Choosing a textbook is one of a teacher’s important jobs. For the class Speaking of Japan, level B3 class, I chose the textbook J-Talk: Conversation Across Cultures. This textbook matched all the criteria for the class: the level, the topic of Japan, speaking practice, and the goals of what should be accomplished in the class. I will reflect on the content of J-Talk, how J-Talk presented materials and built on the materials in stages with the goal of having students produce extended segments of speech without over-burdening the students. I will explain some of the hurdles I faced while carrying out the activities presented in the textbook and how I managed them. Finally, I will report what students thought about J-Talk.研究ノー

Desrosiers, Lori Ann

English

Gunma University Academic Information Repository

RESEARCH NOTE  357 A Reflection on the Use of J-Talk for Speaking of Japan B3 Lori Ann Desrosiers Keywords Speaking of Japan, textbook choice, extended speaking  Abstract  Choosing a textbook is one of a teacher’s important jobs. For the class Speaking of Japan, level B3 class, I chose the textbook J-Talk: Conversation Across Cultures. This textbook matched all the criteria for the class: the level, the topic of Japan, speaking practice, and the goals of what should be accomplished in the class. I will reflect on the content of J-Talk, how J-Talk presented materials and built on the materials in stages with the goal of having students produce extended segments of speech without over-burdening the students. I will explain some of the hurdles I faced while carrying out the activities presented in the textbook and how I managed them. Finally, I will report what students thought about J-Talk.    Introduction  Choosing a textbook is one of a teacher’s several important jobs. This could take time as there is a plethora of textbooks available with new titles coming out all the time. Fundamentally, she has to find a textbook that matches the goals of the class. At the same time as finding matching content, the textbook must match the level of the class and how long the class runs. From there, the amount of supporting material, e.g. teacher’s guidebook, online practice, workbook, tests, audio/visual material, etc. is a consideration. For my Speaking of Japan, level B3 class, I chose the textbook J-Talk: Conversation Across Cultures published by Oxford University Press. In this paper, I will reflect on the use of J-Talk during the first semester of this academic year.   1. 1. Choice of J-Talk 1-1. Content, level and length of class My Speaking of Japan class is an elective class for 1st year students at Kyoai University’s B3 level which was determined by their TOEIC score taken just before entering the university. B3 level means a TOEIC score in the range of 300-360. The  共愛学園前橋国際大学論集 No.18 358 semester consists of a total of 15, 90-minute classes including one syllabus class where students can get a feel for what the class is all about. In addition, there is one week for a final examination if the instructor decides to hold one. The overall goal of this class is for students to become comfortable, competent and confident using English to explain things related to their daily lives. The “J” in J-Talk stands for Japan or Japanese, so it seemed clear that the content would be suitable for this class. Indeed, the topics presented for students to examine are quite suitable for talking about Japanese life. Below is a list of the textbook units and notes about the details of the contents that I found particularly appealing. Unit  Unit title Notes on the content of the unit 1 Names Students explain the kanji for their names and why/how their parents chose their names. 2 Kiss, Bow, or Shake Hands? Comparing simple Japanese gestures with other countries’ different gestures for the same purpose.  3 Prized Possessions Describing items they own, how they got one of those items, and why it is important to them. 4 Cheers! Describing beverages unique to Japan, how they are made, and how they are drunk. 5 What’s the Occasion? Describing Japanese holidays and how they are celebrated. 6 First Dates Explaining dating practices in Japan and their likes or dislikes of these practices. 7 On the Job Describing jobs, mostly part-time jobs for students, and what the requirements for the job are. In addition, explaining what they like or dislike about their job. 8 A Gift for Me? Describing gift giving practices and typical gifts appropriate for different people and situations. 9 Feast on This Explaining Japanese food including how it is prepared and served.  10 Looking Good Describing different fashions including traditional Japanese dress and what is appropriate to wear when. 11 That’s Shocking! Examining cultural “mistakes” that non-Japanese make and how to explain how things are done in Japan.  