Learning Learning
学習の学習
ISSN 1882‐1103
Volume 19, No. 1 Spring 2012
Greetings ごあいさ
From the Editors Michael Mondejar and Jackie Suginaga
編集者 Michael MondejarとJackie Suginagaより
Overview of this issue 最新号について
Learner Development SIG News
学習者ディベロプメント研究部会近況報告 Andy Barfield & Richard Silver
2
3
3
Greetings from Learner Development SIG Members
LD SIGのメンバーより
New to Learner Autonomy? 自律学習は初めて?
Steven Paydon
Greetings from Bill Mboutsiadis LD SIG会員紹介:Bill Mboutsiadis
5
6
LD SIG 2011 Grant Awardees LD SIG2011年度助成金受給者
Lessons from the Advising for Language Learner Autonomy Conference
アドバイジング・フォー・ランゲージ・ラーナー・オートノミー
神田外語大学大会からの学び Ian Alexander Hurrell
Autonomy‐related Problems and Possible Solutions
自律学習に関する問題と解決の可能性 Mehmet Boyno
Reflections on Autonomy 自律学習のリフレクション Michael Wilkins
JALT 2011 Conference JALT 2011 の感想 Matthew Coomber
Feature Articles フィチャード
9
12
16
18
アーテイクルス
Developing an Online Environment to Enable the Independent Learning
of English Pronunciation 英語の発音の自主学習を可能にする
オンライン環境の開発 Mathew Porter
Private Tuition as a Learning Format for Japanese Adult Learners of L2 English
日本人成人のL2英語学習者のための学習形式としての個人教授 Lee Arnold
21
35
Voices 読者の声
Autonomy Big and Small Phil Benson, Michael Mondejar & Jackie Suginaga
42
Looking Back 報告
My Reflections of the January 29th Get‐Together
1月29日エリア・ミーティング振り返って Rachelle Jorgenson
th
Reflection on the February 19 Get–Together
2月19日エリア・ミーティングを振り返って Tomoko Kurita
49
51
Looking Forward 今後のイベント
JALTCALL Conference 2012 Darren Elliott
Nakasendo 2012 Conference Robert Moreau
JALT Pan‐SIG Conference Literacy: SIGnals of Emergence Jim Ronald
Learner Development SIG Forum at JALT2012 Bill Mboutsiadis
52
52
53
53
SIG Matters インフォメーション
財務報告 LD SIG Financial Report LD SIG treasurer LDSIG財務 Hiromi Furusawa
Contributing to Learning Learning 「学習の学習」原稿募集
54
57
JALT学習者ティヘロフメントSIGの会報
Greetings ごあいさつ
From the Editors Michael Mondejar and Jackie Suginaga
編集者 Michael MondejarとJackie Suginagaより
G
reetings all,
This issue of Learning Learning comes out a
little later than usual, and in a season of mixed
emotions. While spring is normally a time of
rebirth and renewal, of fresh starts and new
beginnings, this spring was marked by the
one-year anniversary of the Great East Japan
Earthquake,
which
ravaged the
Tohoku
region
and
continues to
cast a heavy
shadow
in
the minds and hearts of everyone in Japan.
Many of us affected by the quake have come
to reflect on our own lives and the lives of our
neighbors, and have become determined to
aid in the rebuilding efforts either directly via
volunteering or indirectly by making donations.
The theme of self-reflection connects all of the
contributions in this issue of Learning Learning.
The issue begins with an introduction to two
new SIG members, Steven Paydon and Bill
Mboutsiadis. Currently in the SIG publications
team, Steven discusses his first encounter with
learner autonomy as a child in Australia, as
well as how this experience informs his beliefs
about teaching today. Bill, the SIG Program
Coordinator, describes how principles of
learner autonomy influence his teaching beliefs
and practices.
Following the introductions are reflective
pieces by the 2011 LD SIG Grant Awardees:
Ian Alexander Hurrell, Mehmet Boyno, and
Michael Wilkins, and Matt Coomber. Ian and
Mehmet both detail their experiences at the
Advising for Language Learner Autonomy
conference, held by the IATEFL Learner
Autonomy Special Interest Group at Kanda
University of International Studies, and what
they came away with from the conference.
Michael discusses his roots and current
research in learner autonomy, as well as his
experiences
attending
the
JALT2011
Conference held in Yoyogi, Tokyo last year,
and Matthew reflects on both positive and
negative experiences at the same conference.
2 LEARNING LEARNING 19(1)
We are also happy to feature in this issue
two articles by Mathew Porter and Lee Arnold.
Mathew describes an online pronunciation
course that he designed, discussing how
successful the course was in promoting his
learners’
autonomous
acquisition
of
phonological knowledge. Lee reflects on how
adult learners in private tuition take control of
their own learning, and offers some guiding
principles for promoting learner autonomy in
this particular learning context.
Also featured in this issue is an interview with
Phil Benson, one of the plenary speakers at
JALT2011 and long-time proponent of learner
autonomy. In this interview, conducted by
Michael Mondejar and Jackie Suginaga, Phil
describes his personal journey with learner
autonomy, and the directions which it may take
in the future.
In “Looking back”, Rachelle Jorgenson, and
Tomoko Kurita
each
offer
reflections on
the Tokyo LDSIG
gettogethers that
have been held
on a monthly
basis at Teachers College in Suidobashi since
December 2011. Darren Elliott, Robert Moreau,
and Bill Mboutsiadis also preview different LD
SIG forums taking place this year.
This issue of Learning Learning reflects the cooperation of many people, and we would like to
thank in particular for their contributions and
assistance: Phil Benson, Andy Barfield,
Richard
Silver,
Steven
Paydon,
Bill
Mboutsiadis, Ian Alexander Hurrell, Mehmet
Boyno, Matthew Wilkins, Mathew Porter, Lee
Arnold,
Matthew
Coomber,
Rachelle
Jorgenson, Tomoko Kurita, Darren Elliott,
Robert Moreau, Kay Irie, Hiromi Furusawa,
Hugh Nicoll, Alison Stewart, and Fumiko
Murase. Without their invaluable help it would
not have been possible to publish this issue.
We hope that you will find something of
relevance and interest in this issue and as
always, we want to hear from you if you are
interested in writing articles, reflections, or
book
reviews,
or
working
on
the
editorial/translating team.
Newsletter of the JALT Learner Development SIG
Overview of this issue
最新号について
本号に投稿されたすべての論文・記事に共通
しているテーマはセルフ・リフレクションで
す 。 19.1 号 は 二 人 の 新 し い SIG 会 員 、 Steven
PaydonとBill Mboutsiadisの自己紹介に始ま
り 、 2011 年 度 LD SIG 助 成 金 の 三 名 の 受 給 者
( Ian Hurrell ・ Mehmet Boyno ・ Matthew
Coomber)が参加した学会を振り返り、二本の
論文へと続きます。一本目はMathew Porterが
オンライン上での発音学習について、二本目
ではLee Arnoldの成人学習者がいかに自律学
習をすることができるかについて述べていま
す。そして、LD SIGが2011年度年次大会
に基調講演者として招いたフィル・ベンソン
のインタビューをお読みください。彼自身が
今までの自律学習を巡る旅を振り返り、今後
の方向性について語っています。さらには、
Matthew Coomber ・ Rachelle ・ Jorgenson
Tomoko Kuritaによる最近のSIGの活動につい
ての報告です。そして今号の締めくくりは古
澤弘美の会計報告、Darren Elliott・Robert
Moreau・Bill Mboutsiadisによる各学会にお
けるLD SIG フォーラムについてのお知らせが
あります。巻末には学習の学習への投稿募集
とガイドラインがありますので是非お読みく
ださい。
Michael Mondejar & Jackie Suginaga
Learner Development SIG News November 2011‐April 2012
学習者ディベロプメント研究部会近況報告 2011年11月~2012年4月
T
hough the start of the new academic
year in Japan takes place in April, the LD
SIG began its new term in November,
shortly after our Annual General Meeting
(AGM) at the JALT National Conference in
Tokyo. After five years at the helm, Hugh Nicoll
stepped down at the AGM to focus more on
redeveloping the website and editing
publications. We would like to thank Hugh and
all the outgoing officers for all their efforts on
behalf of the SIG these last few years. In our
new roles as co-coordinators, together with all
the other 2012 LD SIG officers, we hope very
much to build on established successes and to
help revitalize the SIG in other areas. Several
new faces were among the 20 people who
took part in the SIG’s AGM, where we
continued the discussions about future plans
that had started over email in the weeks
immediately prior to the conference. We
welcome the further participation of other SIG
members in the committee if you are interested.
Please just let us know if you would like to take
part.
Since November, many changes have
started taking place. Kay Irie, fresh from coediting Realizing Autonomy, will be taking over
from Hiromi Furusawa as SIG treasurer this
April. Hiromi deserves special thanks for
having been so efficient and organized,
helping the SIG stay financially organised in
providing a wide array of teacher support and
conference events. Hiromi’s top-notch work
was noticed and commended by the National
Director of Treasury! Kay has been shadowing
Hiromi for the last year or so, and we hope
someone will in turn step forward and shadow
Kay. Again, if you are interested, please let
Kay or us know - thanks in advance for doing
so.
On
membership
matters,
Rachelle
Jorgenson is continuing as membership chair,
and has been joined since November by Matt
Coomber and Jeremy White. As a team, they
have been putting in place new systems for
keeping up to date membership details and for
reviewing and renewing the email lists by
which we contact you. This will, we hope, allow
better communication about SIG matters, as
well as help the SIG acknowledge and include
new and renewing members more quickly than
before. We invite your feedback on
membership matters, and any other aspect of
what the SIG is doing, and how it is working for
you.
Following the publication of Realizing
Autonomy, the publications team, led by Alison
Stewart and Masuko Miyahara, together with
Hugh Nicoll and Fumiko Murase, have been
putting forward ideas for the next project(s).
These currently include self-publishing a series
of books online. Expect to hear more about
this later in the year after the publication of a
special Learning Learning issue with the
Realizing Autonomy Proceedings. Here we
would like to thank Alison and Kay, along with
Martha Robertson, Steve Paydon and Masuko
Miyahara.
Bill Mboutsiadis took over as Programme
Chair from Richard Silver and has created a
collaborative
SIG programmes
planning
Google site which can be found via the LD SIG
website. Many people are helping Bill organize
events this year with Rob Moreau coordinating
LEARNING LEARNING 19(1) 3
JALT学習者ティヘロフメントSIGの会報
our participation at Nakasendo, Jim Ronald
with Ellen Head at the Pan-SIG Conference in
Hiroshima, and Darren Elliot at the CALL SIG
Conference in Kansai. We will have LD SIG
forums at all these events and hope to see you
at one or more of them. As well as keeping you
up to date with all of the upcoming LD SIG
events, Bill will also be organizing the Learner
Development SIG’s annual forum at JALT2012
in Hamamatsu - we applaud Bill for everything
he is doing.
At the local level, the LD SIG has been
organising get-togethers in Hiroshima, Kansai
and Tokyo, with Jim Ronald and Andrew Brady
taking the lead in Hiroshima, Ellen Head, Phil
Brown, Steve Brown and Richard Silver in
Kansai,
and
Andy
Barfield,
Rachelle
Jorgenson and Stacey Vye in Tokyo. We are
hoping too that get-togethers will soon take
shape in Nagoya, with Darren Elliott leading.
LD SIG get-togethers vary in their specific
character from one metropolitan area to
another, but, generally speaking, they are
discussion based, with those attending
exploring their learner development interests
and/or engaging in collaborative practitioner
research. Please join in this year if you are
interested.
Another committee aim since November
has been to revitalize the SIG website. New
content is continually being added to the
website about different activities and projects
that the SIG is involved in, as well as
information about SIG grants, memberships
and subscriptions. Non-JALT members can
now take part in the SIG through subscriptions,
and information about this and how to join the
SIG as a JALT member can be found on the
website. The AGM minutes from November
2011 are available there if you missed them,
and past issues of Learning Learning are also
fully accessible online. Many thanks to Darren
Elliott, Mike Nix and Hugh Nicoll for all their
work on the website so far, as well as for
maintaining the SIG’s Facebook presence.
Rob Moreau has also been revising the LD
SIG logo, the new version of which you should
start to notice in the coming months. We thank
him for his time and effort on this, too.
Part of the strength of working in teams and
having many different voices to listen to and
acknowledge lies in the breadth and diversity
of input that different issues and decisions
receive. This has helped us all develop further
the 2012 LD SIG Grants and Wider
Participation Scheme, with the first awardees
to be announced in April. It is also helping us
shape our collective planning for the next 1218 months following the success of the
Realizing Autonomy project. We would like to
4 LEARNING LEARNING 19(1)
thank the members-at-large of the committee
for all their constructive criticisms and
suggestions, in particular Phil Brown, Dexter
Da Silva, Ellen Head, Kayo Ozawa, Martha
Robertson, Greg Rouault, Keiko Takahashi,
and Stacey Vye.
Though the story of SIG over the past six
months has been overwhelmingly positive, it
was with great sadness that in January we
learnt of the death of Richard Pemberton, a
close friend of the SIG from its very beginning.
A full tribute to Richard will be published in the
Realizing
Autonomy
Proceedings.
The
committee is currently developing ideas for a
fitting and lasting memorial to Richard and his
work in the learner autonomy field, and we
hope to announce more information about this
later this year.
Our final round of thanks goes to Michael
Mondejar and Jackie Suginaga whose
sustained efforts over the past six months
bring to you this fantastic issue of Learning
Learning. We hope that you really enjoy
reading it. As with the newsletter, so too with
the SIG: We welcome your participation
wherever you are teaching, learning or using
languages (and whatever languages too) elementary school, junior high school, senior
high school, distance learning, graduate
studies, language school or university. May
this new school year be successful and
fulfilling for you in exploring learner
development in many different ways.
With our very best wishes
Andy Barfield & Richard Silver
On behalf of the Learner Development
SIG committee
LD SIG 委員会代表
アンディ・バーフィールド
リッチ・シルバー
Newsletter of the JALT Learner Development SIG
Greetings from Learner
Development SIG
Members LD SIGのメン
バーより
自律学習は初めて?
LD SIG会員紹介:Steven Paydon
New to Learner Autonomy?
Steven Paydon, Tokai University
I
recently joined the Learner Development
Sig after becoming intimately interested in
learner autonomy. At first, I thought I was
new to this idea of putting the learner in control
of their own learning - but now I am not so sure.
Years ago my family moved to a station, what
Americans
would call a
rather
big
ranch, on the
edge of the
Kimberly
region
in
outback
Australia. It was remote and isolated, but that
is actually an understatement. Our nearest
neighbor, literally the house next door, was
12km away. The nearest town was 182km
away, along 120km of unsealed, rough roads
that were often made impassable by flooding
rivers. In fact, the town was so far away, and
so difficult to get to, that we would only go
shopping about four times a year - in a big
truck! We were so remote that we even had
our own airstrip. The airstrip was vital for two
reasons. Firstly, we received our mail once
every two weeks by mail plane. Secondly, and
most importantly, if in case of an emergency
we needed a doctor, the only realistic way to
get help was via the Royal Flying Doctor
Service (RFDS). Needless to say, there were
no schools anywhere remotely near where we
lived. Instead, my brother and I completed our
elementary school years in a pioneer version
of distance learning called School of the Air.
School of the Air derived its name from the
teachers delivering their lessons via HF Radio,
i.e. ‘through the air’ (schools.net.nt.edu/ksa/).
These radio sets were another essential part of
life for isolated communities. Built into a
rugged, army-green metal box, they came with
a hand-held microphone and a long piece of
wire that you would tie to a stick and throw up
the nearest gumtree for an aerial. They were
mainly used for the RFDS, but so long as there
were no emergencies at any given time, they
could be utilized by School of the Air - or the
odd communications between a very small
amount of people scattered throughout a very
vast region.
Other than that, about the only other thing you
could rely on picking up on the HF radio was
the Indonesian fishing boats chattering away at
night about 1000km to our north.
Each school morning we would sit in front of
these radio sets listening intently to the static
in excited anticipation. Then eventually, we
would hear our teacher’s voice come over the
radio and our class would begin. A typical
morning roll-call would go something like this:
“Good morning KSA Grade 6. This is Mrs.
Fitzgerald. Are you there? Over.”
Suddenly the airwaves would burst to life! A
multitude of young little voices would say, not
in quite the synchronized unison we come to
expect in a physical classroom, “Good morning
Mrs. Fitzgerald. Over.” The adrenaline rush
was almost too
much for a young
boy to stand.
From
that
moment on we
were in contact
with the outside
world,
and
although
our
young
imaginations
couldn’t
quite
grasp it, we knew that we were a part of
something big.
Reflecting back now, School of the Air seems
to be my first real introduction to learner
autonomy. Autonomy seems to me to be
having a freedom of choice. My brother and I
were free to choose how much we studied and
when. Just so long as we kept up to schedule
and got our work finished before the mail plane
arrived with our next set of lessons, mum didn’t
really care what we did. This was both a
liberating and motivating experience for us.
Writing on Self-Determination Theory (SDT),
Deci and Ryan (2000) identify three
LEARNING LEARNING 19(1) 5
JALT学習者ティヘロフメントSIGの会報
psychological needs that, when met, lead to
intrinsic motivation: relatedness, competence,
and autonomy. School of the Air helped fulfill
these needs for us. Although we couldn’t see it,
School of the Air gave us a sense of belonging
to a community. We would check in with our
teacher every school day, and we could hear
the voices of other little kids experiencing the
same wonder as us. We had a sense of
competence because we were learning from
materials designed to be at just the right level
for us (optimal challenge). Moreover, seeing as
there were no other kids, no TV, no video, no
clubs, no shops…absolutely nothing, we were
free from distractions and totally focused on
completing our lessons. Not surprisingly, we
also finished them in haste. And finally, we
also had ample autonomy because, apart from
having to be present for our morning roll call,
we could study whenever we wanted.
Deci and Ryan (2000) also postulate that
students in autonomy-supportive environments
show higher levels of motivation and learn
more than students in controlled environments.
My brother and I can vouch for this, too. We
were proactive and engaged. We used to burn
through those materials so fast that we would
finish two weeks’ work in one week. There
were no school rules for us, no sitting in
crowded classrooms waiting for a bell to ring,
either. In fact, there was no watching a clock at
all. We were interested, excited, confident, and
this translated into performance, persistence,
and creativity. In fact, we were so creative that
once we had finished all our materials, we
would just check in for roll call in the morning
and then knick off down the creek catching
snakes and lizards until the next lot of
materials arrived.
Now I find myself here in Japan. My neighbor
lives only inches away from me, I have over a
hundred channels on my TV, and a
convenience store is always in walking
distance. Like everyone else teaching in Japan,
I also find myself bound by various institutional
constraints. These controls are often a
necessary fact of life as a teacher, but learner
autonomy seems to me to offer us some
balance in regards to overbearing control. That,
combined with my own learning experience,
makes me think that we can use learner
autonomy to motivate our students to reach
higher and achieve more. If we can give our
students a sense of belonging, then they will
work hard for their community. If we can give
them a sense of success, then they will gain
the confidence to push their boundaries. And if
we can give them a sense of choice, then they
6 LEARNING LEARNING 19(1)
will be motivated to take control. My brother
and I thrived on the ability to take control of our
learning. We ended up being sent away to
boarding school in our high school years.
However, my School of the Air experience set
me up to thrive at distant learning when doing
my Masters as an external student. The ability
to take control of my learning was a motivating
experience that I hope I can pass onto my
students.
References
Deci, E., & Ryan, R. (2000). Self-determination
theory and the facilitation of intrinsic
motivation, social development, and wellbeing. American Psychologist, 55(1), 68-78.
Katherine School of the Air. Retrieved from
schools.net.nt.edu/ksa/.
Greetings
from
Learner
Development SIG Member Bill
Mboutsiadis
LD SIG 会 員 紹 介 : Bill
Mboutsiadis
H
ello everyone. My name is Bill
Mboutsiadis. I have been asked to
introduce myself since I’m a recent LD
SIG member and to discuss my
understanding of learner development. I hope
to meet more of you during the various events
that are now being developed. As LD
programme chair, I’ve had the pleasure to
connect with some of you via emails and so
I’m looking forward to meeting you in person
this year. In this introduction I will also explain
my ongoing understanding of learner
development by specifically discussing what
learner autonomy means for me and how it is
realized with my learners in our shared
learning environment.
I arrived in Japan in March of 2010 with my
family to teach at Meisei University in the West
Tokyo area of Hino City. I have been teaching
in ESL environments for most of my career
though my initial experience was teaching at a
university in Bratislava, Slovakia. Turning
down a JET teaching offer back in 1996, I
started teaching English for Academic
Preparation at the University of Toronto’s
English Language Program. Since then I’ve
always wondered how things would have
turned out for me if had chosen to go to Japan.
Coming here has thus fulfilled a long-time goal
to have a Japanese EFL teaching opportunity.
Newsletter of the JALT Learner Development SIG
It has also been a great chance for my
children’s growth and learning. My second son
Alexander was born in Niigata in December of
2010. Finally, a major motivating factor to
come to Japan was to re-energize my career
after a recent loss of plausibility and purpose in
my teaching. The professional development
possibilities and academic rigor in applied
research here in Japan have been a major
motivating factor to better myself and has
contributed to a re-evaluation of my
professional belief system. Most memorable so
far has been the many individuals with whom
I’ve met at various conferences who have
welcomed me as if I’d been here for a long
time. I’ve been learning on a daily basis here.
