Sat down with the intention of doing one thing or another, or another, and as you do, I got a little sidetracked and ended up here.  I think The White Stripes may be enlightened beings! Bless em.

 

 

x bhavatu sabbe mangalum x

 

start at the beginning …

 

Learning from learning Japanese

 

Clearly the purpose of me attending these lessons, from my TESOL tutors’ point of view, was not to learn Japanese. The Course Handbook (SCOLA: 2009) tells me:

 

‘Trainees are not assessed on the volume or accuracy of language learned but on the analysis [sic] and reflective nature of the journal’

 

So other than a little bit of Japanese language what did I learn during those four hour-long sessions?

 

I learnt that teaching absolute beginners (entry level students) was something that was incredibly challenging, exciting and thrilling. As I sat in the classroom with Mayumi I increasingly yearned to be the one up front.  This course requirement to undertake four unknown language lessons, this part of the course that I had been dreading provided me with a profound learning experience that no amount of rational pedagogy could of. Over the course of those four lessons I became increasingly aware of one of key psychological and spiritual urges that had motivated me to enroll to train as an ESOL teacher.

 

I realized that I have a deep desire to communicate and connect with others without using words. It is ironic that my most meaningful experience of this (post-infanthood) occurred in an environment designed to teach me words and how to use them. Yet beyond the irony is something quite primal. Being treated as a child by Mayumi caused me to revisit some early childhood memories; of infantile experiences of the teacher as parent, and the parent as teacher.

 

“I was raised by teachers. Most of my earliest years were spent at the back of a small classroom listening to my mother teach. I grew up with teachers, and was a student as much as a son”. (Gibson:2009: 1)

 

Perhaps my unique childhood experience (of being in a classroom from the age of three months) made this association more vivid, however I think it was one relevant to all of us. In many ways Mayumi’s relationship with us, and I assume it is the same in other entry-level ESL classes, replicated that of a parent and their children. And as such the vast potential of this relationship can only be realized when the participants’ share genuine love, trust and respect.

 

It was the challenge of attempting to share and nurture such love, trust and respect with a group of strangers with whom I shared no spoken language that influenced my decision to enroll as a TESOL student. Mayumi’s teaching reminded me of that, and at the same time, wonderfully reassured me just how empowering it is to be in such an environment.

 

My awakening was further heightened as my attendance at Mayumi’s Japanese classes coincided with my guided observations of other ESL classes. This was effective scheduling as the classes I observed were of intermediate or pre-intermediate level which served to highlight for me the significant differences and similarities in teaching practice between intermediate and entry-level classes. I wrote of one of my most memorable observations of an intermediate class:

 

“There was an almost tangible feeling of the tutor bringing her world into the classroom, and by doing so she created a sense of intimacy and friendship between herself and the students… the teacher (whether consciously or not) made a continuous effort to be close to her students. Students were treated as friends and equals … the teacher challenged the students, encouraging them to think, not necessarily about the ‘right’ answer but about how they felt, what they believed and who they were”. (Gibson: 2010: 6-7)

 

Here once again is the teacher as parent, connecting, being intimate with, and challenging her students. Yet now, at this intermediate level, the teacher has a more discursive identity, and the love, trust and respect within the classroom grows more from the sharing of life experiences through words rather than through gestures, chanting and a sunflower soft toy.

 

While teaching at all levels is potentially a very challenging and fulfilling experience I am grateful that as a student I came in contact with the sunflower soft toy. Within the intermediate classroom learning activities are typically less kinesthetic and tactile, and more visual and auditory as greater emphasis is placed upon reading, writing, and grammar. While a variety of learning styles are catered for within the intermediate student environment, naturally as students come to understand more of the taught language, less intuitive learning occurs. It is at this level that discovery techniques are often used where students are “asked to use their previous knowledge to work out what words go with others, when they should be used and what connotations they have (Harmer: 2000:160).

 

I enjoyed being a child again. I enjoyed having no previous knowledge. I enjoyed trusting my intuition. Being in Mayumi’s class reminded me of the ‘hidden map’ approach to teaching used by Roberto, one of my TESOL tutors. It is a way of teaching that recognizes that students do not need to know where they are going to arrive at the destination. Often referred to as the ‘bottom-up’ approach[1] to the teaching process, this approach appeals to me (as a teaching style) as it encourages, and if successful affirms, students’ trust in the process’[2].

