Tag: speaking

  • Speaking in the New Normal 2

    Still time to register and join us!!

    Hey there, I’m Erin Noxon, a public high school teacher in Kyoto. I teach 16 conversational English classes a week. No grammar, no reading, just talking, lots of talking and listening.

    While many of my friends around the world were teaching online for the past year, I’ve been in the classroom, face to face teaching active speaking classes since June 1, 2020. When Twitter was exploding as people were fighting about what was causing COVID to spread so rapidly (and some were blaming English and English classes!) we were developing ways to keep talking and having an active class, so as not to stop the learning growth of a year of students, while making sure they were safe.

    I’d like to show you in detail how we set up our class safely, what activities we did, how we arranged the physical space, and what we demanded of each other and our students.

    I will say that not one of my students became infected, which could have been helped in part by our efforts but also included a lot of luck, I know. So while I can’t claim that running your class in this way will keep everyone from getting sick, I can say that it will help limit the chances of infection! That’s all I can offer.

    Please come join us on the 25th. I’ll show you what we did, and we can have a discussion about what we all can do to continue to be safe moving forward.Register in advance for this meeting:https://umuc.zoom.us/…/tJEvfuqtpj0sGdeZQ4xXaVXe…After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the meeting.

  • Roundtable Discussion: Speaking in the New Normal

    Date: February 28, 2021

    Time: 1:30pm

    Early registration available on the Facebook Event Page

    https://www.facebook.com/events/171599797673696/

    Where has 2021 brought your classroom? Have you continued online, gone back to F2F? Mix of both? Have you been F2F all along? What has been your approach to speaking activities online or in the classroom with COVID protocols in place? Any life-saving hacks, tips, and tricks you have to share for the new school year? Teachers of all levels and backgrounds are welcome and encouraged to participate and present for Iwate-Aomori JALT’s upcoming roundtable discussion. We want to hear from university teachers, secondary and primary JTEs, and ALTs!

    For this event, we hope to have two designated roundtable discussions about how speaking activities are managed in different teaching contexts so as to ensure as many people benefit and take away from this event as much as possible, just in time for the new school year. 

    Of course any participant can chime in throughout these discussions, but if you have something specific you’d like to share that’s been working well in your classroom, please sign-up for your context category below! If you teach and can contribute to multiple contexts, you can sign up for all of them, or just the one you prefer. 

    Roundtable Discussion 

    13:40-15:00 Primary, Secondary, & University F2F

    NameMain topic/ tools used
    Jason HillRisk management in the classroom. My experience with dealing with Covid-19 fears when online isn’t an option (ES)
    John HozackReading discussions, getting students to delve deeper into stories/ Google CR + F2F (JHS kids)
    Evan GarciaAmending speaking activities: How to ensure communicative language practice F2F during Covid-19 (JHS)
    Parvathy RamachandranStrategies for communicating / speaking in the F2F classroom (SHS & Uni)
    Erin NoxonInstructional design for a blended learning communicative English class with shared devices and the need to have discussion based classes, all before and after lockdown (SHS)

    15:10-16:20 University Online/ Hybrid 

    NameMain topic/ tools used
    Andrew CaldwellCollaborative Activities using Moodle and Zoom
    Ivan LombardiCommunication and Public speaking with Google Classroom and Google Meet
    Revathi ViswanathanDigital tools for Speaking Practice
    Jason PipeEncouraging Critical Thinking in Academic Writing
    Barry Grossman A ‘New-Normal’ Curriculum for Speaking and More: Anime-based Classwork and AI Video Platform Homework

  • Revisiting Mechanical Speaking Practices – Emiko Kaneko

    IMG_5595 On Sunday, we had a visit from Emiko Kaneko from the University of Aizu, in Aizu Wakamatsu, Fukushima. She was in Morioka to give a talk about mechanical speaking practices such as repetition and drilling. Traditionally, when we think of these practices, we are reminded of endless sentence and vocabulary lessons at grade school. While there has been a push to more hands-on learning with foreign speakers, Emiko believes that there is still a need for more explicit learning techniques, and studies have shown that they are effective in improving the students language ability. She added that not all students have access to native language speakers or the ability to travel overseas.

    Emiko’s talk focused on how educators traditionally use mechanical speaking practices, and how we can adjust the way we use them when teaching lower level students who aren’t able to generate their own conversation patterns during class. Emiko added that generally, Japanese students can be shy around fellow students that are not in their peer group and it is difficult for them to even make small talk in Japanese.  She lists a number of teacher directed techniques such as shadowing, read-and-look-up and mimicking, and shows how these techniques have had a positive impact on the language creation abilities in students.

    Emiko wanted to emphasize that language acquisition is something that still requires a lot of time and patience. Thousands of hours are necessary to gain fluency. However, she is confident that mechanical speaking techniques are still some of our best tools for getting our students up to fluent levels. We want to thank Emiko for taking the time to come up and share her research with us.

    Reported by Jason Hill

    All photography ©2014 Jason Hill