平成22年度（2010年度）
共通教育センター学部等研究プロジェクト
「コミュニケーションの教育法に関する実践的方法」
平成22年度（2010年度）外国語教授法研究会 報告書
1.
平成22年度（2010年度）外国語教授法研究会報告書作成にあたって
2.
Guidelines for a Successful Language Teaching Program
3.
外国語学習の意義、学習方法、学習支援策—岩手県立大学に適した語学教育カリキュラム構築を目指して
平成23年（2011年）3月31日
外国語教授法研究会
2010年度外国語教授法研究会報告書作成にあたって
本報告書は、岩手県立大学学部等プロジェクト「H22年度学部等研究費、コミュニケーションの教育法に関する実践的方法」の一環として、語学教員有志により立ち上げた外国語教授法研究会活動の成果を報告するものである。
外国語教授法研究会の活動にあたっては、語学教育法に関する研究成果のレビューを通して、語学教育の充実を実現するための具体的方策に関する提言の理論的基礎を構築することを目標としている。
具体的には、「何のために外国語を学習するのか」、「その目的を達成するために、何をどれだけ行う必要があるのか」、「大学としてどのような学習支援策が実施できるか」といった言語習得に関する研究成果を研究会活動でレビュー・議論し、その結果を踏まえ、本学にどのように応用できるのかを検討することを目指している。それは、教室活動のみに限定されるものではなく、大学全体の語学学習環境を含む。具体的には、語学学習環境の整備、語学学習支援センターのあり方、語学学習時間確保のための環境整備、学習動機を確立させるための海外留学制度、国際交流制度のあり方、語学教員の質を高める研修方法の検討、学生の学習方法を適切なものとするための指導体制、に関する研究を収集、レビューし、整理することを目標としている。
2010年度は、前期、後期それぞれ数回の研究会を実施し、本学における外国語教育の問題点に関する議論を重ねた。また、短期大学部国際文化学科と共催し、アジアにおける英語教育の現状に関して、カンボジアの英語教育に関する研究者を本学に招いて講演会を開催した。
本報告書においては、研究会活動の成果発表の第一弾として、第一部において、現時点での最新の外国語教授法に関する情報を整理し、第二部においては、外国語学習の目的などに関する議論を整理し、本学における外国語学習環境の問題点とその対応策の現状について言及した。
本報告書が、本大学における語学教育の充実の実現に寄与することになれば幸いである。
2011年３月30日
The purpose of this report is to offer guidelines to promote the successful renewal of language teaching at Iwate Prefectural University. We hope to add to this initial effort with our colleagues’ help. Thus, we welcome additions and suggestions.
1. The Scholarship of Teaching
2. The Scholarship of Language Teaching
3. Program Issues
A. Integrated Language Program Objectives
B. Class Schedules and Size
C. The Native-Speaker/Non-native-Speaker Dichotomy
D. L1/L2 in the Classroom
4. Class-Specific and Skill-Specific Instructional Design Principles
A. Comprehensive Skills (Whole Language) Design
B. Vocabulary and Lexis
C. Reading
D. Writing
E. Speaking
F. Listening
G. Grammar
H. Online Resources for Language Teaching
I. Extensive Skill Learning
J. Action Research
K.
CALL (Computer-Assisted Language Learning)
L. Teaching for Exams
M. Motivating students
N. Effective Textbook Use
O. Writing Class Materials
P. Promoting Learner Development and Student Autonomy
5. Faculty Development
6. Assessment
A. Program Assessment
B. Faculty Assessment
7. Materials for Language Teachers
8. Conclusion
Acknowledgements
References
Web Resources
1. The Scholarship of Teaching
University classroom learning is understood to occur in a field of complex cultural, social, psychological, and cognitive forces. Developments in the past 30-40 years both in general university teaching and discipline-specific teaching (teaching of chemistry, psychology, computer science, and of course foreign language) have resulted in a large literature on the scholarship of teaching. The term “scholarship of teaching” was popularized in the U.S. in a seminal volume by Ernest L. Boyar of the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching[1]. Boyar deplored the historic narrowing of the faculty role following World War II to research and asserted that the definition of scholarship must be extended to the applied expertise of undergraduate and graduate teaching. Since the 1980’s (and even earlier) there has emerged a generation of scholars, academic societies, and journals devoted to this field.
What are the best ideas in university teaching? What do the best teachers do? While there are many possible sources, we offer one example of the work of M.D. Merrill. Merrill has culled the following five principles of instructional design from research on approaches to teaching. While individual faculty should choose their own models and approaches to classroom teaching, these principles offer useful food for thought both for teaching in general and discipline-specific teaching:
·
Demonstration principle: Learning is
promoted when learners observe a demonstration.
Learning is promoted when learners observe a demonstration of the skills to be learned that is consistent with the type of content being taught.
Learning from demonstrations is enhanced when learners are guided to related general information or an organizing structure to specific instances.
Learning from demonstrations is enhanced when learners observe media that is relevant to the content.
Learning from demonstrations is enhanced by peer discussion and peer demonstration.
·
Application principle: Learning is
promoted when learners apply the new knowledge.
Learning is promoted when learners engage in application of their newly acquired knowledge or skill that is consistent with the type of content being taught.
Learning from an application is effective only when learners receive intrinsic or corrective feedback.
Learning from an application is enhanced when learners are coached and when this coaching is gradually withdrawn for each subsequent task.
Learning from an application is enhanced by peer-collaboration.
·
Task-centered principle: Learning is
promoted when learners engage in a task-centered instructional strategy.
Learning is promoted when learners engage in a task-centered instructional strategy.
Learning from a task-centered instructional strategy is enhanced when learners undertake a simple-to-complex progression of whole tasks.
·
Activation principle: Learning is
promoted when learners activate relevant prior knowledge or experience.
Learning is promoted when learners activate relevant cognitive structures by being directed to recall, describe, or demonstrate relevant prior knowledge or experience.
Learning from activation is enhanced when learners share previous experience with one another.
Learning from activation is enhanced when learners recall or acquire a structure for organizing the new knowledge, when the structure is the basis for guidance during demonstration, is the basis for coaching during application, and is the basis for reflection during integration.
·
Integration principle: Learning is
promoted when learners integrate their new knowledge into their everyday
world.
Learning is promoted when learners integrate their new knowledge into their everyday life by being directed to reflect-on, discuss, or defend their new knowledge or skill.
Learning from integration is enhanced by peer critique.
Learning from integration is enhanced when learners create, invent, or explore personal ways to use their new knowledge or skill.
Learning from integration is enhanced when learners publically demonstrate their new knowledge or skill. (M.D. Merrill, 2009, pp. 43ff)
See also work by Kenneth Eble, Patricia Hutchins, Ken Bain, and other scholars writing on “best practices” in college and university teaching.
2. The Scholarship of Language Teaching
We all would like to teach good and successful language teachers of good and successful language learners. Rubin and Thompson’s (1994) classic volume on the successful language learner identifies several characteristics: good language learners set their own goals; work regularly at their learning; and notice what learning strategies are most effective for themselves. We want to encourage students to be like this, and match their efforts with those of our own.
The TEFL/TESL field. Language teaching in general, and English language teaching in particular, is an extraordinarily active professional field, and often implicitly incorporates principles like Merrill’s (2009) in its discourse. The size and productivity of the teaching English as a second/foreign language (TES/FL) field is sometimes hidden from the awareness of content-scholars in areas such as literature, history, or sociology. However, the influx of international students to universities in native-English-speaking countries in the past 40 years (U.S. institutions presently number around 4200, for example), has resulted in the emergence of a vast network of gateway English language programs. These programs, in turn, comprise hundreds of ready-made field laboratories for the study of adult second-language acquisition processes and teaching methodology by linguists, cognitive scientists, and computer scientists.
This work is robustly complemented by English as a foreign language (EFL) scholarship in other parts of the world. Asia is notable in this respect; Hong Kong, Singapore, Japan, Korea, recently China, and other countries have been fertile centers of TEFL research and publication.
As
a result, there is a vast body of research on second language acquisition, and
a vast body of publication on theory, practices, and classroom applications
emerging from these countries. Some examples of the impact of this extensive
academic enterprise in second/foreign language acquisition and English language
teaching can be cited from the U.S. (although other countries have notable
developments too). We can observe
that many key personnel in the U.S. Department of Education-funded university
Foreign Language Resource Centers Programs (now numbering 15), emphasizing
foreign and less-commonly-taught languages, have significant credentials and
scholarship in the learning and teaching of English. These include Richard
Schmidt, director of the National Foreign Language Resource Center (NFLRC) at University of
Hawai'i; Susan Gass, director of the Center for Language Education and Research
(CLEAR) at Michigan State University; and Elaine Tarone, director of the Center
for Advanced Research on Language Acquisition (CARLA) at University of
Minnesota, among others. (See the
joint website of Foreign Language Resource Centers at http://nflrc.msu.edu/lrcs.php). We can also note that Ph.D
degrees have recently become available in the field of Second Language
Acquisition (SLA) and related fields (29 institutions offering such doctorates
are listed for Canada and the U.S. on the TESOL website at this writing).
Professional organizations. Additionally, the tenets of this work find their way from scholarly conferences, journals, and books into a large textbook publication industry (discussed below). Finally, English teachers belong to professional organizations attend regional, national, and international conferences in large numbers. The international Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL – www.tesol.org ) has about 12,000 members and the Japan Association for Language Teachers (JALT – www.jalt.org) about 3000, according to their websites. Other associations in Japan and the surrounding region include Japan Association of College English Teachers (JACET – www.jacet.org ), Asia TEFL (www.asiatefl.org ), English Teachers in Japan (ETJ - ltprofessionals.com/ETJ/), TESOL Asia (www.tesol.asia/), Korea TESOL (www.kotesol.org/), and ThaiTESOL (www.kotesol.org/ ). These memberships are highly cohesive and rely on an extensive internet presence, actively participating in projects, and freely exchanging materials and information. In individual institutions, colleagues are likely to assume that they will be working using shared goals and an integrated sequence of courses.
Language teachers find great benefits in professional involvement. Maintaining active contact aids ongoing professional development and ensures the ability to stay current with established principles, approaches, methods, and trends of professional language teaching. Currently, these should include a familiarity with the following:
Current pedagogic concepts in TEFL/TESL. From H. Douglas Brown’s Teaching by Principles we can glean an initial overview of some key concepts in the field: learner-centered instruction (activities designed to give primacy to students’ performance of language use); collaborative learning (non-competitive groupwork and cooperation); interactive learning (focus on spoken or textual communication); whole language education (i.e. that all skills should be woven into a class); content-based instruction (integration of discipline-based subject matter such as history, psychology, or other academic subjects, into the language teaching); and task-based instruction (tasks which require students to accomplish something are at the center of the classroom activities); automaticity (movement from “control of a few language forms into the automatic processing of a relatively unlimited number of language forms,” 2007, p. 56); motivation through self-confidence (strategic sequencing of classroom tasks from easy to difficult to ensure success).
