senior student)! But do something! Do NOT come to class after a week with that assignment sheet and tell me you 'don't know'!

2. Deal with those situations where students have a guided speaking assignment in English but as soon as they face the slightest bit of communicative adversity in English they switch over to Japanese, negating the primary value of the whole task.

Figure out why it is happening- Is it because the students think the only thing that counts is completing the spoken task and getting the necessary information or whatever from their partners? They seem to be inordinately focused upon the product whereas in second language acquisition going through the process is equally, if not more, important.

Teach/tell them that fighting through areas of communicative adversity (by language negotiation, circumlocutions, alternate strategies or whatever) is an essential part of developing their language skills. After all, if they want to be good tennis players how can they progress if they avoid working on their backhands and instead try to run backwards on every return so that they can utilize the more familar and comfortable forehand shot? Sure, you might spray a few balls into the bottom of the net as you work on that backhand at first but you'll never be much of a tennis player if you don't confront that weak spot directly. And after awhile it should become muscle memory; you'll be on autopilot. So with English. Add that when they are dealing with NJs outside Japan they will not have the luxury of resorting to clarfications with their interlocutors in their mother tongue.

3. Address those tasks where you are prompting students to be productive and creative, allowing for dynamic expansion for the purpose of extended communication, and they come up with little but dull, jejeune content which seems to exist more for the purpose of completing the assignment than communicating any content of note (e.g. Getting-to-know-you self-generated questions such as: "Do you like music?" or "How old is your father?"), or imprecise and vague content that does not technically violate grammatical rules but lacks a clear criterion, scope, or category (e.g., from the same activity- "What country do you like?" or "What are you interested in?").

Figure out why it is happening- Are the students more concerned with forming a 'grammatically correct' sentence than those which are semantically sound, pragmatically normative, or communicatively compelling? This may be a by-product of high school methodology- the notion that grammatical correctness equals correctness in all respects. You're going to have to hammer away at this deeply entrenched falsehood.

Teach/tell them that grammatical correctness is often meaningless or, to be frank, a lack of concern for the content of discourse can be stifingly boring for all participants. Give them Japanese examples which show this. Strongly express that as university students, especially given your own classes' discourse-based focus, that you (and your grades) are much more concerned with students creating and producing meaningful content.

I've talked before about how I find it strange when teachers talk of 'teaching' a vocabulary item. The notion that naming a discrete item in English equals 'teaching' seems odd to me. 'Telling' is more like it. If I show young Japanese kids a picture of a dog and say 'dog', or even 'Inu ha Eigo de dog to iimasu', I'm not really 'teaching' anything. I'm simply telling them what the English label or cognate is. 'Teaching' it seems to me, means having the learners come to understand at a deeper semantic level (that is, identifying the meaning range- think of an item like "worth", which crosses several Japanese lexical cognate boundaries) and the ability to use it appropriately and flexibly within meaningful contexts (e.g., swell- "My ankle is swollen. My calf is swelling up too. If it swells any further we will have to operate").

In doing so, I may highlight the new word and try to get students to raise consciousness about it but I can't say that I teach it. I may consciously use it in various forms in the materials I produce so that students may absorb or inculcate that item but any such acquisition is a by-product of the task it appears in, and not of explicit item-teaching.

The same goes for grammar.

The idea that you can 'teach' a grammatical tense seems absurd for me and doubly absurd at the university level. Why? OK- let's start with that old standard, the past tense: One might try to 'teach' it as follows: "We use the past tense when something happened in the past". Oh really? So, how about, "Yesterday, I was standing in the shower when...". Or, "I have been to Kabul three times". In other words, the 'past' is not always represented by the past tense.

Now what about the past tense inflection? We could 'teach' learners that most verbs take -ed as an ending but also that there are many irregular past-tense verb endings that you'll have to learn too (and of course most of the irregular verbs are the most common items). Since there's no way of learning them systematically, students will just have to memorize a list. And that's not the same as teaching or learning a tense.

The problem is that the notion of 'past' causes semantic difficulties across languages. Knowing how to make the inflection and knowing when to make the inflection are two very different animals. Using only the former criterion, coming from Japanese, the following would be ok:
A: Put the books down over there.
B: I understood.

This is because Japanese renders the moment of understanding as having been already attained ("Wakatta") whereas English treats it as a current state ("I understand"). Likewise, "I knew that he was married" is fine in English but a direct translation from Japanese would produce: "I was knowing...". So, knowing how to make the inflection, the mechanical transformation of the verb, is easy but this hardly constitutes understanding the past tense.