 

I did however, at times, experience some difficulty in letting go and trusting where Mayumi was leading us. There were a number of external factors that contributed to this, most notably:

 

• As part of the TESOL course, our attendance at the Japanese lessons required us to be as mindful of elements of the teaching practice (e.g. methods, materials, interactive patterns etc) as we were of the Japanese words, sounds and phrases we were being taught. This had the effect of undermining our ability to be completely present in the learning process.
• Unlike typical adult beginners we did not have a high degree of extrinsic motivation to learn Japanese, and we knew the lessons would end after four sessions. What this meant is that some of us who did not enjoy the learning experience soon became disinterested and dismissive of the process.
• Language acquisition is best achieved when students have some ‘deep experience’ (Harmer: 2000: 34). As students of Japanese we had little or no interaction with the vocabulary we learnt outside of the classroom, which we would have had had we been residing in Japan. Such interaction is important not only as it enhances learning but also enhances the motivation to continue learning.

   

Regardless of the above shortcomings (which given the nature of the unit seem almost inevitable) I was truly inspired by my time in Mayumi’s class. Each hour long lesson was an intense experience that left me feeling drained and weary. Yet each week, after having weathered the storm, I felt stronger and more confident. My confidence grew not only as I learnt and retained some Japanese words and phrases, but my self-confidence grew as I learnt that I could learn Japanese.

 

雨降って地固まる 

‘After the rain falls, the ground becomes harder’

 

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[1] The bottom-up approach provides students with little or no understanding of the objectives of the teaching session: it sees understanding as starting from the students’ exposure to, and gradual decoding of, sounds, words and phrases. Teaching progresses as students are exposed to, and grasp, more and more elements (e.g. sentences, intonation) until the lesson objective is reached.

[2] Developing ‘trust in the process’ is a central element within many enlightenment philosophies. Associated with the Buddhist notion of ‘non-attachment’ it encourages the letting go of all fixed locations (e.g. a sense of self, a future objective, a relationship) and just trusting in what is happening, right here, right now. See Chopra, D (2009) and Tolle, E (1999) for elaborations of this principle.

 

 to start at the beginning …

 

One of the most memorable moments for me, and I felt one of the most successful in regard to all of the class was when Mayumi taught us to count. Mayumi provided phonetic English translations for the numbers 1 to 10, which she communicated to us through actions and recited in a sing-song voice . While much of our time initially was (again) spent in individual and choral repetition, we were able to memorize the numbers more easily and more quickly as we could now attach visual images to them. Research has shown that humans have astounding memory capacity for visual (but not auditory) memories (see Cohen, M et al:2009), a discovery that is at the heart of some of the most popular and effective memory enhancement tools (see Buzan:2003, Trudeau:1997).

 

However as David, one of my fellow students pointed out, what was a highly successful and enjoyable learning experience for us would not be that easily transferable as a teaching method. The success of this method rests on two key elements, that:

 

• All the students in the class have a fluency in one shared language, and
• The teacher also has a degree of fluency in this language.

 

Such a situation is unlikely to exist in a British ESOL classroom where the class is usually  comprised of a group of learners who speak a wide variety of languages yet none in common.  Conversely for a teacher who is monolingual (as I am, although now I speak a little Japanese), in an EFL class where the students usually share a common language, the teacher would not be fluent in it.

 

Comparing Japanese and New Zealand English

 

As discussed above Mayumi taught us Japanese through function rather than grammar, and as a learner I quickly focused on listening and speaking rather than reading and writing. This meant that I became very mindful of the ways in which words and phrases sounded and felt similar or different to my native tongue (New Zealand English).

 

Listening

 

The way I heard the words was pleasant and the sound of them seemed familiar. This was partly because the ongoing assimilation of East Asian words and phrases into Kiwi[1] had provided me with some prior exposure to the sound of Japanese (e.g. I was familiar with one of the first words we learnt ‘konichi-wa). However my pleasure came as much from the rhythm of the language as from any recognition of the sounds provided.

 

I have since discovered that Japanese is an Austronesian language which explains why the rhythm, pace and intonation of Japanese was very familiar to me as a Pakeha[2] New Zealander.

