August 2012 blogging challenge
The last few months have been very busy for me, and I have neglected this blog terribly.
I just finished my grades for this semester at the university, so I am looking forward to a couple of months working on projects that had been pushed onto the back burner. One of those projects is this blog.
In order to get back into the swing of things, I am going to post something every weekday this month, starting with this post today.
Extensive Reading Seminar in Nagoya, July 1st
I will be presenting at the ER Seminar in Nagoya this weekend. Details and schedule in the link below:
I’ll be presenting in Japanese about how to sell extensive reading to students, parents, teachers, and administrators, at 13:15 in room 507. Hope to see some of you there!
(and this time I am going to try not to forget my video camera)
JALT Pan-SIG Conference 2012: Hiroshima University June 16th and 17th
I’ll be attending and presenting at the JALT Pan-SIG Conference both days next weekend:
Please come and say hi.
I’ll be presenting in Japanese on ‘how to start up an extensive reading program’ in room K104 on Saturday afternoon (14:10-14:40).
I’ll try to post a video of the talk after the event.
curriculum expectations Language learning self-study speaking teaching teaching culture technology university
by sendaiben
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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?
E-mobile: avoid
This is only likely to be of interest to a few people in Japan, but I am one of them so I am going to go ahead and publish it.
I just got off the phone with an e-mobile supervisor called Mr. Fukunaga following a mostly polite conversation about their contract and renewal policies.
I first got a contract with e-mobile in 2008, when they were aggressively subsidizing new laptops if bought with a two-year wireless data modem contract. I enjoyed the laptop briefly, found the usb wireless modem useful for a year or so, then wireless networks appeared everywhere in my life and I forgot about it.
In 2010 e-mobile automatically renewed my contract. During a contract, you cannot cancel it without paying a 10,000 yen penalty fee. This is not particularly unusual with mobile contracts, but e-mobile ups the ante by doing the following:
1. refusing to send you monthly statements unless you pay them (and not offering email ones)
2. refusing to let you cancel your contract except during a one-month window in the year it is up for renewal
Mr. Fukunaga explained that as e-mobile ‘has so many subscribers’ they could not guarantee that they would remember not to auto-renew my contract for another two years, so I have to remember to call them back between the 1st and 30th of November. If I fail to do so, they will gladly renew my contract again for a further two years without telling me.
This is just obnoxious. Their business model seems to be based on signing people up for contracts, hoping they will forget about them, and enforcing draconian cancellation penalties if and when they do remember.
At first they were one of the only options for wireless data, but now that mi-fi devices are everywhere I would avoid this company like the plague. It probably didn’t help that it took me three tries and twenty minutes to get through their automated phone centre to talk to a person.
Anyone have anything good to say about e-mobile?