English-language learning experience - Essay Example

 English-language learning experience This essay examines my personal English-language learning experience at Iwaki Koukou Junior High School in Naruto, Japan and through an examination of communicative competence in a number of related research articles, offers a modified lesson for more effective language education at the school. An examination of my experience at Iwaki Koukou is contained (2.1), along with a prototypical daily English lesson within the school (2.2). The article then examines various research reports in the study of communicative competence theory (3.1) and applies their essential principals to modify the lesson plan previously discussed (3.2). I began formal English-language instruction upon entering chugakko -- junior high school -- at age twelve. The school I attended, Iwaki Koukou, was in the prefecture of Tokushima, Japan in the city of Naruto. It is a medium sized city, with most families owning large spaces of land relative to more urbanized environments. However, my class sizes were very large, with on average thirty-forty students per class and one home room teacher who also took on administrative functions as a counselor to students. With the large class sizes, discipline was strict and I recall a number of occasions where teachers required misbehaving students to stand next to their desk for the remainder of the class period. Much of my educational experience mirrored that of my American counterparts, as after World War II the Japanese government adopted education reforms in an effort to ‘democratize’ Japan. The school day lasted from 7:00 AM until 3:00 PM, with many students attending private Eikaiwa’s after school to further hone English skills. Clubs and after school activities in the United States – student council, drama, journalism -- were a part of the daily curriculum at Iwaki Koukou and students were required to become a part of one of these organizations. While Western principals of education have had great influence on Japan, many of the Confucian principals that once categorized Japanese education still exist on foundational levels. For instance, beginning at the junior high level students were required to wear tsume-en, school uniforms that consisted of navy blue slacks and a button down shirt with an emblem of my school’s name 岩城高校 (Iwaki Koukou) on the front. Other regulations consisted of restricting hair length and how much money you could spend on snacks. I even recall having a teacher confront me because my socks weren’t regulation colors. The school week ran from Monday-Saturday and only included a month off for summer break. The large emphasis on regulation and education, with students attending school nearly year round, and the popularity of after school lessons, resulted in many of my classmates loosing interests in lessons and a notable majority skipping school altogether. The strict guidelines weren’t confined to only student conduct but also permeated the nature of lessons and the ultimate goals for education. Differing from the United States, entrance to Japanese high schools are determined on an acceptance basis and it seemed that many of my courses in middle school were geared towards cramming in as much information as possible so students would pass their entrance examinations. The English-language textbook we used was called New Horizon and it focused on grammar and vocabulary lessons, with different characters from around the world – there was a Canadian and an Australian in the book who would converse with Japanese learners. It contained a different lesson for each of the three years of chugakko. We had daily quizzes on various aspects of grammar and then a weekly examination that included a vocabulary and an essay portion. English lessons were structured in a very strict and rigid manner, with the intention of ‘educating’ the students with as much information, in as small a time frame, as possible. This resulted in lessons being drilled into students, with rote memorization of vocabulary and grammar a major component of language lessons. With the large class sizes, a typical lesson involved the teacher giving definitions to words and students and then students being broken into small groups and asked to drill each other on these definitions. Oftentimes, we were asked to record our classmates’ responses to the vocabulary questions and write the number they answered wrong on a piece of paper and turn it in for their daily quiz grade. It was a highly efficient means of learning textbook vocabulary. When we had our exam at the end of the week, we were oftentimes able to identify 20-25 words by definition. Another portion of the class consisted of lessons that would cover specific issues in grammar such as asking questions in English, saying please and thank you, or introducing yourself to others. The teacher would then ask students to respond to questions in class by the formula the lesson covered. For instance, the teacher might ask a student what they liked to eat. The student would then be required to respond, “I prefer to eat…” The essential goal of the lesson was that the students understood the grammatical formulation, ‘I prefer to…’ and were then able to substitute a food vocabulary word into the matrix. The lesson might also require students to recite certain elements of grammar that we covered in class. This involved the teacher saying in Japanese question words, and then requiring the students’ to formulate the equivalent in English. Students would speak in unison, “Who”, “What”, or “Where”. Through this rote memorization and recitation, it was understood that we would learn and remember the correct ways to use the question words. This lesson was continued by breaking students into groups and assigning a listening table to each group. We were required to listen to the speakers on the tape and then answer reading comprehension questions based on the conversations. For the exam, the teacher would often play the tape and we would have to answer similar questions. Another section would require students to open their books to a certain paragraph that contained missing parts. The missing parts corresponded to the vocabulary and grammar lessons of the day. The teacher would go around the classroom asking students to read the corresponding sentence and fill in the blanks by speaking aloud to the class. As students responded she would tell them if they answered the question correctly and also correct their pronunciation. At the end of the week, the exam would have incomplete sentences where a specific part of the sentence would be left out and we would have to fill it in with either the vocabulary word or correct grammatical phrase. 