Additionally, understanding and employment of these elements of the field is necessary: schema theory (brought from psychology into prominence in second language acquisition (SLA) by Patricia Carrell, this term emphasized the explicit teaching of textual organization to permit learners to develop skills in predicting reading content; it was expanded to apply to the organization of spoken discourse); top-down and bottom-up processing (the idea that the teaching of lexis and structure must be complemented by the teaching of the overall discourse organization of text or talk); scaffolding (introduced by Jerome Bruner, among others, and expanded for language teaching by Krashen, scaffolding refers to providing students with the aids on an as-needed basis to allow them to accomplish what they could not do alone; see Shoebottom, 2007, for an initial overview); strategic error correction (based on the premise that students cannot attend to all errors simultaneously, strategic selection and correction of prominent and pervasive errors for greatest effectiveness); and autonomous learning (autonomous or independent learning by students should be promoted with tools and resources; approaches many include extensive skill learning, use of online resources and special institutional resources). Further, the integration of technology into teaching and learning through computer assisted language learning (CALL) is a tremendously active area.
3.
Program Issues
A.
Integrated Language Program Objectives
A program whose component courses are interlinked, and whose objectives are ordered will provide the most reliable outcomes. Programs with special purposes (e.g. for academic purposes, for translation, or nursing or other health fields, for business) exemplify this. For university purposes, a general and academic language focus is suitable.
Concrete, achievable, skill-specific, and level-specific program objectives should be developed and adhered to by faculty. These objectives should be in keeping with professional standards as described in the literature. Individual faculty members should have freedom to address these objectives according to preferred approaches, but should be able to demonstrate that students are achieving the objectives.
B.
Effectiveness of Class Size and Frequency of Students’ Exposure to Language
Input
Learning a foreign language is a complex task, sometimes compared to learning mathematics, learning how to play a sport or musical instrument, or other kinds of learning which involve perception of complex information and complex psychological/cognitive, linguistic, and motor responses. It has long been established that learning complex tasks is better accomplished with frequent, short periods of study and practice (“distributed practice”) than widely-spaced, long periods of study and practice (“mass practice”). (See a brief review in Winskowski & Hanna, 2005.) More frequent exposure to and practice of language content results ultimately in stronger long-term remembering. Routine homework fosters students’ regular contact with language input. Further, substantive language learning requires useful and applicable teacher feedback to students on their practice efforts.
Therefore, an optimal foreign language class might be taught in three or four 45-60 minute periods per week, with homework.
Additionally, optimal class sizes should be kept between 12 and 25 students to ensure sufficient interaction between instructor and students. Classes that are too small put a burden of constant response on the student; classes which are too large may tend to become lectures about language, with insufficient coaching or practice of the target language itself.
C.
The Native-Speaker/Non-native-Speaker Dichotomy
Recent developments on two issues should be of interest to language teachers, particularly those in countries where English is not a widespread native language. First, with regard to native-speaking teachers (NS) and non-native speaking teachers (NNS), it has long been held that NS teachers have a “natural” advantage, intuitively recognizing what is correct, having native pronunciation, etc. Indeed, some have even held that being a native speaker by itself is sufficient to teach language, though this is not an opinion held by professionals.
More recently, it has been acknowledged that, along with the rise of varieties of English in so many parts of the world, the distinction between NS and NNS teachers is not so important and cannot always be clearly drawn. Rather, it is understood now that NNS instructors are advantaged in some ways that NS instructors are not, e.g. a NNS teacher may have a better sense of students’ difficulties than NS instructors, may have a better understanding of world Englishes, and actually comprise more the norm than NS instructors. The significance of this distinction between NS and NNS teachers has thus faded; acquisition of appropriate academic credentials, experience, and language competence are the standards of professional employability in ELT.[2]
D. Instructor’s use of L1/L2 in the
Classroom
Another issue has to do with the balance of L1 (the students’ native language) and L2 (the target language) use in the classroom. Some controversy surrounds this topic as well, as those in countries where the L2 is a native language and those in countries where the L2 is a foreign language may see this differently. For some time, there has been a widely-held view that students’ L1 should be avoided in the classroom. However, as Meyer’s recent overview of this topic shows, there are a number of reasons for teachers to use the students’ L1 in a monolingual situation such as Japan, especially at lower levels. He concludes, “The use of the L2 should be maximized whenever possible. The L1’s primary role is to supply scaffolding to lower affective filters by making the L2 and the classroom environment comprehensible. The L1 plays a secondary role by helping students to anchor L2 concepts to the L1 through use of loan words, translation activities, and code switching within story telling activities” (2008, p. 157). Thus, while the teacher’s use of L2 provides a critically important model for students, strategic use of L1 often makes for efficient and smooth management of class activities, quick resolution of students’ questions, etc.
4. Class-Specific and Skill-Specific
Instructional Design Focuses
A.
Comprehensive Skills (Whole Language) Design
In general, classes which incorporate all skills are most effective, even if they emphasize one or two skills. This is because natural language use engages more than reading alone (it probably will engage reasoning and response), more than writing alone (writing is often a response to interaction, reading, or other writing), more than grammar alone (grammar use is always in a context of other use), more than speaking alone (speaking necessarily involves listening to others or at least to oneself), and so on. Learning in one skill area supports and reinforces learning in other areas.
B.
Vocabulary and Lexis.
Applied linguist Paul Nation, a foremost authority on vocabulary study, points out that students must know about 95% of a text’s vocabulary to understand it (2001). Nation’s academic web site (http://www.victoria.ac.nz/lals/staff/paul-nation/nation.aspx) contains or refers to the following resources:
· his major publications on the teaching of vocabulary,
· English vocabulary lists sorted by frequency in groups of one-thousands (the most frequent 1000, the second most frequent 1000, and so on),
· tests for each frequency level (Level Tests), and
· various other resources.
Charles Browne, a student of Paul Nation’s and a Japan-based researcher, author, and software developer, examined three high school English texts to develop a “profile” of vocabulary used (Browne, 2008). Analyzing 11 units across the three texts, Browne found an average of 68.3% of the vocabulary at the 1000 most-frequent word level; 11.4% at the 1001-2000 most-frequent word level, 3.4% at university level, and 17.9% of the vocabulary falling outside these groups. He concludes that in Japan, high school students are not taught full mastery of the most frequent 2000 English words in order to read texts at the 2000 word level with 95% recognition. The result is that at university, students often cannot understand academic texts, which require the 2000 most frequent words plus the 570 words of the Academic Word List (Browne, 1996, 1998, 2008). Rather, too many low-frequency words (i.e., “difficult” such as the 17.9% noted above) are taught in high school for examination purposes.
Work bys Browne and his associates (Browne, 2008; Browne, Cihi, & Culligan 2007) has been applied to the development of a useful software for students’ independent vocabulary learning (www.wordengine.jp).
Additionally, the advent of corpus linguistics has provided vast data bases on the frequency of common word combinations in English. Developments in the study of high frequency phrases and colloquial expressions have brought the realization that quite a lot of language involves groups of words, most commonly between two and seven that appear with higher than random frequency. They range from the highly patterned or even fixed, like polite expressions (“How do you do?), to the recognizable-but somewhat-flexible (“absent from ______” and “In this presentation, I/we will…”). With volumes written or edited by Michael Lewis (The Lexical Approach, 1993; Implementing the Lexical Approach, 1997; and Teaching Collocation, 2000), recognition of the pedagogic value of incorporating lexical collocations has found its way into textbooks and methodologies (see, for example, Cambridge University Press’ textbook series, Touchstone).
Instructors and students have found, additionally, that they can use concordance software to do their own searches for lexical combinations. The user enters a textual phrase and gets a large sample of text lines from many sources, showing the patterns of preceding and following words around the phrase. Other software now incorporates the use of concordances in combination with other functions. One of the best collections of vocabulary, lexicon, and grammar software programs for both students’ independent study and instructors’ class development is The Compleat Lexical Tutor at www.lextutor.ca. A helpful introduction and review may be found at the online journal TESL-EJ at http://tesl-ej.org/ej31/m2.html
The supplementary study of vocabulary and focus on high-frequency lexical collocations can be helpfully integrated throughout all courses, fostering student awareness of natural language and encouraging autonomous study.
Online
resources:
·
Word Engine – www.wordengine.jp
This site allows students to take a free vocabulary test to check their vocabulary level. Then they can sign up for an inexpensive vocabulary courses with a variety of learning tools. These courses are aimed toward various types of tests – Basic, Advanced,TOEIC, TOEFL, Eiken, the Center Exam, etc. The site is based on research by Charles Browne and colleagues.
· Paul Nation’s academic web site - http://www.victoria.ac.nz/lals/staff/paul-nation/nation.aspx
[From the website:] “Paul Nation is Professor in Applied Linguistics at the School of Linguistics and Applied Language Studies (LALS) at Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand.”
On the left side of Nation’s page, you can find a very useful file, the “Vocabulary Resource Booklet” which you can download; it will save itself to your desktop. The file contains the following, as well as a variety of other items:
a) The General Service List (West, 1952) – 1st 1000 most frequent English words, 2nd 1000 most frequent words, 3rd 1000 most frequent words…..all the way to 10th 1000 most frequent words (filename = ‘GSL Wdlists’);
b) The Academic Word List (Coxhead, 2000) of 570 words (filename = ‘awl’); and
c) A vocabulary test that checks the students’ level (filename = ‘Levelstest 1’) and a guide for it.
Also on the left wide of the web site is another test, the Vocabulary Size Test.
·
The Compleat Lexical Tutor - www.lextutor.ca
This site has a wonderful collection of tools for instructors to identify and process the vocabulary in their teaching texts, including vocabulary profilers, concordance tools, and exercise-creation software. The site also has tools for student. See the above description on Vocabulary and Lexis.
· Word and Phrase – www.wordandphrase.info
This site is part of the Contemporary Corpus of American English webpage. It also offers tools for vocabulary profiling and a concordance program for words and phrases, with color-coded output which helps identify grammatical patterns and collocations.
Paraphrasing and Summarizing: Applying Vocabulary and Collocations. Paraphrasing and summarizing are skills that are mentioned in foreign language methodology with rarity. Nonetheless, the ability to express meaning in different ways, using different – often – simpler words, shows a command of vocabulary, grammar, and discourse that are under-appreciated, but in fact underlie all productive skills. As an alternative to translation, summarizing reading material and indirect reporting of speech offer powerful practice for developing the students’ written and spoken fluency. A review of basic expressions, followed by close study of spoken or written text (with presumably more advanced language), provide the groundwork for paraphrasing and summarizing exercises.
