Living with Radiation

Today I found another deranged note had been pushed under my door. I'm putting this out there in the hope someone can identify the writer and get them the psychiatric help they need. I'd also like to know how they got that photo of my wife....

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Hello Kitty leads the way

I'm often asked whether Japan's safe. [<- Try clicking the links.] The short answer is: no, it's dangerous. If you're caught out in the rain without protection, you can be dead within hours. But it's still a fascinating land of contrasts and there's money to be made, so if you fancy a visit don't let the radiation deter you. Do as the survivors do, and you too can make it through your time in the land of the rising Sieverts without knocking too many years off your life expectancy.

Tip 1: Wear your protective gear when you go out.

Not part of the solution

DISCLAIMER

None of the following is true.  I just found it scrawled on a piece of paper slipped under my door.   I publish it for curiosity's sake, but take my advice and don't believe a word of it.  It's just a long, bad-tempered rant from a deranged individual who has clearly never seen the excellent teaching practice going on in real classrooms.

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To-odo ando Furoggu wento fo-o a rongu wo-oku.

If you can read that sentence, you've been in Japan way too long.

Back Open for Business

It's the summer holidays, and I seem to be doing nothing but write, but it's all on other people's websites!  Debito Arudo, English Language & Usage, Dave Sperling, et al are getting all the benefit of my hard work.  Not to mention dear, sweet, Kirsty, who gets all my juices flowing with such interesting questions.

So henceforth, if I see something I wanna' write about, I'll be sure to blog about it too.  I'll start by posting a few things I've got stashed away somewhere.

TTFN!

Peter

Corporatese Exam

“Our proactive reengineering initiative for training is going to be championed by our best-of-breed service partners, whose experiential…”

One of my students, who works at a multinational company, gets emails like this all the time. She brings them in, I put them on the whiteboard, and we go through them line-by-line, trying to figure out what the hell her boss meant.

Said multinational is paying for the lessons, and they asked me to set an end of year exam. I wanted to make it a test of the English they actually use so, for this student, I based her test on a genuine corporate email that came my way. How would you do?

Should we set homework?

This is a response to the article Homework: Winning the Learning Battle, Losing the Learning War by Pamela J. Stewart at The Huffington Post. She argues that, in the long term, homework does more harm than good because it kills the love of learning:

Who else was an avid reader until the inception of mandatory “summer reading”? Who had an aptitude for math and numbers until the cryptic or rote worksheets started coming home in droves? And who couldn't be kept from writing little stories on any paper within reach until writing became an arduous task[…]?

I wish I could agree, but there is a problem. I am in the business of teaching skills, not facts, and skills take practice. Can I give my students all the practice they need in lesson time? I wish!

For me, the problem isn’t with homework per se; it's with assignments like this:

Complete these sentences.  Use the verb like or likes:
I: I    like    cheese.
you: You            cheese.
he: He            cheese.
she: She            cheese.
it: It            cheese.
the mouse: The mouse            cheese.
we:                       cheese.
they:                                 .

You can buy exercise books full of this stuff: two pages per grammar point. You can set them to do in class or for homework. They are designed to be as easy as possible, and yet some kids still write nonsense like:

the mouse: The mouse    like    cheese.
we:    like       like    cheese.
they:    like       like       like   .

I know they can do better than that. Even if they don’t understand, they can at least raise a hand. But that's not the point: they’re just trying to get the whole tedious business over with. They are not (please forgive the buzzword) engaged.

In contrast, do music teachers ever say, “For homework, play this piece through ten times, without paying the slightest attention to the sounds you’re making.” I don’t think so. I think they say, “If you practise hard, you can master this piece by next week. This passage is difficult, so you’ll need to spend a lot of time on it. Here's how it should sound….” They would not accept the attitude of the student who mindlessly wrote    like    ten times.

Daniel Pink famously wrote that the keys to motivation are: autonomy, mastery and purpose. If we give them drudge work, they become drudges. We need to give them engaging exercises — maybe a puzzle to solve — and set clear, realistic goals for levels of attainment. We can give guidance on how to get there, but with the understanding that, ultimately, they are responsible for their own learning outcomes.

So much for lofty ideals. As a humble Assistant Language Teacher (emphasis: Assistant) of only modest experience, what can I do?

One thing I have tried to do is devise interesting worksheets: puzzles, quizzes and so on. Looking back I notice that, quite by chance, some of these worksheets also give students a sense of progress and mastery. When I look at the end-of-year exam scripts, I notice that these are the ones that seem to have got best results. So that’s something I can do more of.

The other I can do is: let students know that I expect engagement. I think there are cultural issues here. While mastery and perfection are enormously valued in Japan, in day-to-day matters it seems that quantity of effort — or the appearance thereof — is valued over outcome. The kid who wrote    like    ten times is all too often allowed to believe that he has done something of value. Well, I guess I can call them out on that. As one teacher wrote on Facebook:

[…] if I suspect completing without engagement … I ask students: “Do you want to skip homework then, because there is no point you doing it like this.” They’ll almost 100% of the time say, “No, I want to do better.” and get on it….

As for me, as a schoolboy I was the ultimate homework shirker. But when I did make an effort I was always totally engaged, which I guess is what got me into University. I can’t say whether my case supports or detracts from Stewart’s argument, but I think it shows there are different levels of disengagement.