With the LD SIG, I have found a great sense of
a community of practice which brings out the
best in everyone. This is what I have been
missing the last 10 years of my career.
Learner autonomy development
As soon as we take our first breath as human
beings upon leaving our mother`s womb, we
are born learners.
We are learners
in the survival of
life. The recent
birth of my two
sons in 2009 and
2010,
have
demonstrated to
me, as to all new
fathers,
the
curious love of
learning. They both are independent explorers
of the world. My wife and I give guidance and
try to create an environment of encouragement
for learning and growth. John, my three-yearand-three-month old son, is constantly trying to
do things on his own. He literally pushed me
away and wants to do things by himself. He
demonstrates a desire to have control of his
learning through his curious exploration of the
environment around him. I have come to
realize that I should give time for him to figure
things out on his own. With my watchful eye
and positive feedback I am facilitating his
learning through experiences that he is
creating and not simply being directed towards
instructional behaviour from me. Knowing
when to intervene and when not to is key to
maintaining an unobtrusive observation.
In the future, as my children enter educational
settings, there will be attempts to curtail their
independent learning through the conforming
influences of formal institutions. This is
unfortunate and can be stifling for learners. A
loss of control and ownership of their learning
process will occur. I would hope their learning
environment would encourage them to be
independent critical thinkers and encourage
them to seek out truth and knowledge.
I believe autonomy in learning is the taking
back of this loss of control in one’s learning
process. The ability to take charge of one’s
learning is very powerful because it builds
learner agency. Agency creates motivation
through nurturing curiosity and thus developing
a belief that something positive is happening to
one’s self and that there is independent control
that is facilitating this experience. A confidence
is thus created that allows a learner to be a
risk taker in the learning process. This
regained control shifts the responsibility of
learning to the learner as opposed to being
dependent on the educator (Holec, 1981).
According to (Benson, 2001), “the autonomous
learner is one that constructs knowledge from
direct experience, rather than one who
responds to someone’s instruction” (p. 70). As
in my son’s case there is a natural tendency
for learners to take control over their learning.
Autonomy may be displayed in different ways
to different degrees depending on each learner
and the learning situation. Autonomy can be
developed if given the appropriate conditions
and preparation and is a more effective form of
learning than non-autonomous learning.
Autonomy can be illustrated by the famous
quote of Galileo Galilei (1564-1642), “You
cannot teach a man anything; you can only
help him find it within himself.” Furthermore,
within my practice I try to be less of an
instructor and more of a facilitator. My students
are discouraged from relying on me as the
main source of knowledge. I try to encourage
my students’ own capacity to learn on their
own and with their peers. I try to encourage
them to make decisions about what they learn.
This all takes time and patience since it is
basically a re-socialization that needs to take
place.
At Meisei University in Japan, the instructors in
the International Studies Department have
been given great autonomy in instruction and
curriculum development. The instructors have
come together and decided the textbooks for
particular courses. On the other hand, the
department that manages the required general
English courses has basically mandated the
textbooks. In all classes where a text is
required we, the students and I, negotiate the
chapters of the text that they would like to
cover. In some other classes I have gone off
the textbook and used my own material to liven
up the class since the text is so disconnected
LEARNING LEARNING 19(1) 7
JALT学習者ティヘロフメントSIGの会報
from the learners’ reality. The most autonomy
I have in my teaching context is by being the
chair of the Computer Assisted Language
Learning (CALL) autonomy learning courses.
International Studies majors are required to
take four autonomous learning classes over
the first two years of study. These classes are
quite unique in Japan and take place in a
CALL room. I am lucky as the chair of the
CALL autonomy learning courses since I am
constantly learning and trying to make a
positive learning environment for my students
and instructors. We are constantly adapting
and improving the course. There is no text
book for the class. Most of materials are
developed, provided and introduced to the
students. Students are also encouraged to
seek out other sources for their learning that
may include online websites or other out-ofclass learning opportunities. The class is not
streamed by proficiency levels due to the
logistics of booking the CALL room. This mixed
class context allows for each student to seek
out their own comfortable level of learning.
Students have a choice of their learning
activities on a daily basis. The activities include
a variety of online learning sites, in-house
software, graded readers and some DVDs.
The students are assigned a similar term
project but it allows for self directed creativity
and expression.
Within my classes I try to give as much choice
to my learners as possible. In the autonomy
classes there is absolutely no testing of any
kind unless the students try some online
quizzes. At the end of the term I set up
advising sessions where we look at the term’s
activities and their progress and together we
negotiate their final mark. This situation is quite
unique and can be explained by the fact that
Meisei is a private university which allows
8 LEARNING LEARNING 19(1)
some freedoms. The English teachers have
been given great autonomy in designing the
curriculum. This autonomy would be very
limited in a more conservative national
university. Finally, autonomy in learning in
general, as I see it, is not necessarily a final
destination. It is also not something to be
taught by some individual. It is a life-long path
of continual discovery by both the learner and
educator of what it means to connect with the
world in the search for ultimate truths in life.
Bill Mboutsiadis has been an instructor in the
English Language Program at the University of
Toronto since 1996. He is chair of CALL
Learning at Meisei University and is a high
school TESL certified educator. Bill has been
living in Japan with his wife and two boys since
2010. His research interests include: learner &
teacher autonomy development, Language
education
policy,
transformative
&
sociolinguistic learning theories, CALL, critical
pedagogy, Content & Language Integrated
Learning (CLIL), Dogme, Extensive Reading
(ER), Digital literacy, kamishibai storytelling
tradition, digital interactive storytelling, English
for Academic Purposes (EAP), World
Englishes (WE), art media education,
children’s literature, international field work
learning, and Teachers Helping Teachers
(THT) – international teacher development
workshops and in-service volunteer work.
References
Benson, P. (2007). Teaching and researching
autonomy in language learning. Harlow:
Longman.
Holec, H. (1981). Autonomy and foreign
language learning. Oxford: Pergamon. (First
published [1979], Strasbourg: Council of
Europe.)
Newsletter of the JALT Learner Development SIG
Learner Development SIG 2011 Grant Awardees
LD SIG2011年度助成金受給者
Lessons from the Advising for
Language Learner Autonomy
Conference
アドバイジング・フォー・ラ
ンゲージ・ラーナー・オート
ノミー神田外語大学大会から
の学び
Ian Alexander Hurrell
University of Birmingham
Ian Alexander Hurrell, バ ー ミ
ンガム大学
A
s a head teacher
at a small private
language school,
more
commonly
referred to in Japan as
an ‘Eikaiwa’ school, I
probably came to the
Advising for Language
Learner
Autonomy
Conference at Kanda
University of International Studies (KUIS) from
a different view-point than most of the other
participants who were coming from a university
teaching background.
I find that it is useful to think of an Eikaiwa
school as a kind of fitness gym for developing
English, where each student comes to the
school with different ability levels and also with
a range of goals, such as becoming able to
communicate in a professional environment or
simply for personal interest. In addition, as a
service industry, there is strong pressure to
provide
customer
satisfaction
as
the
customer’s desire to stay at the school is
directly linked to the satisfaction they feel from
the
service
provided.
However,
accommodating all of these different ability
levels and goals can be very demanding on
teachers who struggle to prepare materials to
satisfy their student’s needs and expectations.
teaching at an Eikaiwa school. The sheer
volume of work in constructing personalized
materials for each of my 40+ students was
often overwhelming and would frequently
result in classes that not only failed to satisfy
my student’s needs but also failed to provide a
motivating teaching experience for myself as a
teacher. However, after starting a Master’s
degree in TEFL/TESL, I was introduced to
ideas such as learner-centered teaching,
learner autonomy, discovery learning, advising,
self-access learning, etc. This has allowed me
to develop and implement open-ended syllabi
which put me in the role of a learning advisor
and passed control of the student’s learning
progress into their own hands. In this way, I
was able to help my students to develop their
own teaching programs and create their own
materials, tailored to their personal needs. This
has not only helped to reduce the burden of
creating materials on my shoulders, but, more
importantly, it has allowed my students to
develop into more responsible, motivated and
independent learners, as well as creating a
much more positive learning environment at
my school (Hurrell, 2010).
It was with this background that I came to this
conference, with a view to finding out how
others have been applying the ideas of
advising and learner autonomy in their own
teaching situations and how I might be able to
apply them to my situation in the Eikaiwa
industry.
The day before the conference, I was lucky
enough to go on a tour of Kanda’s Self Access
Learning Center (SALC). It was illuminating to
see how KUIS had implemented the concept of
learner autonomy and advising into their center
through
full-time
learning
advisors,
independent learning programs, private multipurpose language learning rooms, and a
lounge area where students could come and
chat in English in a relaxed and comfortable
environment. We also had a chance to
observe an advanced writing class where the
students worked collaboratively to investigate
topics of their choosing using the internet and
a variety of other sources and write their own
research papers. It was clear that the idea of
learner autonomy runs deep in the core
philosophy of KUIS, which made it the perfect
setting for this conference.
This was the case for me in the early years of
LEARNING LEARNING 19(1) 9
JALT学習者ティヘロフメントSIGの会報
The next day, I was impressed to see the
number of people who had come from all over
Japan and also internationally to attend the
conference. After taking part in the
enlightening seminars and chatting with the
participants between sessions, it seemed clear
that conference presenters and participants
shared a number of common issues with
developing the ideas of advising, learner
autonomy and self access learning in ELT.
The first and biggest issue was naturally the
question of how should we introduce the ideas
of advising and learner autonomy to students.
These ideas are still in their relative infancy
and, while the literature provides a lot of
evidence to show how autonomous learners
are more successful, there is still little
information on how teachers can actively help
students make the transition from being
passive learners to independent learners who
are in control of their own progress.
Many of the seminars focused on how we
might address this issue. Howard Doyle from
Kochi University and Michael Parrish from
Kwansei Gakuin University presented their
study on the methods that their learners use to
improve their English outside of class. This is
something that my students often ask me
about so I was interested to hear their findings.
I was amused by some of the more ingenious
methods their students had come up with,
such as switching the language of their
iPhones from Japanese to English. At this
point, their study seemed to be mainly
concerned with identifying the various methods
that their students preferred to use, but I think
it would also be very useful for language
advisors to have more information about which
methods are more successful in improving the
learner’s communicative ability. This could be
the subject of a follow-up study.
John Adamson and Naoki Fujimoto-Adamson
from the University of Niigata Prefecture
presented their work on the role of translanguaging (alternating between the learners
L1 and L2) during mentoring sessions. This is
a subject that is of great interest to me as I
have often experienced resistance to native
speaker instructors using Japanese in their
lessons at Eikaiwa schools. I believe that this
is primarily because of the perception that an
English-only policy will create an immersion
environment and will aid learning by pushing
the students to speak more English. While this
idea may have some merit, I feel this policy
greatly limits the types of ideas that can be
introduced, especially with lower level students,
10 LEARNING LEARNING 19(1)
as language has to be kept within the learner’s
L2 ability range. In my classes, I have been
able to get positive results by mentoring my
students using Japanese where necessary and
students have reported greater satisfaction
with their classes. Over time, the management
of my school has gradually become more
comfortable with the judicious use of Japanese
in my classes. Nonetheless, this is still an
issue that I grapple with on a daily basis in my
teaching. Just how much of the student’s L1
should be used during teaching sessions? It
was interesting to hear the stories of how other
instructors dealt with this issue in their classes.
One teacher commented that he only used
Japanese when he got the “blank stare”, an
experience that I think many of us have had at
least one time in our teaching careers.
However, from the range of opinions that were
expressed, I think it is fair to say that the use of
trans-languaging is very much left to personal
intuition at this time. It would be very useful for
the development of language advising to see
more work done in this area to create a set of
guidelines so that instructors can be better
informed about appropriate use of translanguaging when advising.
It goes without saying that creating
autonomous learners was a major issue of the
conference, but another issue of equal
importance was encouraging institutions
themselves to promote the ideas of learner
autonomy and advising. It was clear to see that
KUIS had made a considerable investment in
creating their SALC, and many of the
participants who I talked with had come with
the aim of starting similar facilities at their own
universities. However, in these tough
economic times, competition for resources is
fierce between various departments, and
convincing university decision-making bodies
to commit these scarce resources to creating a
center and employing full-time advisors is a
tough prospect. This is especially the case
when there is currently little concrete evidence
to prove that such centers would be
significantly more effective in improving a
student’s
communicative
ability
than
conventional teaching.
This point was clearly illustrated by the
presentation made by Marjo Mitsutomi and
Mariko Sakurada from Akita University, which
has also recently opened a self-access center.
They talked about their difficulties in fighting for
resources and trying to get students through
the doors. As I listened to their presentation, a
lot of the problems they were talking about
reminded me of discussions from my days as a
Newsletter of the JALT Learner Development SIG
business major, such as the need to create a
coherent business model for the center and to
market the center effectively within the student
body. Therefore, it seems that if we promote
the widespread development of such centers,
especially in a commercial industry such as
Eikaiwa, then a sound theoretical underpinning
alone will not be sufficient. We also need a
strong business rationale.
This brings me to the final issue raised in the
conference, that of using ideas from other
fields to aid our research in developing the
concept of learner autonomy. We saw how the
representatives
from
Akita
University
highlighted the need for a clear business
rationale. However, there were other
presenters who had also taken concepts from
other fields. A presentation which greatly
impressed me was given by Satoko Kato of
Kanda Institute of Foreign Languages. Ms.
Kato had conducted research into the various
problems that advisors at her institution had in
their professional development, for example:
understanding their role as a facilitator of
language learning rather than a teacher;
dealing with the uncertainty of advising where
potentially any issue could arise versus the
relative certainty provided by teaching with a
lesson plan; and adjusting the expectations of
both advisor and advisee as to what is to be
expected in advising sessions. Ms. Kato used
a wheel diagram (Kato & Sugawara, 2008) to
plot how advisors and advisees felt about their
advising sessions and used the results to
discuss with advisors about how they could
improve their advising. Neither I nor the people
around me had ever seen this kind of
technique before. When I approached Ms.
Kato to ask her about how she had developed
the idea, she informed me that she had
adapted the wheel diagram from a technique
commonly used in life counseling to help
people improve their life. After hearing this, I
thought that this technique could also be
applied with my students to help them develop
as autonomous learners, and I plan to do this
in the future.
It became apparent that advising in ELT could
greatly benefit from work already done in
related fields, and this issue was encapsulated
by the final presentation given by the key-note
speaker of the conference, Chris Candlin. He
presented his research on the techniques used
by the professional medical industry to advise
patients about health issues and highlighted
how health advisors could not explicitly tell
patients what they should do, but rather had to
employ a number of techniques in order to
guide patients to make the right choices by
themselves. Candlin then went on to
demonstrate how this basic principle may be
applied when advising students to become
more autonomous learners. This further
reinforced the idea that a lot could be learned
from other related fields to develop the idea of
advising for language learner autonomy
So, after all this, what lessons could be taken
away from this conference? It is clear that
there is still a lot of work to do if we are going
to convince both students and institutions to
commit to the ideals of learner autonomy,
advising and self-access learning. This is
especially true of the Eikaiwa industry, which is
commercially driven and wary of abandoning
tried and tested methods. However, if research
into the problems raised in the conference can
be continued with the help of work already
done in related fields, such as business and
counseling, I believe that it will be possible to
overcome these issues. Conferences such as
this one play a great part in exciting people’s
imaginations to explore ways that we might
develop and adapt our own teaching contexts
so that we can help learners take greater
control of their own learning, and I look forward
to making my own contributions in the future.
Ian started his teaching career on the JET
program teaching at two senior high schools in
Saitama Prefecture, Japan. After three
productive years on the JET program, he
became head teacher of a private language
school in Sapporo, Hokkaido, where he
continues to help his students to develop into
successful learners of English. Currently, he is
about to complete his Masters in TEFL/TESL.
His main interests lie in learner autonomy,
task-based language teaching and the use of
discourse analysis to help learners understand
pragmatic meaning in authentic materials.
References
Hurrell, I.A. (2011). A plan for a negotiated
task-based syllabus. JABAET Journal,
14(15), 93-110.
Kato, S., & Sugawara, H. (2008). Actionoriented Language Learning Advising: A
new approach to promote independent
learning. The Journal of Kanda University
of International Studies, 21, 455-475.
LEARNING LEARNING 19(1) 11
JALT学習者ティヘロフメントSIGの会報
Some Autonomy‐Related Problems
and Possible Solutions
自律学習に関する問題と解決
の可能性
Mehmet Boyno
Sahinbey Kiz Teknik ve Meslek Lisesi
Mehmet Boyno, Sahinbey Kiz Teknik
ve Meslek Lisesi
T
he way I
was
brought up
as a child at
home and the
way I was treated
as a student at
school
in
an
obedient culture
(one where a person isn’t able to decide or
behave on their own in most cases) made me
eager to become an autonomous individual. In
the first year of my PhD studies, I became
aware of the concept of learner autonomy and
could name this desire concretely. Then, I
conducted research on some dependent
engineering students with low motivation. They
were dependent in that their English instructor
was complaining about their not activating their
inner mechanisms in terms of shaping and
directing their own learning. On my
supervisor’s advice, I started to deal with
learner autonomy. My PhD dissertation is
entitled “An analysis of the factors influencing
learner autonomy in the Turkish EFL context”
(Boyno, 2011). While learning more about
autonomy, I decided to encourage my students
to become autonomous because my students
were, as I observed with the engineering
students, not so independent nor self-directed.
Accordingly, at the very beginning of the
academic term, I administered a questionnaire
to students so that I could find out their
personal diversities: their learning styles,
multiple
intelligence
areas,
emotional
intelligences, motivation, attitudes and anxiety
towards learning English, parental attitudes
and English language learning strategies that
they employ. I shared the results with them so
that they could experience more personal
awareness before getting language awareness
and learner awareness. I did not follow the
12 LEARNING LEARNING 19(1)
ready-made curriculum and the commercial
coursebooks entirely. Instead, my students
decided on the syllabus design, the order of
the units and topics to study in accordance
with their needs and wants. They also
developed their own materials in addition to
using the coursebooks. At the end of the
semesters, they assessed both their own
performance (self-assessment) and that of
their peers (peer assessment).
I am interested in parental attitudes and
autonomy in early childhood, and the
applications of self-access centres. I am also
interested in classroom-based advising. I know
the difficulties of classroom-based advising
(please see my explanation of our presentation
for the details); yet, in last year’s IATEFL
Learner Autonomy Special Interest Group (LA
SIG) event entitled ‘Advising for Language
Learner Autonomy’ held at Kanda University of
International Studies (KUIS), I expected to
learn more about the role of the advisor and
that of the advisee and about the advising
process including the development of materials.
I have been teaching English in Turkey since
1995. I worked at both private and public
primary and secondary schools. Everything
was quite traditionally teacher-centred: the
foreign language teaching system, teachers’
way of teaching, administration, and so on. In
2007 and 2009, I presented and listened to
presentations on different aspects of learner
autonomy at the Independent Learning
Association Conferences (ILACs). The LA SIG
event at Kanda was very special for me owing
to its on-target topic: advising. As a practitioner
researcher, I have been aiming to practice
autonomy in my classrooms since 2007
despite facing many problems (the details of
which you will find below where I write about
our presentation). By joining this LA SIG event,
I wanted to learn from other academics’
experiences as to classroom-based advising in
their presentations and to find possible
solutions to my problems.
In 2009, I listened to Marina MozzonMcPherson’s presentation at ILAC in Hong
Kong. She talked about advising and how to
deal with advising-related problems. I enjoyed
it very much. Hence, I decided to join the oneday event at Kanda after flying from Turkey to
Japan for nearly 11 hours non-stop, thinking
that I would be able to listen to Marina again.
Unfortunately, she could not make it to this
event on advising because of some health
problems. (I hope you made a speedy
recovery, Marina!) Yes, I missed her but
Newsletter of the JALT Learner Development SIG
enjoyed and
presentations.
learned
a
lot
from
other
One of my main points of interest is the selfaccess centres (SACs) incorporating materials
available for the students, advisors and
assessment. I satisfied this academic hunger
of mine during the pre-conference visits to the
self-access centres. This was not my first time
at self-access centres. In 2009, I also visited
some centres in Hong Kong as a preconference event before ILAC and in Mexico
when I visited Marina Chavez Sanchez and
her colleagues at Universidad Nacional
Autónoma de México (UNAM), and Virna
Velázquez and her colleagues at Universidad
Autónoma del Estado de México (UAEM). I
tried to understand how people design these
centres, how many advisors are employed for
how many students, what the limitations of the
centres are, and what kind of students tend to
make use of the facilities in the centres. I
enjoyed my interviews with both the advisors
and the students there in this sense. I did the
same during the SAC visit before the LA SIG
event at Kanda. I found out that, if not
integrated into the curriculum in any year,
mostly
final-year
students
(fourth-year
students) visit self-access centres aiming to
obtain some materials in their majors to assist
them with their career after graduation. In other
words, they hoped to find opportunities in
English for academic and specific purposes. I
observed that there were not often enough
advisors in SACs. Another problem was not
the diversity of materials but the limited
number of the same materials.
My teaching experience through autonomy
taught me that learner autonomy is a kind of
character education. As one gets older, I
believe it gets difficult to change a person’s
character. Hence, it would be better to start
nurturing autonomous learners when they are
young. And I insist that, even before beginning
school, children should be brought up as
autonomous individuals. In other words,
parental attitudes are of crucial importance.