C. Reading
Top-down and bottom-up. A major idea that has informed and probably transformed the teaching of reading in recent decades is the idea that reading is an interaction between the reader and the text, rather than passive reception of information. The reader brings background understanding of a setting, including presuppositions and expectations, to a text. This idea, formalized in schema theory (Carrell & Eisterhold, 1983), means that it is the reader who creates meaning in the reading process. It is the reader who brings a recognition of the rhetorical, social, and cultural knowledge needed to understand a narrative, for example. Thus, background knowledge, types of texts, rhetorical forms in writing, the structure of argument and reasoning must be considered and taught simultaneously along with the vocabulary, collocation, grammar, and mechanics – thus both a top-down and bottom-up approach.
Reading strategies. The strategies of good readers are often incorporated into modern reading textbooks. For example, skimming for main ideas, scanning for specific information, pre-reading exercises to prompt mental “semantic maps” in the reader’s thinking, silent reading without mental pronunciation or translation, identification of discourse markers – these are all part of the cognitive strategies needed for the reading of texts.
Speed reading. Additionally, speed reading practice is a valuable skill recommended by some. See, for example, Paul Nation’s Speed Reading short course (available to download and print from http://www.victoria.ac.nz/lals/staff/paul-nation.aspx ). This can be integrated into and can supplement a reading course.
D.
Writing
It is the consensus among theorists and practitioners of writing instruction that the teaching of writing must be done by having students write. Most authors agree that to build writing fluency, a person must write extensively. Writing a daily journal is a useful exercise for fluency, and frequent reading is considered by most to be a critical component in developing writing skills.
Process writing. Process writing has been the major approach for both NS and NNS students for some decades. It emphasizes teaching the process of writing rather than directly seeking the product. Authors in this area frequently point out that it is useful for students to do pre-writing activities to generate ideas. The use of brainstorming (thinking of as many ideas connected with the topic as possible) and freewriting (to write freely for five or ten minutes, not mentally planning or monitoring the writing for accurate grammar, punctuation, spelling, etc.) are often effective. Then several drafts (versions) are suggested, using peer editing and teacher feedback to make corrections and improvements each time. In this way, writers discover what they want to say.
Correction of student writing. H.D. Browne advises that corrections be handled carefully. In early drafts, guidance should focus on the overall ideas and structure of the argument. He recommends correction of grammar only at a later stage of the paper, and suggests limiting feedback to an indication of the kind of error, letting the student find the solution to the problem. He also advises that rhetorical forms and conventions of English prose be explicitly taught (i.e. exposition, narrative, process, cause-effect, persuasion, etc.), especially for academic writing (2007, p. 411-12).
E.
Speaking
The teaching of writing probably has the reputation of being the most labor-intensive skill to teach. After all, once students have read the model passages, gone through the pre-writing and drafting stages, then there is the exacting task of reading, offering selective correction and commentary, even conferences, before the students’ re-drafting cycle repeats. Yet some would be surprised to realize the degree of planning for effective teaching of speaking. In fact, the teaching of speaking is probably the most labor-intensive of all skills in its preparation phase. Additionally, the teaching of speaking has been plagued by the popular-but-misguided idea that one needs “only” be a native speaker to teaching speaking successfully.
Fluency, accuracy, recycling. Experienced instructors know that actually speaking is the skill that varies most widely in its forms, content, and interactional performance. As Folse points out, the teaching of speaking skill may be the most difficult skill for which to design effective class activities (Folse, 2006, p. 29). A speaking class must have a good balance of fluency-building exercises and correction for accuracy, along with continued opportunities to practice (recycle) learned content. In addition, students must have exposure to a wealth of comprehensible input from which to get models. Folse notes that research suggests that speaking activity is likely to be more successful (i.e. produce more spoken practice) if students can plan for the task, if recycling expressions is encouraged in the task, and if there are clear goals expected for the task (pp. 49-51). Indeed, teaching speaking requires meticulously-prepared scaffolding to develop student skills.
Online resource. It is, perhaps indicative of the difficulty of “capturing” spoken English language (except as transcripts) that there are relatively few websites devoted to the teaching of speaking. However, English Central (www.englishcentral.com) offers students the opportunity to view many hundreds of subtitled video clips, study them, practice speaking the lines, and receive feedback on pronunciation from the site software. Students may pursue specialized topics (e,g, business English, travel English), and instructors may arrange to upload materials for class. To use this site, students must subscribe for a fee.
F.
Listening
Comprehensible input. Understanding of the processes involved in listening gained attention with Richards’ seminal (1983) article, “Listening Comprehension,” with its extensive list of micro-skills. Brown (2007) points out that the teaching of listening came into prominent focus in the field when researchers on second language acquisition realized the need for students to have substantive amounts of comprehensible language input to effectively build their skill (as argued in Stephen Krashen’s The Input Hypothesis, 1991). Comprehensible input refers to language input that is at or slightly above the student’s level. This is a critical point for the teaching of listening (as well as being applicable to other skills, like reading).
Design of activities, students’ listening strategies. As with reading, the learner brings background understanding or schemata to the learning task. Also, as with reading, listening is an interactive process as the listener processes and interprets what is heard. Brown offers some principles for designing listening activities, including using designs with intrinsically motivating material, using authentic language and contexts, carefully considering what sort of response students are expected to give, encouraging the development of listening strategies (e.g. listening for keywords, noticing nonverbal cues to meaning, predicting speakers’ purposes, etc.), and incorporating both top-down (to activate schemata) and bottom-up (vocabulary, grammar, expressions) listening techniques (Brown, 2007, pp. 311-12).
Online
resources. In addition to learner websites like Randall’s ESL Cyber
listening lab: http://www.esl-lab.com/ and ESL Podcasts –
listening: http://www.eslpod.com/website/index_new.html , there are a number
of other sites like YouTube (www.youtube.com), online news sites
with streaming video (e.g. NHK World English news site at http://www3.nhk.or.jp/daily/english/index.html ).
G.
Grammar
Since the movement away from strictly grammar-oriented teaching, through audio-lingualism, the direct method, various “designer” approaches, and ultimately toward communicative competence-oriented teaching and more eclectic methods, the role of grammar has been hotly debated. H.D. Brown points out that most agree that some grammar instruction is necessary (2007, p. 419). While the preponderance of argument seems to be in favor of incorporating grammar teaching into other skills, Brown concedes that there may be a role in some curriculums for a separate grammar course (p. 425).
One helpful realization that has emerged is that grammar is not learned in a step-wise fashion, first the simpler structures followed by the complex ones. Rather, features and functions of a grammatical element (e.g. the definite article) are learned through repeated exposure and recycling through which form, meaning, and use are mapped (Larsen-Freeman, 2001, p. 255). A variety of new approaches to the teaching of contextualized grammar (i.e. rather than isolated patterns and disconnected sample sentences) have developed (see, for example, New Ways of Teaching Grammar by M. Pennington, 1995). Task-based texts, along with speaking and other textbooks have become increasingly sophisticated at highlighting grammar elements in the context of other learning.
The role of grammar. Japan is one of the few remaining places in the world where grammar continues to play such a central role in EFL, and where it remains controversial. For example, it has been argued that while university entrance exams have moved away from heavy emphasis on discrete-item grammar testing and toward reading/analysis of passages and writing, high schools have not necessarily shown a beneficial washback effect (Mulvey, 2001). Indeed, Michael Guest states, “There seems to be little connection between high school teachers' stated need for an emphasis upon grammar and the key items or tasks that appear in either the Center or public university entrance exams. Not only is grammar as such not really taught for exam preparation, but in fact, few exam tasks require the syntactical transformation type of exercise that are practiced in classrooms” (2000). Instead, “[s]uccess depends more on understanding the lexical and semantic properties of key words in the texts or the rhetorical form of a particular genre” (Guest, 2000).
Dellar (2004) offers the following teaching strategies for those who teach grammar alone or as part of another skill:
· Teach grammar as lexis. For example, add the most common collocates to the irregular verbs being learned to familiarize student with the most common expressions they will encounter.
· Grammaticalize lexis in typical ways. Offer constant, repeated exposure to high-frequency expressions that may be grouped as part of a grammatical pattern.
· Teach more fixed and semi-fixed expressions. Refrain from thinking of grammar and lexis as separate, and instead, let them combine to teach students high frequency expressions in their fixed and semi-fixed forms.
· Teach the grammar of spoken English, rather than the grammar of written text, which is likely to be more useful for students (pp. 30-31).
Online resources. An online grammar handbook may be found on the Online Writing Lab (OWL) site, part of Purdue University’s site (owl.english.purdue.edu/). While this presentation of grammar is meant for native speakers, it may be helpful. A large collection of grammar links for English learners may be found at veteran teacher Vance Stevens’ grammar page - http://www.vancestevens.com/grammar.htm
H.
Use and integration of Online Resources for Language Teaching
The tremendous increase of online technologies for language teaching present many opportunities to promote students’ autonomous learning and to help the instructor in the development of classes. In additional to using an online teaching platform or website for classroom support, there are numerous web-based language learning aids that can be used. Some are mentioned above; a few more are below:
Dictionaries
Just the
Word – http://www.justtheword.com
In this dictionary, collocations
(high-frequency word combinations) and thesaurus alternatives to vocabulary are
shown. Enter a word in the search
window and explore the results.
Students may need some coaching on using the site effectively.
Visuwords - http://www.visuwords.com/
This is a graphical dictionary and a thesaurus. Put a word in the search window, and a word family is displayed, with relationships between concepts coded by color and connection type. For common verbs, similar meanings are conveniently clustered together. When the cursor is passed over the diagram, the definitions come up. Words may also be dragged toward or away from the center to change the focus of the page.
Lesson Writer - http://www.lessonwriter.com/default.aspx
This web site that allows you to paste in a text and make a lesson with vocabulary study, questions, etc. Watching the demonstration video is helpful for ideas.
Ready-made
Materials
In addition to software of various kinds on the internet, there are literally hundreds of websites prepared by interested and enthusiastic teachers from all over the world containing lessons, quizzes, and a wealth of other material – all given freely to other teachers. Some well-known sources include:
· The ESL Loop site (http://www.tesol.net/esloop/esloop.html)
This site has many hundreds of pages of teacher-made exercises, quizzes and materials
· Dave’s ESL Café (http://www.eslcafe.com/)
This site is a resource for both students and teachers.
