[ LLL SIG Website ][ LLL SIG Publications ][ This Issue's Contents ]

TOLd You So!

Volume 3, Issue 2 [August, 2007]
 

Feature Article
My Learning Challenge: A program of learner-set objectives with Japanese culture center adult students

By Amanda Harlow

We have been meeting every Tuesday afternoon for four years: six Japanese women and I. Their English does not improve much from year to year because they do not study much outside class, but we do have fun together. Every year, the manager of NHK Culture Center in Shin-Sapporo asks me to choose a new textbook to show to prospective students, and I head directly for Kinokuniya bookstore.

We have used Side by Side and Interchange. Students have practiced ordering in restaurants and giving advice. They have done storytelling and worksheets. Since this group of women rarely if ever goes abroad, they do not actually need English. The students, usually wives, mothers, and grandmothers aged 45 to 70, come together for social reasons and to keep their interest in English alive.

Thumbing through possible textbooks, I wonder if we really need further practice with dialogs along the lines of "Two steaks and a green salad, please." Try something different? Yes, oh yes please! And in April 2006 we did try something different. As an outgrowth of my reading for my distance master's degree, I had become interested in self-directed learning and goal-setting. Therefore, I decided to see if my learners would like to play a greater role in choosing classroom activities using learner-set objectives. To this end, I set up a project which I called My Learning Challenge.

Background

Adult educators in Western countries have been discussing the merits of self-direction for adult learners for decades. Table 1 highlights some major issues.

Table 1. Major Issues in Self-Direction for Adult Learners

Author Date Focus
Nunan 1988 better suited to adult learning styles
Nunan 1988 a necessity to realize learning beyond the classroom
Hiemstra & Brockett 1994 adults prefer to take responsibility for their own learning
Brookfield 1995 a response to inherent adult self-awareness
Brophy 1998 a professional duty of an educator
Dornyei 2001 a self-motivating factor

Many types of learners have been studied, among whom are immigrants, professionals in need of retraining, and educated retirees in Western countries learning investment and health-related skills. In light of these varied adult learner populations, the cultural aspects of self-directed learning have been debated. Some general concerns are whether the concept of self-directed learning is ethnocentric and whether Asian students have an inherent need for self-direction.

McDevitt (2004) questions whether teachers and students might develop their own kind of interculture. Brookfield (1986) asserts that goal-setting may not always be appropriate since teacher guidance often may be necessary when learners are unfamiliar with the material. Some researchers feel that goal-oriented learning reduces incidental learning. Certain experts have reported that their students felt uncomfortable when asked to be more autonomous. Brookfield's (1986) graduate adult education course class (p. 111) and Nunan's (1992) description of Marzia in Budd and Wright's puzzled Cambridge First Certificate class offer some lighter insights.

Dornyei and Csizer (1998) and Dornyei (2001) discussed the use of short-term goals to maintain motivation. It is argued that adult non-accredited learning is so devoid of rewards that learners may need goal setting and achievement markers to maintain their interest in the subject matter beyond its social offerings.

Life is full of ongoing self-assessments. For example, I love to ski and, at the bottom of the slope, I might engage in self-assessment by saying to myself, "Hmm. I did that a little better today than I did last year. Should I perhaps start bending my knees more?" Brookfield says this quality of critical reflection is inherent in adults. I wondered whether critical reflection might be applied to my English classes.

Setting Up

My learners agreed to alternate regular textbook classes with challenge classes. Easy True Stories was chosen as the textbook because one unit can be completed in a single class. For the challenge classes, I prepared B5-sized plastic folder booklets and fit them with pages divided into horizontal boxes, with a box for the "Challenge" and three smaller boxes for "I did it," "Did it well," and "Did it great!" I also included some examples, written in Japanese, of different types of challenges: "I want to talk about my garden" (conversational); "I want to check how to use the article a and the and write four examples" (grammar); "I want to send an e-mail to Amanda in English" (application); and "I want to talk about Japanese food in English" (vocabulary).

Explaining to the Learners

I gave the learners a two-page English/Japanese handout with suggested discussion topics concerning English learning and textbooks and an explanation of how My Learning Challenge might work. There was nervous silence rather than discussion and, although some learners asked questions about My Learning Challenge, others seemed ready to panic.

Finally, I wrote "Write about my life story" on the board and pointed out that, since everyone had done this successfully in the previous term, it could be a "finished" learning challenge. Everyone dutifully recorded this in their booklets. Then I passed around stamps so that learners could stamp each other's "achievement boxes," at which time the mood shifted from panic to pleasure as learners began stamping and laughing. We then added another "finished" challenge to the booklet. For homework, I asked learners to think of their own My Learning Challenge for the next challenge class in two weeks' time. I went home exhausted, wondering how my introduction of learning objectives had gone so wrong and what would happen the next time.

Take Off

In fact, I didn't have to wait two weeks to find out what would happen.