There is a famous Turkish saying: “A tree gets
shaped when young.”
In the conference, I visited the poster
presentation entitled “Advising using parenting
skills” by Yuki Hasegawa and attended the
presentations entitled “Advisor versus advisee”
by Umida Ashurova, “Developing a deeper
understanding of learning processing during
complex learning tasks” by Luke Carson, “How
a learner changed: Linguistic evidence of
metacognitive awareness in advising sessions”
by Hisako Sugawara, and “Encouraging
learner autonomy through peer feedback in the
writing classroom” by Jennie Roloff-Rothman.
My colleagues Eyyup Akıl, Ferhat Dolaş and I
gave a presentation entitled “Difficulties of
classroom-based advising”.
The themes of these presentations suited my
interests and the questions in my mind. Yuki’s
poster introduced the concept of STAR
Parenting
(respond to
cooperation,
acknowledge feelings, set limits, teach new
skills, and avoid problems). These components,
which are originally proposed for not perfect
parents but growing parents, are used in faceto-face advising sessions and also in
written feedback on the students’ work by
teachers and aim to assist children in
becoming autonomous by giving them
responsibility to make choices on their own.
Although very practical, the steps of this study
look very difficult to practice in a crowded
classroom in terms of dealing with each
student in details. Nonetheless, I believe that
these steps can be useful with students who
are really eager to learn English at a
reasonable level in spite of their harsh
conditions. What is more, this study positively
confirmed my belief that not only teachers at
schools but also parents at home can do
something to nurture autonomous individuals.
Umida and her two third-year student advisors
talked about the linguistic gains from peer
advising to first-year students through positive
feedback. They shed light on the importance of
the interference of peer advisors’ own learning
styles, and learner beliefs and attitudes in
advising sessions. Some other variables that
they emphasized were cooperation between
peers, credibility of peer advisors, personality,
age, gender, culture, motivation and language.
I asked Umida about her thoughts concerning
the integration of self-access centres into the
curriculum as in their case. She replied that as
a limitation of their curriculum they had to
separate listening skills from reading, writing
and speaking skills and learner training.
Students worked on their listening skills in their
self-access centre as a compulsory part of the
curriculum
while
practicing
the
other
components in the regular classrooms. One of
the participants suggested that integration of
the self-access centres into the curriculum
raises awareness in students and makes them
explore
more
about
their
strengths,
weaknesses, wants and needs. I have seen
that there are different set-ups with regards to
SACs: some are completely integrated into the
curriculum, some are integrated partially into
LEARNING LEARNING 19(1) 13
JALT学習者ティヘロフメントSIGの会報
the curriculum, and others are separate from
the curriculum. I think it might be a burden for
teacher-dependent students to visit such a
centre and try to make their own way through
their learning. However, as they get
accustomed to the centre and start to be more
successful in their learning, that is, once they
get a taste of success, this burden might turn
into a habit of them making use of centres.
Luke’s presentation was on how cognitive and
metacognitive processing interact in complex
learning situations. In his study, teacher
guidance was replaced with learning advisors’
working with advisees – a very dynamic and
continuous movement between upper and
lower levels of cognitive processing. This
process was improved by all learners’
metacognitive behaviours to various extents.
To him, the upper level of cognitive processing
is a must for the completion of a complex
independent learning task and must be
accompanied by metacognitive learning
concepts such as planning, monitoring and
control of learning. Most of my students are
passive and have low motivation to learn
English. They prefer playing the secretary of
the teacher while they take notes in the
classroom and memorising their notes before
exams as much as they can. Putting aside
whether they can direct their own learning in
terms of planning, monitoring and controlling it
(metacognition), they do not even try to
discover their own wants and needs. Neither
do they try to understand the tasks that they
are assigned (cognition). Thus, parallel to the
findings of this study, cognition and
metacognition should go hand in hand.
Hisako’s presentation described one way to
assist learners to reach their learning goals: by
autonomous dialogues through multiple
advising sessions instead of assigning them
with a long to-do list. Hisako’s case study with
one female student put forward some linguistic
evidence as to how her learner’s metacognitive
awareness developed to take responsibility of
her own learning process. At the end of this
informative
presentation,
one
of
the
participants commented that teachers should
focus on not only “what is the student doing”
but also “what does she think she is doing” In
addition, he added that even parents should
personalise the learning process for their kids
and support them metacognitively at their own
reasonable pace instead of asking them to do
everything that teachers require, including
staying up late all night studying. Yes, this was
one of my viewpoints concerning autonomy. I
felt elated to see that there are academics
14 LEARNING LEARNING 19(1)
thinking in the same way as me.
In Jennie’s workshop, participants discussed
the significance of peer advising and peer
feedback
for
dynamic
and
effective
autonomous writing lessons. During the
workshop, through sample essays and peer
reflection worksheets, we played the adviser
and learner. At the end of the workshop, we
found opportunities to speculate on the
applicability of the presented writing materials
to our own contexts and encourage the
promotion of peer feedback in the writing
classroom. I believe that peer advising and
peer feedback should be aimed for when
autonomy is in practice. However, when writing
(a productive skill) is in question, teachers
should be attentive and keep monitoring the
learners’ work.
My colleagues and I aimed to draw attention to
some other elements apart from the learning
advisor which is still a crucial component of
autonomous learning: the education system,
fellow teachers, learners, administrators and
parents in the Turkish EFL context at the
secondary school level. The foreign language
teaching system has imposed ready-made
curriculums and materials. Fellow teachers
have been uninterested in professional
development and have showed resistance to
change and shifts in their roles. Students have
been unwilling to take on more responsibility in
their own learning and are disturbed and
reluctant to leave their comfort-zones.
Administrators have been strictly loyal to the
ready-made issues and concerned about the
students’ disturbance just like parents. At the
end of our presentation, one of the participants
told us that we were not alone in experiencing
these issues. He meant they experienced the
same problems in Japan. Another academic
complained about the restrictions made by
policy makers. In addition, Andy Barfield asked
whether there was an autonomy association in
Turkey. It was an honour for me to say that we
have already started a new association with
my colleagues. We aim to conduct autonomyrelated research at school – starting from
universities down to primary school. In order to
be able to practice learner autonomy in any
circumstance as effectively as possible – at
secondary schools in my case – I believe that
everyone
involved
(teachers,
students,
administrators, parents) needs training.
Additionally, a radical change is needed in the
foreign language teaching system. Fortunately,
the system in Turkey has changed since the
beginning of this academic term. We would like
to start with the three universities in our city
Newsletter of the JALT Learner Development SIG
(Gaziantep). At the same time, we are in close
touch with the Provincial Administration of
National Education to train the English
teachers to help them gain positive beliefs
towards learner autonomy as an initial issue.
Thus, they will be able to encourage their
students, administrators and student-parents
to practice learner autonomy as well. The
students may be encouraged to gain more
responsibility related to their own learning
processes. The administrators and the student
parents may be more patient with the process
and provide the teacher and the students with
some
support
both
financially
and
pedagogically.
All of these points reminded me of two realities
of the Islamic Turkish educational system:
medreses (a kind of religious and scientific
higher education institution) and Holy Qur’an
courses. At medreses (although rare in
number nowadays, they have been functioning
for centuries), the scholars have their own
classrooms, just like individualised rooms for
different skills at self-access centres. They
educate groups of two students at the same
time by means of assessing their individual
learning out of class. This is to not only
personalise the learning but also provide
opportunities to negotiate in groups. Students
follow their own paths of learning and try to
accomplish the requirements at their own pace.
That is to say, even though some students
start the programme on the very same day,
they may soon find themselves following
different paths according to their levels,
background and pace. As for the Holy Qur’an
courses, there is a hodja (a teacher) helping a
group of successful learners to go ahead and
work at their own pace. After finishing their
daily requirements, these leading successful
learners are assigned with teaching and
helping some other groups of learners learn at
their own pace. In other words, they play the
role of peer advisors. In both cases (medreses
and Holy Qur’an courses), learning is not
limited to school or course hours. Rather,
students do research and study out of school
and are scaffolded in their learning when
necessary.
choose from ready-made materials or develop
their own materials? When should students
start to develop their own materials? What
kinds of training programmes should be
organised
for
students,
teachers,
administrators and parents? Where should the
advisor start and stop? Is peer advising
practical in all levels? What are the typical
characteristics of an advisor? What are the
roles of teacher-, peer- and self-assessment? I
am planning to pursue my post-doc studies to
find answers to these questions.
Mehmet Boyno received his MA in English
Language Teaching from Gaziantep University,
Gaziantep, Turkey, in 2003 and his PhD from
Çukurova University, Adana, Turkey, in 2011.
His main interests include learner autonomy,
English for specific purposes, teaching young
learners,
personal
and
professional
development, and teacher education.
References
Boyno, M. (2011). An analysis of the factors
influencing learner autonomy in the Turkish
EFL
context.
(Unpublished
doctoral
dissertation). Cukurova University, Adana.
All in all, many questions come to my mind
regarding nurturing autonomous learners and
individuals: How can the teacher be
encouraged to let go of some of their control
and to let their students gain more
responsibility? When should we start giving
responsibility to the students? What criteria
should be taken into consideration while
deciding on the tasks? Should students
LEARNING LEARNING 19(1) 15
JALT学習者ティヘロフメントSIGの会報
Michael Wilkins
Ritsumeikan University
that allowed me to be flexible and experiment
with different materials and methods to follow
up this interest. Some materials and methods I
have tried are extensive reading, portfolio
assessment, negotiated syllabi, projects,
vlogging (video blogging), webquests, and
various social media applications.
Michael Wilkins, 立命館大学
Autonomy research group
Reflections on Autonomy
自律学習のリフレクション
M
y name is
Michael
Wilkins.
I
work
at
several
universities
around
the Kansai area. I
received a grant to
attend
the
JALT
national conference
in Tokyo last November. I’d like to thank the
LD SIG members for this support. I think these
grants, however small, make a big difference
to part-time teachers. The professional
development costs of courses, books, and
conference fees and transportations costs can
add up over a year when coupled with no
research grants from the universities. Last year,
I had a new addition to my little family, and
before I received notice that I would receive
the LD grant I was seriously considering
cancelling my attendance in Tokyo. However
in the end I participated in five presentations.
My learner autonomy “history”
I’ve always been a bookworm, so when I first
heard of Extensive Reading (ER) through a
pamphlet written by Rob Waring and published
by Oxford University Press, I was an instant
enthusiast. However, my teaching context at
the time was not conductive to experimentation
so I soon started doing my M.Ed at Temple
University. I think my interest in both ER and
learner autonomy started from my own
learning style and interest in reading. I actually
joined the LD SIG at that time but was unclear
on how to participate besides going to the
national conference, so I let my membership
lapse.
Another source of my interest in learner
autonomy is from my classroom experience.
Like most teachers I experiment in the
classroom to see what works best. Essentially,
I do my own action research daily and I found
the obvious pattern that students would
engage in learning much more readily when
dealing with topics they were interested in and
in ways they were comfortable with. Luckily, in
the past 3 years I have had teaching situations
16 LEARNING LEARNING 19(1)
Last year I joined a group of 6 researchers
from various universities but based at Kansai
University of international Studies. The focus
of the group is learner autonomy. We
administered a survey to almost 1000
participants at various universities around
Japan.
The research was inspired by a study
conducted by Holden and Usuki (1999), which
attempted to correct the misconception that
Japanese university students are somehow
less autonomous than learners from other
cultural backgrounds. Their study utilized 10
open-ended interview questions to elicit
students’ attitudes and beliefs about learning,
their expectations of themselves, and their
expectations of their teachers in the learning
process. Our study, however, utilized a
questionnaire used by Ustunluoglu (2009) in
Turkey. This questionnaire contained 22
questions to elicit: what learning decisions and
tasks students perceive as their responsibility,
what learning decisions and tasks are their
teacher’s responsibility and what learning
decisions and tasks they perceive they are
capable of doing. The final goal is to measure
students’ perceptions of responsibility and
ability in the classroom - two main learner
autonomy dimensions laid out by Littlewood
(1999).
The process of doing this research has been
as interesting as the outcomes. As the last
person to join the group, I had no say in the
initial structure of the research. However,
being able to collaborate with a large group
and participating in the process of collecting,
coding, and analyzing data from a study of
over 1000 respondents was a valuable
experience.
My classes
I have been lucky enough to have been
teaching in places where I have teacher
autonomy. To me, teacher autonomy is the
freedom to experiment and be creative in the
classroom. This has allowed me to experiment
with using new technologies, peer assessment,
syllabus negotiation and other studentcentered teaching methods.
Newsletter of the JALT Learner Development SIG
I saw Steve Quasha’s Best of JALT 2008
winning presentation at a Kobe chapter
meeting on portfolio and peer assessment, and
have been working on variations of that idea
for over 3 years. Some things I like about this
method are: the students reflect on what they
have done over the whole course, the
audience is more than just the teacher, the
students have choices about what they will put
in their portfolio and how they will present it. As
well as English skills the students need to use
artistic skills, and, most of importantly,
students choose to share some surprising
personal information about their successful
experiences that brings the group closer
together. Students always give this sort of
evaluation good feedback.
I have also been experimenting with new ways
for students to present their information. Some
ways I have tried have been Pecha Kucha
(see pecha-kucha.org), Prezi (see prezi.com)
presentations, poster presentations, and video.
Recently, the production and consumption of
video has been a major area of student activity
in and out of class. One reason for this is
Facebook and smart phones make it extremely
easy for students to make and share short
videos and interact with each other.
Recent interests
For the last few years I have been really
interested in polyglots, people who speak
multiple languages, and their take on language
learning. Their perspective is a little different
than that of a language teacher, but they are
the ultimate successful autonomous language
learners so they must have something to say.
Of course, throughout history there have been
many good examples of polyglots, but in the
digital age there are a few that have caught my
attention:
Steve
Kaufman
(thelinguist.blogs.com
and
lingq.com),
Khatzumoto (alljapaneseallthetime.com), and
Benny Lewis (fluentin3months.com). All three
are very successful and autonomous language
learners. They are not particularly supportive
of language classes and teachers, but rather
advocate Krashen-style input learning methods
such as extensive reading and listening.
JALT National
Autonomy seems to have become a buzzword
in the teaching community. At every session I
attended the presenters mentioned autonomy
and how their topic would positively affect
student autonomy. This may have been due to
my own focus but the presentations were often
random ones I chose for their time and location
next to my presentations rather than their
particular topics. Since then I have noticed
learner autonomy mentioned in almost every
local presentation as well.
I’m embarrassed to say I had not heard of Phil
Benson until his keynote speech, which piqued
my interest. Through attending the LD SIG
forum and dinner, I had the good fortune of
talking to him at length. I have since bought his
book and am currently working through it.
I participated in five presentations at the 2011
JALT national, four of which were connected to
learner autonomy. The first was titled
“Examining Learner Autonomy Dimensions”
from the project described in the third section
of this article. The second was titled “The 24
Hour English Challenge”. In this project we
asked students to volunteer to use English all
day on a non-school day. Originally, the idea
was for students to individually try a variety of
autonomous activities but in collaboration. It
evolved into groups of students interacting in
English in the community while completing fun
tasks. This worked well and was very
satisfying when students recreated the idea
themselves without direct teacher input (but as
invited participants). The third presentation
was entitled “Using Google Docs in the Writing
Classroom”. This was mainly an introductory
presentation describing for teachers on how to
use the Google Docs tool. However, the focus
of the activities was on groups of students
working autonomously on writing projects
collaboratively on line. The last presentation
was titled “Developing an Audience for ESL
Writers”, which looked at using the Internet to
create spaces for students to create real
meaningful content that others want to read
and in turn motivate students to learn more.
Future
My main project next year is how to create an
audience on the Internet for student work.
Students react positively to an appreciative
audience for their efforts. With the
development of the Internet and social media,
this has become easier than ever before. I’d
like to start a blog, YouTube channel and
Facebook page where students write about
what interests them about Japan in English
and attract people around the world who are
interested in Japan.
A second project is an English Speakers’ club.
Students from various universities would meet
to do fun activities in English only. Students
often express a need to find social situations to
use their English and meet others who want to
LEARNING LEARNING 19(1) 17
JALT学習者ティヘロフメントSIGの会報
do the same.
References
Holden, B. & Usuki, M. (1999). Learner
autonomy
in
language
learning:
A
preliminary investigation. Bulletin of Hokuriku
University, 23, 191-203. Retrieved from
http://www.eric.ed.gov/PDFS /ED450581.pdf
Littlewood, W. (1999). Defining and developing
learner autonomy in East Asian contexts.
Applied Linguistics, 20(1), 71-94.
Ustunluoglu, E. (2009). Autonomy in language
learning: Do students take responsibility for
their learning? Journal of Theory and
Practice in Education, 5(2), 148-169.
Retrieved
from
http://eku.comu.edu.tr/index/5/2/e_ustunluogl
u.pdf
Reflection on the JALT 2011
Conference JALT 2011 の感想
National Memorial Olympics Center,
Yoyogi, Tokyo, November 18th – 21st, 2011
国立オリンピック記念 青少年総合セ
ンター、2011年11月18日〜21日
Matthew Coomber
Kyoto Sangyo University
マシュー・クーンバー
京都産業大学
W
ere anyone to
conduct
a
genre analysis
of
ELT
conference
reports, they would
doubtless arrive at the
conclusion
that
conferences
are
unremittingly
sunny
affairs,
and
presentations always professional, thoughtprovoking and engaging. But of course the
reality is not quite the same. Conference-going,
like any other activity, has its fair share of
frustrations and disappointments. It’s just that
these aspects of the experience rarely seem to
make it as far as the reports, and with good
reason considering the huge amount of
volunteer work that goes into organising a
conference on the scale of JALT National. It
seems almost inconceivable to report on a
conference in anything less than glowing terms,
as if to mention a negative experience is in
some way a criticism of the conference as a
18 LEARNING LEARNING 19(1)
whole. Even though this is most emphatically
not the case, it is thus with some trepidation
that I must report that my two days in Yoyogi
included both ups and downs.
Despite the risk of living up to the common
stereotype of the British as being obsessed
with the weather, it would be difficult to write a
balanced report on this year’s conference
without mentioning the torrential rain which
persisted throughout the whole of the first day.
I wish I had been able to ignore the effect of
the downpour which set in when I was in the
middle of Meiji-jingu, having foolishly decided
that a walk across the park from Harajuku
would be a more pleasant way to get to the
site than attempting to change trains at the
intimidatingly complex (to a non-Tokyoite at
least) Shinjuku station. Sadly though, that
would require a more phlegmatic character
than that which I possess. Needless to say,
arriving soaking wet was not a good start to
the day, and with events split between three
buildings drying out was never more than
temporary. This combination of bad luck and
my own bad judgment led me to reflect upon
how these two factors can impact upon the
conference-going experience.
A more predictable, but equally unavoidable
problem, relates to scheduling. While one of
the great advantages of a conference the size
of JALT National is that there will almost
certainly be a presentation appealing to your
interests at any particular time, the downside
of this is that there will often be more than one.
Thus, when deciding on my first presentation
of the day during my shinkansen journey from
Kyoto, I was faced with the dilemma (trilemma,
perhaps?) of choosing between three
presentations which, for very different reasons,
appealed to me roughly equally. Greg Sholdt’s
Featured Speaker Workshop - Getting started
with quantitative research, sounded just the
kind of thing I needed to help me with my
current research, in which I am looking at ways
teachers can encourage learners to make selfdirected revisions to their writing, rather than
relying on teacher feedback. Yet on the other
hand, I really wanted to hear Marcos
Benevides introducing his new series of
graded readers, based on the Choose your
own adventure series I enjoyed as a child. As
next year I will be starting a new job at a
university with a well-established extensive
reading programme, I was especially
interested in discovering whether the ELT
version of the series had managed to retain
the atmosphere of suspense and reader
involvement I recall from my own reading.
Newsletter of the JALT Learner Development SIG
Finally, a short paper by Paul Leeming and
Stuart Cunningham on group dynamics and
leadership in the classroom, the importance of
which I feel to be vastly under-represented in
ELT research, was something I didn’t want to
miss. In my own teaching, I have long been
mystified as to why certain classes seem to gel
far more successfully than others, and was
hoping to gain some insights as to how I might
be able to promote greater cohesion in my less
successful groups.
Ultimately, my poor planning led to me arriving
late and took the decision out of my hands, but
the process of deliberation made me think
about how any one delegate can only ever see
a tiny fraction of what is on offer at JALT
National, and how the decisions that we make,
which involve both luck and judgment, are to a
large extent responsible for our perceptions of
the event as a whole. Luckily, I was able to
attend a later presentation by Sholdt on a
similar topic, and was thoroughly glad I did so.
Even more fortunate was the fact that no
Health and Safety officers happened to look in.
By the time the presentation began, a room
designed for around 20 people held twice that
number. However, it was well worth the effort
to squeeze into the room. While quantitative
methods can seem intimidating to the novice
researcher, Sholdt’s clear explanations and
sheer enthusiasm for his subject left me with
the feeling that quantitative research was no
longer the impenetrable mystery I had
previously thought, but something I could see
myself eventually getting to grips with. While I
doubt I will ever attain a true appreciation of
what the presenter termed the ‘beauty behind
the numbers’, Sholdt’s example of an early
research project he conducted into extensive
reading helped me to realize both that potential
sources of quantitative data are readily
available in the classroom, and that results can
be analyzed and presented in ways that are
both meaningful and comprehensible. To
practicing language teachers, such as myself,
who have only a rudimentary knowledge of
statistics, it would be a refreshing change were
more quantitative researchers to consider just
how accessible their work is to the typical
reader.