· TESOL’s Resources Center http://www.tesol.org/s_tesol/trc_genform.asp?CID=1253&DID=7561)
This site has many useful publications for teachers; membership required to access site.
I.
Extensive Skill Learning
Principles of extensive skill learning. Programs for extensive reading, extensive listening, extensive writing, etc. can be helpfully implemented to a) complement and reinforce classroom learning and b) promote learner autonomy. Examples include a program of extensive reading, a weekly lunchtime movie series, a creative writing club, a conversation club, and so on. The principles of extensive skill practice generally include the idea that the student should be practicing at a language level that is just below his or her level. Though it may seem counter-intuitive, the purpose of extensive skill practice is not exclusively new learning and study. Rather, it is practice designed to cement (strengthen) previous learning with a slow and easy increase of new material, that is, to move what has been learned to long-term memory.
Extensive
reading. Extensive reading
programs are probably the best known type of extensive program, and are offered
by many institutions. Programs vary in a number of different ways – some are
incorporated into class and some are extra-curricular; some require student
response (e.g. a quiz) and some do not. One of the foremost publications on
this topic is Day & Bamford’s Extensive
Reading in the Second Language Classroom (1998). In Japan, the work of Rob
Waring is well-known as a prominent author and editor of graded readers (www.robwaring.org),
as is the Extensive Reading Foundation (ERF) (www.erfoundation.org). Institutions
developing extensive reading programs usually find helpful the graded readers
prepared by publishers such as Cideb Black Cat, Heinle, Oxford, R.I.C.
Publications, Penguin and others. Instructors will find the ERF site useful for
its EFR Graded Reader List, as well as its EFR Graded Reader Scale showing
graded reader levels.
Extensive
listening. Extensive listening is probably the next-best known sort of
program. The internet is one excellent source of material. Randall’s ESL Cyber listening lab (http://www.esl-lab.com/), ESL Podcasts (http://www.eslpod.com/website/index_new.html) and English Central (www.englishcentral.com) come to mind. Additionally, Rob Waring’s website (www.robwaring.org) has many extensive listening
links. Movies with subtitles are still another excellent resource with great
intrinsic interest. Students can watch once with the subtitles to catch the
meaning, and a second time without the subtitles.
Extensive
writing. Extensive writing might comprise activities such as email
pen-pals or daily journals (see, for example, a 2000 R.I.C. publication by
Beals, the Daily Dash Diary: Writing
Journal, with a different and interesting topic on each page and room to
write). A student newspaper/newsletter is also a useful idea, as are class
project portfolios showing each student’s written contribution, and finally
peer responses.
Extensive speaking. Programs pairing learners with native speakers or groups like English clubs offer opportunities for extensive speaking. With the availability of video chat websites, pen friends offer access to others where geography is a limit.
J.
Action Research
Action research is often thought of as a small-scale investigation of a teacher’s own classroom practice. It is designed to explore a problem, attempt a solution, innovate, improve an outcome, etc. (This term also applies more widely to other social and institutional settings.)
Action research. Faculty should be encouraged to regularly engage in action research on their own classes and document their efforts as part of their annual personnel review. The notion of action research, generally credited to Kurt Lewin[3], a pioneer in social/organizational psychology, refers to improvement of an organizational process through planning, action, and assessment of results. When applied to education, it commonly refers to successive cycles involving studying of a classroom process, planning of changes, observing results, and reflecting on the effectiveness of the change. The purpose is deeper understanding of the teaching-learning process and systematic improvement. The Center for Collaborative Action Research offers a graphic representation of this process:
Source:
Center for Collaborative
Action Research (2006-10). “Understanding action research.) Retrieved August
20, 2010 from http://cadres.pepperdine.edu/ccar/define.html
Good language teachers and action research. Brown (2007) offers a detailed list of a good language teacher’s characteristics: technical knowledge (including linguistics systems, basic learning and teaching principles, competence in the target language and the professional field); pedagogical skills (including a well-thought-out, informed approach to teaching, appropriate use of techniques, attention to student needs, effective and clear presentation, innovation in creating new materials); interpersonal skills (including awareness of cross-cultural differences, enjoyment of people, patience, ability to challenge students and cooperate with colleagues); and personal qualities (including being well-organized, conscientious, flexible, reflective, inquisitive, highly ethical and moral) (Brown, 2007, p. 491). However, the author notes that having such characteristics is not enough without reflective self-observation and systematic attempts to improve, i.e. doing action research.
K.
CALL (Computer-assisted language learning)
The growth in use of digital devices in ELT has had a two-way effect. The availability of textual, audial, and graphic media in computers and mobile devices has encouraged the expansion of language teaching texts into digital forms. At the same time, language learning has migrated away from the desk/textbook as a sole location and may now have multiple locations, even moving with the learner. Combined programs of onsite (classroom) and online learning have become the norm rather than the exception, blending online e-learning components with face-to-face teaching. The design of teaching software has become increasingly sophisticated, with adaptive algorithms and interactive features that individualize learning.
The field has expanded so rapidly and become so thoroughly integrated with the rest of the ELT field, that the presence of computer-assisted language learning (CALL) may often be taken for granted (and perhaps may one day cease to be considered a sub-specialty). Discussion now tends to be about the integration of CALL elements with particular kinds of teaching, e.g. for reading or for pronunciation. Any description of CALL uses will quickly be outdated because the field changes so quickly, but here are some applications of digital technology to language learning purposes:
Applications
of specialized software
· It is possible to replace the traditional language lab with digital materials for listening and speaking. Many hours of listening materials are available from a textbook’s audio files on CD, from English listening websites, and from authentic materials from news websites (e.g. NHK, BBC), educational websites (the History Channel), and more.
· Teacher can make their own listening materials and upload them, for example with software such as Audacity, a free online audio recording and editing software. Indeed, this software can be used for student projects as well.
· Speech recognition software is readily available for students to practice their pronunciation, receive feedback, and do various other recording activities.
· Drills of any kind can serve students well, whether for grammar, vocabulary, or subject content through which foreign language is learned. Software programs are patient and can repeat as often as is needed. The introduction of adaptive programs has leveled-up student-computer interaction, as the software increases or decreases the level of difficulty depending on the rate of correct student responses.
· Adaptive testing has a related use where, again, the testing program increases or decreases the level of difficulty depending on the student response, and the test score is a cumulative result.
· Entire online lessons can make use of this adaptive principle, as students read/study a component, respond to questions or checks, and the program either goes on to the next step or recycles the material. Instructors can design their own lessons with this type of software, which is available on some course software platforms, such as Moodle.
· Concordance software has brought new possibilities for students and instructors to explore how vocabulary is used – the user enters a word or phrase into the search screen and the program returns a large collection of text lines using that word, so that patterns in the sentence structure around the word are revealed. Additionally, concordances reveal collocations (high-frequency word combinations).
· Software programs can also train students for speed reading, can produce cloze passages, and can identify vocabulary of a particular level of difficulty from a passage (e.g. less frequent than the 1000-most-frequent words, for example).
· Both ready-made flashcard programs for specific vocabulary learning and fill-in flashcard programs (to be filled-in by instructors or students themselves) exist. Some are free and others require payment.
Several specific examples of these software programs are mentioned throughout the pages of this Guideline. There are many more applications that are not designed for language learning but can be usefully adapted. Some examples include:
· virtual communities such as Second Life, where members participate in a virtual society;
· multimedia projects using Word, PowerPoint, other Office software and webpages;
· online archives – e.g. museums, Library of Congress digital archives; and
· news websites, such as the NHK World English site mentioned above.
L.
Teaching for Exams
Teaching students to prepare for a standardized exam has much in common with other classroom teaching – many of the strategies that students must know to take a test with a reading or grammar component are the same things they must know to do well in a reading class or to understand and use grammar. However, teaching for an exam may require the teacher to limit the teaching content to what is on the exam, schedule strictly, and to teach test-taking strategies as well as content.
Considerations for an exam class. Instructors must be well-versed on the exam that students are preparing for. For example, they must know:
· What is the content being tested, and what is the level?
· How much time is allowed for each part of the test, and for the whole exam?
· What kinds of items or tasks are found in each part of the test?
· How are the instructions written?
· What knowledge must be demonstrated in a response or answer?
· What is the method of scoring the exam? and so on.
The instructor must also plan the class according to the amount of time available before the exam is to be given, and the number and length of classes that will be scheduled. An exam course must adhere to a schedule more strictly than other kinds of classes, and the inclusion of practice tests will limit the instructional time.
Preparing students for exams. Burgess and Head (2005) offer, in addition to extensive descriptions of test item types for various skills, strategies for test-taking for various skills. Some of these are appropriate as general strategies as well as skill-specific strategies. A few are listed below, stated to apply more broadly. The teacher should help students:
· develop awareness of the kinds of tasks asked for in a listening component, a reading component, a writing component, etc.
· practice time management
· read instructions carefully to ensure clear understanding
· answer or respond to all items
· understand how exam tasks and items will be evaluated, especially writing, speaking, and other tasks needing a non-discrete response
Reference sources. Textbooks, such as Tactics for TOEIC Listening and Reading Test by Grant Trew (2007) and similar volumes, offer many tactics for the student to apply. Reference texts, like How to Teach for Exams by Sally Burgess and Katie Head (2005), additionally offer detailed descriptions of skill item/task types and teaching methods for each.
M.
Motivating Students
With our student demographics changing, it becomes increasingly important to incorporate motivation of students into our teaching strategies. A useful volume by Zoltan Dörnyei – Motivational Strategies in the Language Classroom (2001) – offers several ideas, some of which are summarized (somewhat abridged) below (pp. 137ff):
· Demonstrate and talk about your own enthusiasm for the course material, and how it affects you personally.
· Take students’ learning very seriously with sufficiently high expectations for what they can achieve.
· Develop a personal relationship with your students.
· Create a pleasant and supportive atmosphere in your classroom.
· Promote group cohesiveness and explicitly develop norms to be shared by the group; be sure to observe them consistently.
· Present peer models (e.g. more senior classmates) in the classroom and raise intrinsic interest.
· Promote a positive and open-minded attitude toward the L2, its speakers and internationalism in general.
· Encourage students’ awareness of the value of foreign language ability in the world.
· Increase students’ expectation of success by ensuring that they have sufficient preparation and assistance.
· Have students develop individual goals in order to outline a common purpose for the class; draw attention to it periodically.
· Vary the learning tasks occasionally to avoid monotony.
· Make the learning enjoyable with challenging, naturally interesting tasks which yield tangible, finished products.
· Consider using contracts, mutually negotiated by instructor and students (individually or in groups) to encourage goal commitment.