 

“The Austronesian languages are a language family widely dispersed throughout the islands of SouthEast Asia and the Pacific… It is on par with Bantu, Indo-European, Afro-Asiatic and Uralic as one of the best-established ancient language families” (Wikipedia)

 

Not only has my Kiwi dialect been formed over more than a century alongside the Maori language, I have grown up surrounded by Maori words, words that incorporate sounds (e.g kaukapakapa, turangawaewae, whangaparoa) akin to Japanese.  One of the most notable similarities is in the vowel sounds. The five long Japanese vowel sounds are the same as those of Māori.

 

Speaking

 

I found the pronunciation of Japanese relatively easy.  Fortunately for me the way Japanese sounds are formed has similarities with both Kiwi and Maori. As a New Zealand linguist has noted “the New Zealand accent is quite understated. It does not employ the shaping of the mouth in quite such a defined way as others do. We tend to speak without shaping the mouth as much. We tend to mumble more, be a little lazy.” (Crean: 2008). This is similar to Japanese speech, in which lip and jaw movement is often minimized and ‘tentativeness is preferred to assertiveness, hesitancy to momentum’ (Thompson: 2000:297). 

 

The Japanese acceptance and use of silences and pauses when speaking is paralleled in Maori (and increasingly Pakeha) oratory[3] and while for some English speakers the pronunciation of the Japanese ‘r’ causes some difficulty, it came easy to me as it is similar to Maori, involving the rolling (or tapping) of the tongue behind the teeth.

 

Furthermore the prosody of most of the words and phrases seemed similar to that which I was used to, particularly the pitch. I seemed to very quickly be able to mimic the teacher’s pitch and felt at ease with the related communicative implications (e.g. asking a question, greeting, showing interest, etc). The frequent use of particles at the end of Japanese sentences (e.g. ka, wa) is paralleled in Maori, and has been adopted into Kiwi in the oft-parodied ‘eh’.

 

The many differences between Japanese and New Zealand English[4], particularly in aspects of writing and grammar, are too numerous to discuss here. Perhaps the most significant differences pertaining to spoken Japanese, only hinted at by Mayumi, is the system of honorifics within Japanese called keigo[5]. This ‘respect language’ is extensive and has no parallel within Kiwi. In Japanese, for example there are more than five different words for the English word “I”, which are used depending on the context.

 

to continue …

 

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[1] Increasingly New Zealand English is referred to as ‘Kiwi’, This term has been adopted here. For more information on the characteristics of Kiwi see Crean, M, 2008.

[2] Pakeha is an ethnic identity referring to New Zealanders of non-Maori descent who adopt and display shared cultural, linguistic and social characteristics.

[3] For more information on aspects of Maori and Pakeha oratory see Stubbes, M and Holmes, J (2000)

 

[4] A good discussion of the differences in grammar, vocabulary, style and orthography between Japanese and English is provided by Thompson, I (2001) in ‘Japanese Speakers’

[5] Keigo falls into three broad categories: respectful language, polite language and humble language. Keigo means that different words and expressions will be used when talking to an unknown person or a superior, as opposed to when talking to a child, family member or a close friend.

 

Thought you might be interested in this – my journal of my time as a Japanese language student. I enjoyed writing it, and as I stated in the last post, I think it may have cost me 1/2 a tooth.

 

I have made attempts to learn other languages; French and Latin at school, and Maori at University and in work-related learning environments. Compared to other subjects in which I have excelled, learning a language has always been a difficult and not very enjoyable experience, one which has invariably left me not only with a sense of dissatisfaction but also disability. I had come to believe that I simply could not learn languages. It was therefore with some trepidation that I anticipated undertaking the lessons in Japanese that were part of my TESOL training course.

 

This journal details my experiences of those lessons. In the first section I reflect on how I was taught and how I learnt. I consider the planning and the presentation of the Japanese lessons and focus on some of the teaching methods and materials that I as a student found noteworthy. In the second section I discuss some of the contrastive features of Japanese and New Zealand English and in the final section I reflect upon my wider learning experience, reviewing how my time as a Japanese language student helped me in my training as an ESOL teacher.

 

Teaching Japanese, learning Japanese

 

I remember thinking when our Japanese teacher first walked into the classroom that this is probably going to be a lot harder for you than it is for us. Here we are a bunch of fifteen mature students, none of whom have any genuine motivation to learn Japanese. We were not a typical entry-level class[1], and were there solely because a requirement of our TESOL course was to experience being taught an ‘unknown language’. Japanese was chosen as it was one language that none of us had ever bothered to try to learn before. It really seemed to me our teacher had drawn the short straw.

