(teach) Obama, the English teacher in Japan

[dk-5]

The New York Times is reporting on a new phenomena in Japan, Obama, the
English teacher in Japan.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/12/business/global/12iht-speech.html?ref=educ
ation

[Julian Suddaby-2]

Recently two website have caught my eye: the first is
http://www.alljapaneseallthetime.com and the other is
http://www.antimoon.com. The first describes the method used by one
American student to learn Japanese to fluency in only 18 months; the
second describes how some Polish students have reached a high level of
English.

Points they argue for include:

1. An extremely high amount of L2 input. They suggest most students do not read or listen anywhere near enough.
2. Writing before speaking, and not saying something unless you are sure you have heard it before and know you can say it correctly.
3. Heavy use of a "spaced repetition" computer flashcard program to help vocabulary retention (http://www.supermemo.com and
http://ichi2.net/anki/ are two examples of these programs.)
4. Little or no explicit grammar teaching.

They are suspicious of classes and the "communicative approach",
believing that most teaching does not give students enough L2 input for correct output.

I'd be interested to hear if anyone had thoughts about this.

Julian Suddaby

[Margaret Orleans-2]

--- On Fri, 10/16/09, dk <davekees1@...> wrote:

> The New York Times is reporting on a
> new phenomena in Japan, Obama, the
> English teacher in Japan.

Thanks for sharing that, Dave.  It's certainly true that the students at the women's university where I teach all seem to be aware of key phrases from his speeches, and even try to incorporate them in their essays.

--Peg

[Margaret Orleans-2]

--- On Sat, 10/17/09, Julian Suddaby <julian@...> wrote:

> Points they argue for include:
> 1. An extremely high amount of L2 input. They suggest most
> students do not read or listen anywhere near enough.

If Malcolm Gladwell (in _Outliers_) is right and it takes 10,000 hours of application to master anything--and earlier research by J.D. Brown suggested that this applies to language acquisition, though I don't remember the number of hours of class he found was necessary to improve by one level--this makes sense.

> They are suspicious of classes and the "communicative
> approach",
> believing that most teaching does not give students enough
> L2 input for correct output.

Even a traditional teacher-fronted class where the teacher talked for the whole time--and graded his/her speech to the i+1 level (as if that were possible to do for a mixed level class) wouldn't provide enough input.

A sensible division of labor is to use CALL for extensive input and vocabulary training and to use live teachers and classmates for interaction, coaching, evaluation of more nuanced aspects of language, answering questions, etc.

--Peg

[Jada Rufo]

Dave Kees wrote:
 
The New York Times is reporting on a new phenomena in Japan, Obama, the English teacher in Japan.
>
>
I used Obama's election as a part of one of my lessons on US culture.  I remember a comversation I had with a student while on the way to the football field.  He greeted me with the Hawaiian expression "Aloha" and I returned the greeting.  Then he said, "Obama!  Black man!"  I said, "Yes, do you know where he's from?"  He said, "Hawaii!"
 
I also recall that just about that same time reading the students' English Weekly paper and there was an article about Obama and his family.  I thought that there's got to be a lesson about this.
 
I cut and paste a montage of famous people from different ethnic backgrounds both men and women.  I had pictures of Yao Ming, Hu Jin Tao, Kobe Bryant, Jason Kidd, George W. Bush, Iman, Giselle, and an Asian model.  For my purposes I just pretended that she was a Japanese model.  And of course I had a picture of Obama.
 
Then I'd ask them some simple questions like who would they prefer to be friends with Obama or Bush?  Kobe or Yao?  And since most of my students were boys I could cater to their hormones a bit.  I asked them who would they prefer to marry?  A Japanese model or an ordinary Chinese girl?  BOY!  Did I spark controversy on that one!  You can imagine what their answers were.  I hate Japanese.  Japanese invaded our country and killed many Chinese.etc...
 
I asked them more questions like "when were you born?" and "have you ever met a Japanese?"  They'd say that they were born in 1992.  Then I'd ask them why they hate the Japanese.  They weren't even born!  Yet they still hated them.
 
So I asked them if they were racist.  I explained earlier to them what the word meant.  They all admitted that they were.
 
Perhaps I could write an article titled "Obama, the Civics teacher in China."
 
Jada





 
            

















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[Halima Brewer-2]

Jada Rufo wrote:

I asked them who would they prefer to marry?  A Japanese model or an ordinary Chinese girl?  BOY!  Did I spark controversy on that one!  You can imagine what their answers were.  I hate Japanese.  Japanese invaded our country and killed many Chinese.etc...I asked them more questions like "when were you born?" and "have you ever met a Japanese?"  They'd say that they were born in 1992.  Then I'd ask them why they hate the Japanese.  They weren't even born!  Yet they still hated them.