· Encourage students to build confidence and diminish or minimize anxiety-provoking elements in the classroom.
· Teach students good learning strategies and actively promote their autonomy.
· Use grades to motivate by making the grading system transparent and ensuring that grades reflect improvement and effort.
· Provide students with self-evaluation tools and encourage accurate self-assessment.
Tim Murphey, a Japan-based researcher and author, has worked with a number of colleagues using peer interaction to stimulate motivation. Deacon, Murphey, & Dore (1998) describe the motivational benefits of having students write and share their language learning histories: students relive good experiences and experience catharsis over bad experiences; they are reminded of successes; they have a sense of accomplishment at producing this record and feel “heard”; they bond with one another over identifiable experiences; and they become peer role models for one another. Echoing Dörnyei’s, advice on peer role modeling above, Murphey and a number of colleagues have conducted a series of studies using near-peer role models (Murphey, 1998; Murphey & Arao, 2001). Near-peer role models (NPRMs) are models close to one’s social, professional, or age level. The many studies that Murphey and his colleague have conducted powerfully demonstrate that when students are exposed to enthusiastic NPRMs who have achieved some success in using English, that success seems readily achievable to students. This perception of achievability promotes students’ self-efficacy, i.e. the sense that they also are capable of such achievements. In addition to the language learning histories described above, Murphey advocates newsletters of students comments, inviting of older peers to the classroom to share experience, or use of a NNS who is proficient in English to substitute teach (1998),
N. Effective Textbook Use
A recent anthology, Using Textbooks Effectively, takes as its premise the idea that we should “teach the students, not the book” (Savova, 2009). She advocates moving away from the idea that the textbook is to be used as a fixed and inflexible authority which is the controlling source of teaching approach and content, dominating the learning schedule and classroom method. Rather, the author encourages treating the text as a flexible and adaptable tool, promoting student-centered learning amenable to the addition of communicative activities, adding exercises that add value through practice and recycling, adjusting the level of difficulty, and adding projects, games, Web-based components, etc. (Savova, 2009, p. 2).
While it is not unusual for instructors to themselves learn a subject from a book, or learn a useful exercise design, it is rather rare to find a textbook that accomplishes everything wanted by an instructor. For example, a textbook on spoken business English may fall short on writing assignments and need supplemental exercises. A reading instructor may supplement the reading by adding oral summary practice for the students. Thus it is common practice to add, alter, and adapt text components. Authors in the Savova (2009) volume offer these ideas, among others:
Adding authentic models. Encourage students to critically analyze the models of spoken text, e.g. in the case of business meeting models, for authenticity and politeness. Guide them in modifying the model language, using references on authentic spoken business discourse or transcripts/video recordings, if available (C.S.C. Chan). Of course, this idea may be adapted for any textbook on spoken language, using databases and corpora on spoken language that have been made available in recent years.
Reading strategies. Explicitly teach reading strategies, e.g. for science texts, to students to train up their efficiency in reading. These strategies include: identifying the purpose of the reading, finding and summarizing the main idea, inferring meaning, predicting, mapping concepts, self-monitoring comprehension and self-regulating comprehension failure (M. Bradinova). Indeed, this advice may be used for any reading, listening, or spoken (e.g. lecture) text.
Oral reconstruction of read texts. Students may be trained to orally reconstruct the texts they have read through choosing key words, comparing their choices with a classmate and discussing them, retelling the text up to three times (C. Stillwell).
Identifying pronoun reference. Students can identify who or what pronouns refer to, then find how these pronouns create cohesion (P. Rosenkjar).
Still other ideas include:
Oral and written reconstruction of lectures. Students can be trained to take notes on audio/video recorded lectures (e.g. a part at a time), then verbally summarize them to a partner, fill in gaps in one another’s information, listen again to confirm, and finally write a summary.
Listening to slow reading for comprehension. Normal speed audio files often accompany reading texts these days, with a native speaker reading at normal (or sometimes high) speed. However, after some examination of the text (e.g. to ensure vocabulary and main topic recognition, it may be helpful for the teacher to read the text slowly, while students relax and focus on listening, perhaps with eyes closed. This can lay the groundwork for easier auditory comprehension at normal speed.
Graphic organizers. Graphic organizers with boxes and lines can form a flowchart showing the rhetorical and discoursal structure of a difficult passage, a paragraph, or an entire text. Partially labeled boxes can help students identify such elements as causes and effects, main ideas and details, processes, arguments and counter-arguments, timelines, types and examples, etc. The instructor can have students fill in the appropriate text, or students can construct them directly to show their understanding.
Re-doing exercises.
An easy way to get “extra mileage” out of a textbook is to simply re-do it with
new or partly-new content.
An
excellent way to find other ways to extend the uses of a text is to attend
presentations at JACET, JALT, ETJ, and read their publications.
O. Writing Class Materials
It is inevitable in the course of a career that language instructors find themselves writing materials. Materials writing range from adding a handout to supplement a textbook lesson, to designing a separate exercise, to writing an entire unit, or even to writing an entire course text. Writing any class material is generally a painstaking business, though it is well worth the satisfaction of a well-designed component that accomplishes precisely what is needed and intended.
To that end, here are some suggestions that may be helpful:
· Have a clear goal, purpose, or outcome for each activity or each unit.
· Use authentic or natural language.
· Be aware of how the activities or exercises fit with current understanding of and research on the language learning process.
· Keep the student audience specifically in mind, that is, their level and abilities, and their cultural awareness.
· Analyze the microskills that may go into the larger activity.
· Mentally envision the students stepping through each part, and clearly envision what the instructor will do and what the students will do – e.g. how will target language be introduced? How should students become familiar with it? Once familiar with the target language, how will students apply it? Etc.
· Determine how you will assess the effectiveness of your component – did it impact the outcome of a textbook unit? Did it add to what students know or can do?
· Mentally take the role of your student and step through the exercise, activity, or unit. This is an excellent way to see if there are gaps in your planning – e.g. not all of the nouns in your exercise can be normally paired with all of the determiners or verbs you have provided, or that a pairwork activity lacks an explanation how to exchange partners, etc.
· Field test your handout, exercise, or unit to observe how it works. Do not hesitate to also simply ask students - Is the addition was helpful? Could it be improved? Etc.
Resources. A number of professional organizations have Materials Writing special-interest-groups (SIGs) (though they usually require membership), including JALT Materials Writers at (http://materialswriters.org/index.php), TESOL, and others. Usually, these groups publish newsletters and offer many links to helpful content. Additionally, there are internet resources, such as Lesson Writer software (http://www.lessonwriter.com/ ), which allow users to paste a text into the site and produce vocabulary exercises, questions, grammar exercises, and other elements.
P.
Promoting Learner Development and Student Autonomy
It goes without saying that we want students to become good language learners, motivated and independent, taking the next step without being led. What does it take to be a good language learner? And how can we encourage students to strive for autonomy (i.e. independence)? It has been argued that becoming autonomous does not mean learning in isolation (though some learners may do so) (Esch, 1997). It does mean, however, that learners are encouraged 1) to take responsibility for their learning, monitoring their own progress, and 2) to systematically make use of self-access resources.
Best practices. The classic volume How to be a More Successful Language Learner, by Rubin and Thompson (1994), lists a number of points of advice that might be relevant for our students:
· Find your best learning style (some people are intuitive, others are analytic; some learn best with a text, others by listening, etc.)
· Set clear and realistic goals
· Establish a regular schedule
· Plan to learn something new each day
· Notice how difficult a task is and adjust your effort accordingly
· Notice what helps you succeed, even keep a diary
The authors also offer advice for specific skill learning – vocabulary, reading, speaking, etc.
Levels of autonomy. More specifically, Nunan (1997) describes five levels of learner autonomy, each level with increased student responsibility (p. 95):
1. Based on awareness of teaching purposes, students identify preferred strategies and learning style.
2. Students are involved in selecting their own learning goals from a set of alternatives.
3. Students are involved in adapting and modifying the goals and content of a program.
4. Students create their own goals, objectives, and tasks.
5. Students go beyond the classroom, becoming their own researchers and teachers.
Self-monitoring and self-evaluation; self-access and, self-motivation. There are many ways to promote the development of student autonomy through self-monitoring and self-evaluation, self-access and self-motivation. Some ways are mentioned in other parts of this Guide; others may include strategies such as these:
Self-monitoring
and self-evaluation
· a daily learning journal in which the student identifies what was learned and gives a self-assessment
· a vocabulary notebook (or any similar log, e.g. grammar, reading) to monitor daily progress in a specific skill
· before a group or pair activity for speaking, students predict the percentage of English that can be managed; at completion, the students report on their actual percentage of English use
Self-access
and self-motivation
· extensive reading of graded materials, authentic materials, manga, etc.
· extensive listening for pleasure, e.g. with subtitled movies, song lyrics, television programs, podcasts, etc.
· access to other users of the target language on a routine basis, e.g. lunch in English, field trips in English, etc.
· independent use of vocabulary software, games, social networking, and other online resources
Making extra materials available to students through a self-study center or a reading room, integrating extensive skill tasks into classwork, making speakers or movies regularly available, and similar activities help build students’ motivation and autonomous engagement with the target language.
5. Faculty Development
As has been pointed out, faculty must maintain their professionalism in language teaching. While some language teaching faculty have expertise in unrelated fields, they must also keep current in the field of language acquisition. Below are some suggestions for FD events:
Expert workshops. A series of expert workshops for all interested faculty may be given on, for example, a language skill (e.g. reading), research developments, innovative classroom techniques, etc.
Consultations. An expert could consult individually with interested faculty members extensively, examining course materials, visiting classes, and making suggestions and recommendations.
Faculty exchanges. A group of interested faculty may contact a similar faculty group in another institution to exchange program or class materials, class visits, and consultations.
Group innovation. Small groups of faculty may wish to jointly study and try new curricular innovations (engaging in action research, described above). Working together offers the advantages of many perspectives for problem-solving and innovation.
Resource collections. Many faculty groups develop a collection of resource books and materials for language teachers.. The major publishers of English language teaching materials have sets of books written by established experts, designed for teacher training and development in general. Publishers also produce volumes on particular approaches such as task-based learning or the lexical approach, and on specific issues like testing in language teaching and extensive reading, incorporating grammar, and so on. (See Published Materials for Language Teachers and Language Teaching below.) Additionally, TESOL, JALT, and other organizations offer a number of teacher resources. These materials could be housed in a support center, an international center, or a faculty reading room.
Professional membership. Finally, colleagues should be encouraged to join and participate in professional language teaching organizations like those described above (for English these would include JACET; JALT; ETJ or English Teachers of Japan, TESOL Asia, Asia TEFL and related organizations), and regularly attend local, regional, and national conferences in order to keep current with developments in their fields.
