New collaborators – I’ve been looking for and continue to look for other teacher/researchers who share a passion for exchanging ideas, working together on classroom research projects, stretching themselves in new directions and building long-term friendships. Specifically, I’m interested in the following areas:

• Fluency in EFL
• TOEFL iBT
• Classroom research
• Learner Autonomy
• Teaching Unplugged

Time to talk – It seems that most of the shop talk takes place after hours, with a beer in one hand, and music filling the room and my brain. I would like more time in sessions to brainstorm and share ideas. Assuming that colleagues at the same presentation share the same interest in that topic, it would be wonderful to have more discussion type sessions, perhaps facilitated by the main presenter.

Opportunities to bond – Months after a conference, I rarely look back at a particular session that I went to, and I almost never have reason to talk about them. However, I often reminisce about things I did with others: dinners, karaoke, sports activities, or collaborations in studying, writing or planning events. These are where the memories remain alive.

Inspiration – Thinking back over the past 4 or 5 years, only two or three presentations or workshops have really inspired me to take action in any significant way: to change something or introduce something new into my teaching. Of course, I make changes every year, but most of those changes come from reading or collaborating online. It would be nice to meet some more inspirational speakers at language teaching conferences.

New types of events – Two close friends went to a recent conference in the States. Neither of them new that the other one was there, but they both contacted me from the conference, telling me that they were overwhelmed (happily) with meeting people who wanted to connect with others. They both said they had never felt this at any conference to that point. Sounds great to me! And it made me wonder if we could have a Collaborators Corner or a Connect over Coffee section set up explicitly for those who want to find like-minded souls.

As I keep learning over and over again, there are different strokes for different folks, so I wonder what you’d like to get from upcoming conferences this season?

Here’s what’s on MY radar (sorry to others):

Sept 17-20 MASH JALT Equinox 2010 in Tokyo (Thornbury/Nation/Helgesen et al)
Sept 23 ETJ-JALT Equinox 2010 in Kita-Kyushu (Thornbury)
Sept 25 MASH JALT Equinox 2010 in Osaka (Thornbury/Nation et al)
Sept 26 27th Annual Hokkaido Conference (Thornbury)
Oct 16-17 The 2010 PAC-KOTESOL International Conference
Oct 31 The 5th JALT Joint Tokyo Conference 2010
Nov 6-7 The 31st Tokyo English Language (TEL) Book Fair and ELT EXPO
Nov 19-22 JALT 2010: 36th Annual International Conference
Nov 28 ETJ Kansai Expo

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Steven Herder
Managing Editor

It is an award-winning, five-part series documenting the philosophy of a Japanese elementary school teacher and stories from the lives of his students. It is realistic, heartwarming, challenging, sad, and inspiring. I’ve shown it to about 10 different classes now and many of the same comments come up:

• “I wish I had him as a teacher in my elementary school days.”
• “I can’t believe how mature his students are”
• “The student really know how to express themselves”
• “Are they really only 10 years old?
• “I wanna marry Yo san (the boy who speaks out in the rafting episode)”

There are 5 clips (about 9 minutes each). I have the students watch 2 or 3 clips together with pen & paper in hand. I encourage them to watch and jot down some notes to be able to report what happened later. At the end of each clip, they go back and forth explaining what happened in the story. They also express their opinions about what impressed them.

For homework, I ask them to watch the remaining clips and prepare to talk about them in class. Following this discussion, they must write a 250 word short essay addressing one theme within the video series. There are too many things going on in the whole series to try to address it all in one essay.

I hope to post one or two pieces written by my students next week.

Has anyone ever used this in class? I’d love to compare notes.

There is a great FREE test here

I did a bit of a cut and paste here to show students their overall personality and also their three levels of healthy, average and unhealthy. This was particularly interesting for me.

I’ll let you know how this goes and any other ways to exploit the super dooper Enneagram.

