2010年2月11日木曜日

To make my school's English classes better


One year has passed since I became a head of the teachers in charge of English section in my school. Through this school year, most of our efforts has been spent on making a integrated or packaged way of teaching. Until recently, each teacher has taught something in the way what she or he would like to teach. There has been no rigid "style" which they call "This is our school's teaching method". Through making Can-Do-List in terms of four skills, coming up with syllabi, and sharing them among teachers, our teaching style has been determined little by little.
Yeterday evening, I talked with a co-worker a lot around four hours. His teaching style and belief underlying his way of teaching seemed at first just as opposite of mine. Because I have had little opportunity to tell him what I learned from grad school, I explained my teaching belief under my way of teaching yesterday. My belief means like learners are likely to understand English through sizable input, they acquire English through 'meaning', not just form, and interaction and output are crucial for English learning process. Interestingly it turns out that he also strongly believe so, but the problem is he does not change his teaching style because he as a learner receive no instruction as I said above. The more he go through experiences where he could activate his deep knowledge about English (He is really much more knowledgable than me!), he would change his style into more what is called, 'SLA-friendly' one. Anyway it was really meaningful evening to share and discuss such matters.

Two books above are the latest books from which I was inspired in the field of English education.
First one is from a book featured in the blog below and also recommended in a teacher training this winter. It boosted my motivation again to make my class sophisticated one along with SLA insight. The second is also a book from really famous ex junior high school teacher. Though he does not seems to have so much SLA or TESOL background, his practices through 26 teaching experiences have been surely crystallized within this book, which of course encouraged me to change my style more better one.
The last one below is a blog from a author who came back from Britain where he studied SLA. His blog was full of insightful mixture of his SLA background and his daily practices in his classes.

http://d.hatena.ne.jp/takachan75/

The next school year will be a challenging one for us to make more packaged teaching style. Whether who will be a head teacher, I will spend considerable time and effort on this "mission".

2 件のコメント:

Taka さんのコメント...

Thank you for introducing my blog here. I understand your claim while talking with your colleague. Unfortunately, instructed SLA has been rarely known in Japan. It would be challenging to make English teachers in Japan aware of the cognitive process of L2, but it is worth trying.

Tetsuo Marugari さんのコメント...

What you says is exactly true. Thanks to your energetic efforts to change your class and education, I can feel encouraged. Thank you so much!