By 5.30 on Saturday evening, many delegates’
enthusiasm may have been starting to wane,
and my thoughts were turning to the first beer
of the night rather than the last presentation of
the day. After an early start and a long,
information packed day, what I needed was a
presentation that could re-energise me. Given
that Richard Silver is not only co-coordinator of
the LD SIG, which generously sponsored my
participation in this year’s conference, but also
a colleague and a good friend, I am about to
lay myself open to charges both of sycophancy
and subjectivity. However, not to mention
Richard’s presentation in this report would
seem fundamentally dishonest, as it was by far
the best I saw at this year’s JALT, providing
me with just the burst of energy I needed at the
end of the day. Focusing on the issues and
challenges
which
arise
when
using
presentations in the language classroom,
Richard suggested several ways in which the
activity can be transformed from one
dominated by one-way transmission of
information by a single student to an
experience in which the entire class can be
more actively involved. Even more than the
highly stimulating content, what set this
workshop apart was the innovative way in
which the presenter managed to create
genuine interaction between participants who
had been strangers at the start of the session.
Too often, in my experience, presenters’
attempts to promote audience interaction in
workshops feel forced, awkward, and at times
pointless. Yet in this case, the group activity
Richard engaged us in was not only integral to
his theme of Growing autonomy in
presentation-discussions, but also immensely
enjoyable. In spite of the knowledge that that
first beer was waiting for me, I left the room
wishing the presentation could have gone on
longer.
After such a positive ending to the first day,
and with a dry pair of shoes on my feet and a
blue sky overhead, my expectations were high
as I set out on Sunday morning for the first
plenary speech of the day. A quick glance
inside the cover of any of the books in the
Cambridge Language Teaching Library
reinforces the view that Jack Richards,
responsible for more titles in this series than
any other author, is without doubt one of the
giants of our field. Yet a speaker being an
‘internationally renowned applied linguist,
teacher educator, and textbook author’, to
quote Richards’ biodata from the conference
handbook, does not necessarily guarantee a
good speech. Richards though, more than
lived up to his reputation, delivering a wideranging plenary covering some of the most
fundamental issues in our profession, and
doing so without apparently feeling the need to
pause for breath! As Richards himself
acknowledged, the scope of this plenary was
such that to do his subject full justice in a mere
hour was an ambitious goal. But while the
sheer breadth of topics covered meant that at
LEARNING LEARNING 19(1) 19
JALT学習者ティヘロフメントSIGの会報
times the audience may have been left wishing
for greater depth, personally I felt that Richards
did a fine job in walking (perhaps sprint would
be a better choice of verb?) the tightrope of
offering something to novice teachers, 40-year
veterans, and everyone in between. As a
member of the latter group, of particular
interest to me was the importance Richards
ascribed to disciplinary knowledge and
pedagogical content knowledge. While I would
certainly agree with the presenter’s assertion
that teachers who possess both types of
knowledge are more likely to be more effective
than those who do not, I also wonder about the
potential impact of when and how that
knowledge was obtained. My practical
experience of teaching preceded the
theoretical knowledge I have gained, a
situation which would be decidedly odd in most
professions, but which does not seem unusual
among EFL teachers in Japan. It seems to me
that
overlaying
theory
onto
practical
experience, rather than vice versa, may have a
significant impact on the ways in which we
develop as teachers.
As Sunday drew to a close I faced my final
scheduling conflict of the weekend, with my
own presentation beginning at the same time
as the LD Forum. Thankfully, although I
missed most of the poster session, I was able
to arrive in time to enjoy the stimulating round
table discussion which closed the event, and
for me, the conference. While the need to
return to Kyoto that evening meant that, much
to my disappointment, I was unable to join
other SIG members for dinner, I was at least
provided with food for thought: Phil Benson’s
observation that there is a degree of conflict
between the principles of learner autonomy
and sociocultural theory leading me to reflect
on the need to be aware of this potential
conflict in my own classroom. And it was with
that thought in my head that my participation in
JALT 2011, made possible by the much
appreciated grant I received from the LD SIG,
ended. Now, looking back through the
conference handbook as I write this report, I
am reminded once again of the incredible
variety of expertise that language teachers in
Japan possess, and only regret that limited
time allows us to enjoy such a small amount of
what is on offer at JALT. But perhaps it is
better to be left wanting more.
Matthew Coomber has been teaching English
in Japan since 2001. Having spent the past
five years working at Ritsumeikan University,
he is looking forward to different challenges
when he takes up a new position at Kyoto
20 LEARNING LEARNING 19(1)
Sangyo University in April 2012.
5year membership of
JALT: Buy 4 Get 1 free!
JALT is currently running a ‘5 years for 4’
membership campaign where you can
pay for 4 years’ membership of JALT (4 x
10,000 yen) and receive one year free
(i.e., get a total of 5 years membership of
JALT). The campaign runs from March 1
to August 31 2012. If you sign up for a 5‐
year membership within that period,
you will also have a chance to win a fees
waiver for this year’s conference, to be
held in Hamamatsu, Shizuoka, October
12‐15 2012. For more information about
joining JALT, go to:
http://jalt.org/main/ membership.
At present there is no SIG‐wide
agreement about running a similar offer
for your SIG memberships, so if you do
pay for a 5‐year JALT membership,
please note that you will – for the time
being – still need to pay your 1500 yen
SIG memberships(s) on a yearly basis.
For detailed information about joining
the LD SIG as a JALT member or
becoming a LD SIG subscriber as a non‐
JALT member, please go to http://ld‐
sig.org/join/.
If you have any questions or comments
about any of the above, please contact
the Learner Development SIG
membership chair Rachelle
Jorgenson
rachellejorgenson@gmail.com.
Many thanks.
Newsletter of the JALT Learner Development SIG
Feature Article フィチャード
アーテイクル
Developing an online environment to enable the
independent learning of English pronunciation
英語の発音の自主学習を可能にするオンライン環
境の開発
Mathew Porter
Hiroshima Bunkyo Women’s University
マシュー・ポーター,広島文教女子大学
Abstract: This exploratory study examines an online pronunciation course designed to (a) help
university students develop meta-linguistic knowledge about pronunciation, (b) gain familiarity with
cognitive and meta-cognitive strategies (c) develop self-monitoring skills, and (d) develop phonological
competency individually and at their own pace. 110 low-intermediate, first-year university students in a
required listening course completed eight post-module questionnaires and provided feedback on six
areas using a 5-point Likert scale. Two additional questionnaires administered at the end of the
semester asked students about their perceived improvement, performance, helpfulness of the
assignments, and other aspects of the class in general. All questionnaires allowed for open comments.
The results showed students desired more guidance with segmentals and preferred Japanese
instructions. Open comments suggested the course provided a satisfactory environment for achieving
the above goals, but improvements could be made by including more multimedia, more freedom, and
more voices.
Keywords: pronunciation learning strategies, metalinguistic, self-monitoring, autonomy, CALL
要 旨 : この探索的研究は、大学生が(a)発音についてのメタ言語的知識を発達させ、 (b)認知ストラテ
ジーおよびメタ認知ストラテジーへの理解を深め、(c)自己モニタースキルを発達させ、(d)音韻論的
能力を個別に且つ各自のペースで発達させるのを支援するために作成されたオンライン発音コースに
ついて考察するものである。必修のリスニング授業を受講する初中級レベルの大学1年生110名が
モジュール終了後の8つのアンケートに回答し、5段階のリッカート尺度を用いて6つの領域につい
てのフィードバックを提供した。学期末にさらに2つのアンケートを実施し、学生たちに向上したと
思う点、学習への取り組み、課題の有益性、授業全般に関するその他の側面について質問した。すべ
てのアンケートには自由記述欄を設けた。本研究の結果から、学生たちは分節についてより多くの指
導を希望し、日本語による指導をより好むことが分かった。自由記述からはこのコースが上記の目標
を達成するのに十分な環境を提供したことが示唆されたが、マルチメディア、自由、そして学生たち
の声をより多く取り入れることによって更なる改善が可能だと思われる。
キーワード:発音学習ストラテジー、メタ言語、自己モニタリング、オートノミー、コンピュータ支
援語学学習
M
any teachers of Japanese students of English are already undoubtedly aware that many
students struggle to accurately perceive and reproduce the sounds of English. According to
Pawlak (2010), the complexity of foreign language pronunciation and the difficulty of achieving
phonological competence in an EFL environment can be alleviated by fostering learner autonomy.
Learner autonomy, as it relates to pronunciation learning, entails being able to self-monitor and selfevaluate so as to set goals, plan the learning process, and choose suitable strategies for improving
one’s pronunciation (Pawlak, 2011). However, this may prove impossible without a phonetic and
phonological awareness of English (Vitanova, 2002) which can be developed through training in
pronunciation learning strategies (PLS).
LEARNING LEARNING 19(1) 21
JALT学習者ティヘロフメントSIGの会報
Research into PLS is still in its early stages, and there have been few studies examining what kinds of
strategies exist and which would be beneficial to introduce to adult EFL students. Peterson (2000),
describes 21 different tactics that her participants—American university students of Spanish—had
used when studying pronunciation and organized them according to Oxford’s (1990) classification
system. Cognitive and metacognitive strategies, made up of naturalistic and formal practice, learning
about and analyzing the sound system, setting goals, planning for language tasks, and evaluating
oneself, were the most common PLS used. (For other studies on PLS see Derwing & Rossiter, 2002;
Eckstein, 2007; Osbourne, 2003; and Varasarin, 2007.)
Getting students to self-monitor and self-evaluate means explicitly teaching students about specific
features of English pronunciation (Vitanova, 2002). In the metacompetence model of phonological
acquisition, Wrembel (2008) describes phonological metacompetence as “conscious knowledge of
and about the grammar of the language and which may be developed by making the learner
metalinguistically aware of L2 phonetics and phonology” (p. 2). Wrembel has proposed an approach
for teachers to help students develop phonological metacompetence, made up of basic awarenessraising activities, articulatory control exercises, informed teaching techniques, and the use of
multimedia learning aids, which will “equip students with self-monitoring strategies” (p. 2). This
strongly suggests that there is value in explicitly teaching pronunciation features even though this has
been seen as incompatible with the communicative approach (CA). However, pronunciation teaching
has gradually come to focus on the importance of producing comprehensible speech (over nativeness)
because it facilitates communication. This means that both segmentals that have a “high functional
load” such as vowel sounds found in minimal pairs and meaning-rich prosodic features should be
taught so students can develop phonological competency (Celce-Murcia, Brinton, & Goodwin, 1996).
Perception plays a key role in the development of phonological competency, and the L1 greatly
influences how L2 sounds are perceived because the perceiver must have enough prior knowledge to
identify, interpret, and sometimes even review and reappraise the underlying phonological units in
order to accurately process language (Tatham & Morton, 2011). Research has shown that adults can
become able to perceive and produce phonemes crucial to communication in the L2 and create new
categories for those sounds (for an extensive discussion of this and other aspects of the Speech
Learning model, see Flege, 1995). It has also been shown that L2 vowel production is influenced by
how L2 vowels are perceived and that non-native subjects’ accuracy is related to their accuracy in
perceiving the same sounds (Flege, 1997). There is also evidence that perceptual training can lead to
improvement in production, even without teacher-instructed articulation practice (Thomson, 2011). For
suprasgementals, Abe (2009) found that providing Japanese university students with instruction about
rhythm, linking, assimilation, and elision produced gains in perception and production of those features.
(For other studies documenting the effectiveness of teaching suprasegmentals in order to improve
perception and production see Derwing & Munro, 1998; Pennington & Ellis, 2000; Tanner & Landon,
2009.)
In the case of Japanese, the influence of the student’s L1 creates serious perception and production
problems at both the segmental and suprasegmental levels. Two influential features of Japanese that
effect English pronunciation are the lower number of vowel and consonant possibilities and its
predominantly consonant-vowel (CVCV) syllable structure. Since Japanese only has 5 vowels and
lacks consonants such as v (/v/) and th (both / θ/ and /ð/), English words represented in Japanese are
noticeably different and often far removed from their English equivalents. Also, the syllable structure
makes consonant clusters and closed syllables problematic (Rogerson-Revell, 2011).
Unfortunately, the use of katakana as an aid in English reading and the large number of loanwords
from English modified to fit the Japanese sound system reinforces these problems (Martin, 2004).
Furthermore, there are prosodic differences as well because Japanese is a mora-timed language,
which means that almost all sounds represented by the kana syllabary are of the same relative length
when spoken. In other words, は (ha) andあ (a) are the same length, but あん (an) or ああ (aa) are
actually twice as long. Additionally, stress is distributed equally on each syllable and vowels are
seldom reduced, so both rhythm and intonation are markedly different from English (Tsujimura, 2007).
Although Japanese students’ formal study of English begins in junior high school, most students don’t
receive enough pronunciation guidance or extensive exposure to comprehensible listening input
before entering university. Historically, the approach to English teaching at the junior high and high
school levels has focused on reading and grammar while preparing students for entrance
22 LEARNING LEARNING 19(1)
Newsletter of the JALT Learner Development SIG
examinations, which until recently did not focus on communication and therefore comprehensible
pronunciation. In addition, junior high and high school teachers have reported lacking an
understanding of English phonetics and phonology as well as training in methods for effectively
teaching pronunciation in their classes (Kochiyama, 2011). Naturally, the majority of pre-university
Japanese students of English have been exposed to non-Japanese English through popular culture
and perhaps access to non-Japanese English teachers at the primary or secondary school levels, but
by the time they reach university they still lack extensive experience listening to simple, non-Japanese
English with their attention focused on pronunciation features (Nakashima, 2006).
University teachers hoping to assist students in developing students’ ability to perceive and produce
English more accurately might find it hard to effectively support their students due to large class sizes,
time restrictions, curriculum constraints, and individual differences in ability and motivation. As more
universities adopt Moodle and similar virtual learning environments, teachers might be attracted to
such environments as a way of coping with classroom limitations and start to design and share
multimedia content for pronunciation study. Such online environments, especially if they incorporate
web 2.0 features allowing for collaboration and interaction, could help to foster autonomy (Bailly, 2010)
as students learn to pay deeper attention to English and monitor their own pronunciation.
This paper introduces an exploratory project I undertook to develop an online Moodle environment
where students could access explanations and examples in English and Japanese in order to develop
their metalinguistic knowledge of English pronunciation, gain familiarity with cognitive and
metacognitive strategies in order to develop self-monitoring skills, and explore activities and links to
external sites where they could develop phonological competency individually and at their own pace.
This project is in its early stages and this preliminary study was initiated to discover if the above goals
were being met and in what ways the online environment could be improved. My hope is to create a
shared, collaborative space for teachers and Japanese students of English which effectively achieves
the above stated goals.
The class
The Moodle course was made up of 8 modules covering, in chronological order: morae, phonemes,
syllables, vowels, consonants, ellipses and elision, stress 1, and stress 2. Since Moodle allows
creators to hide or show content to course members, pronunciation modules were prepared in
advance and hidden until that week’s class had finished. At the end of a class, a new module was
revealed and students were told to complete it by the next class.
The first three modules - morae, phonemes, and syllables - used a contrastive approach to get
students to notice particular features about the English sound system vis-à-vis the Japanese. All three
modules included English introductions to the topics with exercises, discussion board activities (for
example, posting rhyming words or haiku), and quizzes. Beginning with the vowel module, the
remaining modules were delivered using Japanese.
Two modules were created to reintroduce and review phonemes. The vowel module dealt with the
differences between Japanese and English vowel sound categories, the physical articulation of vowel
sounds, and self-awareness activities such as reporting about the shape of one’s mouth when making
Japanese vowel sounds. The approach used in the consonant module was similar except students
were
given
instructions
to
go
offsite
to
a
free
phonetics
lab
(http://www.uiowa.edu/~acadtech/phonetics/) which has flash animation, video, and native examples.
Using these materials, students were asked to report which consonant sounds were difficult to hear
and make. Although the morae topic was not reintroduced in Japanese, syllables were reinforced in
the remaining suprasegmental modules where possible. The ellipses and elision module used
recorded examples and quizzes to introduce students to the elimination of unstressed sounds
(ellipses) and the addition of glides (the semivowels /w/ and /j/) between vowel sounds to aid in
pronunciation (elision). Stress 1, the most independent module, asked students to select unknown
words from the unit vocabulary list and note the word’s syllables and stress pattern in their vocabulary
journals. It also included a listening activity where students listened to two words and answered
whether their stress patterns were the same. The final module, Stress 2, introduced stress differences
in noun-verb homophones with word and sentence examples for practice and testing.
Since each module was created after viewing feedback from a previous module, the development of
materials and the approach was organic and tried to respond to student needs within the limitations of
LEARNING LEARNING 19(1) 23
JALT学習者ティヘロフメントSIGの会報
the environment. As will be discussed below, the lack of feedback and desire for further guidance
were ever-present challenges, so where appropriate I addressed this by making Japanese-language
videos and uploading them to the course. Being reactionary, these do not neatly fit into the modules,
and could be conceived of as a “review” section added into the following week’s modules. In total, I
made 11 videos for the course. Using the information about difficult consonants reported by students, I
made 10 videos explaining how to articulate the difficult sounds, indicating where a similar sound
might already exist in Japanese, and introducing practice exercises. The final video explained how to
notice syllable boundaries using the mouth’s movements.
Additionally, for homework students were responsible for listening to a 15-minute Voice of America
(VOA) Special English (http://www.voanews.com/learningenglish/home/) short story, completing one
video on English Central (EC) (http://www.englishcentral.com/), doing the self-study unit from the
textbook (Listen In 1, Nunan, 1998), and keeping a vocabulary journal of unknown words from a word
list from the VOA short stories and textbook.
Participants
The participants in this study were 111 first-year students from a university in western Japan majoring
in Law (n=51), Commerce (n=37), Economics (n=29), or Human and Environmental Sciences (n=4).
All students were enrolled in English I, a required listening course focusing on TOEIC preparation,
which met once a week for 90 minutes, 15 times during the first semester. The TOEIC Bridge was
used as a placement test for incoming first-year students, and all students had tested into level 3 (low
intermediate), the highest first-year English level at our university. Two classes were made up entirely
of students from either Law (TOEIC Bridge average 145; Listening section average 69) or Commerce
(146; 68), while the final class serviced the Economics department and Human and Environmental
Science (145; 68) department.
Method
Data was collected using Moodle questionnaires (Appendix 1) in which students were asked if they
completed the module (P) and for feedback on 6 areas: ease (E), meaningfulness (M), comprehension
(C), interest in studying further (I), need for guidance (G), and language (L) using a 5-point Likert scale.
They were also given space to freely write comments. The first questionnaire was delivered
electronically in class and covered the first three modules: morae, phonemes, and syllables. It was
given after a test and all students were able to finish before the end of the period. In subsequent
weeks, a questionnaire was available online as the final step of each module and students responded
to them on their own. From this data, I tabulated student participation on each module and calculated
the means and standard deviations for each area. I then translated, coded, and tabulated open
comments.
After the final exam, students completed a final Moodle questionnaire (Appendix 2) in class asking for
feedback on course assignments, including the pronunciation modules. Afterwards, they filled out the
university’s course survey. Again, students had enough time to complete all of the questionnaires. I
was able to instantaneously view responses to Moodle questionnaires and received the analyzed data
from the university’s survey along with any open responses after the semester ended. I tabulated the
responses from the Moodle questionnaire and then translated, coded, and tabulated all of the open
comments from both questionnaires.
Results
Figure 1 shows students’ self-reported progress for each module based on questionnaire responses.
24 LEARNING LEARNING 19(1)
Newsletter of the JALT Learner Development SIG
110
100
90
80
70
No. of
60
Participants 50
40
30
20
10
0
Neither
Attempted
Completed
Module
Figure 1: Participation per module
As Figure 1 shows, all students report having either completed or attempted the first three modules
(N=110). After the third module, students began to fail to respond to the questionnaire, so it can only
be assumed that they did not attempt the weekly activities. The final module was undertaken by only
half of the original 110 participants, although the weekly participation is not a simple downward trend.
The number of students attempting but not completing the modules does decrease steadily.
In the final Moodle questionnaire at the end of the semester, students were asked if they had
completed all of the modules in the pronunciation course and 74% of the respondents (N=108)
reported that they always did, 23% reported that they sometimes did, while only 3% said they had not
completed one module. Figure 2 shows the distribution of completion numbers based on responses to
the module questionnaires.
Modules completed
Number of students
0
5
1
4
2
6
3
17
4
17
5
18
6
15
7
14
8
14
9
10
Total
110
Figure 2: Total number of modules completed
Accordingly, only 13% of students completed all of the modules and 83% completed some of the
modules. The questionnaires were voluntary which may account for the large discrepancy.
The means and standard deviations for student responses to the 6 areas investigated are displayed in
Figure 3. The greyscale represents the scope of the first questionnaire and (N) is the number of
respondents. In the first three modules, only English was used, and language (L) above shows that
students had a strong desire to have the modules presented in Japanese, which was subsequently
accommodated.