Here’s one more image in case motivation is a problem… LOL

1. I’m not going to join a sports club. I have confidence on this one as I’ve never yet joined a sports club.

2. I’m going to blog every Sunday for a year. Now this one is gonna take some sweat (perhaps even more than the sports club!!)

So, I’ve been working with a Japanese publisher for almost a year now. Perhaps the best thing I can say about my performance thus far is that I’ve yet to be thrown onto the heap of discarded, urusai (loud and obnoxious) foreigners who have not been successful working on Japanese text-writing teams. In fact, there are only two kinds of foreigners in Japan – Easy gaijin (foreigner) and difficult gaijin. I went in with my eyes wide open, and up for the challenge of being useful and harmonious.

I’m sure that my first meeting was the most difficult because even with the best of intentions (to sit and be quiet) I found myself being the first of the ten of us to speak up – and that was after a grueling minute or so of tempered silence in which the Japanese Wa wafted throughout the room. I hope I’m not sounding too facetious because after 5 meetings, I’ve really come to like the group of varied personalities and the array of valuable perspectives. I hope they like me as much as I like them…

Anyways, I’ve edited the first 6 chapters of the first Ko I (grade 10) textbook and am currently procrastinating on the 7th chapter which is due within the next 24 hours. It is a very interesting process which seems at times a cross between the rubik’s cube and sudoku.

As far as my contribution, I’m given one long story for each lesson that has been cut into 4 – 5 parts and then I’m required to do 4 things:

1. Edit for readability and naturalness

2. Edit for word count and average sentence length

3. Edit out difficult words and phrases for equally meaningful easier words and phrases

4. Add in GPOD (grammatical patterns on demand)

So which of these do you imagine causes the most gray hair?

I’ll answer next week, unless I get any comments before then!

Cheers.

Steven

In all my online searches, fluency always turns up in relation to speaking or writing output, never as listening or reading input. However, here in Japan, it is widely agreed that the flourishing extensive reading boom is a great source of reading fluency practice, while EFL professionals such as Rob Waring are promoting extensive listening, and I have written my MA TEFL dissertation and presented on extensive writing for many of the same reasons.

This topic is on my mind constantly these days. Not only because my colleagues and I have a call for submissions for a new book, Fluency in EFL, open until May 31st, but recently, I see all four skills coming together and benefitting from a fluency-based approach. Nation wrote a piece, Fluency and Learning, 20 years ago and I wonder why it hasn’t taken off or synthesized for more of my EFL colleagues?

One major problem is trying to define fluency. No one seems to agree and it simply never ends (see 91 entries on Scott Thornbury’s blog). Linguists are lost on how to test for fluency and often get caught up in trying to measure pauses, hesitations and the like.

Fluency also doesn’t get thought about very much in either the EFL or ESL worlds for very practical reasons: in EFL contexts, creating genuine situations for fluency practice to be real and meaningful is rather tricky, if not impossible; in the ESL world, students can get fluency practice opportunities 24/7 and so schools don’t even need to think about it.

Undaunted, since April 2010, I’m now experimenting with a fluency-based approach within a TOEFL iBT preparation course at Doshisha Women’s College of Liberal Arts in the International Studies department. I am absolutely amazed at both my focus and the singular focus of the students within our curriculum. My fluency message, in contrast to the previous six years of accuracy focus, resonates strongly with my highly motivated and highly challenged students. In addition to a fluency approach towards reading, writing, listening and speaking, there is also a palpable understanding that other fluency-related skills are very important: so far speed-reading, touch-typing, efficient note-taking and timed exercises are all on my students’ radar.

On Sunday, May 23rd, I’ll be presenting on Fluency in EFL at the JALT Pan-SIG 2010 conference. It promises to be provocative at the very least: I’ll share what I’ve been learning about fluency and even attempt my own definition of fluency for each of the four skills. I’ll also make a pitch for a strong fluency-based approach within a TOEFL iBT preparation course. Finally, I will invite my audience to thicken my skin a little with any opposing perspectives. Yikes…

Come join me for a little professional development through collaboration.