Rather, knowing how and when the past is rendered in English (or any language) discourse, psychologically or semantically, is a delicate and complex matter that is best developed by exposure to a variety of meaningful contexts in which time relations are juxtaposed.

The same principle can be applied to the passive voice. We can say that "The pedestrian was scared by the foreigner" is the passive form of "The foreigner scared the pedestrian" but the ability to make the transformation is just a matter of mechanics. It doesn't tell us anything about WHEN we would choose to employ the passive voice or what semantic or psychological considerations and choices would make us choose it. The factors behind a choice of voice can be quite complicated if taught as a discrete item. And again, Japanese and English don't match up here (e.g. "I surprised").

Most grammatical 'rules' taught in junior and senior high schools in Japan have been absorbed at some level in Japan by students, even if latent, implicit, and subconscious. But productive mastery of these forms (as opposed to passive, multiple choice, recognition) eludes almost all. University is precisely the time and place in which this latent understanding can be made more fruitful- by exposure to the contextual aspects in which grammatical and lexical choices are made. Simply going over 'the rules' again is to reinvent the wheel, and a flat one at that. Students are not suddenly going to 'get it' in university if they are 'taught' grammar tenses and the like all over again. Instead, they have to be presented within academic contexts that are meaningful to learners, contexts which reveal norms, choices, relations and meaning/application ranges.

University is the perfect place to do this. At university, Japanese students are declaring majors and (should be) considering content in greater depth and with greater interest. If English is a medium used to explore these areas of interest and research, the structures which express the underlying relationships, states, and actions will be more fully absorbed, married as they are to students' cognitive engagement (of course, there is no accounting for the militarily bored and uncommitted). That understanding of structure which they have retained in some vague, ephemeral state from high school, will be made manifest. The 'rules' will become applicable to semantic content.

One visceral example of this occurs with my first year medical students. In learning to take a medical history students are forced to think of relevant opening questions for patients in order to gather sufficient information. A number of these take on the perfective aspect (I say that because it's not really a 'tense' per se). To wit:
How long have you had it?
Have you noticed anything else?
Have you taken any medicine?
Have you had anything similar in the past?

Contrast these (and I do highlight the contrasts) with:
When did you first notice it?
What did you do when you first noticed it?
How long do they last?
Is there anything that makes it feel better?

As students understand the semantic range of each form (because the questions are relevant to their own interests, carried out in etended tasks, and presented within a meaningful context) they can begin to 'feel' the range of stituations that demand the perfective, as opposed to the other forms and tenses. In other words, the semantic range is known to them and they now see that certain meaning ranges demand the perfective. To 'teach' the perfective first, as a rule-bound structural discrete item, would be ass-backwards, since there is no underlying semantic range in which students can place the form.

Teaching grammar and university EFL- like opera and peanut butter.

In the comments section of the previous entry, reader Mark Howarth asked me to outline what I think an English program at a Japanese university should look like. I have covered a similar topic on this blog in the past which you can access here (scroll down to the second entry) but I thought it would also be worthwhile to restate, or elaborate on, a few points.

First, here's what I think a Japanese university English course shouldn't be modeled upon:
1. It is not eikaiwa. There are legitimate places to learn daily conversation. University is not one of them. A university should have a more rigorous academic focus for any subject- including English.

2. It is not a continuation of high school English. Most students learned English structure in the form of discrete items in high school (particularly in preparation for entrance exams). The students, at some level, know this stuff. True, very few can use it productively or even in a consolidated manner but at some level they 'know' it. The trick is getting it from the realm of the latent and passive and into more active contexts. Now is the time to put what was learned (at a certain level) in high school to use.

3. It is not a matter of just memorizing more specific terminology- which can be achieved using a good dictionary.

4. It should be more generalized in scope- as befits the concept of a university- than the narrower, very specialized focus of a senmon gakko. That is, it should balance intrinsic and instrumental purposes.

5. It shouldn't be reduced to a TOEIC-like course, a detached, discrete-point, impersonalized, externally-administered program. Such things are useful foor supplementary study but hardly as a curriculum framework.

On the positive side- a university program should...
1. cause students to engage cognitively

2. be academically viable

3. develop critical thinking skills and production of English within meaningful contexts (meaning within their major subjects)

ESP (English for Specific Purposes) and EAP (English for Academic Purposes) models therefore seem most appropriate.

Teaching methodology should not focus upon structure (which will just repeat the shortcomings of high school English) or terminology but upon the frames of discourse within a particular academic subject (i.e., agriculture majors should study and utilize English skills that reflect and enhance what people in the field of agriculture talk about, what they read, write, communicate.