Mora
N
E
M
C
I
G
L
110
2.81
3.49
3.03
3.05
3.59
3.88
0.87
1.00
1.00
0.97
0.96
0.99
2.63
3.27
2.71
2.94
3.49
3.88
0.94
0.82
0.88
0.89
0.88
0.94
2.82
3.35
3.12
3.05
3.36
3.77
0.94
0.93
0.87
0.92
1.00
1.00
2.04
3.89
2.85
3.33
3.92
3.11
0.88
1.05
1.08
1.09
1.00
0.97
2.51
3.88
3.17
3.43
3.74
3.03
SD
Phonemes
110
SD
Syllables
110
SD
Vowels
73
SD
Consonants
65
LEARNING LEARNING 19(1) 25
JALT学習者ティヘロフメントSIGの会報
SD
E&E
70
SD
Stress1
67
SD
Stress2
55
SD
0.95
1.05
0.94
0.93
0.85
0.86
2.79
3.75
3.31
3.41
3.59
3.15
0.92
1.07
0.91
0.99
0.81
0.80
3.22
3.78
3.51
3.49
3.43
3.12
0.99
1.23
1.00
1.06
0.98
0.94
3.55
4.09
3.95
3.76
3.56
3.35
1.02
1.08
1.09
1.03
0.95
0.79
Figure 3: Means and standard deviations for the six areas
E
M
C
I
G
Stress 2
3.55
Stress 1
3.22
Syllables
2.82
Morae
2.81
E&E
2.79
Phonemes
2.63
Consonants
2.51
Vowels
2.04
Stress 2
4.09
Vowels
3.89
Consonants
3.88
Stress 1
3.78
E&E
3.75
Morae
3.49
Syllables
3.35
Phonemes
3.27
Stress 2
3.95
Stress 1
3.51
E&E
3.31
Consonants
3.17
Syllables
3.12
Morae
3.03
Vowels
2.85
Phonemes
2.71
Stress 2
3.76
Stress 1
3.49
Consonants
3.43
E&E
3.41
Vowels
3.33
Syllables
3.05
Morae
3.05
Phonemes
2.94
Vowels
3.92
Consonants
3.74
Morae
3.59
E&E
3.59
Stress 2
3.56
Phonemes
3.49
Stress 1
3.43
Syllables
3.36
Figure 4: Means ranked by area
Two areas, (E) and comprehension (C), were the most variable and did not seem to be related to the
language of delivery. The means for meaningfulness (M) were higher once the modules were
presented in Japanese. Starting with the fourth module, it can be assumed that only the students who
found the pronunciation modules meaningful continued to pursue their independent study. Interest (I)
in studying the module topics in greater detail was low when the modules were in English, climbing a
little after they were presented in Japanese. Desire for additional guidance (G) was highest with
segmentals; however, students seemed to consistently want guidance on other modules regardless of
language of instruction.
In Figure 4, the means of five areas—ease (E), meaningfulness (M), comprehension (C), interest (I),
and guidance (G)—have been rearranged in rank order from highest to lowest.
Morae, Phonemes, and Syllables could be considered the test phase of the project as the modules
were not well received and the results of the questionnaire were taken into immediate consideration to
improve the following modules. These areas ranked worst in meaningfulness, comprehension, and
further interest. Even though they were in English, they ranked higher in ease than modules covering
segmentals in Japanese. Although 110 students completed the questionnaire, comments were
received from only 12 students on the Morae module, 10 students on the Phoneme module, and 6
students on the Syllable module. Their responses are recorded in Figure 5 further below
The responses show students had difficulty dealing with unfamiliar topics and they wanted more
support in the form of additional explanations, in-class guidance, or Japanese language. The two
modules dealing with segmentals, vowels and consonants, ranked low in ease and comprehension,
26 LEARNING LEARNING 19(1)
Newsletter of the JALT Learner Development SIG
high in meaningfulness, and highest in desire for guidance. This suggests that there is something that
made the segmental modules difficult and hard to understand while participants believed that the
content was important to know. Comments from 17 students on the vowel and consonant modules are
summarized in Figure 6.
Although the module had asked students to focus closely on the physical aspects of sound and the
desire for more guidance was requested in the articulation, this proved challenging for some students
form of in-class teacher intervention and the use of more examples. In response to this, more visual
and aural examples were created to help students understand consonant articulation. As a result,
students had remarked how much easier the consonant module had been thanks to videos,
animations, and recordings.
Respondents
Comment
M
P
S
I don’t understand.
2
3
2
I want to know more.
1
1
0
Please explain it more.
3
2
2
I don’t even understand this topic in Japanese.
1
2
0
I’ve never studied this before.
0
0
1
Please talk about it in class.
2
1
1
Please use Japanese.
2
0
1
I’m not good with computers.
1
0
0
Figure 5: Comments from Morae, Phoneme, and Syllable modules
Respondents
Comment
V
Articulating vowel sounds is difficult.
5
I want more guidance.
5
I’m trying to pay more attention when articulating
vowel sounds.
The vowel charts were helpful.
4
The recordings were helpful.
1
The consonant module was easier than the vowel
module.
It is hard to read/write pronunciation symbols.
C
2
3
3
Figure 6: Comments from Vowel and Consonant modules
The Ellipses and Elision module ranked around the middle in most areas, but low on ease. Both
ellipses and elision rely on an understanding of syllable boundaries, with which students were still
having a problem. Comments were received from 18 students and are listed in Figure 7 (see below).
This time students commented on my Japanese, although more comments were expected because
there was no native Japanese input on any of the Japanese language materials produced. In addition,
these comments are what lead to the creation of the syllable video with link to additional syllable
practice at http://www.bbc.co.uk/skillswise/game/ en01soun-game-syllables-factory.
Both stress modules were at the top of the rankings for ease, comprehension, and desire to study
more deeply, with Stress 2 also ranking highest in perceived meaningfulness. This was reflected in the
comments received. The Stress 1 module received comments from 24 people while the Stress 2
module had comments from 15 people. Relevant comments are shown in Figure 8 (see below).
LEARNING LEARNING 19(1) 27
JALT学習者ティヘロフメントSIGの会報
Comment
Respondents
I don’t understand syllables yet.
4
I need to practice.
2
This is important in order to sound more native.
2
The audio was helpful.
1
I’m paying attention to vowels and consonants
more.
Adding w/y makes it easier to say words.
1
The Japanese explanation was helpful.
1
Your Japanese was a little strange.
2
Learning pronunciation is fun, but I want to study
in class.
1
1
Figure 7: Comments from the Ellipses and Elision module
Although the comments allude to why the modules were easy to understand through the use of
multimedia resources, they also suggest that the high ratings received for meaningfulness are due to
how comprehension can be affected by a lack of proficiency with stress (and syllables). The
comments also point to a need for improved use of dictionary skills using IPA.
Comment
S1
I think I need to understand syllables first.
1
I think stress is important.
1
If I pay attention to how my mouth opens, I can
understand syllables.
The syllable video was easy to understand.
The syllable game helped me to understand
better.
The syllable game was fun.
I have a deeper understanding thanks to looking
things up on my own.
I don't know how to note stress in my vocabulary
journal.
I can now notice that verb-noun homophones
have different stress patterns.
I will use this new knowledge to monitor my
speech and comprehension.
I don’t know what to do when my dictionary gives
me conflicting information about stress.
S2
1
3
3
3
1
1
5
2
1
Figure 8: Comments from Stress 1 and 2 modules
On the final Moodle survey at the end of the semester, students were asked if the pronunciation
course had been helpful and 81% responded that it had been very helpful with only 5% answering that
it hadn’t been helpful at all. When asked if their pronunciation had improved, 74% believed that it had
improved a lot, while 13% reported that they had felt no change. Of the 55 participants that left
comments, 12 specifically mentioned the pronunciation course. See Figure 9 below for their responses.
28 LEARNING LEARNING 19(1)
Newsletter of the JALT Learner Development SIG
As can be seen, the comments were both positive and negative, and the desire for in-class guidance
continued to be a theme until the very end. In a class survey given by the university, another 54 open
comments were collected, 15 of which focused on the pronunciation course. The comments are
presented in Figure 10.
Although these final comments are positive, they should be interpreted holistically with all previous
comments in order to serve as catalysts for further improvements to materials, approach, and delivery,
as will be discussed in the next section.
Comment
Respondents
The materials were helpful.
3
The pronunciation course was too difficult.
3
I wanted more in-class help with pronunciation.
3
I want to continue working on my pronunciation.
3
Figure 9: Final Moodle questionnaire comments
Comment
Respondents
I can understand pronunciation better than before.
4
The materials were helpful.
4
The detailed explanations were helpful.
2
I liked studying at my own pace.
2
I like that this class focused on pronunciation.
2
I am more aware of my pronunciation now.
1
I liked using the internet to study pronunciation.
1
Figure 10: Comments from end-of-semester class survey
Discussion
This exploratory project was envisioned as a way for students to (a) develop their metalinguistic
knowledge of English pronunciation, (b) gain familiarity with cognitive and metacognitive strategies for
improving their pronunciation, (c) develop self-monitoring skills, (d) develop phonological competency,
and (e) work on goals 1-4 individually and at their own pace. Whether the project has met any of these
goals and in what ways is up for debate; however, I think there is a case to be made for this type of
environment to support the independent learning of pronunciation.
First, metalinguistic knowledge of phonetics and phonology is gained by learning about the features of
not only the target language but also one’s mother tongue. Students were exposed to information,
through a variety of media, explicitly drawing their attention to pronunciation features. I believe that
comments in which students report understanding something better or now being able to understand a
specific highlighted feature are evidence that these students are on their way to developing cognitive
awareness of English pronunciation that can be put to use in their practice of English listening or
speaking. Ideally I think it would be best if future participants in the course were also enrolled in a
class that spent some classroom time on communicative activities to supply students with a natural
environment for further pronunciation practice.
Cognitive and metacognitive strategies for pronunciation were introduced inductively throughout the
modules. These included those cognitive PLS mentioned in Peterson (2000) such as listening to and
imitating English speakers, practicing through repetition, talking aloud or silently to oneself, noticing
the position of articulators, noticing contrasts between the target language and your mother tongue,
LEARNING LEARNING 19(1) 29
JALT学習者ティヘロフメントSIGの会報
and metacognitive PLS such as learning about phonology and phonetics, focusing on particular
sounds, or listening to one’s own pronunciation (possible in EC). Although there is some evidence in
the comments that students were beginning to use these strategies, I think more research is needed
as it is unclear if students had just used the strategies within the limited confines of the online
environment or if they had indeed acquired them and started applying them in other learning or
communicative situations. Furthermore, since students were not given a PLS battery at the start of the
semester, it remains unclear whether some students were already using these strategies especially as
they are not often introduced in junior and senior high school.
Monitoring skills are theorized to rest upon phonetic and phonological awareness (Pawlak, 2010;
Vitanova, 2002), so it is possible that those students whose metalinguistic awareness of English was
strengthened by the pronunciation course could also have developed or strengthened their ability to
self-monitor, and again there are a few comments from students who reported actively trying to pay
attention to specific pronunciation features. However, more detailed and experimental classroom
research is needed to discover if the course really realizes this goal as well as to measure the
existence of this skill before the start of the course.
Phonological competency is a very large area and one that takes years to develop. Pennington's
(1994) research asserts that "the typical case in L2 acquisition seems to be that learners approach
new values for phonological features gradually and piecemeal, rather than as the outcome of a rapid
shift" (p.95), meaning that a single lesson is not going to awaken some large and powerful shift in
phonological competence. Although it would be difficult to provide evidence of gains in phonological
competency as a result of this course; I believe the online course did lay the groundwork for
improvement by providing students with an environment in which to develop their metalinguistic
knowledge, use of PLS, and self-monitoring ability. With the additional out-of-class work as well as
short communicative speaking opportunities in the listening classroom, I am not surprised that 87% of
students reported that they felt their pronunciation had improved. Once again, controlled, longitudinal
investigation is needed to measure change in both production and perhaps students’ personal
approaches to pronunciation learning to see how effective the course has been in achieving this goal.
Finally, was this environment conducive to independent learning? Looking at the number of students
who completed all or a significant portion of the lessons, I believe it may not have been. My initial
approach may have been a contributing factor in dissuading people from undertaking the
pronunciation course because students at this level were overwhelmingly unprepared to study the
topics in English. The addition of Japanese explanations improved student understanding, but perhaps
it was too late. A second reason could be the lack of in-class guidance related to the pronunciation
modules of which many students seemed eager for in their comments. Unfortunately, my classroom
situation limited the amount of explicit, individualized pronunciation teaching that could be done
because our limited class time was already committed to vocabulary and comprehension quizzes and
listening and speaking activities. To remedy the lack of individualized feedback, I created a forum on
Moodle and encouraged students to ask questions there or come to my office and talk with me, but
none used either support line.
As a topic, suprasegmentals seemed to be easier to digest in an online environment, but one of the
reasons could be that every week students had a lot of opportunities to hear comprehensible English
in EC and VOA assignments and notice the features that were being introduced. Segmentals,
especially vowels, proved to be harder, and I have since become aware of an online resource that I
would like to introduce to students for improving the perception and production of vowel sounds
(http://www.englishaccentcoach.com/).
One improvement that needs to be made relates to the degree of freedom students have within the
pronunciation course. The modules in the course were required and linear, and a new module was
introduced every week. This means students worked at my pace although I had hoped that they would
work at their own. This could be allievated by providing a can-do survey or test related to
pronunciation features or to specific goals allowing access to a related module with explanations and
activities. Modules also should include more activities, explanations, and materials. Although students
did comment that diagrams and charts were helpful, audio recordings that provided students with an
opportunity to hear a non-Japanese English speaker and video recordings of Japanese explanations
seemed to have had a greater impact on students. However, the non-Japanese samples used in the
Moodle course featured only my voice, which could mean that students had grown accustomed to my
30 LEARNING LEARNING 19(1)
Newsletter of the JALT Learner Development SIG
speech and generalized phonological competence could be limited. Therefore, future versions of the
course need to provide exposure to a variety of male and female voices from various English
backgrounds. Finally, a review module could be made freely accessible for students wanting more
guidance and practice in a specific area at any given time.
The original intention for the data collected in this study was to feed back into future modules and
incarnations of the pronunciation course, so there are obvious flaws in how the data was gathered and
analyzed and a lot of opportunity for future research. Nevertheless, much time and effort went into
designing and creating this environment and the research that was undertaken to write this paper has
made me feel that the investment has been worthwhile and is worthy of further pursuit. In the future, I
hope I can continue to develop the course and design empirical research studies specifically looking at
the development of self-monitoring skills and the use of pronunciation learning strategies within this or
a similar environment.
Mathew Porter has been working with English learners in the U.S. and Japan since 1999. He
currently works at a self-access learning center and is making a transition from classroom
teacher to learning advisor, which has been a great opportunity for reflection and growth.
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Appendix 1
I’d like to ask you about the online pronunciation course so that I can find ways to improve it. Please
answer the questions below. There is no right answer and your responses are anonymous. Thank you
very much for your help.
1. Did you complete the entire module?
2. In the next section, I’d like to ask you how much do you agree or disagree with the statements
below. Click on a number from 1 to 5.
1 = Strongly disagree
2 = Disagree
3 = Neither agree nor disagree
4 = Agree
5 = Strongly agree
This module was easy.
I think studying this is meaningful.
I was able to understand.
I want to study this more deeply.
I want it to be explained more.
I want you to use more Japanese (English*).
3. Please use the space below to write any comments or suggestions you have.
*From the fourth module.
Appendix 2
I’d like to ask about your beliefs and behavior in regard to this English 1 course. Please answer the
questions below. There is no right answer and your responses are anonymous. Thank you very much
for your help.
1. Read the statements below and answer (1) yes, (2) no, or (3) no change.
I think I did better on TOEIC this time.
I think my listening ability has improved.
LEARNING LEARNING 19(1) 33
JALT学習者ティヘロフメントSIGの会報
I think my vocabulary has increased.
I think I like English more.
I think I have gotten used to listening to English.
I think my pronunciation has improved.
2. Read the statements below and answer (1) always, (2) sometimes, or (3) never.
I did the vocabulary journal homework.
I did the self-study homework from the textbook.
I listened to and read the VOA short story.
I just listened to the VOA short story.
I just read the VOA short story.
I did English Central.
I did the pronunciation homework.
3. Read the statements below and answer (1) yes, (2) no, or (3) no change.
The vocabulary journal homework was helpful.
The self-study homework from the textbook was helpful.
The VOA short story was helpful.
English Central was helpful.
The pronunciation homework was helpful.
4. Complete the statements below with one of the following words: (1) easy, (2) hard, or (3) just right.
The vocabulary journal homework was
The self-study homework from the textbook was
The VOA short story was English Central was
The pronunciation homework was
5. Please use the space below to write any comments or suggestions you have for next semester.
34 LEARNING LEARNING 19(1)
Newsletter of the JALT Learner Development SIG
Feature Article フィチャード
アーテイクル
Private tuition as a learning format for Japanese adult
learners of L2 English
日 本 人 成 人 の L2 英 語 学 習 者 の た め の 学 習 形 式 と し て
の個人教授
Lee Arnold
Hoshi University, Seigakuin University, Shibaura Institute of
Technology
リー・アーノルド
星薬科大学,聖学院大学,芝浦工業大学
Abstract: Japanese learners of L2 English in secondary and higher education have often been
characterized as group-oriented and risk-averse. Yet adult Japanese continue with L2 development for
necessary employment and career purposes, often in private lessons, to an extent that may contradict
stereotypical characterizations. While commercial language schools have responded to such needs
and interests for adults, cost is often a factor. Adult learners are nonetheless seeking this format both
inside and outside of commercial ELT, perhaps with a latent desire for learner autonomy and a
rationale grounded in adult life experience. Such desire, with life experience as a component, may
enrich the profile of Japanese learners across the board if taken into account, and may elevate oneon-one lessons into a broader scheme of private tuition for adult L2 learning.
Keywords: Japanese adult learners, private lessons, private tuition, andragogy
キーワード: 日本人成人学習者、個人レッスン、個人教授、アンドラゴジー(成人教育学)
要 旨 : 中等及び高等教育において英語を第二言語(L2)として学ぶ日本人は、「集団主義的」且つ「危
機回避的」と特徴づけられることが多い。しかし、成人の学習者は雇用維持や昇進の目的でL2学習を
継続し、多くは個人授業を通してこのような既成のイメージには一致しないレベルに達している。こ
のような成人のニーズや関心には、民間の語学学校が対応しているが、費用がしばしば問題となる。
それでもなお成人の学習者は、民間の英語教育機関の内外で、この学習形式(個人教授)を求めている。
これはおそらく自律的学習を潜在的に求めているためであり、且つ成人としての人生経験に基づいた
理由からであろう。このような欲求が存在することを考慮することで、我々は、日本人学習者が全般
的にどのような特徴を持つのか理解を深めることができる。また、成人のL2学習のための個人教授と
いう広い視野の中で、マンツーマンレッスンの地位向上に貢献しうる。
A
llwright's (1995) paper on the social context of classroom language learning highlighted a
dynamic that he believed had gone largely unnoticed: the potentially negative influence of L2
learners in groups on individual L2 learners. He traced this lack of attention to the striving in
second language acquisition (SLA) studies for research legitimacy in applied linguistics rather than
education, and to a preoccupation with details of methodology and psycholinguistic accounts of SLA.
Such details increasingly, and ironically, centered on the what the individual underwent, rather than
the role social interaction played, in the SLA process. This had the effect, in his view, of ignoring the
classroom as a social setting in its own right and how social dynamics shaped the learner (p. 7).
In Japanese ELT contexts, however, the social dynamic is significant to the extent that some teachers,
especially those new to the country, may see individual Japanese learners as defined by the group so
completely as to be unable to rise above it. In such a view, the needs of the individual may be seen as
lesser in importance to the needs of the group, reinforcing Allwright's (1985) concerns all the more and
circulating an image of Japanese as ultimately too dependent on the group to be capable of full L2
mastery.
LEARNING LEARNING 19(1) 35
JALT学習者ティヘロフメントSIGの会報
Yet if such an assumption of group definition is even true, it is true only part of the time.
Mainstream Japanese university research in English, understandably focused on its
predominantly late-teens/early-twenties learner demographic, overlooks what many Japanese may be
capable of achieving in the L2 once they leave higher education and make their way into the working
world. Indeed, Japanese adults must often continue L2 development for the purpose of real-life
engagement across a spectrum of public and private interests wherever the L2 is required. Given the
action, choices and demands involved, there is no room for passivity or inhibition.
For adult learners, the joys and difficulties of their lives may form a powerful source of L2 motivation
and development. Yet such a source is still largely untapped as a basis for expanding the sense that
Japanese are ultimately more capable of realizing greater L2 learner development than what they
have often been given credit for. This paper will therefore explore Japanese adult L2 learner
capability by way of a format that may draw the most from their life experience - the private lesson.
Such a framework could potentially serve as a developmental context for the autonomy that fits with
adult learner orientation, unobstructed by negative social dynamics and connected to the bottom-up
initiative that adult deliberation calls for. The following will be an account of two adult learners I have
had in private lessons – one at a language school where I was once employed, and the other in a
private arrangement.
A reflection on two adult learners
Dr. Takeda (a pseudonym) was a highly educated medical science professional in a hospital affiliated
with a medical school northeast of Tokyo. In once-a-week sessions, he made it clear from our first
meeting about how the lessons should go and what materials he wanted to use. While the materials
were recommended by the school, he had a sense as to what he wanted from them - specifically,
smoother spoken output with improved pronunciation and grammatical cohesion. While I privately
questioned such emphasis given how proficient he already seemed, I agreed to work with him on
these terms.