Check in every weekend here for new thoughts by three of my innovative colleagues and me.

Well, I am…

I’m gonna take my inspiration from a friend who seems to have the discipline to blog once a week… religiously. I’m going to try an experiment for the next 4 weeks to see if I can keep notes on my iPhone all week of topics that I’d like to address early on Sunday mornings. If a few more people wanted to make this a collaborative Sunday morning venture, that would help me a lot. Misery loves company, etc.

OK, let’s see if this gets any traction???

Cheers,

Steven

While everything unfamiliar spins uncontrollably around me for the coming months, I hope to hang on to my new students and my three new colleagues starting on the same contract as me. We’ll call them Ms. T, Mr. S and Ms. D for now, at least until I officially meet them in a few hours.

The focus of this program is simple. We have 18 months to raise their TOEFL scores as high as possible, because they will all travel overseas for a one-year study abroad experience. The basic design/concept of the program seems very, very clever. If these girls can’t feed off of or feed into their own motivation to live abroad, then I’ll be shocked.

I’m hoping to take an approach that focuses mercilessly on a fluency goal. Half the battle is just defining fluency, so here is my attempt for each of the four skills:

Speaking – thinking and speaking at the same time in a relatively natural speed

Writing – thinking and writing at the same time in a relatively natural speed, with a relatively average number of revisions

Listening – understanding spoken English to the depth that is necessary for any given situation. This implies that listening to friends, a university lecturer, the police, a YouTube video all carry uniquely different needs.

Reading – understanding written English at a speed somewhere closer to L1 readers than L2 readers (some say that 250 wpm with a 75% comprehension rate is a good target).

I’d love to hear what people think about these definitions. They are a starting point for this whole approach and I’m sure that many of my wise EFL colleagues out there have bundles and oodles of opinions to share.

Cheers.

Japanese Fluency Program

日本語が流暢になるプログラム

How to learn Japanese

according to a teacher in the US

http://www.shindenkan.com/japanese.html

This note will address questions and opinions raised in a previous facebook post Fluency in the EFL Context: a simple truth. Please start reading there if you want some background reading.

Matt wrote: As a result, I wind up teaching English once per week for 90 minutes to students who are only interested in raising their TOEIC scores from 300 to 400…despite the obvious fact that standardized exams cannot accurately measure productive language capacity from year to year, and despite the fact that TOEIC itself is well known to have an error margin of 50 points. So what I am to do?

Steven: Offering answers to rhetorical questions may be a death wish, but, of course, we’re all in the same “psychological” boat with our students, so I think it is OK just to share my approach:

From April 2010, I’m going into a university context with a full-scale, multi-fluency, TOEFL-raising, meaning-based, regular testing, high expectation, show me the results/ let’s be best friends forever approach. I plan to dogmatically promote the following:

1. Reading fluency – Nations speed reading program. This is a very easy sell to the students. They have years of experience not finishing the long essays on various tests. Everyone who makes an effort on reading speed improves. Seeing one’s own improvements builds confidence and increases motivation for overall learning.

2. Writing Fluency – I’ll continue my combination of 10-minute fluency writing in every class (and negotiate more for homework as part of their portfolio grade). I’ll also alternate between teaching writing conventions such as cohesion, coherence, organization, genre, etc., with doing timed test writing. Whatever students write will be read and evaluated and/or commented on by other students so as to encourage peer editing and to provide an audience for all writers.

