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by sendaiben
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Jazz English
Published by Compass, Jazz English is a speaking textbook for lower-intermediate students. It works very well with junior high school students that have been studying for a while and are ready to take things to the next level in terms of speaking, as well as with high school and I imagine lower level university students. I have only used the first textbook, so this review does not address Jazz English 2, nor the companion workbook (which I am going to try soon).
The textbook consists of ten main units and three supplementary ones, with all units following the same pattern: new vocabulary, conversation prompt questions, a dialogue, a short reading section, a crossword to practice the vocabulary, a short reading task, exercises to support speaking, and a final speaking activity.
The focus of the book is for students to develop more autonomy while speaking, and to try to have longer and more complex conversations. It does this very well, at least in my experience, with students that have a solid base of vocabulary and English exposure, and who are motivated to improve their conversational skills. Our ‘advanced’ classes, consisting of junior high and high school students that have been studying for four or more years took to it very well.
This has been a real find for us this year, and I wholeheartedly recommend it for classes similar to the one described above. The course requires a lot of student input, so this book would not work well with unmotivated or reluctant learners.
Anybody else using Jazz English?
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Home Run Lesson
I just finished teaching a home run lesson (strange thing to say, as I am from the UK and don’t even understand how to play baseball) and am now compelled to write about it.
From this semester I have started teaching a class in a computer lab (you can read about the disastrous second lesson here). Today was a very different experience.
We had another tough class last week, where I gave the students too much work to do in too short a time. This week I wanted to give them a break, and put together something a bit lighter.
You can see the full lesson plan on my teaching blog.
This class has been weird for me. Partly it’s because of the physical properties of the computer lab, where students are much further away and more inaccessible than I am used to. Partly it’s the dynamics of the class, where I communicate with the students via blog, notebook comments, and email. And partly it’s because I have never taught this particular course before, so I’m making it up as I go along.
Today we explored a theme that I am very interested in having students think about. Part language identity poll and part wake-up call, the class examines Japanese speakers of English and asks the students to consider where they would fall on a scale ranging from non-English user to native-like speaker.
It seems I got the timing right this week, as the students all finished on time, but what really blew me away were the comments. I’m going to post a few below. The brackets show comments that were in Japanese originally. Translations are mine and may be inaccurate 🙂
Today’s work was good. I think about why we learn English again. I want to train my English skill, especially listening and speaking skill.
(I noticed that my English is really poor. I want to be able to understand spoken English at the very least. I’ll need English once I start working, so I want to get better at it while I am still a student)Â
Today,my motivation rised. I want to become well to speak English like them.In the future, I would like to interview without an interpreter.
It is good for me to see Japanese-speaker in the various phases.I think I am in no English, especially listening, so I will study English everyday and improve my English skill.
(I was completely shocked. I think I will study English more. Thank you)
It was nice to know a few Japanese who has different English skills. I noticed be able to speak English fluently is pretty hard.
Most students said similar things, which made me incredibly happy. My goal for this class was to get students thinking about why they might be studying English, and motivate them to push a little harder.
Now, this lesson is by no means perfect, and I’m already thinking about how to update and improve it, but I wanted to share it as it went down so well.
Has anyone done anything similar?
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by sendaiben
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Independent study in a computer lab (my steep learning curve starts here!)
I started teaching in a computer lab for the first time this semester. It’s been a bit traumatic so far, as the classroom dynamic changes a lot, but I’m enjoying the challenge so far.
Yesterday we had our first proper class, and I decided to run it as an independent study session to allow students to familiarize themselves with some useful online tools. There were 35 2nd-year non-English majors in the class, and their English ability and familiarity with computers varied wildly. You can see my lesson briefing on my teaching blog here.
The lesson was partly successful, but I can see how to make it better and was very excited by the potential of using a blog or website to communicate with students. Here are my major impressions of the class:
- I tried to do far too much. None of the students had enough time to finish, and that was very harmful to the classroom atmosphere and their feelings towards the course. This is the #1 thing I would change about the lesson
- Only a couple of students asked questions/for help. Need to spend more time getting the class comfortable with calling me over to help with problems
- Unforeseen technical problems reared their ugly heads: the NY Times website does not allow popjisyo to load individual articles (something I only noticed when a student pointed it out) and the edublogs comment feature is a bit too aggressive in its attempts to deter spambots. Both of these caused a lot of frustration to my students
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New (Academic) Year’s Resolutions
Now that we are two three months into 2010 2012 (can you tell when I started writing this post?), it seems like a good time to think about new year resolutions. I didn’t make any specific ones this year, but I would like to make some for the next academic year.
In Japan the academic year runs from April to March, and at universities at least classes finish in February, allowing teachers some much-needed downtime to do admin, write papers, and think about next year’s classes.
So what am I going to focus on next year?
One of my priorities as a teacher and learner is effectiveness, or maximising results. I want to continue making my classes as effective as possible. I define effectiveness as the amount of learning over a certain time.
For my university classes, I am working off the following assumptions:
1. my students have already studied enough grammar
2. we only have a maximum of 22 hours together
3. my students actually want to learn English
4. most of my students don’t know how to get better at English
5. there are things I can teach my students that will help them improve their English
6. tests and quizzes, while very useful for assigning letter grades, are not very helpful
I am going to be teaching the following classes next year:
Reading
Communication
Listening
Presentation
I have already submitted my syllabi and know more or less what we are going to be doing, but I would be very interested to hear any advice or ideas about what I should do in each of these. I’ll be posting the contents later in the week. Please comment below.
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English teachers aren’t really teachers, are they?
This is something I have been thinking about for a while now.
I was just drafting this post when I saw this link by Steve ‘the Linguist’ Kaufmann (NB: I started writing this post three months ago).
I’m not sure that we EFL teachers are actually teachers.
After all, we are in charge of helping learners become proficient in a language. I see this as a skill to be practiced rather than a set of knowledge to be taught. I have always compared language learning to sports, and described what learners should be doing in terms of practice and training. The sports analogy seems to work very well:
1. some people are naturally better at sports/languages than others
2. anyone can get better at sports /languages through practice
3. formally studying sports/languages is of limited use on its own, although it can help if done in conjunction with practice
4. being good at one sport/language will often help you with another one
5. if you want to get better at a sport/language, you should aim to do meaningful practice every day
6. training equipment will help you improve at a sport/language, but is no substitute for practice
7. drills can be helpful, but you also need to practice under realistic conditions if you want to get better at a sport/language
You can probably make similar analogies to playing a musical instrument, or producing art.
The point is, if we are coaches rather than teachers, don’t we need to re-examine our teaching situation?
Are formal classes, exams, class assignments, and grades appropriate ways to help our students master the skill of English language use (as opposed to the academic equivalent knowledge), or are they actually counter-productive?
Now, most of us are restrained by our work situations: we can’t abolish classes or grades, but perhaps there is some way we can change our classes to make them more practical. I’ll be thinking about that in the new academic year, starting in April here in Japan.