In each lesson, we would work through some structures he was comfortable in as warm-up activities
towards his target structures. He insisted on repeated dialog pair practice with me on these structures,
and based on these forms we would create new personalized conversations, with work on
pronunciation points if needed.
As the year continued, we would deal with readings in the text with these forms as his confidence
grew. He challenged me on the structures and insisted on deeper answers for their rationale and use.
Any preparation on my part soon focused more on supplementary exercises, including my own
materials which centered on particular structures and their use.
He showed me, progressively over time, what his particular goal for the week's session was. He knew
how to discuss issues in his field; he was drawing from the outside as a way of attending to what
doubts he may still have had with his output. I soon stopped assigning homework; he did it without
being asked. At the end of the year, when my schedule was to change and I could no longer continue
our lessons together, he brought me a box of Belgian chocolates and a letter of praise to the school
director about my work.
A few years later, a private student I had taken on directly was similarly unique for the reflective
character he brought to bear. Mr. Nishimura (also a pseudonym) was a young minister in a church
who expected to be sent to Canada for a number of years with his wife and infant daughter. His aim
was discussion on topics of his choosing with social issues, particularly those that overlapped with
what he expected to hear from his Canadian church members should he be posted there.
He had selected a reading text and had ideas about what he wanted from it, and while I believed it
was suited for him, I advised him to push beyond it into discussion based on reflection of the topics
themselves, rather than weekly updates on what he had read. He undertook this eagerly and soon
began emailing me in advance on what he would talk about from a particular reading, saying that this
would enable us to focus on discussion in our sessions.
While he wanted to hear my thoughts on these issues, he also wanted feedback on how well he had
presented himself in his talk on them and how thought-out a certain view on an issue at hand had
been. He told me that he did not expect me to agree with him, and sometimes I did not – but that was
36 LEARNING LEARNING 19(1)
Newsletter of the JALT Learner Development SIG
not central to the aim of our sessions. I nonetheless advised him on how he might handle himself with
those who may disagree and push things with him with strategies that would be most useful in such
cases. Based on his own initiative, he began using such points in discussion, asking for critiques on
them. I began emailing him these critiques, which he then replied to in unsolicited but well-thought
reflections that sometimes showed change in his views. He eventually received his assignment to
Canada, thanking me in a card for our sessions and confident that his English came away
substantially improved.
Both of these learners brought a sense of purpose, great confidence, initiative and determination to
their learning, even with any doubts they may have had in areas of their language. The case of Dr.
Takeda in particular fits with Krashen's (2006) description of the autonomous language acquirer, in
terms of the vigorous pro-activity in execution he shared with Mr. Nishimura in what he wanted to
achieve in the L2. If fully maximized in these terms, the one-on-one setting for adult learners moves
away from a group lesson tailored to one person towards an individualized vehicle more like an
ongoing tutorial. It may therefore be better to refer to it as private tuition, and requires a different
approach by a teacher and realization by the learner engaged in it. The notion of an individualized
learning scheme may nonetheless be problematic, and calls for a review of issues that may negate the
effects of private tuition.
Issues of private tuition
The marketability of private lessons in commercial ELT may admittedly represent a personalization of
choice among learners in that connectedness to the instructor, particularly the native-speaker, and the
L2 can be bought, reinforcing the notion of learners as consumers. As many English conversation
schools also tend to charge more for one-on-one lessons than in groups, a narrow learner base may
only be reached – namely, middle-class corporate workers with the disposable income for such
lessons. The greater learner capability that the one-on-one format may show promise for may
therefore not develop over a wider range of adult learners.
In addition, the type of psychosocial dependence with a corresponding expectation of indulgence
identified by Doi (1973) as peculiar among Japanese, explored further by Befu (1983), Clancy (1986),
and McDaniel (2005), and treated as an aspect in a number of L2 learning issues involving Japanese
by Bohn (2004), Doyon (2000, 2003), Pritchard (1995) and Yoneoka (2000) may indeed play a role in
hampering learner capability even into the adult years, to a degree that the private lesson format may
not be able to remedy.
While outside of ELT, Hofstede's concept of uncertainty avoidance (1980), which emerged from his
insights about the scope of interaction within cultural boundaries, has bearing as well. His uncertainty
avoidance index (1991) expanded this concept further; on this scale, countries and their cultures were
gauged on the degree that withdrawal from ambiguous or uncomfortable outcomes within sociocultural
interactions are permitted to individuals. In his findings, he ranked Japan somewhat highly for the
great importance attached by a significant number of Japanese to procedure and certainty in outcome
over ranges of interaction across business, educational and other societal settings and situations
(Hofstede, 1991). Doyon (2000) also provides an account of shyness in the Japanese university L2
classroom that may be formidable as a learning barrier. He traces this phenomenon to the compulsory
educational years, particularly on the secondary level, where student performance appears to be
evaluated to a degree that goes beyond learning and into the assessment of students themselves as
people; as a result, low self-esteem can arise in many students, with the possible result of a
performance-oriented dependence on the approval of others, especially those in authority (p. 13). As
most Japanese leaving school will have likely gone through such an orientation, those teaching in
higher education will receive what it may produce – hesitant, easily overwhelmed and fearful learners
who may be unlikely to develop a heartfelt love of learning free from external approval.
Breaking through issues and stereotypes
Given the economic and sociocultural obstacles present, why are adult learners still seeking out oneon-one learning? One explanation is that dissatisfaction with the typical group lesson may have
emerged and that they have perceived a learning format they can engage in within a safe haven,
where proactive effort can be freed. With regard to the learners in my reflection this may have been
the case, as they controlled the question of their learning, but on their terms and time.
More importantly, it may be possible that they are seeking out this format as a release from the social
LEARNING LEARNING 19(1) 37
JALT学習者ティヘロフメントSIGの会報
tensions Allwright (1995) points out. They may have accepted the interpersonal risks that can come
with one-on-one interaction as a price that must be paid in order to break through the L2 pain barrier,
perhaps even coming to feel that such a barrier is best broken away from their peers. On these terms,
a more meaningful conception of private tuition is enhanced when it maximizes greater release from
such psychosocial tensions and sets learners as agents who can shape their learning.
The negative influence of the group in the L2 classroom what Allwright found may be seen as a
network of patterns among individuals in relation to groups – perhaps of value in tracing certain
aspects of behavior in relation to other learners, but falling short when examining individual learners.
Indeed, accounts of dependence, avoidance and shyness may even be unhelpful when we look at
adult learners themselves, let alone men and women with rights and responsibilities.
On those terms, if Japanese adult learners are to be taken with their existential characteristics into
consideration, tropes of dependence, avoidance and shyness must be put aside. Even more, there
must be a departure from the temptation to see these elements as forming a narrative about Japanese
as a whole. Only then will it be possible to see them in their own right as workers, professionals,
spouses, parents, travelers and returnees to Japan. Ultimately, for Japanese adult life to meet the
demands placed upon it, the group dynamic may not hold sway in the long run. An account by Kirk
(1999) of adult students admitted into EFL classes at a regional university in southwest Japan
demonstrate the advantages they bring in interaction, motivation, and networking to their younger
classmates. If such students can have this kind of impact in a higher educational context, what might
be gained by explicitly seeking it out in a one-on-one format?
Realities of adult learners and Knowles' andragogy
The lives of adult Japanese living and working within the current social and economic realities of
Japan may be increasingly contradicting stereotypical images. Those who have left the country for
travel or extended living and working situations more often than not return changed from their
engagement with foreign cultures. Many are increasingly forced into changing jobs and careers as well
given the erosion of traditional patterns of lifetime employment. The societal pressures that may have
given rise to certain psychosocial conditions in the past may now be gradually breaking down - or
being engaged with by a newer type of Japanese adult, one more resilient.
In the light of such realities, teachers could ask who these learners are in their work experiences,
career paths and daily lives. Indeed, what are they looking for? What has been the character of their
previous learning and life experience? Where do they wish to position their current and future L2 use?
What is in the research literature that will help us to understand who they are? Adult life experience
may be expressed within such learners consciously or not, because such experience goes to the heart
of who they are as people.
Such questions were raised by Knowles (1973), in holding that adult learners situate their learning in
relation to their life experience. This was the culmination of his research on the differences between
adults and children in learning styles, and rounded out his body of thought about adult learning,
dubbed andragogy, or the education of adults (Knowles, 1970; Merriam & Caffarella, 1991). To
Knowles, the adult learner is driven by a sense of application that is direct, immediate, and
instrumental, centered in the way “(...) both programmed experiences (psychotherapy, adult
education) and unprogrammed experiences (marriage, child rearing, occupational activities) produce
deep-seated changes in the ways adults approach problems, handle risk and organize their thinking”
(p. 46).
Knowles' scheme is grounded in a North American context of individualism and bottom-up initiative
that seems at odds with Japanese sociocultural patterns. Yet what may reconcile these seemingly
opposed sources is an instrumental focus that may possess cross-cultural applicability. Such focus
draws from an adult what a given situation may require – something that demands, for example, as
much from the new recruit at a Japanese company as it does from his or her counterpart overseas.
The ability to handle what emerges may therefore be a sign of mature adult development regardless of
cultural contexts and societal factors.
Extending this line, he proposed that one's readiness to learn coincided with one's developmental
maturity towards the assumption of social roles:
38 LEARNING LEARNING 19(1)
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This assumption is that as an individual matures, his readiness to learn is decreasingly the
product of his biological development and academic pressure and is increasingly the product of
the developmental tasks required for the performance of his evolving social roles. In a sense,
pedagogy assumes that children are ready to learn those things they “ought” to because of
their biological and academic development, whereas andragogy assumes that learners are
ready to learn those things they “need” to because of the developmental phases they are
approaching in their roles as workers, spouses, parents, organizational members and leaders,
leisure time users, and the like (1973, pp. 46-47).
How may private tuition bring this formulation into Japanese adult learning contexts, especially with
regard to the existential characteristics of learners? It may be best imported through a focus on the
content of adult experience, contextualized into L2 areas most relevant for the learner, and on the
character of communication that most fully brings out the richness of such content.
Structure and features of private tuition
While private tuition may not necessarily be about conversation, the character of discussion, either to
personalize the content of lessons, or as an extension of themes within it, is central on three counts:
first, in the freer range of discussion and engagement that will be opened up from the nature of oneon-one interaction; second, from the way that alternatives to the grammar-orientation in much
Japanese instruction of L2 English can be explored; and third, in how context frames the spoken
discourse that occurs in analytical and practical terms.
Brown (2000) points out that the rules governing conversation, even where they belong to a
fundamental area of linguistic competence in the learner's L1, have been given little attention in the L2
classroom (p. 255). Attention-getting, topic nomination, topic development, and topic termination, with
skills such as turn-taking and clarification, are culturally-specific and may not always transcend cultural
boundaries. Grice (1967) gave what Brown calls conversational “maxims” that form a four-point guide
for topic development, clarification, and maintenance that may aid in bridging such gaps:
1. Quantity: Say only as much as is necessary for understanding the communication.
2. Quality: Say only what is true.
3. Relevance: Say only what is relevant.
4. Manner: Be clear. (cited in Brown, 2000, p. 257)
Where conversation may make the whole, or even part, of content, Guest (1998) argues against the
use of written forms as models. His corrective focuses on ellipsis, in how it shows what the L2 and L1
have in common with regard to unmarked forms and other less complex structures. In his view,
ignoring spoken forms in favor of so-called “standard” language not only tends to overemphasize the
differences between the L1 and L2 at their greatest points of divergence, but circulates a false image
of the L2 to the extent that it “may increase psychological barriers to acquisition” (p. 22). His response
is concise: “Freeing students from unnecessarily complex grammatical deliberation by focusing on the
common shortcuts and interpersonal features of English that are manifest in spoken grammar (SG)
can serve to lessen possible resultant cross-cultural misunderstandings and interpersonal friction” (p.
22).
In choice of material, the previous reference to Krashen's (2006) autonomous language acquirer may,
at least in some cases, fit the characterization of some adult learners and make room for a similar
degree of liberation in content. His analysis of the potential of narrow listening and reading for
pleasure holds promise for the autonomous acquirer (p. 4-5); the focus that may be enabled was
realized by my two learners in their approach to their material even given their more instrumental
purposes, and may suit a wider range of adult learners in one-on-one interaction as well. When taken
further with the conversational features described, more meaningful discussion from such material
may be realized.
Rights and responsibilities in private tuition
The question still remains on what is there to prevent individualized tuition from becoming a
reinforcement, rather than a release, from any misconceptions of learner role or L2 learning an adult
student may have. Could this prevent a learner from drawing on the fullness of his or her social roles
as valuable assets? What indeed is there to prevent individualized tuition from enabling dependence?
Teachers must make it clear that private tuition still calls on learners to draw from the changes
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Knowles (1973) captured that leads to adult response to situational events. Yet given the expectations
attached that are still reasonably within what adult responsibility can handle, there is little room for
dependence or avoidance, as the purpose of the format will be defeated.
To summarize, here is a set of guidelines for both teachers and learners that may be used to structure
an individualized plan of tuition. For learners:
1. Private tuition gives an adult learner the right and responsibility to control the method and
content of learning.
2. Private tuition necessitates proactive effort by the learner to a greater degree than in group
lessons.
3. Private tuition requires the learner's life experience to form some part of its content.
For teachers:
1. Private tuition calls on the teacher to be a cooperator and facilitator with the adult learner.
2. Private tuition necessitates as much thinking on the part of a teacher as that of group lessons.
3. Private tuition dictates proactive thinking by the teacher to respond to a learner's direction.
These guidelines can be laid out with prospective students as conditions of private tuition, with room
for more to be added. As a whole, they can form the structure for a plan tailored for a learner that
dictates equal input from both sides.
Conclusion
What Japanese adult L2 learners may be capable of achieving in private tuition, despite sociocultural
and economic barriers, may make it worth more than what it has previously been conceived. Yet its
true measure comes when there is understanding about how private tuition differs from group lessons,
placement of learners and their life experience at the center, and clarity by both teachers and learners
on what it calls for. The maturation of Japanese adult learners from their life experience and the
learning orientation it may result in could nonetheless enable them to realize greater autonomy.
Lee Arnold is a part-time lecturer in the Hoshi University General Studies Department in
pharmaceutical English, the Seigakuin University English Communication Arts program, and the
Shibaura Institute of Technology Department of Engineering English program. He has been living and
working in Japan since 1997, first in Ibaraki and Chiba prefectures, and since 2007, in Tokyo. He
holds a Graduate Certificate in Education and an M.Ed. (Honours) in TESOL from the University of
Tasmania and his research interests are in adult language learning, and vocabulary organization for
enhanced reading comprehension and speaking ability.
References
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challenges of Japan's internationalization: Organization and culture (pp. 232-266). Osaka: Kwansei
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Hofstede, G. (1991). Culture and organisations. London: McGraw-Hill.
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suggestions. In E.M. Skier & M. Kohyama (Eds.), More autonomy you ask! (Learner and teacher
autonomy in Japan 2) (pp. 1-8). Tokyo: JALT.
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Merriam, S.B., & Caffarella, R.S. (1991). Learning in adulthood: A comprehensive guide. San
Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
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LEARNING LEARNING 19(1) 41
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Voices 読者の声
Autonomy Big and Small
Phil Benson, The Hong Kong Institute of Education
フィル・ベンソン 香港教育学院
Michael Mondejar, International University of Japan
マイケル・モデジャー 国際大学
Jackie Suginaga, Komazawa Women’s University
杉長ジャッキー
駒沢女子大学
Keywords: autonomy, grammar, vocabulary, institutional education, demotivation, self-instruction,
self-access, independent learning, self-access learning, democratic schools, technology and language
development, project work
キ ー ワ ー ド :自律学習、文法、語彙、学校教育、意欲喪失、独習、セルフアクセス、独立学習、セル
フアクセス学習、デモクラティックスクール、技術と言語発達、プロジェクトワーク
J
ackie Suginaga and Michael Mondejar were thrilled and honoured to meet Phil Benson, one of
the plenary speakers at the JALT national conference in Tokyo last November. As Phil has
been a writer and researcher at the forefront of learner autonomy for many years, we wanted to
interview him to get some insight into how his interest in autonomy started, how his ideas have
evolved, and what advice he could give to teachers who wish to promote learner autonomy. Sitting
down over coffee, Michael started the ball rolling with an important question…
Michael: So why do you think promoting learner autonomy is important in second language
acquisition?
Phil: I think it’s important in learning and I think it’s especially important in second language
acquisition because of this idea that really there’s no curriculum for a second language. If you’re going
to learn a second language to a high level, first of all you have to do a lot of work outside the
classroom and second, everybody’s going to learn in their own way, anyway. So, it’s that idea that
second language acquisition is a very variable thing already, whether you are introducing autonomy or
not. So, I believe that autonomy is important, because that’s what people need to do – they need to
learn a language in their own way, to use it for what they want to use it for.
Michael: How would you respond to people who have researched first language acquisition and have
stated that people’s first language is acquired in stages? Wouldn’t those people say that you have to
structure language learning in a certain way?
Phil: Well, I don’t think that that idea is incompatible with autonomy. I mean, I myself would think that if
I was learning a new language, I would want to learn the tense system, I would want to learn how to
make singular and plural, those basic grammatical things. That’s how I was taught French at school,
and there’s nothing wrong with that. But I think that that’s actually a very small part of learning a
foreign language. So, I am not against the structure at all. I think there are some things that are better
as structured. But in fact, I think that that can generally be done in a very short time. It’s the
development - it’s going beyond that kind of beginner, intermediate stage and so on – that takes time
and requires autonomy. In my own experience of teaching myself languages, I’ve started with a
grammar book and tried to get on top of the grammar, the basic vocabulary, the kind of vocabulary
you find in a list of common words. That doesn’t take long, but then that’s when the difficult part starts.
I think you can also learn a language autonomously from the beginning. But what I’m saying really is
that autonomy doesn’t mean that you have to learn everything autonomously and everything in a kind
of deconstructed way.
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Michael: I wanted to ask you something that occurred to me when I read your book, Teaching and
Researching Autonomy. Students who are already very motivated to learn a language, wouldn’t they
automatically become autonomous?
Phil: Well, I don’t think they would automatically become autonomous, because that’s something that
schools and universities can discourage. I think institutional education often demotivates students. The
biggest risk in education is that you will actually discourage the students rather than encourage them.
But there is a link between motivation and autonomy, so I would agree that autonomy is perhaps more
for motivated students than for less motivated students.
There are also unmotivated students, right? There are students in language classes who really don’t
want to learn those languages. I think autonomy means that students should be free to not learn a
language, free to spend their time learning something else instead. We can take a step outside
language learning and look at autonomy as having a choice about the kind of subjects we want to
learn.
This is the thing with English language teaching though, isn’t it? Everybody has to learn English,
particularly in Asia. In Europe and the West, we talk about language aptitude – that is, some people
are better at learning a language than other people. But in Asia, you rarely hear people talk about
language aptitude. It just seems that everybody has to do it, and it’s how hard you work that
determines your success.
Jackie: Why did you first become interested in autonomy?
Phil: The reason why I got interested in autonomy was because I myself would prefer self-instruction. I
prefer to teach myself than to go to classes. I’ve learned Spanish, Portuguese and Italian in this way. I
tried to learn Japanese and Cantonese too but had a lot less success with those. So, I guess I am
pretty autonomous myself. That’s how I got interested in, first of all, self-access because when I went
to Hong Kong it was to help set up a self-access center in Hong Kong University. I thought that that
was a really great thing for me because this was the kind of thing that I would love to have myself. So,
to help set something like that up for students was really interesting.
Michael: Could you tell us more about the self-access center?
Phil: Well, that was in the early 1990’s, and at that time they expanded the university education
system. These were all English-medium universities, so when they expanded by about 20%, they
were very concerned about the level of the English of the students. They gave a lot of funds to the
universities for what they called “language enhancement”. Most of the universities at that time set up
these self-access centers, with various degrees of success. I think the ones that have worked
particularly well were City University, The Science and Technology University and the Polytechnic
University. The one we worked in at Hong Kong University, it’s been OK, but we had a lot more
difficulty than the other universities in terms of trying to integrate the self-access and the teaching
together. I think other universities were more successful in doing that.
Jackie: Would, for example, students research their own projects at the self-access center? And was
this combined with some classroom teaching?
Phil: Yes, we tried various things. For example we had a course where 60% was classroom teaching
and 40% of the course was actually set up so that you could do what you want. You could choose to
complete a project yourself, you would set targets or carry out the learning yourself, and keep a record,
and so on. That kind of approach was less successful because there was a lack of connection
between what students were doing in the classroom, which was mainly academic writing, and what
they were doing in the self-access center, which would often be at a much lower level. At other
universities they developed programs that were 100% self-access, and you could get credit for that.
Michael: So there was no classroom instructor, or no classroom time?
Phil: In some cases. There was a program called the Independent Learning Program at City
University, where students could opt for that. The students had to take an English course, but they
could opt to take it in a classroom or they could opt to take it through self access. If they opted to take
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it through self-access, I think there was no classroom instruction. There may have been a kind of a
learner-training workshop, but there was no curriculum, no set of skills that you had to improve – it
was all self-directed.
Jackie: But there was a teacher there for guidance?
Phil: Yes. So, say if it was a classroom course, you would have 20 students in your class. If it was a
self-access course, you would also have 20 students who you were responsible for.