3. Listening Fluency – I tell students that many English teachers (especially me) speak too slowly and too clearly. When they go abroad, “real” foreigners won’t edit their spoken discourse, so the onus is on the students to speed up their ears. I use a series of Steve Stories usually in one of three genres: My opinions, My life Lessons, Stories about my Kids. I ask them to listen, take notes in English, Japanese or by pictures, and then be ready to tell a partner what they could catch. I tell stories anywhere from 1 – 5 minutes. Here is an example of one I did just last week: Link to
Kid Story – Ren at KOSS

4. Speaking Fluency – The goal is to express oneself clearly and smoothly. I subscribe to the simplistic, demonstrable definition of speaking fluently as, “thinking and speaking at the same time” in one’s own relatively natural speed. I have students recycle things they have written as mini-speech presentations. We also do impromptu speaking, debating, persuasive speeches, and many other genre of spoken discourse that benefit from a fluency approach. As well as being practical, topics such as interviewing, small talk, news topics, pop culture, persuasion and public speaking are interesting and meaningful ways to focus on fluency.

From April 2010, I’m planning an almost “evangelical” message to my students about the importance of fluency. They will hear fluency over and over again, in many ways, shapes and forms for the first number of lessons. I’ll quote Jeremy Harmer who recently tweeted, “Yes, fluency is the success/failure divide for LL (language learning – my insert). My question is how come some SS get it, others not. I asked b4 on twitter”. I’ll tell stories of friends and students who believe in fluency as the key to their success. Fluency will be our “mantra”.

I base this approach on a certain level of success I had in the high school context recently when I invested time in explaining a simplified version of Nation’s, The four Strands – as a balance of INPUT (listening/reading) and OUTPUT (speaking/writing) with a focus on grammar and fluency. I knew that something was sinking in when I heard my message coming back to me, as for example, in a recording that students had to do in class:

Students talk Input/Output

I believe that teachers who go in with a strong plan fare better than teachers who don’t. Even teachers with plans that are faulty still seem to do better than teachers who “depend on the kindness of a teacher’s manual”. I’m willing to wage a beer or two on my strong plan coupled with a sincere message to students that I am on their side and I’m cheering for their improvement. The key, in one sense, is to get beyond the grammar and the vocabulary, to that zone of “meaning-based interaction” where sharing ideas, stories and opinions that are greatly enhanced by correct grammar and appropriate vocabulary.

Geez – that’s a 900-word answer to Q1.

Matt wrote:
Another issue is whether “fluency” itself can be defined. Skehan’s famous “fluency-accuracy-complexity” theory has often been tested in the ESL context, but can it be tested in EFL? Moreover, can “fluency” (whatever that is) actually be separated from accuracy and complexity? Japanese students have been well known in the past to favor accuracy at the expense of all else, but my experience has been that Japanese students are not too terribly good at ANY of the “Skehan 3.” Many of my current engineering students adamantly adhere to grammar-translation, but their grammar is actually quite atrocious, particularly when they try to write. Can fluency training help them?

Steven replies:
Can fluency be tested in EFL? Moreover, can “fluency” (whatever that is) actually be separated from accuracy and complexity? I’m gonna bail on these questions because I simply don’t know… yet. I am willing to say, “Let’s find out” by talking, researching, and making it our goal to leave an answer to this question for those who come after us.

As for, “Can fluency training help them?” Yes, I most definitely believe that it can.

Having done a fluency-based writing program for high school students since 2007, I have both quantitative and qualitative results that clearly show an increase in self-confidence in students’ English abilities in multiply ways: writing more, writing faster, writing longer sentences, writing better grammar, expressing opinions, enjoying English, and wanting to learn more about writing (see the I.DISS tab at Extensive Writing (EWr): An innovative approach to EFL writing in a Japanese high school)

So whether a fluency-first approach to writing improves written accuracy or complexity is still a fair question that needs further research. However, if as many educators believe, learner autonomy is one of the best things that we can “pass on” to our students, then a focus on fluency in any of the four skill is absolutely wonderful breeding ground for developing confident, motivated, autonomous learners.

One of my goals for the 2010 school year is to put these ideas into practice and do some classroom research on the efficacy of an approach that promotes fluency in EFL.

If anyone would like to join me, let’s start talking.

Steven Herder