12 Glued to the Tube Describing the variety of television programs on Japanese television, television viewing habits of Japanese people and expressing their own preferences.  Mar. 2018 A Reflection on the Use of J-Talk for Speaking of Japan B3  359  In addition, other factors that made the textbook a good fit for Speaking of Japan B3 level are the TOEIC range and the number of units matching with the number of classes in the semester. The catalog details that this textbook is appropriate for students with TOEIC scores ranging from 250 – 400, so this was suitable for the class level. Moreover, the 12 units made me think that I could possibly cover every unit in the textbook over the course of the semester.   1-2. Goals of the class   In addition, I decided to use J-Talk because it seemed to clearly fit the criteria of matching the goals of the class. The overall goal of this class as determined by the English Course for this level is for students to be able to use English to explain things related to their daily lives such as food, entertainment, their homes, schools, clubs, college life, part-time jobs, etc. I also included on the syllabus that they should become comfortable, competent and confident talking about these topics. In J-Talk’s introduction, it is stated that: J-Talk is a speaking and listening course for pre-intermediate Japanese Learners of English. J-Talk is designed to provide students with the opportunity to share personal opinions and ideas as they examine the customs, practices, and values of Japan and other countries. J-Talk provides opportunities for guided pair and group activities as students try out new language and build confidence in communicating their ideas and opinions. (p.1)  1-3. Supporting materials  The supporting materials did not play as much of a role in my decision to choose J-Talk as did meeting the goals of the class, etc. J-Talk provides teachers with a manual that for each unit instructs the best use of the textbook content and audio, in what order to flow the material, as well as hints for keeping motivation high and students speaking. It also provides extra activity ideas for the students with higher TOEIC scores who may get through the material at a faster pace. In addition, there are four extra supporting material sections: conversation tests (one test per unit), conversation strategies (one strategy per unit), culture notes (brief descriptions of 25 countries) and listening scripts.   2. Using J-Talk  共愛学園前橋国際大学論集 No.18 360  Speaking of Japan B3 is an elective class for freshman students. New students enter the university very excited, anxious and enthusiastic. While they know rationally that they are heading into unknown territory, they are emotionally unprepared and unaware of the major changes that are ahead of them. One of the changes is adjusting to completely different teacher and classroom styles. University classrooms often take the shape of small groups of 3~5 students working on an activity. Language classes especially are smaller and require students to do pair work. Small group work and pair work confuses students at first. The purpose of the activity may be to practice a language point, however, they often have to insert their own ideas or experiences into the practice.   2-1. Description of the J-Talk classroom Each unit starts with a warm-up called “Exploring the Topic”. The textbook employs a variety of techniques to introduce the topic. These techniques include matching, listening, guessing and a simple question/answer sequence with a partner. It was at this point that I noticed something was not working in the class.  J-Talk is an English textbook, with a bit of Japanese at the end in the unit glossaries. It was easy to see that this posed an additional burden on students when it came time to do an activity. The activity might say take turns, match, ask your partner, get together with a classmate, etc. I noticed that they could not understand what to do clearly even with an example. I understood that I needed to help them read directions. This might be due to the fact that in their school textbooks up to now the directions were written in Japanese, so they are unfamiliar with the English way. I started by asking if they understood the word, for example listen as in listen to the speakers….The answer they gave was the dictionary form of the word, 聞く (kiku) which is correct in a way. What they didn’t understand was that the word, listen, in the case of directions was in the imperative form, which in Japanese would be ~ 聞きなさい or ~聞いてください. A further explanation as to why the students may have had trouble reading the imperative form might be due to the structure of the sentence. In English the imperative is at the beginning of the sentence, as in “read something”, whereas in Japanese it would be at the end「何かを読みなさい」.  