6. Program and Faculty Assessment
A.
Program Assessment
Specific evidence of language acquisition must be built into program objectives and individual course objective for assessment purposes. It may be tempting to rely on standardized testing of students’ language ability, e.g. the TOEIC, TOEFL, or IELTS. However, while a standardized test may provide a useful measure of proficiency across groups (especially large groups), they are essentially a “snapshot” of individual students’ ability at a single moment in time. They cannot capture the richer, in-depth experience of students’ learning. Thus, standardized testing should comprise only a small part of this evidence.
The more significant achievements of students will be shown in the demonstrable products of student work – portfolios of student writing, poster projects, slide shows, reports on internet-based investigations, video records of speaking, books read and movies watched with attendant written or oral responses, and so on. It is for this reason that program objectives must serve the coordinating function of integrating individual course objective into a coherent whole. Course syllabi must, of course, specify how course objectives are realized and assessed, thus how students are evaluated for grading.
B.
Faculty Assessment.
A number of newer approaches to faculty assessment or evaluation have been implemented following decades of criticism of conventional student evaluation forms. These new approaches include use of teaching portfolios, peer observation, peer review of teaching, classroom assessment techniques, and instructor-designed ratings instruments (see Winskowski & Duggan, 2007, for a review). These approaches offer rich and substantive information for administrators, and offer an opportunity for faculty to document their best practices in depth.
7. Published Materials for Language Teachers
and Language Teaching
The industry of English language teaching publishing is large and varied, even overwhelming in the number of competing texts and new texts published every year. The era when a text meant a stand-alone textbook has given way to textbooks + audio/video CDs/DVDs, text-supporting websites, graded readers, digital software, photocopiable resource texts, teacher resource materials, online podcasts and videocasts, and more.
International
publishers. Colleagues will find many useful materials on English
language teaching research, theory, and practice from these major international
publishers: Pearson Longman (www.longmanjapan.com) Oxford University
Press (www.oupjapan.co.jp), Macmillan
Languagehouse (www.mlh.co.jp), University of
Michigan Press (www.press.umich.edu/), Cambridge University Press (www.cambridge.org/contacts/japan/). Cengage (www.cengage.jp/top), and TESOL (www.tesol.org), as well as some smaller independent publishers such as Prolingua
(www.prolinguaassociates.com).
Japanese
publishers. Additionally, Japanese EFL publishers have, for some years,
been publishing texts that are increasingly comprehensive in their design,
authentic in their use of English, varied in their subject focuses, and
reflective of current ELT theory and practice. Major publishers include: Kinseido
Publishing Co., Ltd. (www.kinset-do.co.jp ), Nan’un-do Publishing
Co., Ltd. (www.nanun-do.co.jp), Seibido Publishing Co.,
Ltd. (www.seibido.co.jp), Sanshusha Publishing
(www.shanshusha.co.jp) and R.I.C.
Publications (www.ricpublications.com). Included in the catalogs of
these publishers is an ever-increasing number of English for Special Purposes
(ESP) offerings, e.g. in English for nursing, business, science and technology,
travel, etc.
Independent
and small publishers. Finally, there are a number of smaller
independent publishers and distributors of EFL materials in Japan: Alma Publishing
(specializing in conversation, www.almalang.com), Independent
Publishers Internationals (I.P.I., www.indepub.com), ABAX, Ltd. (www.abax.co.jp), and others.
8. Conclusion
Renewal of foreign language teaching at IPU presents a number of challenges and opportunities. Challenges may include bringing faculty members together in collaboration, the need to quickly get on the path of demonstrable student accomplishment, and limited funding and resources. However, efforts to implement reforms will present opportunities for innovation, renewal of teaching methods, and collegial sharing of a number of exciting developments in second language acquisition.
Acknowledgements
The March 2012 Guidelines was prepared by Christine Winskowski. Invaluable overall guidance from 三宅良子 and helpful suggestions from 佐藤智子 and 小川晴美are gratefully acknowledged.
Subsequent additions and contributions include:
References
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Web Resources
Vocabulary,
Reading
Paul Nation - vocabulary, reading:
http://www.victoria.ac.nz/lals/staff/paul-nation/nation.aspx
Word Engine – vocabulary: www.wordengine.jp
John Bauman’s Vocabulary Resources page - http://jbauman.com/
The Compleat Lexical Tutor – vocabulary, reading: www.lextutor.ca.
Introduction and review in TESL-EJ at http://tesl-ej.org/ej31/m2.html
John Bauman’s
Homepage - vocabulary: http://jbauman.com/
Reading
Rob Waring’s site – extensive reading & listening: www.robwaring.org
Extensive Reading Foundation: www.erfoundation.org
Paul Nation - vocabulary, reading:
http://www.victoria.ac.nz/lals/staff/paul-nation/nation.aspx
Listening
and Speaking
Randall’s
ESL Cyber listening lab: http://www.esl-lab.com/
ESL
Podcasts – listening: http://www.eslpod.com/website/index_new.html
English Central – speaking: www.englishcentral.com
Audacity – recording software: http:// audacity.sourceforge.net/
Writing
Online Writing Lab (OWL), Purdue University – writing: owl.english.purdue.edu/
Vance Stevens - grammar page: http://www.vancestevens.com/grammar.htm
EAP (English for Academic Purposes)
Using
English for Academic Purposes (UEfAP) – academic English, all skills by
Andy
Gillett: http://www.uefap.com/
Dictionaries
Just the Word – dictionary: http://193.133.140.102/JustTheWord/
Visuwords – dictionary: http://www.visuwords.com/
Instructors’ sites
Lesson Writer – text materials construction: http://www.lessonwriter.com/default.aspx
The ESL Loop site – teacher-made pages: http://www.tesol.net/esloop/esloop.html
