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Teaching, Learning, Adjusting: Week 1


Today's post begins a seven-week cycle of blog posts that are devoted to my teaching and practicum at the University of Southern Maine. 

I teach in a variety of settings in Utsunomiya, Japan, and this week, I am excited to begin this blog series by sharing a bit about my brand-new EFL class I just started. I will also share a new syllabus and a new class activity for oral speaking practice I will use this semester at Teikyo University. In a way, the theme for this week could be: Creating. I want to harness the power of the creative process and in both my new class and Teikyo classes I hope to do this. Posting about this actually helps develop the ideas and outside comments are welcome!

Recently, I have been thinking about the usefulness and practicality of learning a language through creating things (presentations, short videos, audio podcasts, a pamphlet, a brochure, or an advertisement for example) the list is pretty much endless. My experience as a professional musician has definitely influenced this line of thinking. Personally, each time I created a new recording I have always felt a rush of positive feelings and new depths of motivation. I want my students to tap into this positive creating experience. 



I. New Class Advertisement and Description.




II. Email sent (9/1/22) introducing a few more details about the class. 

Note: I don't know why these parentheses are here...and I cannot erase them! How frustrating...






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                    This week at Teikyo University:


I teach two classes, a first-year and second-year English class. They are supposed to have a "general" focus, but recently I have begun to doubt whether a "general focus" actually exists. We all have goals and desires and it follows that no one has a "general" outlook. Based on last semester's outcomes (my first semester at Teikyo) I recreated two new syllabi and added an important speaking activity to both. Following is one example of the original syllabus, given to me by the school, and then one of my new syllabi. 

I created the new syllabi to incorporate a new activity I call "Minute Speeches". This is a weekly speech in front of the class on a variety of topics (mostly relating to the unit being done). Last semester, students in the class were not challenged enough. The textbook and syllabus provided little stimulation to me or the students, and I observed and noted that each of my students has great potential to be more fluent if given opportunities. Additionally, we have connected as a class and I feel that the students are comfortable and willing to take risks such as speaking in front of the class. I feel the weekly speech activity will put the students in the zone of proximal development and will situate the class in a more challenging (yet doable) context.

Old Syllabus (1 page, vague goals, and overview):


New Syllabus (updated Overview, new Objectives that include all four skills, speech topic list, speech schedule, and rubric):





I based the weekly "Minute Speeches" activity to align with the CEFR Global Standards (See below). Generally, my students at Teikyo are around B1 and I hope we can move into B2 and C1. 

While I wrote all the parts of this syllabus, I used some ideas from my Utsunomiya University EAP class. Adding listening and reading strategies, for example, is a good idea and such strategies should not be confined to EAP classes, and yet, nowhere in my Teikyo textbook or original syllabus is there a reference to strategies for listening and reading, standards to be aligned to, rubrics, awareness of the importance of all four skills. However, this is part of the teacher's job, but it is also part of the school's department to make this kind of development happen. 



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                           This Week at Ben's Class


We are reading a script aloud of "The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe". This class of five older adults has been reading scripts as part of the class for a year now. After taking over the class, I introduced reading aloud and I think reading aloud (especially conversational scripts) has helped the class increase vocabulary,  improve prosody, and increase motivation a little bit. 

My goal is for the class to audio record a script live in class. We could create a radio show version. We have read two Agatha Christie scripts and they were enjoyable. I think the class would be challenged by this project, but I also believe it might serve as a good goal for each reading we do in the future. I am going to propose this idea to our class next week. 

Each week I audio record the scenes we will read in the following lesson and then send them out via email. I think this helps with prosody and pronunciation. 














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