Michael: Was there any research in, say, gains in language proficiency?
Phil: I’m pretty sure there wasn’t research on language proficiency, no. It would be really difficult to do
because they were pretty short courses and the students are pretty advanced already when they go in,
compared to other levels. At this age in Hong Kong, they have already done about 15 years of English
classes, so it’s very difficult to measure their language proficiency anyway, and then if you are looking
for an improvement over 10 weeks. There are some interesting articles written by Jean Young and her
colleagues about that course.
Jackie: With regards to teacher autonomy and learner autonomy, do you think that they are
connected in any way?
Phil: Well, I should say that I understand what learner autonomy is. I am not sure that I, or anybody
else, really understands what teacher autonomy is, in the sense that there are a number of ways that
you can use that term, teacher autonomy. You can talk about whether teachers are autonomous
learners or not, so that’s a sort of learner autonomy of teachers, they are autonomous in their learning
to teach. Then, there is teacher autonomy in the sense that they have a freedom to do and to make
decisions in the classroom. So, you know, there are so many different ways to define it that it’s difficult
to say. I am a lot less comfortable with teacher autonomy than I am with learner autonomy.
The other problem with the idea of teacher autonomy is that if teacher autonomy means teachers
having more freedom in the classroom, is that an end in itself? If teachers have more freedom in the
classroom, they can use that freedom any way they want. It might not necessarily be to promote
learner autonomy. So, the way I prefer to look at the whole issue is in terms of the specific constraints
that prevent teachers from allowing students to be more autonomous rather than more general
constraints on their own behavior.
But not everyone would agree with that. I’d be very reluctant and slow to take on this idea of teacher
autonomy. I understand what people are talking about, but I think our priority here is learner autonomy,
and then teacher autonomy. Yes, there’s a link, but it also takes you off into other areas about
teachers’ lives, professional work, etc. which are not necessarily related to learner autonomy.
Michael: What do you think about this idea of filling students with knowledge, like pouring water into a
vessel, versus nurturing them like a seed, providing them with the necessary conditions in which to
grow?
Phil: Well, I prefer the second, but I am not sure how helpful these kinds of metaphors are. I don’t
know if this is a metaphor, but I like to think of students as people. I don’t want to be critical about how
other people conceptualize things. But for me, I find it very important to remember that students are
people. They are people like me, they are just as tired as I am, and they have the same kinds of
concerns that I have. I think it is easy for teachers to forget that and treat students like they don’t have
lives or that they don’t have their own particular concerns. Particularly in language learning, that’s
important. That’s where you begin: the idea that students are learning languages for particular reasons
or for a particular purpose and so on, and if you can help them develop those reasons and purposes,
then that’s good teaching. That’s teaching for autonomy. That’s like the seed growing - so it’s not a
bad metaphor. I think the idea that learning is growth is a valid idea. Otherwise, you’re going to see
the learner as an empty vessel, and you’ve got to try to fill it up. So we are all looking for alternatives
to that idea of filling up an empty vessel with knowledge.
Michael: Isn’t this idea still prevalent in Asia? The idea that the teacher has to bestow this knowledge
upon the learner and then the learner has to absorb it?
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Phil: My impression is that it is prevalent in education systems. It’s odd, actually, because when you
look at policies and curriculum documents and so on, that idea is not there. It’s all learner-centered,
it’s all lifelong learning, it’s all communicative and task-based and so on. But it seems that at the level
of the way that schools organize things, you tend to get that filling-up-the-vessel idea, and I think it’s
got a lot to do with the big high-stakes public examinations. I think that once you get that, it
encourages a lot of conformity.
Hopefully, in Hong Kong at the school level, it’s changing a little bit because they’ve just introduced a
lot of in-class, in-school assessments. But we have a system where you have one examination for the
whole territory, for the whole city. In principle, I should be able to go into a school on Tuesday, for
example, and see what’s happening in that school and I should be able to go anywhere in the city and
see exactly the same thing happening. That’s the ideal situation, but I think it’s impossible and they
can’t enforce it. It just doesn’t work. And that’s irrespective of the level of the students. You’ve got
really good students and really weak students, and they’re all supposed to be doing the same thing.
The driving force of that is the examination. So, I guess within educations systems, you have a lot of
different drivers and they conflict sometimes.
But this is the case all over Asia. We have these education policies, particularly at the school level,
which are in favor of learner centeredness, communicative teaching, autonomy, etc., but it seems that
the school systems themselves and the examinations systems conflict with that – they disconnect.
And this is why you can talk to teachers about autonomy. This is why they want to talk about it. It
creates a kind of fertile ground where you can actually have a discussion. But at the end of the day the
teachers are quite likely to go away and say “yes, but I can’t do anything”. So, I feel that it’s important
that we try to address that problem.
Jackie: How has your thinking towards autonomy evolved?
Phil: Well, I think there’s a big autonomy and a smaller autonomy, and the big autonomy is really
about education reform, about really changing the whole approach to language learning and language
education. And then there’s a small autonomy, which is what teachers can practically do without
changing the whole system. If you work in teacher education or even when you are speaking at
conferences like this, it’s not really helpful to tell teachers that the entire education system should
change, or even that they should change it. Well, maybe they can do that, but they can’t do it
tomorrow. So, I think that we try to put that idea in their minds that it would be great if the whole
education system would change, but there are also things that you can do now that will be good for
your students.
Michael: How do you feel about democratic schools such as Sudbury – where they promote a
Rousseau-like curriculum, where the learners have more freedom to explore different kinds of stimuli
and take up whatever interests them? Also, learners have a stake in deciding the rules in the school;
they can propose rules and have the same voting power as school staff. There are several of these
schools even in Japan. I’m wondering how successful they are?
Phil: This is a whole informal education system in the States, right? I think every big city, every state
has one or two of these schools and some are better known than others. The impression I have of
these schools is that they generally serve kids who are dropping out, who are failing in the state
system. So in a sense, as a parent, you only send your kind there when they fail everything else. It’s
really a last resort. If they fail there, it doesn’t really matter because they’ve failed everywhere else. It
does seem that they work for many of those kids. You’re talking about kids who have taken almost no
responsibility for their learning, and are very, very demotivated. These schools can have an effect in
motivating or empowering the students.
Michael: Do you have any experience working with these schools?
Phil: No, I don’t have any experience, no. To my knowledge, there was a well-known one in England –
Summerhill. If you’re interested, get the book (http://www.amazon.com/Summerhill-School-New-ViewChildhood/dp/0312141378). A.S Neill was the headmaster – he wrote the book on it. It was one of the
first of these free schools in the 60s. There were no rules, you didn’t have to go to class, you could do
anything you wanted. Well, what they claimed was that normally the kids would just sort of lie around
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and do nothing for six weeks, and then they would get bored. They started going along to lessons
because they were interesting. There have been a number of very well-known graduates. But whether
that’s a model for an entire education system – I don’t know. These schools have a particular role
within the mainstream education system in that they are taking up the kids who really can’t cope with
mainstream education.
Michael: Do you think technology has had an effect on learner autonomy, particularly with increasing
use of online and mobile technology? Anyone can access any kind of information in the blink of an eye.
Phil: Yes, I think it’s had a massive effect, actually. I think that it is probably the most important thing
that is influencing autonomous language learning, especially in countries or in situations where
students don’t have direct access to the language they’re learning. The Internet has really quite
radically changed that situation because kids are spending hours every day on it. It’s like that’s
another country that they live in. All the research I’ve seen which has looked at students, the language,
and the Internet is really showing that they do access, particularly in English, the foreign language that
they are learning out of class on their own. They don’t tell the teachers. It’s not part of homework.
They just do it. Whether they connect it to what they’re learning in school or not, I don’t know, but I
think often they don’t.
Jackie: What about the situation in Hong Kong? Do students access the Internet to learn English?
Phil: The major complaint that I’ve heard in Hong Kong year after year is the students don’t practice
English outside class, but actually they do now. We know that they do, especially at the secondary
level. They get into things on the computer, and they’re doing it all the time, even if only they’re playing
games. Maybe it’s very different in Japan. In Hong Kong, very few people play video games in
Chinese. Most people play in English because of the quality of the games. So Japanese games come
out in an English version and a Chinese version. But normally the English version is much better than
the Chinese version. It’s much more sophisticated. It’s because the Chinese game is a copy, it’s not
under license. It’s not exactly the same game. Actually, it’s not just the language, but the game itself.
The English games are always ahead. They may even be a year ahead of the Chinese games. That’s
why more people play games in English instead of Chinese. But lots of kids are finding ways to use
the Internet in a foreign language, so I think that’s really going to have a very big impact.
Michael: Do you think technology will have an impact on the role of the teacher in the future?
Computer-assisted language learning is still a relatively new field. Do you think it may change our
goals?
Phil: If you’re teaching English to students in Japan, or you’re teaching English to Japanese students
who are at a British or American university, the approach would be very different, right? To
oversimplify, you’ve got a foreign language approach and a second language approach. So, what I’m
thinking is that in foreign language situations, the Internet is making English more of a second
language. So I think it’s that kind of adaptation - you have to adapt teaching to account for the fact that
students have so many more opportunities to talk to people or do things outside of class. And the idea,
for example, that we take all the text into the classroom for the students for reading – we find the text
and give it to the students – is so unnecessary now. It is very easy to ask the kids to go out and go
find a text for themselves. If they’ve got mobile phones they can even do it while they’re sitting in the
classroom.
I think this applies particularly to the self-access context. People involved with self-access are already
rethinking this. You don’t have to provide all of the resources anymore. It’s probably more important to
be knowledgeable about the resources that are available on the Internet. Students don’t necessarily
have to come to your self-access center. To a certain extent, self-access is maybe becoming
redundant as well. Self-access centers may become more like social centers for people interested in
learning foreign languages.
Jackie: What have been the most crucial moments in developing your own thinking about researching
and promoting autonomy?
Phil: Well, I started off in self-access with the idea that autonomy was about self-instruction, about
providing people with resources for self-instruction. And I think the major way in which my thinking has
46 LEARNING LEARNING 19(1)
Newsletter of the JALT Learner Development SIG
developed is that it shifted from the idea of providing resources in a particular place to looking at types
of learners and to what extent they are autonomous inside and outside the classroom. So, that’s been
the biggest development over 20 years or so. And I think a lot of other people in the field have gone
through a similar development as well.
Michael: What advice would you give for teachers seeking to promote learner autonomy in an
environment where teacher-centered instruction is still the norm?
Phil: My advice is – and you can quote me on this – do what you can and don’t worry that you are not
achieving the really big goal. Try to do small things that you can do and that won’t get you into too
much trouble. Like a lot of people, I thought of learner autonomy as a kind of goal, something you’re
trying to achieve with students. That’s fine, but sometimes I just have to prepare my next lesson.
When I do that I can just think about ‘how am I going to teach this stuff’. But if I add in autonomy, I
think ‘how am I going to teach this stuff’ and ‘how am I going to introduce some autonomy in the
course as well’, and I will prepare in a different way. The way I prepare it may not achieve the goal of
autonomy in the end, but it will be different – it will take autonomy into account. So going back to
advice for teachers, when you’re planning lessons, when you’re planning a course, just think about
where autonomy can fit in. If you think about autonomy, will you do this a little bit differently?
There’s an interesting thing that Kumaravadivelu (2003) says - I was actually quite strongly influenced
by him and his ‘post-method pedagogy’. He has ten principles, ten things you should think about
whenever you’re planning a curriculum or a course. What struck me is his idea that autonomy is one of
these principles. So, I’m excessively interested in autonomy, but for everybody else, autonomy is only
going to be one of ten things to consider. So, in terms of practically making autonomy work in teaching
– just factor autonomy into your planning. There will be a very small number of people who actually
plan their courses to achieve autonomy, but for everybody else, what we can hope is that they
incorporate it in one way or another.
Jackie: How do you factor autonomy into your courses?
Phil: Mainly by trying to create spaces where the students can have more choices and make more
decisions. People expect my classes are really autonomous, but they’re not, actually, because of the
situation I teach in. For example, in one class I have 160 students in a lecture hall. I’m supposed to
give a lecture – that’s the way this course is structured. So I do little things in the lecture to try to give
them choices, try to get them more engaged, but it’s still a lecture; it’s still not the best way to teach.
Jackie: How about learners who prefer the teacher to do everything for them and think they’re too
busy to be autonomous?
Phil: Actually, that’s a real problem. My kid goes to an international school where they do a lot of
project work. It’s progressive in the sense of having the students more actively involved in what they’re
doing. But the number of things he has to keep in his head and managing the workload is challenging
because he’s involved in many project groups. You can handle one or two…but what if you have five
of those? Five different subjects, five different groups to manage? You’ve got to plan everything and
so on. So I think, in schools that adopt that approach, the problem that they face is the complexity of
managing learning. My feeling is that the filling-up-a-vessel approach is very efficient in terms of the
amount of knowledge you can pour in, but if you’re going to have more of a constructivist approach, I
think there’s a trade-off: You have to say that they’re not going to learn quite as much – their learning
may have to be more focused. The benefits that you get in terms of the student’s development of
learning skills outweighs the number of words they know. It’s quality versus quantity.
But this is a very difficult argument because people think it’s important that autonomous learners
should get to the same level of proficiency as non-autonomous learners. And I think they may not,
actually. We may have to accept that and persuade people that there are more important things than
level of proficiency – for example, relevance, usefulness of what you learn. When we measure
proficiency, we are very often measuring useless, trivial knowledge. There may be other things we
have to consider, personal relevance in particular. These things are difficult to weigh and measure.
Michael: So while autonomy may be an ideal, it doesn’t always mesh well with current beliefs and
goals.
LEARNING LEARNING 19(1) 47
JALT学習者ティヘロフメントSIGの会報
Phil: Well, no, if you’re looking at the bigger picture, and you look at education policies, it does mesh
well. I think what doesn’t mesh well are the education policies and the systems. It’s the
institutionalization of education that is the problem, which makes it difficult to implement these policies.
There seems to be a willingness among people who are at policy decision-making levels, but it’s
difficult to put it into practice, and it’s difficult to get people to practice what they preach.
Jackie: That’s something for us all to think about. Do you have any last words to say?
Phil: I think it’s what I said before: Please think about autonomy when you’re planning your teaching.
Keep it in mind.
References
Benson, P. (2011). Teaching and researching autonomy
(2nd ed.). Harlow, UK: Pearson Education Limited.
Hafner, C. A., Fisher, D., & Young, J. (2007). Integrating
independent learning: Lessons learned and implications
for the classroom. In D. Gardner (Ed.), Learner
autonomy 10: Integration and support (pp. 33-55).
Dublin: Authentik.
Hafner, C. A., & Young, J. (2006). From teacher to
facilitator: Developing perspectives. In L. Miller (Ed.),
Learner Autonomy 9: Autonomy in the Classroom (pp.
104-127). Dublin: Authentik.
Hafner, C. A., Young, J., & Fisher, D. (2007). Shifting sands: Supporting teachers in facilitating
independent learning. In A. Barfield & S. H. Brown (Eds.). Reconstructing autonomy in language
education: Inquiry and innovation (pp. 196-208). Basingstoke: Palgrave MacMillan.
Kumaravadivelu, B. (2003). Beyond methods: Macrostrategies for language teaching. New Haven,
CT: Yale University Press.
Neill, A. S. (1996). Summerhill school: A new view of childhood. New York, NY: St. Martin's Griffin.
Sudbury Valley School. http://www.sudval.org/01_abou_02.html
Note
The photo on this page shows Robert Moreau, Phil Benson and Jackie Suginaga.
48 LEARNING LEARNING 19(1)
Newsletter of the JALT Learner Development SIG
Looking back 報告
My Reflections of the January 29th
Get‐Together Teachers College
Columbia University Tokyo
Campus, January 29th, 2012
1月29日エリア・ミーティ
ング振り返って コロンビア大
学ティーチャーズ・カレッジ
(於:東京)2012年1月
29日
Rachelle Jorgenson
昭和女子大学
Rachelle Jorgenson
Showa Women’s University
Key words: collaboration, discussion,
research interests, learning, reflection,
observation
A
ndy
Barfield
and
Stacey
Vye started off
the Tokyo LD-SIG
get-together with an
introduction of the
SIG and what goals
they envision for the
get-togethers.
The
goal of the gettogethers
is
for
participants to discuss our teaching contexts
and research interests related to learner
development issues – how our students learn
and understand language and how we as
teachers learn too. By getting together, we can
better collaborate, develop ideas for research
or classroom practice and support each other.
Reflection: For me this is really important. In
my Teacher’s College Columbia University
days I had my classmates to bounce ideas off
of and I found that discussing different
concepts with others helped me a lot to clarify
not only my understanding but also focus in on
what was really important and how I wanted to
approach my own classroom. I did a lot of
presentations and research projects with my
classmates in the final year of my master’s
degree and I found working in a group to be
not only extremely helpful for confidence
building but also fun. The LD SIG gettogethers are providing me with the same kind
of learning and researching atmosphere that I
enjoyed at Columbia.
Since there were a lot of new members joining
the get-together, Andy and Stacey had the
new participants make a group with a person
who had attended the December meeting to
bring them up to speed. My group was Mike
Nix, Masuko Miyahara, Fumiko Kurosawa and
me. Fumiko had attended the December
meeting so she told us what they did and then
proceeded to tell us about what she was
interested in researching. She is interested in
“tandem learning.” It was very interesting to
hear that there is an international association
of tandem learning that pairs language
learners up with native speakers over the
Internet. Masuko also had a chance to tell us
her research interest, which was “Autonomy
and Identity.” It was very inspiring to hear that
her university wants to implement autonomous
learning underlying the whole curriculum at her
university. Unfortunately, Mike and I didn’t
have a chance to talk about our research
interests.
Reflection: I felt this activity really helped
make the new members feel welcomed into
the fold. Even though we had missed the
December meeting, we could still catch up and
participate in the get-togethers to follow.
Fumiko and Masuko’s stories were really
inspiring!
In the next
part of the
gettogether,
we
were
asked
to
write a few
of
our
research
interests
on a A3 paper and walk around the room with
the paper facing outwards so that others could
see if they had similar research interests. My
A3 paper had two areas of interest. The first
was helping my students establish more
effective vocabulary learning practices outside
the classroom and how does encouraging
feelings of happiness, excitement and
energized focus affect memory. My second
research interest was helping my students
become better critical thinkers and agents of
change. I ended up talking to Andy and Lee
LEARNING LEARNING 19(1) 49
JALT学習者ティヘロフメントSIGの会報
Arnold a lot as they were both interested in
vocabulary too. But I talked to a lot of other
people as well.
Reflection: I thought this was an efficient and
creative way of getting a large group of people
to quickly find others with similar interests. I
also enjoyed the fact that I met a lot of different
people though briefly. As the contact person
for the get-together, it was great to meet
people and start connecting the names of
people I had contacted by email with their
faces. I wanted to have more time to talk with
people but we had to keep things focused.
After the A3 paper activity, we sat down in
groups of people with similar research
interests. My group was Andy Barfield, James
Underwood, Lee Arnold and me. I hadn’t
talked to James at all before so I wasn’t sure
exactly what specifically he was interested in.
Lee and I had talked a lot. We are both
teaching content classes in which the students
were having difficulty discussing topics due to
lack of vocabulary. We wondered how we
could better help our students. I could be
mistaken but I think James was interested in
vocabulary acquisition strategies. Andy had
been doing research related to vocabulary for
one year already. His students had written
reflections about the way that they learn
vocabulary. He is teaching a content class in
which students have to do a research project
on some social, political or global issue and
though vocabulary is not explicitly taught,
students have to be able to explain their
research to their classmates in presentation
format. In preparation for this activity, students
initially felt that they needed to study “new and
difficult” words but when they went through the
process of explaining their research to others,
they realized that their vocabulary focus shifted
to “important and useful for explaining my
research.”
Reflection: My initial feeling in this meeting
was that I needed to start doing a lot of reading
on my own so that I could get a feel for what
kind of research is being done in this area and
what I would like to do with my own classes.
Andy had mentioned reading Paul Nation’s
Learning Vocabulary in Another Language as
a good base for the field. Later on he
recommended
another
source,
Folse’s
Vocabulary Myths. I plan to get a hold of these
resources and others and start familiarizing
myself with the field.
In the later part of the get-together, John
Fanselow, in his usual unique and creative
way, asked us to watch a video clip of an “ideal
50 LEARNING LEARNING 19(1)
class.” He had us transcribe what the teacher
and students were saying. Although the class
seemed very positive, we learned that by
transcribing it, there were “issues.” The
teacher was not really listening to her students’
responses but instead focused on the answer
to the question she had asked. His point is that
when we audio or video tape our classes and
do a bit of transcribing, we can realize a wealth
of information that is not readily available to us
compared to if we just reflect about our class
afterwards. He encouraged us to ask the
question, “What do students learn from this
kind of teaching? Is the instruction useful and
helpful or is it stupid and useless?”
Reflection: This exercise reminded me of
when I took the Observation course at TC. I
had some basic questions about my
movements in the classroom and how I
interacted with students. I video taped my
class and was quite surprised by what I
learned. I think that when we are teaching, we
often are in our own “zone” thinking about what
we have to accomplish in that time period
allotted. We do things that we don’t realize and
I was reminded that either video or audio
taping my classes is an excellent way of
collecting data for research!