Dave’s ESL Café – teacher-made pages: http://www.eslcafe.com/
TESOL’s Resources Center http://www.tesol.org/s_tesol/trc_genform.asp?CID=1253&DID=7561
JALT Materials Writers: http://materialswriters.org/index.php
Professional Organizations
National
Foreign Language Resource Center (NFLRC): http://nflrc.msu.edu/lrcs.php
Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL): www.tesol.org
Japan Association for Language Teachers (JALT): www.jalt.org
Japan Association of College English
Teachers (JACET): www.jacet.org
Asia TEFL: www.asiatefl.org
English Teachers in Japan (ETJ): ltprofessionals.com/ETJ/
TESOL Asia: www.tesol.asia/
Korea TESOL: www.kotesol.org/
ThaiTESOL: www.kotesol.org/
ELT Publishers
Pearson Longman: www.longmanjapan.com
Oxford
University Press: www.oupjapan.co.jp
Macmillan
Languagehouse: www.mlh.co.jp
University
of Michigan Press: www.press.umich.edu/
Cambridge:
www.cambridge.org/contacts/japan/
Cengage:
www.cengage.jp/top
TESOL:
www.tesol.org
Prolingua:
www.prolinguaassociates.com
Kinseido
Publishing Co., Ltd.: www.kinset-do.co.jp
Nan’un-do
Publishing Co., Ltd.: www.nanun-do.co.jp
Seibido
Publishing co., Ltd.: www.seibido.co.jp
Sanshusha
Publishing: www.shanshusha.co.jp
R.I.C.
Publications: www.ricpublications.com
Alma
Publishing (specializing in conversation): www.almalang.com
Independent
Publishers Internationals (I.P.I.): www.indepub.com
ABAX, Ltd.: www.abax.co.jp
外国語学習の意義、学習方法、学習支援策—岩手県立大学に適した語学教育カリキュラム構築を目指して
1. 本稿の目的
本研究は、多分野に渡る外国語教育に関する研究をレビューし、本学の条件に適した語学教育のあり方を検討するものである。また、学習環境を含む言語教育に関する方針、カリキュラム方針、効果的語学学習を考慮した国際交流のあり方などを検討し、語学教育改善へ向けた具体的な提言を目指す。
本稿においては、以下の点について検討を行う。
何のために外国語を学習するのか。
目標を達成するために、何をどれだけ行う必要があるのか。
外国語学習時間をどれだけ確保する必要があるのか。
学生が言語を学ぶことをどう手助けするのか。
大学は、外国語学習に関してどのようなサポートができるのか。
大学は、どのようなきめ細かい指導体制を確立することができるのか。
2. 何のために外国語を学習するのか。
2.1 複言語主義(plurilingualism)
欧州評議会(Council of Europe)は、ヨーロッパにおけるコミュニケーションを円滑にはかり、豊かさと相互理解を推進するために複言語主義を採用し、域内の言語政策を推進している。
複言語主義は、「複数の言語の知識であり、あるいは特定の社会の中で異種の言語が共存している」[4]多言語主義にとどまらず、さまざまな言語体験を通して、個々人のコミュニケーション能力が発展していくという点を強調するもの、と欧州評議会は規定している。
つまり、「言語学習者は複言語使用者となり、異文化適応性を伸ばすのである。それぞれの言語や文化を身につける能力は、他の言語の知識によって変化を受け、異文化に対する認識、技能、ノウ・ハウを習得する上での助けとなる。また、それらの能力によって、個人個人が豊で、より複合的な個性を身につけ、その言語学習能力もより強化され、新しい文化を体験できるようになる。」[5]
これは、外国語獲得の経験を単に幾つかの並列的な外国語の習得と捉えるのではなく、その言語経験がより広い意味での総合的なコミュニケーション能力をつくりあげ、異文化へ視野を広げ、豊かな人格を形成していく、と理解するものといえる。そのうえで、外国語学習を次のように位置づけている。
|
「異文化を意識した教授法の中心的目標は、学習者が言語と文化に見られる異質性を経験することによってその人格全体を豊かにし、アイデンティティー感覚が好ましい方向に発展するよう手助けすることである。」[6] |
ヨーロッパでは、経済圏統一に伴う人口の移動に拍車がかかる社会の安定のため、「外国語嫌い、外国人嫌悪、超国家主義的反動はヨーロッパの安定と民主主義の健全な機能をおびやかす脅威と認識し」[7]、その言語政策を推進している。ヨーロッパの社会的状況と日本の状況は異なるとはいえ、グローバル化に対応せざるを得ない日本においても、多かれ少なかれ同じような傾向が生じるであろうことは十分予想される。異なる文化、異なる言語を話す人々が入り交じって社会を形作る地域で生じる問題から生まれた知恵から学ぶべきことは多い。本学が、グローバル化の進行する今後の社会を担う「人間性を培う」教育を実施する基盤教育の柱として、語学教育を位置づける理由も、ここに見いだされる。
2.2 英語の普遍語化と日本語およびその他の言語
欧州評議会現代語部門では、前述目的のために、母語のほかに二言語以上の言語教育の推進に加え、あまり学習されることの少ない言語に対しても学習の機会を設けるよう教育機関に注意を促している。
また、「カリキュラムに関する配慮や措置は一つの言語だけを取り出して行うべきではなく、またいくつかの言語を統合したカリキュラムを考えなければならないというものでもない」が、「一つの言語を学習した人は、気づかないかも知れないが、その他多数の言語についても多くを知っていることになる。一般的に言って、さらに別の言語を学習すると、このような知識が活性化され、意識は高まる。こうしたことも、無視して避けるのではなく、考慮に入れるべき」[8] としている。欧州評議会では実例として三つの外国語を学習するプランをあげているが、与えられた状況下でさまざまなプランが可能であるとしている。
一方、日本においては、英語教育充実が言語政策の柱として進められているが、その現状に対する警鐘も多く聞かれる。
水村美苗は著書『日本語が亡びるときー英語の世紀のなかで』のなかで、各言語が尊重されるべきであるという理想とは裏腹に、現実として言語には力関係が存在していることを指摘し、英語が普遍語となりつつある現実に対応すべきある点を論じつつ、英語を話せるエリートの育成と、日本語教育の充実を唱えている。また、例えば、寺島 隆吉は、著書『英語教育が亡びるとき—「英語で授業」のイデオロギー』のなかで、英語支配の弊害を無くすために、他の外国語学習の必要性を説いている。
世界共通語としての英語学習の必要性と、そこに存在する言語の力関係の弊害を念頭においたうえで、どのような言語教育カリキュラムを作っていくのか、意識的な検討を常に行っていく必要がある。
3. 言語学習で設定された目標を達成するために、何をどれだけ行う必要があるのか。
3.1. 言語学習の結果、何ができるようになるのか。
言語学習で設定された目標を達成するために、何をどれだけ行うかを考えるに当たっては、学習者が何を必要としているか、学習者がどのような状態にあり、どの程度の動機があるのか、同時に、実際に学習に使用可能な物理的環境とを組み合わせて考えていく必要がある。
欧州評議会は、学習者が言語学習の結果、何ができるようになるかに関して、学習者の熟達度レベルの参照レベルを設定している。全体的な尺度では「基礎段階の言語使用者」「自立した言語使用者」「熟達した言語使用者」の三つに分類し、具体的に何ができるのかの指標を細かく作成している。ここでは、例として全体的な尺度の表をあげる。細かい分類と具体的な内容についてはCouncil of Europe （2004）『外国語教育Ⅱ—外国語の学習、教授、評価のためのヨーロッパ共通参照枠』に詳しく記載されている。
表1 共通参照レベル:全体的な尺度[9]
|
基 礎 段 階 の 言 語 使 用 者 |
A1 |
具体的な欲求を満足させるための、よく使われる日常的表現と基本的な言い回しは理解し、用いることもできる。 自分や他人を紹介することができ、どこに住んでいるか、誰と知り合いか、持ち物などの個人的情報について、質問をしたり、答えたりできる。 もし、相手がゆっくり、はっきりと話して、助け船を出してくれるなら簡単なやり取りをすることができる。 |
|
A2 |
ごく基本的な個人的情報や家族情報、買い物、近所、仕事など、直接的関係がある領域に関する、よく使われる文や表現が理解できる。簡単で日常的な範囲なら、身近で日常の事柄についての情報交換に応ずることができる。自分の背景や身の回りの状況や、直接的な必要性のある領域の事柄を簡単な言葉で説明できる。 |
|
|
自 立 し た 言 語 使 用 者 |
B1 |
仕事、学校、娯楽で普段出会うような身近な話題について、標準的な話し方であれば主要点を理解できる。その言葉が話されている地域を旅行しているときに起こりそうな、たいていの事態に対処することができる。
身近で個人的にも関心のある話題について、単純な方法で結びつけられた、脈絡のあるテクストを作ることができる。経験、出来事、夢、希望、野心を説明し、意見や計画の理由、説明を短く述べることができる。 |
|
B2 |
自分の専門分野の技術的な議論も含めて、抽象的かつ具体的な話題の複雑なテクストの主要な内
容を理解できる。 お互いに緊張しないで母語話者とやり取りができるくらい流暢かつ自然である。 かなり広汎な範囲の話題について、明確で詳細なテクストを作ることができ、さまざまな選択肢
について長所や短所を示しながら自己の視点を説明できる。 |
|
|
熟 達 し た 言 語 使 用 者 |
C1 |
いろいろな種類の高度な内容のかなり長いテクストを理解することができ、含意を把握できる。 言葉を探しているという印象を与えずに、流暢に、また自然に自己表現ができる。 社会的、学問的、職業上の目的に応じた、柔軟な、しかも効果的な言葉遣いができる。
複雑な話題について明確で、しっかりとした構成の、詳細なテクストを作ることができる。その際テクストを構成する字句や接続表現、結束表現の用法をマスターしていることがうかがえる。 |
|
C2 |
聞いたり、読んだりしたほぼ全てのものを容易に理解することができる。 いろいろな話し言葉や書き言葉から得た情報をまとめ、根拠も論点も一貫した方法で再構成でき
る。自然に、流暢かつ正確に自己表現ができ、非常に複雑な状況でも細かい意味の違い、区別を表現できる。 |
外国語学習の該当レベルでどのような言語活動ができるのか、の具体的項目づくりに関しては、欧州評議会の作成した上述リストが参考になるが、さらに個別のカリキュラムで、具体的にどのような言語活動ができるようになるのかについては、さらに各授業担当者が検討を加える必要がある。また、当然ながら、各言語の持つ特徴と学習者の母語との関係から、習得にいたるまでの目標設定も細かな検討事項が加わることになる。
3.2. 言語習得時間数
次に、どのような言語活動ができるようになるのか、の目標を設定した場合、そこに到達するのためにどれだけの学習時間数が必要となるのであろうか、を検討する。
例えば、櫻井直子「外国語学習のためのヨーロッパ共通参照枠組み：学習、教授、評価（CFE）を参照したカリキュラム・試験評価の再編成と日本語授業への応用—ベルギー・ルーヴァン市現代言語センターの例—」[10]によれば、A2レベル（基礎段階の言語使用者）では、主要欧州言語120h、ギリシャ語、ロシア語、トルコ語180h、日本語、中国語、アラビア語240hとなっている。この実践報告では、ベルギーの学生が基礎段階を終えるのに、日本語に関しては240時間必要と見ている。単純にこれを逆に考えれば、日本人が基礎段階の欧米言語を終えるのに240時間と考えられる。また、ゆっくりと話してもらう事で、簡単なやりとりができるA2レベルでは、この半分の120時間が必要と考えられる。もちろん、文字習得の困難さなどの要因は考慮していない条件でのまったくのおおざっぱな話ではある。それにしても、本学の週一回一年間30回の授業は、90分を二時間として計算しても授業時間数60時間にしかならず、ゆっくりと話して簡単なやりとりができるまでには至らないことを意味する。しかし、これらの数字が示すところは、逆に、この学習時間を確保すれば、目標が達成されることを意味する。学生に外国語を習得しているという達成感を感じさせるためにも、授業時間数を増やすカリキュラムを組むことを検討する必要があり、全学的な検討が必要とされる。また、カリキュラム上不可能であれば、この時間数を確保するために何が可能なのかを検討すべきであろう。