Universities should be a place where students learn to communicate with peers worldwide in the field and gain the ability to write papers and give outlines/preparations in English on specific topics.

Discrete aspects of English (specialist vocab., structural elements) can be mastered through ongoing moderated evaluated tasks, process learning, (if and when such points are needed and can be grasped contextually for the sake of enhancing communication) rather than a focus upon numerically-based discrete item testing. In other words, vocabulary and grammar are mastered not before dealing with meaningful, academic content but through dealing with such content. The meanings and functions only have reality for students when they manifest themselves in meaningful expression, and is retained only when recycled through meaningful contexts which the student is creating or maintaining (not teacher or text fed).

The most common negative response I get in regard to these proposals is that many, if not most, university students don't have the English skills to embark upon such a program- that many can barely squeak out the most basic of utterances.

I would answer that it is precisely the focus upon non-cognitive mechanics that has brought about this disjunct (between the passive knowledge of English as gained in HS and actual, practical, meaningful usage) and therefore to continue pursuing it, arguing that students have not yet mastered it sufficiently, is flogging a dead horse.

Challenging, rather than cognitively coddling, students should inspire them. By relating it to their field of study/interest we provide a framework that has significance for them. Talking about shopping or movies in English does not. They might start of awkwardly upon this track but the rate of improvement and mastery of skill should excite both students and skeptical teachers. After all, it treats them as if they were adults and real students.

I should know because I've seen this happen with my medical students. And while medical students tend to be pretty sound academically, this does not always transfer into utility when they enter university. In fact what they generally do well at is test-taking. But after two years of a discourse-based ESP/EAP approach most have taken at least a few steps forward- steps that are more becoming of a university student.

• Amusement/Fiction (2)
• Conferences (1)
• Culture (3)
• Grading (5)
• In the real world (5)
• Management (11)
• Testing (6)
• University (44)
• Activities (13)
• Courses (12)
• ELT university society (8)
• Grammar and vocabulary (10)
• daily workload (8)
• methodology (25)
• publications and research (5)
• rants (22)
• research (9)
• the political side (17)
• the students (25)
• what you didn't know... (13)
• working conditions (9)
• contracts (3)
• foreigners in Japan (10)
• internationalization (5)
• theory (6)

• A very brief blueprint for Japanese university English programs
• Why I never teach grammar tenses
• Fixing poor student study habits: Notes to self
• A companion piece to "Face Value Not Enough for Choosing Vocabulary" -Daily Yomiuri article of May 03rd
• Feedback on feedback
• Two mini entries: 1. Grammar, plurality, agreement and 2. Formalized brainstorming
• 1. The image of MEXT and 2. Learning from open-ended conversation tasks
• (1) Japanese English teacher stereotypes and (2) boring academic journal writing
• The Daily Yomiuri column (and two more grammar puzzles)
• Two grammar puzzles; Plus- What’s so good about working at a university; Plus- the reason older Japanese professors (supposedly) teach teacher-centered lecture-based lessons revealed!

• A very brief blueprint for Japanese university English programs
  
• Why I never teach grammar tenses
  
• Fixing poor student study habits: Notes to self
    - Mark Howarth
    - dhez abayari
    - Mike Guest
  
• A companion piece to "Face Value Not Enough for Choosing Vocabulary" -Daily Yomiuri article of May 03rd
  
• Feedback on feedback
    - Mark Hunter
    - Mike Guest
    - Mark Howarth
    - Colin Skeates
    - Mike Guest
    - Julian Bamford
    - Bernie Panzo
  
• Two mini entries: 1. Grammar, plurality, agreement and 2. Formalized brainstorming
    - Kevin Ryan
    - Kevin Ryan
    - Mark Hunter
    - Mike Guest
    - Yasumasa Arai
    - Mike Guest
    - Mark Howarth
    - Mike Guest
  
• 1. The image of MEXT and 2. Learning from open-ended conversation tasks
    - Peter Parise
  
• (1) Japanese English teacher stereotypes and (2) boring academic journal writing
    - Mark Hunter
    - Greg Goodmacher
    - Bernie Panzo
  
• The Daily Yomiuri column (and two more grammar puzzles)
    - Harry Harris
    - greg
    - Mike Guest
  
• Two grammar puzzles; Plus- What’s so good about working at a university; Plus- the reason older Japanese professors (supposedly) teach teacher-centered lecture-based lessons revealed!
    - Walter
    - Mike Guest
    - Walter
    - Naomi
    - Mike Guest
    - Matt