 

If she had she didn’t show it. From the very moment she started teaching she exuded confidence.  She was committed, keen, excited, and was obviously enjoying herself. I was impressed by the way she went about her work. I felt she wanted to be there, up front, teaching us. I felt she wanted us to learn Japanese. And I did learn Japanese. Not only that I enjoyed myself. How did she do this? How did she help make this such an awesome experience for me?

 

She kept it simple. She emphasized listening and speaking rather then reading and writing. And what she required us to listen to, and speak, was kept to a minimum. When coaching us to speak Japanese the teacher’s main objective of the lessons was to enable us to be understood, by her and by each other. To use more academic language, the focus was on communicative efficiency and intelligibility (see Kenworthy:1987).

 

We spent a lot of time in choral and individual repetition and cue-response drills with the teacher monitoring and correcting pronunciation[2]. However I never felt that she was drilling me to maintain perfect pronunciation. As I listened during our rounds of individual repetition I was sure that each of us were saying something just a little different , well that’s how I heard it anyway. And the great thing was it didn’t seem to matter. I quickly felt that it was not about getting it ‘perfect’ but rather about being good enough.

 

‘Perfection is another crazy-making addiction… We have been taught that we should go for excellence in anything we attempt. We are afraid of making a fool of ourselves … We need to learn to make enjoyment, not perfection, our goal… when we have done our very best, we have done enough, and we are enough’ (Jeffers: 1997: 52-54)

 

And I did my best. Not once did the teacher indicate to me that I was not good enough, that I wasn’t ‘getting it’. We were never made to feel foolish, but rather were rewarded with an enthusiastic ‘ii-desu[3]’. A word that made us feel okay about how much and how fast we were learning.

 

When we started we didn’t understand each other. She hardly spoke not a word of English to us.  For all intents and purposes when she began to teach we couldn’t understand her and she couldn’t understand us. And yet, for all the frustration such a situation could engender she hardly ever raised her voice to us, and when she did it was when we had become overexhuberant or over-fearful and were gabbling amongst ourselves. Then she would raise her voice slightly and ever so gently draw our attention back to the teaching.

 

The first lesson focused on us introducing ourselves, and our learning and remembering of how to do this was developed, expanded, and revisited in all of the lessons[4]. Introducing ourselves was an excellent choice of ’function’ as one of the first things we want to know when we meet someone is their name.  And the first thing a teacher needs to do is let their students know who they are.

 

This is how the lesson began, by the teacher gesturing to herself and speaking her name, Mayumi[5]. It didn’t take us long to figure that one out. From then on the lead-in[6] got a little more difficult as Mayumi expanded this primal greeting to the phrase “my name is Mayumi”. Now before I sat in that classroom I wouldn’t have thought learning to say ‘My name is Simon’ in Japanese would be all that difficult. However it is, and yet I learnt it very easily and quickly. That is the paradox that lies at the heart of how we were taught. How very Zen. How very Japanese[7].

 

‘A koan is a fundamental part of the history and lore of Zen Buddhism. It consists of a story, dialogue, question, or statement whose meaning cannot be accessed by rational thinking, yet it may be accessible by intuition’. (Wikipedia-1) 

 

Mayumi did not teach me how to say ‘my name is Simon’, she taught me how to introduce myself (Simon desu[8]). This is a critical difference, one that distinguishes teaching a language via functions from teaching it grammatically. We were not given any grammar instruction from Mayumi. It would have been nigh impossible for her to do so, remember we had no shared language, how could she have told us about sentence structure, verbs, particles and the such like when we couldn’t even say hello to each other.

 

We were being taught to learn intuitively rather than rationally. To this day I do not know the English translation of ‘Simon desu’. It could mean ‘I am Simon’, it could mean ‘my name is Simon’. What I do know, and what I can do, is introduce myself in Japanese. I can perform that function. This is the essence and the objective of teaching language via function, and Mayumi taught us well.

 

She treated us like children[9] and what a treat it was, for me at least. There were some of us for whom this wasn’t such a pleasure. Some of us may have responded more eagerly and easily to a rational approach to learning. To a teacher who spoke English and explained about contrastive features, language structure, verbs, particles and the like.