また、日本の国際競争力の弱さの最大要因として指摘される英語運用能力の習得に必要な時間数について、ウエブで検索すると、2000−3000時間以上という数字が多く見られる。その数字の根拠とされるアメリカ国務省機関の外務職員局（Foreign Service Institute）で訓練を受けた職員の外国語レベルに関する資料Expected Levels of Absolute Speaking Proficiency in Languages Taught at the Foreign Service Institute (1973）によれば、３段階評価の３に到達するために要した時間として、週30時間の授業で88週−92週のコースの時間数にあたる2400-2760時間の訓練時間数があげられている。[11]
単純に考えて、この逆をいくと、外交の職務をこなす英語の運用能力レベルに到達するためには、日本人が高校までに費やした英語学習時間が1000時間程度であるので、さらにこの2倍から3倍の時間数が必要となる。
それぞれの個々人が必要とする外国語のレベルはさまざまであろうが、いずれにせよ、かなりの学習時関数を確保しなければならない。大学在学中にどこまで外国語能力を獲得させるのか、これらの時間数を考慮しながら、学習時間数確保の検討が必要となる。また、当然ながら、学生たちには、この時間数を意識させ、大学在学の期間にどこまで進めるのか、卒業後もどのように外国語運用能力を高めていくのか、の方法をも在学中に学ぶよう意識させる必要がある。
4. 学習方法、授業設計
1960年以降、第二言語習得研究 (Studies in Second Language Acquisition) の研究分野は大きく進展した。1940年代第二次世界大戦で米軍兵士に基本的日常会話を習得させる必要から、行動主義的学習観に基づくオーディオ・リンガル法（米国ミシガン大学 Charles Fries提唱）が盛んに取り入れられたが、1950年代には有効な指導理論としての価値を失う。その後、普及したコミュニカティブ・アプローチに対しては、ある程度の文法を確認していく、文の構成を意識化していく作業の必要性が指摘された。1970年代後半にクラシェンにより提案された、インプットが絶対であるという主張に対しては、それだけではなくアウトプットしながら習得していくものであるという修正が加わった。また、構成主義からのアプローチとして、学習者が自ら学習を構築していくものである、という考えに対しは、その効率の悪さから、回答を示すモデルを提示する必要性が主張されるなど、さまざまな議論が行われ、教授法に関する広範囲な研究が進んでいる。そのうえで、おおよその教授法に関しては研究の蓄積を踏まえて固まりつつある。順番に読ませて文法事項を説明するだけの従来型の授業ではなく、さまざまな方法を組み合わせて学習者が効率的に運用能力を身につける教授法が考案され、現場の教師たちの手によってさまざまな実践の工夫がなされている。
実際、白井恭弘は、著書『外国語学習の科学』のなかで実践の実例をあげながら、「初期の段階から身近な内容について意味と形式の両方に注意を払って自然なコミュニケーションをしていけば、比較的短期間で、『限られた文法、単語を使って、限られた内容について』流暢なコミュニケーションができるようになります。」[12]と述べている。適切な教授法により、学生たちは教室活動により、外国語の運用能力を獲得していく。これまでの多分野に渡る語学教育法に関する研究をレビューしつつ、各学習者の状況に応じた授業設計を行っていけば必ず外国語を習得できることを語っている。
また、授業設計の際に考慮する各学習者の状況に関しては、欧州評議会があげる次のような設問が有用である。「学習者が具体的にどのような状況で外国語を必要としているのか」、「学習者がやり遂げなければならない外国語の課題とは何か、対応できなければならない事例とは何か」、「どのような状況で話さなければならないのか、話す事は必ず必要なのか」、「どのような行動が期待されるのか、不必要に過剰な訓練をすることなく、必要なコミュニケーションへの準備が可能であるか」、と言った事項である。[13]
これらの検討事項を念頭におきながら、具体的に授業内容を決定しなければならない。さらには、大学が提供する基礎教育の外国語の授業として、学生が将来関わって行くであろうさまざまな多様な仕事に共通する価値のあるものは何であるのか、に関する議論も行い、大学全体の外国語カリキュラムを設計する必要がある。
5. 学生が言語を学ぶことをどう手助けするのか。
「動機づけ」に関する研究を行っているゾルダン・ドルニェイは、外国語学習面での成功あるいは失敗を決定づけるのは、学習動機を高め、維持させることが重要であると結論づけ、「本当に外国語を習得したいと願う（真に動機づけられている）学習者の99%は、言語適性（language aptitude）とは関係なく、最低限、かなりの役立つ知識を身につけることができる。」[14]と述べている。本学学生に外国語学習への意欲が低い者が少なくないことを深刻に捉え、この動機を高める工夫についても緊急に対応していく必要がある。
ゾルダン・ドルニェイは、その著書において、外国語運用能力を獲得するために要となる外国語学習に対する動機づけを喚起し、動機づけを維持するのに必要な方法を多分野に渡って整理している。
「教材を学習者にとって関連の深いものにする」「学習を心躍る楽しいものにする」「学習者の自律性を育む」といった学習環境要因確保のために、教師は「適切な行動をと」り、「教室内に楽しい、支持的な雰囲気を醸成」し、「適切な集団規範を持った、結束的学習集団を育て」[15]るよう工夫しなければならないことを述べている。また、教師は学習者に対して期待を持つことも学習者の成果に大きく影響する研究結果を引き合いに出し、教師の姿勢にも注意を促す。「学習者は選ばれた優秀な学生である」と嘘の情報を与えられた教師のクラスの学習到達成果はその情報を与えられなかったクラスよりも優秀な成績をあげることが研究により分かっている。外国語学習に関して言えば、「学生に外国語を学ばせても無駄だ」と教師たちが思っては学習成果はあがらないということである。本学の学生のなかに見受けられる外国語習得に関して学習意欲の少ない学生についてはその原因を確かめ、対策を取り、あくまでも学習効果が得られるという期待を失うことなく授業設計を行わなければならない。
しかし、この外国語学習への意欲の少なさ、というものへの対策がなかなか難しく、簡単には解決ができない。本学のみの現象というわけではなく、英語を学習し始めると時間を置かずして英語嫌いの子供たちが出現するのは日本の大手の教育関連企業のアンケート調査などにも表れている。また、ゾルダン・ドルニェイの著書のなかでも「学習された無力感」として取り上げられているところからしても、世界共通の一般的な傾向であることが窺われる。
外国語を身につけたいという動機があり、学習時間が確保されれば、ほとんどの学習者が外国語運用能力を身につけることが確実である。にも関わらず、外国語を運用できる人が十分に存在するわけではない。誰もが外国語を身につけることができるのだが、誰もが身につけるわけではない。一般的な学習上の問題以上に、外国語学習における特有の難しさが存在している。
その大きな原因のひとつには、外国語学習はその他の教科の学習とは異なり、学生へ大きな負担を課す学習活動であることがあげられる。そのうえ、学生にとって、外国語はやらずに済ませられるのであれば、やらずに済ませるという選択に容易に流れる学習活動に属する。上述著書のなかでゾルダン・ドルニェイが指摘するように、外国語の学習とは、子供のように幼稚な内容を片言で話さなければならず、間違いを必ずおかす、つまりメンツのつぶれる活動だということが前もって分かっている学習活動であり、もっとも多感な時期に当たる学生たちにとっては可能ならば避けたい学習活動に属することを指摘している。要するに、外国語習得の学習過程は、心理的にかなり負担の多い学習活動であり、継続していくことが非常に難しい教科であるということである。従って、他の教科以上に、大学側が学生の学習をサポートしている、というメッセージを与え続けること、学生たちが気持ちよく学習できるように、心理的環境だけではなく物理的環境も最大限整備する必要がある。
6. 岩手県立大学が抱える外国語学習上の問題点とその対応策
現在、岩手県立大学が抱えている外国語学習に関する問題点としては、以下のような項目があげられる。
○ 外国語の授業が週1回という現行のカリキュラムは、学習時間確保の点で問題がある。
○ 学生の外国語に対する学習意欲が不足している。
○ 大学全体として外国語授業に対する理解が不足し、学習時間確保の必要性などに関する共通認識があるとは言いがたい。
○ 外国語学習のうえでも、人間的成長においても高い教育効果を期待できる海外留学などの制度が脆弱である。国際交流担当部門が教務と兼任になっていることも、業務の多さと重なり、問題解決が遅れる要因となっている。
○ 具体的な教育目標に立って、その実現に向けて具体的に何をしていく必要があるのか、そのためにどのような環境が必要か，といった学習環境構成の理念に立って検討する仕組みが存在しない。
外国語運用能力を獲得するためには、一定の学習時間を確保する必要がある。同時に、外国語習得の過程が、講義科目で得られる習得内容とは根本的に性質が異なる点にも注意し、外国語学習環境を整備していく必要がある。これらの問題点を解決するために、本学においては、次期中期計画おいて以下の二点が計画されている。
1. 学生の興味を喚起し、言語習得方法などを提示することができる専門職員を確保する。
2. 外国語学習支援センター（仮称）の設置を企画する
語学授業の時間数の不足を補うため、外国語学習支援センター（仮称）を設置し、より多くの学生が自学自習に向かう環境を整備する構想である。また、授業時間外に語学を自主的に学習することで、就職や留学に備えたいと希望する学生のニーズに応えようとするものでもある。センター設置に当たっては、(i) 自習室としての機能が十分に果たされるよう、学生のアクセスがよいこと、(ii) 開放的な雰囲気を持つこと、(iii) 十分な自習スペースが確保されること、を目標としている。
また、外国語習得過程は、講義科目と異なり、ピアノやダンス、スポーツ能力獲得に近い特徴がある。教師とのレッスンと組み合わせて、個人での訓練が必須であり、個人訓練の際も専門のトレーナーの元で訓練するほうが高い習得が見込める。そのため、外国語学習支援センター設置に当たっては、語学学習に関して総合的に対処することのできる専門職員の配置を計画している。
つまり、学習時間を確保するために学生に語学自習室での自学自習を促しているが、専門のトレーナーとして適切なアドバイスを施すことができる専門職員が配置されれば、効率の良い言語習得が促進され、学生の学習意欲を高めることにつながる、という構想である。また、外国語学習環境整備を推進していくためには全学的取り組みが必要であるが、大学全体として外国語授業に対する理解が不足している現状では、合意を得るために多くの議論が必要であり、そのための資料収集、整理なども重要な作業のひとつとなってくる。そのためにも、多くの作業を担う専門的知識を備えた職員がいなければ、外国語学習環境整備全体を進めていくことは難しい。
既に、外国語学習支援センター設置に向けた取り組みとして、語学自習室を利用し、授業とセットになったラボラトリー学習を英語教員の数名が実験的に実施している。これらの取り組みの効果を検討しながら、今後のセンター設置に向けた整備が実施される予定である。
そのほかにも、留学プログラムの研究および開発を通して、学生への国際的視野の育成を目指すなど、さまざまな取り組みが模索されている。外国語学習支援センターが設置されたらすべての問題が解決するわけではない。また、留学プログラムができればそれで決定打になるということではなく、それらが総合的に、学生の動機付けを高め、学習時間数を増やし、結果として本学学生の外国語運用能力の向上がもたらされることが目指されている。
ひとつひとつ効果を確認しながら、多くの工夫や学習意欲を促すしかけを張り巡らし、外国語学習支援策を構築していく必要がある。そのためにも、多分野で蓄積された外国語学習に関する研究成果を取り入れながら、かつ、本大学の学生たちの特色にも注意を払い、具体的な教育カリキュラム、支援方法がひとつひとつ確立されていくことが要求されている。
7. 終わりに
外国語学習は、言語学習を通して、異文化適応性を伸ばし、個人個人が豊で、より複合的な個性を身につけ、言語学習能力がより強化され、新しい文化を体験できるようになるためにある。そのために、多分野に渡る言語学習に関する研究をレビューし、学生たちが効率的に外国語学習を進められるように授業設計に工夫を凝らす必要がある。外国語運用能力は誰にでも習得できるものであるが、かなりの学習時間数が確保される必要があり、学習を継続していくためにも、多くの困難が存在している。そのため、動議付けを高めるための多くの工夫が教育機関に要求されることになる。
本学においては、カリキュラム上の問題点の解決策として、語学学習に関する専門職員を配置した外国語学習支援センター設立を計画しているが、学習支援策としての有効性を点検しながら、具体的な方策を進めていく必要がある。
また、外国語学習に関わるカリキュラム設計上の改善策を検討する際には、外国語をめぐる社会的特殊性の議論も必要である。つまり、「言葉には力の序列がある」ため各言語は「非対称性」[16]を持ち、単に母語と並列するその他の言語学習、とならないところから生じる政治的な問題点や、異なる文化を学習したことによる当該社会における人格形成上の難しさに関して、である。大学という教育機関における外国語カリキュラム上の設計を行ううえで常に注意を払い議論を続けていく必要があろう。
参考文献
・ Council of Europe (2004) 『外国語教育Ⅱ—外国語の学習、教授、評価のためのヨーロッパ共通参照枠』朝日出版社.
・ 水村美苗 (2008)『日本語が亡びるときー英語の世紀のなかで』筑摩書房.
・ 寺島 隆吉 (2009)『英語教育が亡びるとき—「英語で授業」のイデオロギー』 明石書店.
・ 櫻井直子 (2006) 「外国語学習のためのヨーロッパ共通参照枠組み：学習、教授、評価（CFE）を参照したカリキュラム・試験評価の再編成と日本語授業への応用—ベルギー・ルーヴァン市現代言語センターの例—」 web版『日本語教育実践研究フォーラム報告』.
・ 白井恭弘 (2008) 『外国語学習の科学』 岩波新書.
・ ゾルダン・ドルニェイ (2005)『動機づけを高める英語指導ストラテジー35 Motivational Strategies in the Language Classroom』大修館書店.