3.1 Perhaps appropriately, research on communicative competence differs greatly in its exact definition, with each offering slight variations of perspective. In Fundamental Considerations of Language Testing, Bachman offers an extremely dichotomous definition of communicative competence. He begins by stating that effective communication begins with a Language Competence phase and then filters down to a Strategic, Psychophysiological, and ultimately contextual scenario. Within Language Competence, there are then Organizational and Pragmatic subsections, which are further divided into Grammatical, Textual, Illocutionary, and Sociolinguistic. The absolute nature of these categories are debatable and Bachman even acknowledges the definitions exist, “…at the expense of making them appear as if they are separate and independent of each other (Bachman 86).” In large part, Bachman is making the case that separate components of language exist that can’t be measured in objective, starkly grammatical terms. That while Organizational Competence, or “those abilities involved in producing…grammatically correct sentences” is a major component of language, communicative competence functions to illuminate the necessity of teaching, “…language users and the context of communication” – that is, pragmatic concerns (Bachman 87). The issue becomes particularly muddied when discussing Strategic Competence, as some researchers identify this aspect of communication as compensatory to the Linguistic and Pragmatic elements. It seems that Bachman differs from past research here in that he includes Strategic Competence in as vital a position of communication as the Pragmatic and Organizational Components. In Communicative Competence, the idea is extended to, “…cover listening and reading as well as speaking and writing (Faerch, Phillipson 169).” The article offers an example of the written elements of Strategic Competence by discussing the difficulty a Danish speaker has in deciphering a Medical textbook, not because of its grammatical or vocabulary elements, but because of the textual positioning of sentences. The author argues she has this difficulty because these are rhetorical elements that function in-addition to the lexical structure of the text. The article goes on to offer scientific evidence for the inter-dependence of linguistic and pragmatic elements of communication, with the results of this Tolerance Test indicating “that none of the components of communicative competence can be ignored (Faerch, Phillpson 176).” In identifying explicit means of instruction Communicative Language Teaching discusses competing interpretations of communicative competence. The article distinguishes between a ‘weak and ‘strong’ version of communicative language teaching, where, “the former could be described as ‘learning to use English,’ the latter entails ‘using English to learn it’ (Richard, Therdore 155).” The distinction underlies fundamental differences in theoretical understandings of communicative competence. With the ‘strong’ interpretation language is viewed from a post-structuralist lens, and exists through the “…unconscious development of the target-language system as a result of using the language for real communication (Richards, Therdore 162).” It seems that communicative competence acknowledges that there are structural components to language, but that the actual task of communication is far more complicated than the basic structural model accounts. That is, language exists in the instant of communication between the speakers, not in purely objective, grammatical form. Whereas the ‘weak’ version believes that grammar and lexicon are foundational concerns for language development and the functional component of language learning exists only to reinforce these concerns. It’s clear that the methods Iwaki KouKou Junior High School used -- directly relaying vocabulary through textbook definitions ignores standards of communicative competence. In Word Knowledge, author Cheryl Zimmerman writes, “The meaning that you assign to a new word is closely linked to what you already know…the association of words to personal experiences facilitates the learning of new information (Zimmerman 18).” That is, teachers cannot “teach” all that the students need to know about the meaning of a word, so that the lesson should ultimately allow students to negotiate word meaning through contextual and strategic means. The old vocabulary definition tests should be discarded. In its place, a daily word presentation could be instituted: Students are assigned a word and are required to explain it to the class by relating it to a personal experience or visual or verbal entity. For instance, if the word was ‘ecstatic,’ the language learner would describe a situation they felt ecstatic in, an American song that is ecstatic, and a Western picture that produces these emotions. The rest of the class could engage in the lesson and offer personal interpretations. This is ‘strong’ understanding of communicative competence and corresponds to Bachman’s Pragmatic level of competence, and also involves a strong sociolinguistic component. This lesson displaces the absolute nature of vocabulary that textbook definitions relay, and requires students to implement their pragmatic capacities for language by requiring them to use vocabulary in various contextual dimensions, and compare their efficacy with fellow students. By requiring the students to involve Western traditions of art and music it helps attune students to foreign registers and develop deep understanding of foreign sociolinguistics. Rather than requiring students to memorize grammatical elements of language and recite them for memorization, the lessons should implement more strategically competent means of pedagogy. The grammar lessons that required the class to recite particular structures of language, or fill in the blanks of paragraphs, could be realigned to require students to interact and implements their linguistic competence in functional ways. For instance, a lesson on modals could be used to illustrate a functional element of asking for advice. The students could be divided into groups of 4 to 5 members and told to think of a scenario where they need advice. The groups would then announce their issue and the other groups would be required to use modals in three sentences of advice for them. “You should buy a hose”; “You could eat something and take a walk”; “We think you should stop thinking so much.” This lesson is a ‘weak’ interpretation of communicative competence. It would eliminate ineffective, meandering classroom discussions and require everyone to participate and speak up for the activity to be complete. This develops linguistic competence through the use of modals, pragmatic competence by requiring students to negotiate the proper way to give the advice, and strategic competence by determining what advice would be helpful. The lesson could also incorporate current events or video clips to ensure that the students were developing cultural awareness. In conclusion, the difficulty of clearly defining communicative competence should be evident. The very nature of the theory can be said to defy simple written definition, as it relies heavily on the negotiation of language between speakers. It’s hoped that through this article the necessity of stopping language pedagogy through routine and memorization is strikingly evident. That the very scope of communicative competence is such a broad undertaking that progressive reform in language-learning will certainly struggle to keep up with the broad range of possibilities that this paradigm shift entails, but that through minor shifts in educational reform, like the examples given in 3.2, teachers can begin to unleash their students from the shackles of out-dated structural education. Works Cited Bachman, Lyle F. (1990), Fundamental Considerations in Language Testing. London: Oxford University Press. Faerch, C., Haastryg, K. and Phillipson, R Learners Language and Language Learning. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. Richards, Jack C. and Therdore S. Rodgers (2001), Approaches and Methods in Language Teaching, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Zimmerman, Cheryl. Word Knowledge. London: Oxford University Press, 2008. Read More