Teacher Diary 18/04/06
Oh my god! We did it! They came all prepared with challenges and wanted to do them and help each other. It was the most amazing thing.
cI noticed they'd all brought their booklets to class and during warm up S3 said she'd been to a concert in her town and she'd met a German clarinet player - and she'd wanted to talk to him. But she didn't know how to start the conversation, so she'd said nothing. "I want to know conversation start - I wrote here" she said, waving the MLC booklet at me. With that everyone else opened their books revealing that they too had written themselves challenges since last week - mostly two or three - S7 had actually written about 8!
So I abandoned my lesson plan - nice safe reassuring text book based - and we set sail into a learning objectives lesson.

My Learning Challenge Develops Over Time

The pattern established in the first class in April, where students prepared a written report at home and presented it in class, changed and developed over time. During April, reports were done in groups of three, and I visited each of the two groups to offer help. By May, students expressed their eagerness to share their challenges with the entire class. Each student usually took 10 to 15 minutes, and I tried to minimize my comments in deference to peer support, where one person called the Grammar Queen explained the Past Perfect and another person called the Vocab Queen shared her inexhaustible list of alternative words.

Challenges were written into the booklets using a mix of English and Japanese, and there was also a mix of self-, peer-, and teacher-stamping of achievement boxes.

What they chose to do was fascinating. During Week One, a rather shy student wrote, "I want to order food in a restaurant" and acted this out with the help of two classmates. Apart from this, however, there was no role-playing based on dialogs. In retrospect, it seems that most textbook dialogs must have been unbearably boring for the students. There were a few challenges relating to grammar and vocabulary. But, overwhelmingly, there was a splendid variety of personal stories and interests, including a book report on Narnia, feelings about reading Gone With the Wind, The Tale of Guri and Gura (in English), Takuboku's poem, a news story about a dog shown on TV the previous night, a salmon and herbs recipe, yoga in English (Parts I-III), bicycle insurance (in English), my husband and I went mountain-climbing, my garden and seeding plans, and planning my son's wedding.

After I reminded students that challenges could take many forms, reports on children's books, songs, translations of poems, e-mails to me, an opportunity to talk with foreigners at a hotel, and reading a story in English all were entered in their booklets. Emotion became part of the class as learners shared their lives. One student movingly described how scarce books were in wartime, and another tearfully related her brother's sudden hospitalization.

The Good Points

1. It was fun.

The textbook classes seemed flat in comparison with the challenge classes. We learned and shared far more than we had in the past four years. Even I accepted a challenge and managed to read the opening pages of a classic Japanese children's book to the class amid laughter and applause.

2. The three shiest students blossomed.

Despite a lot of initial nervousness, these learners exhibited real personal growth in confidence during the project. This translated into better English usage. Sometimes the difference was miniscule, and, of course, I could be guilty of an over-hopeful analysis. But I felt it. A student who had been stuck at the telegraphic stage began to use short sentences and sent me two e-mails in English. Another progressed, over a period of two months, from speaking in single sentences to translating 15 pages of her favorite childhood storybook.

3. Students shared their life and English interests.

My Learning Challenge gave a legitimate place in class to topics, such as gardening, well-loved poems, and exercise regimes, heretofore relegated to the "How was your week?" warm-up slot. Students also explored areas of English they were interested in. For example, a year later, one student is still collecting examples of phrasal verbs in a notebook.

The Bad Points

1. Bad pronunciation and overambitious reports

In preparing for their challenge, some students inevitably relied too much on dictionaries and came to class with presentations they could hardly read and others could not understand. I was forced to repeat, rephrase, and write sections of some reports on the board.

2. Over-reliance of the rewritten report format

Despite my explanation that challenges could take many forms, the class seemed to rely more on homework-prepared challenges rather than on impromptu in-class challenges. I am hoping to encourage more spontaneous English by having students throw a big die with different challenges on each face, a favorite strategy on of Japanese game shows.

3. Learners like teacher correction

During presentations, peer advice took precedence, and I only corrected English that impeded understanding. Some students wanted more correction, while others dreaded any correction at all. Having students submit their reports after class gave me the chance to correct their written English according to their wishes.

Onwards - April 2007

Students voted to continue My Learning Challenge classes the next year. One student, however, dropped the class, most likely the one who reported on an anonymous questionnaire that she preferred a textbook because My Learning Challenge classes were too difficult while conceding that the experience was useful.

This year, we are continuing the format of alternating textbook and challenge classes, but with some changes. The first change was that students requested that, for the My Learning Challenge classes, I choose one topic per month and that the second topic be a free choice. This was the perfect opportunity to use the spontaneous dice challenge for the second My Learning Challenge class. A second change was that students requested that I myself stamp the achievement boxes. It appears that stronger students value my appraisal more than that of their peers, and weaker students value my encouragement.

Conclusion

It was stressful, but so, so worth it. It has given this group a much stronger focus and shared interest. It has pushed shier students to engage in a very supportive atmosphere. Most of all, I did not feel as though I were alone in deciding what happened with this class because I knew six very capable women were happy and willing to pitch in.

I debated trying this strategy with another class but decided against it. Some of the class members attend principally for social reason, and I do not think they would rise to the challenge. But I am surprised at what a difference it has made to the Tuesday class, and, with the help of students, I hope we will continue to make our My Learning Challenges grow. If you would like to know more about the My Learning Challenge program we did here at NHK in Shin-Sapporo please contact me for more details.

Bibliography