 

That was not how it was. That is not, I quickly came to realize, how it is in an entry level language class. We weren’t given any rational explanations instead we got a cute sunflower soft toy, flash cards and one handout[10] each session with simple pictures, a few words in Japanese and not a word of English. Mayumi’s main teaching methods and materials involved gestures, symbols and pictures. She trusted, as she progressively taught us how to greet each other, how to count and how to order a meal than we would intuitively understand what were doing, and what we were saying[12]. And we did.

 

Yet she did not leave it to trust alone. Much of our learning involved peer/pair-work, using the words and phrases we were learning in conversation with each other.  Over and over we practiced conversing with each other, with Mayumi carefully and considerately walking by and listening to how we were doing. At times she would correct or prompt us by saying the phrase herself, always she would praise us. Sometimes if she felt that, as a group, there were certain words or phrases we were having difficulty with she would reinforce these through choral repetition. This would often involve five repetitions as she quite literally had our voices at her fingertips[13]. Fingers and hands played a significant role in our learning. They were there at our lips, eyes and ears when we learnt the Japanese words for speak, see and hear.

 

Some in the class found it difficult to participate in these childlike activities, retaining a degree of adult ‘self’ consciousness that inhibited their learning experience.

 

‘In the child’s role the learner takes part in role playing, games, songs and gymnastics exercise that help the older student regain the self-confidence, spontaneity and receptivity of the child’ (Richards, J. C. et al:1992:102)

 

For myself I found this infantilization liberating. As well as enhancing my learning experience it also served to reassure me; for I felt that as children we were all in the same boat. The emphasis was on enjoyment rather than achievement, on cooperation rather than competition. [to continue...]

 

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[1] As Harmer (2000:8) states adult beginners are usually the easiest to teach as they  “come to the classroom with a high degree of extrinsic motivation”.

[2] Repetition is characteristic of entry-level language classes where the focus is on non-communicative activities ‘where students … will be motivated not by a desire to reach a communicative objective, but by the need to reach the objective of accuracy’ (Harmer:2000:49).

[3] ‘Ii desu’ translates as ‘good’

[4] The lessons involved a high degree of revision of past learning (often referred to as ‘recapping’ in English Language teaching). Repeated recapping of vocabulary and phrases in an entry-level class reinforces student learning and also provides the teacher with regular assessment of class understanding.

[5] The tutor’s name has been changed to provide anonymity, and I have chosen Mayumi as it may be written with the characters for “true; reality” (ma) and “bow” (yumi). Other possibilities include “true; reality” (ma), “wherefore; a reason” (yu) and “beauty; beautiful” (mi).

[6] Lead-in is a term used for the first of five components of a typical model of introducing new language. During the lead in phase the teacher establishes a context for the learning, and new language is used.

[7] Around 90 million people consider themselves Buddhists in Japan. Zen Buddhism was established in Japan in 1191 and has had a major impact on all aspects of Japanese life, most notably politics, education, culture, art and architecture.

[8] This form of introduction using the sentence ending ‘desu’ is characteristic of the ‘polite language’ (teineigo) category of honorifics and is the form of the language first taught to most non-native learners of Japanese.

[9] This is a teaching method referred to as ‘infantilization’. As Larsen-Freeman (2000: 80) states ‘It is desirable that students achieve a state of infantilization so that they will be more open to learning. If they trust the teacher they will be reach this state more easily’.

[10] Of note was that information on each handout spanned across lessons (for example the handout we were given in the first week (1/4) contained words we were introduced to in the fourth lesson). This had the effect of not only melding the lessons together and keeping each handout relevant, but also provided students with some indication of the learning yet to come. Furthermore through the creation of a continuous learning process the teacher was able to be more responsive (flexible and adaptable) to the her students’ pace of learning.

 

[12] This technique, involving the use of the context in which a word appears to derive an idea of its meaning is referred to as ‘contextual guesswork’.

[13] Mayumi would often count the class through the repetitions by raising the fingers of one hand one at a time. This was an effective technique as it (1) helped the class to stay in time, (2) encouraged collective behaviour and undermined individual self-consciousness, (3) allowed us to relax as we knew how many chants were left, and could therefore be more mindful to the sounds Mayumi was making, and (4) reinforced learning through repetition.

 

Nothing wrong with the middle. Just try it. Try being in the middle – the middle of:

• here and there
• young and old
• black and white
• living and dying
• male and female

 

And the list just goes on. Head for the gap in between. The space between you and me. Best place in the world to be -  the middle – the happy place.

 

 

x bhavatu sabbe mangalum x