After the warm-up section, in most units the next phase is to move more deeply into the topic with a vocabulary building chart. For example, here is an abbreviated chart from unit 5 – “What’s the Occasion?”    Mar. 2018 A Reflection on the Use of J-Talk for Speaking of Japan B3  361 Special Occasions People Activities Shichi-Go-San  (7-5-3 Day  Taiiku no hi (Athletic Day) men women children girls boys parents eat special food run races wear special clothes give or receive candy wear red and white caps visit a shrine  The next step in the process is to pick and choose words from each section of the chart that go together. As in this example, students are still working at the word level, but thinking in English about the special occasion.  Special Occasions People Activities Shichi-Go-San  (7-5-3 Day)   children girls boys parents wear special clothes give or receive candy visit a shrine *The font style represents students’ handwriting.  From this point, in several units and in different sections, J-Talk provides an activity with the goal of having students produce longer utterances of speech through some kind of game, often a guessing game. Using unit 5 again, one student would say, “On this occasion, girls wear kimonos. Children visit a shrine with their parents. Parents give them candy. What’s the occasion?” Then, another student must guess, “I think it’s…” J-Talk attempts to reduce the burden of producing these longer utterances into an enjoyable activity is partially successful. The problem is that students don’t like guessing, or they don’t have enough confidence to produce a guess and face the shame of being wrong. Also, they are not used to the rather free style of volunteering an answer without being called on. I felt that much of my work was not only helping students form the item to be guessed, but to also encourage the guessing by offering a guess of my own (sometimes a wrong guess), having the first student repeat her description, or, if no one would volunteer a guess, I would randomly choose someone to provide an answer as a last resort. This work was time consuming but quite important as it really highlighted not only the need to produce language, but to do so without fear of being wrong in either the speaking role or the guessing role.  Although not as frequent as the guessing game activities, J-Talk includes surveys to get students speaking with each other in a non-threatening way. In some cases, the students respond to the degree in which they express their feeling about some item on a rating scale. In other cases, students must come up with the survey questions  共愛学園前橋国際大学論集 No.18 362 themselves. In either case, students must report on the survey results. The way of reporting the survey results varied from survey to survey. One way was to think of the reasons why their classmates answered the way they did, and another was to guess how particular students answered an item on the survey. The second way was not really doable in my class. Since there were so few students in the class, basically everyone knew what everyone answered. Instead, I mainly used the first way to think about the reasons for the results.   As the full name of the textbook implies, J-Talk: Conversation Across Cultures, in every unit, the topic is looked at from the viewpoint of individuals from different cultures. It consists of one page called Across Cultures. This page is not an in-depth examination of the topic, but rather it serves as a model for how students can talk about Japan, in addition to providing even more vocabulary. For example in unit 7 about jobs, Alice from France walks dogs. She is a dog walker. She likes her job because she gets to be outdoors, but she has to get up early. This is rather generic content and could be applied to several people in several countries. Other units may be more culturally specific, but not much. There was a speaking opportunity for students in this section so I did not skip over the page. At the same time, though, I did not spend too much time in this section as I felt it was more valuable to give students as much speaking about Japan time as possible.   Finally, the last two pages of each unit, called On Your Own provided a glossary of words in the unit with Japanese translations and three extra vocabulary activities with different kinds of puzzles, matching, and odd-word-out practices. These were helpful to use for homework or to use when the class seemed to come to a logical end but there was too much time left to finish the class early and not enough time to carry out one of the surveys or guessing games.   