>
>
I believe the Chinese are programmed to hate Japanese. It helps the
government to maintain an external enemy despite the changes since WWII.
When I point out that the English, and Israel now have good relations
with  Germany, it cuts no ice. I sincerely believe this is a problem or
will present one in international relationships in the future, and that
the Chinese Gov't is ill-advised to maintain this level of irrational
hatred. I do think that the Japanese were indeed horrible in WWII to the
Chinese on the scale of what Germany did to Jews and that this needs
acknowledged and dealt with, but that not dealing with it, nor having
any knowledge or insight as to the various injustices and wrong that the
Chinese gov't has meted out to its own citizens, not to mention some of
the minority cultures is a time bomb and totally counter-productive. big
mistake. I think this pretending to be all good while others are all bad
will one day come back to bite China in the arse. sorry, but I think so,
given history and I  think this is a pity because it may well one day
eclipse the various good things, albeit so far small, that China is
attempting to do vis a vis global interests.

I am in the UK, and here we do not permit racism. I must ask Chinese
students to apologise to any insults they make to Japanese, and I demand
respect and tolerance from everybody to everybody. I have Russians and
Georgians, and other nationalities with current conflicts and none
appear so close-minded and unwilling to understand as the Chinese.
I recommend - gently, and with caution and delicacy, teaching tolerance
and to question unthinking predjudice, letting them know that such
tolerance does not mean ignoring what happened, but a balance with
present day events and some ideas that no-one is perfect, even the
Chinese - and that looking at these issues will make them better
prepared for the world outside, and give them greater tools to right
real wrongs, instead of focusing on old ones they cannot change.

These lessons are vitally important. I do not know to what extent you
can do this in your class, but well done for trying. Keep up the gentle
but firm questioning of biases. They will indeed need it.

Halima

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[Anthony Green-6]

Dave Kees wrote:

The New York Times is reporting on a new phenomena in Japan, Obama, the English teacher in Japan.

Margaret Orleans <tommysibo@...>:

Thanks for sharing that, Dave.  It's certainly true that the students at the women's university where I teach all seem to be aware of key phrases from his speeches, and even try to incorporate them in their essays.
>
>
The thread on using Obama as a learning tool is a fascinating one, and
I have a similar experience.
When Obama was still a candidate I created a listening lesson using a
short excerpt from his acceptance speech at the Democratic convention.
It requires downloading and installing an interactive player available
at the following URL
http://www.voicebook.com/download/vbplayer/obama_setup.exe
Briefly, students need to open the Player, then listen and reconstruct
the text. Anything which is correct (or close to correct) is rewarded,
and various level of help (changing delivery speed, lexical help,
spelling help etc.) are available in order to help the Ss complete the
task.
I would be delighted to hear from anyone who uses it with students,
and I heartily recommend using it with a small group of students
working together on one workstation, when all of its potential can be
realised, though it can also be used for self-study.

Anthony

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70016 Noicattaro (BA) - Italy
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Fax: [phone]
Skype: anthonygreen5831

[Margaret Orleans-2]

Not too long ago, someone (Ria?) mentioned she liked to have students read along while they listened.  Here's a news site with that option:

<http://www.newsy.com/>

I hope the site is accessible in China.  Much of the news has an American focus, but there is a variety of topics to choose from.

I found this site through a recommendation of Nik Peachey, a member of this list.  Follow him on Twitter or one of his blogs for dozens of tech-oriented suggestions each week for EFL activities and resources.  For example, I record a Bubble Joy video card each week as part of the homework for my college-level Listening II course.

--Peg

[Russ Taylor-2]

--- In TEFLChina@..., Margaret Orleans <tommysibo@...> wrote:

>
>
> Not too long ago, someone (Ria?) mentioned she liked to have students read along while they listened.  Here's a news site with that option:
>
> <http://www.newsy.com/>
>
> I hope the site is accessible in China.  Much of the news has an American focus, but there is a variety of topics to choose from.
>
> I found this site through a recommendation of Nik Peachey, a member of this list.  Follow him on Twitter or one of his blogs for dozens of tech-oriented suggestions each week for EFL activities and resources.  For example, I record a Bubble Joy video card each week as part of the homework for my college-level Listening II course.
>

My Comment

Is it available in China, well in Dongbei anyway. This is useful as they are short pieces of news from different native speaking news channels and you can go to different kinds of news including World or Culture for example. You can make it a listening exercise first and then click on 'Transcript' so the students can check if they were right, and then they can read along with the news story, hopefully following intonation patterns of a native speaker.
Nik Peachey's resources are always prety useful, his Daily English Activities are something I recommend students to subscribe and follow.

Russ Taylor