Final reflection: I thoroughly enjoyed the
th
January 29
Tokyo get-together! It was
inspiring on many levels. My current work
situation is so busy and sometimes I feel that it
is all I can do just to keep up with my
responsibilities. But this gathering helped me
get back my motivation to start exploring my
students’ learning and researching again. I
teach a class about social and cultural issues
in which students read a lot of articles and then
discuss and debate them. The students find it
difficult to discuss and debate various topics
due to a lack of vocabulary. I want to help
them with their productive vocabulary and
vocabulary coping strategies. I still have a lot
of reading to do but I look forward to future
gatherings for more support and inspiration!
Rachelle Jorgenson is an assistant professor
at Showa Women's University in Tokyo. Her
current research interests are learner
autonomy, vocabulary building and critical
thinking.
References
Folse, Keith S. (2004). Vocabulary myths.
Michigan: The University of Michigan Press.
Nation, Paul I. S. (2001). Learning vocabulary
in another language. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
Newsletter of the JALT Learner Development SIG
Tokyo Campus, February 19th, 2012
My Reflection on the February 19th
Get–Together, Teachers College
Columbia University
which is a kind of self-directed assignment. In
the project, each student chooses a topic and
a web site to view, and then uses a notebook
to record what he or she learned from the web
site. Finally, he or she makes a presentation
about it to share with other classmates.
2月19日エリア・ミーティ
ングを振り返って,コロンビア
大学ティーチャーズ・カレッ
ジ(於:東京)2012年2
月19日
Group discussions
Tomoko
School
Kurita,
Kawamura
High
Key words: learner development interests,
getting to know each other, self-assessment
within a self-directed framework, language
learner vs language user, identity
I
recently
became
a
member of JALT
as well as LD-SIG
in January 2012.
This
was
my
second time to
attend a LD-SIG
get-together.
In
reviewing
the
January meeting, I
enjoyed getting to
know other members’ learner development
interests and different teaching contexts. I
decided to join the group which had an interest
in self-assessment within a self-directed
framework, although vocabulary development
and
collaborative
learning
were
also
fascinating topics for me.
Getting to know LD-SIG members
I thank Andy for providing us with the
opportunities to learn new things and get to
know other members of LD-SIG. Talking with a
LD-SIG member made my vague ideas of selfdirected projects clearer. I talked to an
attendee named Ken, who teaches in a college.
I teach English in an elementary school. Our
teaching contexts were different but we shared
a lot of interests about vocabulary
development and
autonomous learning
amongst others. Ken talked about his
vocabulary building practices at the college. I
talked about the project I recently started
I joined the group “self-assessment within a
self-directed framework”. Some people left and
some new people joined our group, including
Sachiko, Chris and Lynn. Chris and Lynn
shared their English drama project in which the
students wrote and performed a play, showing
the video by iPhone. Peter had summarized
the previous discussion in January and it
helped a lot to confirm our shared perspectives
at this meeting. We discussed our various
interests and teaching contexts. However, it
seemed difficult to narrow our interests into
specific research questions. This was because
we have such different teaching contexts,
which would make the content of assessment
varied.
Although it seems important for students to
self-assess
their
performance
and
improvement
within
the
self-directed
framework, the ability of learners to self-assess
themselves depends on the student’s age and
proficiency level. Although it seemed difficult
for our discussion to move forward we tried to
brainstorm ideas. I suggested a selfassessment of learner’s identity as an L2 user
vs. an L2 learner. From my experience as a
Japanese learner and teacher of English, I
have been wondering if having identity as an
English learner might be critical to Japanese
learners of English.
I found a difference between Japanese people
who view themselves as English users who
use English as a foreign or the second
language in a real context and Japanese
people who view themselves as English
learners in terms of confidence and autonomy.
Recently, I had two returnee students (one is a
th
4th grader from Canada, the other is a 5
grader from Indonesia) at the elementary
school. I noticed the returnees who had
confidence in speaking and writing English
even though they had no more grammar and
spelling knowledge than some classmates who
had learned English only in Japan. On the
other hand, good students who study in Japan
feel less confident comparing themselves to
the returnees. As for learning, Japanese
people as English learners tend to try to get
more knowledge about English in school
LEARNING LEARNING 19(1) 51
JALT学習者ティヘロフメントSIGの会報
context but not use it in a real context. They
tend to be passive learners. They don’t like
making mistakes and even think it is
impossible to be an English user unless they
master the language perfectly.
After talking about my insight above, we
shared ideas about differences in identity
between an L2 user and an L2 learner. Peter
shared his insight that the English user vs.
English learner might be relevant to fluency vs.
accuracy. Sachiko, who is teaching at an
English conversation school, shared her idea
that her students seemed to have identities as
English users rather than English learners
because they were aiming to study abroad. We
agreed that our group would explore the
relationship between self-assessment, learner
identity, socio-cultural aspects and motivation.
I am excited to see how our group research
will develop.
Tomoko teaches English at Kawamura High
School. Her current research interests are
listening for acquisition, autonomous learning,
CALL and cooperative learning. She has an
MA TESOL degree from Teachers College
Columbia.
Looking forward
今後のイベント
LD SIG Forums in 2012
2012 LD SIGフ ォ ー ラ ム (6
月
JALT CALL Conference 2012
Konan University, June 1-3, 2012
http://conference.jaltcall.org/2011/jaltca
ll-2012/
Darren Elliott
LD-SIG Forum Coordinator
T
he JALT LD-SIG will be holding another
forum at the JALTCALL Conference
2012. JALTCALL 2012 will be held at the
Konan CUBE, Hirao School of Management,
Konan University from June 1-3, 2012.
From self-access centres with cassette
libraries to m-learning, technology has played
an important role in learner autonomy in
language education. However, CALL activities
52 LEARNING LEARNING 19(1)
are not intrinsically autonomous and Learner
Autonomy need not make use of educational
technologies. In this forum, we will explore
CALL as viewed through the prism of learner
autonomy, and vice versa, in an attempt to find
common ground.
Each presenter will give his or her fifteenminute presentation twice (including questions)
within the 90-minute slot, giving participants
the opportunity to see four different
presentations. Of course, visitors are welcome
to join the full session or just come in to see
one or two presentations. We will have short
presentations on Facebook, CALL in selfaccess centres, e-learning, blended learning
and other autonomy / technology-related topics,
from a number of experienced and talented
presenters.
The JALTCALL conference itself is always well
worth attending, with visitors from around the
world and a lively atmosphere. This year, the
conference welcomes a true leader in the field
with the visit of Dr. Stephen Bax as featured
speaker.
Nakasendo 2012 Conference
Urawa Citizen’s Hall, June 2, 2012
http://nakasendoconference.com
Robert Moreau
International Christian
High School
University
T
he LD-SIG forum this year at the
Nakasendo 2012 Conference in Urawa,
nd
Saitama on June 2 promises to be an
interesting space in which participants can
share a variety of ideas on teaching and
learner development. Since December 2011,
members of the LD-SIG have been meeting on
a monthly basis and, in groups, have been
discussing ideas and conducting small-scale
practitioner research in the following areas:
collaborative learning, language learning
strategies, self-assessment, and vocabulary
development.
In this forum, members of each research group
will set-up display stations where people can
learn more about what members of each group
has been working on, ask questions and
engage in dialogue on the different topics that
people have been exploring so far. Finally,
participants will be invited to share thoughts
and ideas about what they have seen and
discussed.
Newsletter of the JALT Learner Development SIG
The goal of the forum is to better acquaint
conference attendees with the work of LD-SIG,
and also, through the sharing of ideas, allow
participants to take away with them new ideas
that may be useful for their own learning and
teaching practices.
JALT Pan‐SIG Conference Literacy:
SIGnals of Emergence
Hiroshima University's Higashi‐
Hiroshima campus, 16‐17 June
http://www.pansig.org/2012/
LD SIG Forum: Language, Literacies,
Learners ‐ Development Beyond the
Classroom
•
•
Outside the classroom is Japan, where English
is typically perceived as a very foreign
language with which our students will have
little
contact.
Through
rotating
minipresentations, we will report explorations of
different ways of exploiting, or creating, a world
beyond the classroom to challenge this
perception, helping our students become more
motivated, focused, and independent (or
interdependent) language learners. We will
address these topics: the purposes, planning
and running of English camps; language
learner histories and digital comics; media
literacy development; online pronunciation
resources, finding and talking with English
speakers outside the classroom; running
Scrabble contests; and assessing learner
autonomy.
Learner Development SIG Forum
at JALT2012, ACT City, Hamamatsu
October 12‐15, 2012
Bill Mboutsiadis
Meisei University and the University of
Toronto
D
The plan is for this year’s LD-SIG forum is to
involve many presentations exploring how
learner development can be theorized from
different practices, so that overlapping and
conflicting definitions and ideologies of ‘learner
development’ can be discussed ahead of the
SIG
holding
a
20th
anniversary
retreat/conference in 2013 (more details to
follow in the coming months).
Definitions
and
ideologies
development may draw from:
Jim Ronald
Hiroshima Shudo University
ジム・ロナルド, 広島修道大学
ear
Learner
Development
members and newcomers,
This year we are proposing to hold a forum on
“Defining Learner Development: Different
Interests”, and we would like to invite you to
take part.
SIG
•
•
of
learner
Different theories of learning and the
learner (e.g. cognitive, constructivist, or
socio-cultural views);
Different areas and tools of, and/or
approaches to, learning (e.g. advising,
self-access, self-assessment, collaborative
group-based learning, learning strategies,
vocabulary development);
Different issues and principles to do with
interaction and learner development (e.g.
agency,
autonomy,
criticality,
differentiation,
identity,
motivation,
narrative knowledging, near-peer modeling,
positioning, scaffolding);
Other discourses of learning and
development.
Each contributor to the forum will present (a)
particular case(s) of learning and learner
practices, and also theorize from such cases
about what learner development may mean/is
about within their local context and practice.
Cases may be drawn from classroom learning,
self-access learning, outside-class learning, at
different levels and ages of education and
development. Cases may also be fully
language learning-based or to do with
academic study, content-based learning, or
learning across the curriculum.
At present we envisage that the forum will
feature simultaneous displays or presentation
corners (poster, laptop, tablet, kamishibai, and
so on), with plenty of opportunities for
audience interaction, discussion and plenary
round-up.
Many thanks – we’re looking forward to seeing
you there!
Bill
LEARNING LEARNING 19(1) 53
JALT学習者ティヘロフメントSIGの会報
SIG Matters
インフォメーション
財務報告 LD SIG Financial Report
2011年10月 - 2012年3月 Oct 2011– March 2012
Oct-11
Nov-11
Dec-11
Jan-12
Feb-12
Mar-12
10/1/11
11/1/11
12/1/11
1/1/12
2/1/12
3/1/12
Balance in bank account 銀行預金残高
493,059
645,063
391,877
344,160
344,162
344,164
Reserve liabilities JALT本部預け金
250,000
250,000
250,000
250,000
250,000
250,000
0
95,000
0
0
0
0
743,059
990,063
641,877
594,160
594,162
594,164
0
0
0
0
0
0
Total revenue 総収入
269,304
146,394
303
2
2
20,003
Total expenses 総支出
‐22,300
‐494,580
‐48,020
‐0
‐0
‐0
‐0
‐0
‐0
‐0
‐0
‐0
End balance 当月帳簿残高
990,063
641,877
594,160
594,162
594,164
614,167
Balance in bank account 銀行口座の残高
645,063
391,877
344,160
344,162
344,164
364,167
0
0
0
0
0
0
250,000
250,000
250,000
250,000
250,000
250,000
95,000
0
0
0
0
0
990,063
641,877
594,160
594,162
594,164
614,167
Cash on hand 現金
Balance carried forward 前月資産残高
The current month activities
Total revenue liabilities 仮受金等総額
Total expense liabilities 仮払金等総額
Balance in other accounts その他の口座残高
Reserve liabilities JALT本部預け金
Cash on hand 現金
LD SIG balance 当月資産残高
Major revenue 主な収入 2011年10月 - 2012年3月 October 2011– March 2012
Membership dues SIG会費 (A)
Tohoku donation from LD members
LD-SIG会員からの東北被災地向け寄付預かり(B)
139,500
55,000
20,000
RA conference registration fees
RA出版記念カンファレンス 参加費(C)
12,500
80,000
RA conference table fees from publishers
RA出版記念カンファレンス スポンサー・テーブル
使用料
12,000
24,000
Bridge loan repayment from FLP-SIG
FLP-SIGへの当座貸付返済 (D)
50,000
Temporary cash out from Treasurer
会計係からの仮受金 (E)
54 LEARNING LEARNING 19(1)
42,090
Newsletter of the JALT Learner Development SIG
Major expenses 主な経費 2011年10月 - 2012年3月 October 2011– March 2012
Expenses for RA conference
RA出版記念カンファレンス必要経費
1,700
231,350
20,000
Donation to the Best of JALT
Best of JALTへの寄付
Co-sponsoring a JALT2011 plenary speaker
JALT2011の講演者共同招聘費用
100,000
Conference grants
LD SIG 年次大会参加助成金 (F)
80,000
IATEFL-KANDA Conference grants
IATEFL-KANDAカンファレンス参加費助成 (G)
80,000
Shipping LD materials for JALT2011
JALT2011会場へのLD資料配送料
5,270
Repayment to Treasurer (temporary cash out)
会計係からの仮受金返済 (E)
42,090
NOTES
(A)
1,500
93 members (for 6 months)
(B)
The following LD members have donated for the SIG's future plan to support those in Tohoku. 以下のLD-SIG会
員から、東北被災地支援目的で寄付を預かっている: (1)Richard Silver (35,000yen) (2)Funds surplus at an
informal SIG party (20,000yen) 非公式のSIG会合での余剰 (3)Andy Barfield (15,000yen)
(4)Philip Brown (5,000yen). Also, we reserve the following amount for the future donation: 更に、将来の寄
付目的で、以下の金額を準備金として保有している:SIG's original budget SIGの寄付目的予算 50,000
Alison's donation (June 2011) 30,000 In total we currently have 155,000 yen for the donation purpose. 総
額で、寄付目的で155000円を現在保有している。
以下のLD-SIG会員から、東北被災地支援目的で寄付を預かっている。
Also, we reserve the following amount for the future donation:
更に、将来の寄付目的で、以下の金額を準備金として保有している:
In total we currently have 155,000 yen for the donation purpose.
総額で、寄付目的で155000円を現在保有している。
(C)
From 54 participants at "Realizing Autonomy" conference held in October
10月開催の"Realizing Autonomy"カンファレンスにおける参加者54名からの参加費
(D)
Bridging Loan for FLP-SIG (December 2010) was repaid in full.
FLP-SIGへの当座貸付(2010/12月実施)は、予定通り全額返済された。
(E)
Treasurer temporarily used her own money to send grants, which was returned to her in December.
会計係は助成金を用意するのに、一時的に自分の資金を使ったが、12月には返済された。
(F)
40,000
2 members
(G)
40,000
2 members
st
SIG fund balance March 31 2012 / SIG資金残高2012年3月31日
Balance in bank account 銀行口座の残高
364,167
Reserve liabilities JALT本部預け金
250,000
TOTAL 合計
614,167
LEARNING LEARNING 19(1) 55
JALT学習者ティヘロフメントSIGの会報
PLANNED EXPENSES April to Dec 2012
2012年4月- 12月予定経費
Table Rental for JALT2012 ALT2012でのSIGテーブル代
(17,000)
Shipping LD materials to JALT2012 JALT2012への資材送料
(10,000)
Shipping fees for other events 他のイベントへの送料
(10,000)
LD web site cost (including domain name registration)
LD専用ウェブサイト費用(ドメイン名登録料含む)
(7,200)
Financial support for Nakasendo 中仙道カンファレンス協力
(10,000)
Donation for Best of JALT2012 JALT2012のBest of JALT寄付
(20,000)
2 Tohoku JALT+LD SIG membership grants
東北JALT・LD SIG会費助成 2名
2 Pan SIG conference grants (25,000 yen each)
JALT PAN‐SIG 2012年度大会参加助成金 2名
2 LD SIG research grants (25,000 yen each)
LD SIG 研究助成金 2名
2 National conference grants (40,000 yen each)
JALT全国大会参加助成金 2名
*1 *2
(20,000)
(50,000)
(50,000)
(80,000)
Donations to the disaster‐stricken area 被災地への寄付
(155,000)
*3
Other miscellaneous 他の雑費
SUB-TOTAL 小計
(20,000)
(449,200)
PROJECTED REVENUE April to Dec 2012
2012年4月- 12月予定収入
Membership 75 members (150 members * 6 months/12) 会費
半年分
SUB-TOTAL 小計
112,500
112,500
Projected SIG fund balance Dec 31st, 2012
予定SIG資金残高2012年12月31日
Balance in bank account 銀行口座の残高
127,467
Reserve liabilities JALT本部預け金
TOTAL 合計
150,000
277,467
*4
NOTES
*1 JALT membership fees vary, but do not exceed 10,000 yen a year. JALTの会費は何種類かあるが、最高年
額は1万円。
*2 We have other grants, but they require no cash out. 他にも補助金制度はあるが、現金の出金は不要:
(1) 10 First‐time LD SIG subscription grants / LD SIG体験入会・会費助成(非JALT会員向け)10名
(2) 10 First‐time LD SIG membership starter grants / LD SIG体験入会・会費助成(JALT会員向け) 10名
*3 See the Notes in Actual 「実績」の備考欄参照
*4 We will need to have 100,000 yen back from Reserve Fund to have enough operating funds.
JALT本部預け金から10万円を戻して、運転資金を確保する必要がある。
Hiromi Furusawa 古澤 弘美 LD SIG treasurer LDSIG財務
May 6th, 2012 2012年5月6日
56 LEARNING LEARNING 19(1)
Newsletter of the JALT Learner Development SIG
Contributing to Learning Learning 「学習の学習」原稿募集
Learning Learning is your space for continuing to
make the connections that interest you. You are
warmly invited and encouraged to contribute to the
next issue of Learning Learning. We welcome
writing in Japanese and English, and in different
formats and different lengths about different issues
connected with learner and teacher development,
such as:
• Articles (about 2,500 to 4,000 words, with a 100
word summary)
• Reports (about 500 to 1,000 words)
• Learner histories (about 500 to 1,000 words)
• Stories of autonomy (about 500 to 1,000 words)
• Book reviews (about 500 to 1,000 words)
• Letters to the SIG (about 500 words)
• Personal profiles (100 words more or less)
• Critical reflections (100 words more or less)
• Research interests (100 words more or less)
• Photographs
• Poems… and much more…
We would like to encourage new writing and new
writers and are also very happy to work with you in
developing your writing. We would be delighted to
hear from you about your ideas, reflections,
experiences, and interests to do with learner
development, learner autonomy and teacher
autonomy.
We hope to publish the next issue of Learning
Learning in October 2012. Ideally, we would like to
hear from you well before July 31, 2012 – in reality,
the door is always open, so feel free to contact
somebody in the editorial team when you are ready:
Jackie Suginaga
Michael Mondejar
Hugh Nicoll
Fumiko Murase
jackiesuginaga AT MARK gmail.com
mikemondoman AT MARK gmail.com
hnicoll AT MARK gmail.com, and
fumikomurase AT MARK gmail.com
Learning Learning is the newsletter of the JALT
Learner Development SIG. We aim to publish twice
a year in April and October. All pieces are copyright
of their respective authors.
All pieces are copyright of their respective authors.
Permission
to
re-print and/or
re-produce
online writing from Learning Learning should be
sought directly from the author(s) concerned. If
arrangements are made for the reprinting and/or reproduction online of an article originally published in
Learning Learning, we respectfully request that the
full citation reference for the original article in
Learning Learning be included with the reprinted and/or re-produced online versio.
「学習の学習」は会員に興味あるつなかりを
構築 する空間てす。次号「学習の学習」への
投稿を募 集しています。形式や長さを問わ、
学習者の発 達に関連した以下のようなさまさ
ま文章を歓迎し ています:
• 論文 (約4000語-10000語)
• 報告書 (約2000語-4000語)
• 学習者のヒストリー (約2000語-4000語)
• 自律性に関する体験談 (約2000語-4000 語)
• 書評 (約2000語-4000語)
• SIGへの手紙 (約2000語)
• 個人フ ロフィール (約400語)
• クリティカル・リフレクション (約400語)
• 研究興味 (約400語)
• 詩
その他
これまてにない形式のもの、また新しい方々
か らのこ投稿をお待ちしております。内容に
ついて もせひこ相談くたさい。みなさまのこ
意見やお考 え、こ経験、そして学習者の発達
、学習者の自律 性と教師の自律性に関するこ
となと、せひお聞か せくだ さい。
次号「学習の学習」は2012年10月1日に出版の
予定てす。2012年7月31日まてにこ連絡いたた
けれは幸いてす。受け付けは常にいたしており
ますの て、アイティアが まとまり次第、遠慮
なくいすれ かの編集員にこ連絡くたさい。
Jackie Suginaga
jackiesuginaga AT MARK gmail.com
Michael Mondejar
mikemondoman AT MARK gmail.com
Hugh Nicoll
hnicoll AT MARK gmail.com, and
Fumiko Murase
fumikomurase AT MARK gmail.com
「学習の学習」はJALT学習者ティヘロフメン
トSIGの会報てす。年2回4月と10月に出版予定
てす。全ての原稿の版権はそれぞ れの執筆
者にあり ます。「学習の学習」の文章を他の
出版物に使う 場合は直接その執筆者の許可を
もらってくたさい。
LEARNING LEARNING 19(1) 57