2-2. Testing in the J-Talk classroom  Although the J-Talk teacher’s guide provides one conversation test per unit complete with a rubric for scoring, I chose to make paper based unit tests. Each unit was so packed with vocabulary that I felt it would be a valuable practice to hold students accountable for learning the vocabulary. I tested vocabulary using multiple choice, fill in the chart, odd word out, and picture recognition items. Even though I chose to give students a paper based test, I did not ignore speaking. One way I tested speaking was by providing A and B conversations where either A’s part or B’s part was blank so they had to write in the appropriate utterances to make the conversation complete. Another way I tested conversation was to have an out of order A and B conversation where they had to Mar. 2018 A Reflection on the Use of J-Talk for Speaking of Japan B3  363 number A and B’s utterances. I used the conversation tests provided in the teacher’s guide for the final examination. To prepare students for this type of test, I chose one of the conversation tests for one of the units we completed during the semester. We discussed how to navigate the directions and what they could expect to do. I pointed out that the test closely resembled the speaking activities they had already done in class, so that in order to prepare for the final examination, they should review the speaking activities for the units covered in the class.   3. Students’ impressions  I chose this textbook based on several criteria. I concluded that it was the best fit for the class. However, I wondered if the students as well felt that it was a good fit for them. I asked students to respond to three statements to find out. The results are in the chart below.  Question 1 Responses to Question 1 I had opportunities to share my opinions and ideas about Japanese life and culture. All students strongly agreed to this question. As this is a main goal of the class, this result is very good.  Question 2 Responses to Question 2 I learned a lot of vocabulary and phrases to talk about Japanese life and culture. Students differed in degree of agreement. Some strongly agreed and others somewhat agreed. I suspect that the difference between strongly and somewhat is rooted in the question “about Japanese life and culture”. There was so much vocabulary and so many phrases not specific to Japan that was presented in the textbook. Having said that, though, the vocabulary and phrases presented are necessary for students at this level. Therefore, it would be wrong to interpret this in a negative light.  Question 3 Responses to Question 3 The games, surveys and other activities increased my ability and confidence to talk about Japanese life and culture. Most students somewhat agreed or somewhat disagreed. Although disappointed that not all students strongly agreed, the textbook can only provide the activities. The work needed to increase ability and confidence needs to come from the students themselves. In addition, students may be judging themselves against some idealistic version of a confident, high ability English speaker. That  共愛学園前橋国際大学論集 No.18 364 they did not reach that ideal may have had an influence on their choice.  These results come from a very small number of students and no strong conclusions can be drawn. However, as these students are fairly representative of their group as a whole, I would venture to guess that had I asked several students, the responses would be more or less the same.  4. Summary  This paper was a reflection of my use of the textbook, J-Talk: Communication Across Cultures for Speaking of Japan, B3 level. There were several criteria that needed to be met for this class including content, level, how long the course runs, and so on. The textbook matched the criteria very well. Especially, it gave students a lot of opportunity to speak about themselves, their culture, their personal experiences and their opinions. It was slow going at first for students to feel comfortable in an all English classroom. I can’t say that this textbook worked miracles and now they are completely comfortable and confident, but I can say that it helped and students are on their way. I am presently teaching the second semester of Speaking of Japan B3 and notice that students are more capable at understanding directions on their own, and are more willing to take risks and laugh at mistakes.   Reference Lee, L., Yoshida, K., & Ziolkowki, S. (2000). J-Talk: Conversation across cultures. New York: Oxford University Press.    Mar. 2018 A Reflection on the Use of J-Talk for Speaking of Japan B3  365 要旨 Speaking of Japan B3クラスでの J-Talk 使用における考察  デロージェー ロリ アン  教科書の選択は教員にとって最も重要な仕事である。B3 レベルのクラスの Speaking of Japanの授業では、J-Talk：Conversation Across Cultures という教科書を採用した。この教科書はこのクラスの基準を満たしている。すなわち、内容のレベルや、トピック、会話練習、さらに授業で達成すべき目標のすべてを網羅している。この教科書の目標は、学生に過度の負担をかけずに段階的に発話量を増やしていくことである。本論文では、どのようにJ-Talkが学習内容を提示しているか、また、どのように J-Talk が構成されているか、その内容を考察する。この教科書で紹介されているアクティビティを用いた際に直面した問題を詳説し、その対処方法を述べる。最後に、J-Talkについて学生たちの意見を報告する。  

A Reflection on the Use of J-Talk for Speaking of Japan B3

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A Reflection on the Use of J-Talk for Speaking of Japan B3

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