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...]
[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.
