Wired language labcustomizes classes
Yoko Mizui Daily Yomiuri Staff Writer
About 25 sophomores of humanities courses at Tokyo Metropolitan University in Hachioji, Tokyo, seemed to be enjoying their English class. The class, which took place on July 12, was part of their Practical English II course and was conducted by lecturer Hironobu Okazaki, 44.
It was an e-learning class using a computer-assisted language laboratory (CALL). First, the students were told to open the Voice of America Special English Web site and choose one article from the site that interested them. They copied the article into a Microsoft Office Word file and then checked the word count.
As it was a speed-reading exercise, students were required to read the article quickly using a stopwatch. Some students checked words they didn't know using an online dictionary. When they finished reading one article, they clicked the completion box. The number of words per minute was then displayed on the screen and the data recorded in a study file that includes their past record. Okazaki encourages them to read at a speed of more than 120 words per minute.
"Have a conversation [in English] with your partner about the article you read," Okazaki told the students. one of them, Masafumi Hasegawa, a sociology major, talked with a classmate about the article he had selected: "Looking for Weight-Loss Answers." The article was about a recent study of popular dieting plans in the United States.
"I chose the article as it was at the top of the page and I thought it was interesting," he said.
Listening to Hasegawa's explanation, Hasegawa's classmate, Jun Akutagawa, a Japanese literature major, said that he also thought the article was interesting.
"I agree with the comment in the article that 'the most successful weight-loss plans include a well-balanced diet and exercise,'" Akutagawa said. "At this university, I belong to a table tennis club. So I'm doing the exercise part."
The VOA's Special English was originally designed for use on radio. The idea is to use clear and simple English for people whose native language was not English. Special English has become a popular tool for teaching English throughout the world, as their writers use short and simple sentences that contain one idea and avoid using idioms.
"Most students choose an article with 700 to 800 words, though some students read an article with more than 1,000 words," Okazaki said.
The next task in the class was a "shadowing" task in which students try to instantly repeat what they hear. Using the CD-ROM and textbook set Eigo Shadoingu no Tatsujin (Expert of English Shadowing), cowritten by Okazaki and Haruhiko Nitta, students practiced shadowing at their own pace.
The CD-ROM offers shadowing exercises that allow students to choose the length of phrases and sentences. Each student practices by recording their voice while shadowing, so that they can compare it with original afterward.
The last part of Okazaki's lesson was an English listening practice using American films. At the beginning of the first semester, students took an assessment test to check the weak points of their English listening. It was a dictation test, comprising only words that students had learned in middle school. The test results revealed weaknesses with specific phonemes such as "th" sounds and with contractions.
Based on the results, exercise questions that cover the weak points of each student are automatically selected from a stock of questions. Students have to fill in the blanks of dialogues by watching and listening to the voices in a movie. The blank parts differ according to each student. Students chose one of three films--You've Got Mail, Speed or Ghost--according to their level.
Students can check whether or not the lines they typed in are correct with just a mouse click.
This kind of varied approach to learning was quite new to most of the students.
"I was surprised at first by this new kind of approach, but I think this class is very interesting and useful," said Natsumi Matsukawa, a social anthropology major. She said she didn't like English when she was a high school student and had experienced difficulty understanding English used in films as it was too fast. "But I found there were some patterns in English that I just didn't understand. I now realize how much my listening ability has improved."
A classmate, psychology major Aimi Kanazawa, said: "I think this class is good because we can study English in a fun way without getting bored."
Sociology major Hisashi Tsuchiya said: "I think this class is very innovative. It's quite a convenient and efficient way of studying English as we can use online dictionaries on the spot. English in middle school and high school was so analog! We'd use textbooks and notebooks. Here we only use computers and it's so refreshing."
Hiroyuki Kodaka, a psychology major, added: "I think it's good because I can develop my studies step by step and can see my English level improving. I don't like studying, but I enjoy this class."
Okazaki, who also teaches at some other universities, said students at this university were more highly motivated to study English.
"I use films to motivate students, but if students are already really motivated, it isn't necessary to use films," Okazaki said. "More than 90 percent of the vocabulary used in films is middle school level and films have many scenes that will not help students of English. For advanced students or those who want to study English more seriously, studying films is an inefficient use of time.
"Generally speaking, university students in English classes are not very motivated. It's certainly meaningless just to repeat the same kind of English lessons they did at high school or cram school."
Okazaki has also developed a program with some other teachers that students can use to measure their English proficiency using a range of statistics.
"Students are encouraged if they can check the percentage by which their English ability has developed and see what parts of their English have improved," he said.
Although this is the fourth year that Okazaki has adopted this "blended" learning approach, he began to use films in his CALL classes more than 10 years ago. At first, he used films to teach the whole class, but he found he could not meet the various needs of students with different levels in that way. With the development of information technology, it has become much easier to make use of video.
"The moment I realized this, I thought I might be able to cater better to each student," he said.
Okazaki tried to do the necessary computer programming himself when he was in his early 30s. But he gave up.
"In the end I thought I should ask a professional programmer for help, as I didn't want to neglect my efforts in educating my students by devoting too much of my attention on programming," he said.
"What I'm aiming at is something like a general hospital. It has a listening department, a reading department, a speaking department and a writing department," Okazaki said. "In the listening department, each patient has different weak points such as slowness in comprehending English sentences or difficulty catching certain consonants. I'd like to help students overcome these specific weak points by offering them individual prescriptions."
Okazaki thinks many universities have good CALL facilities but do not make effective use of them.
"The amount of access is too low, considering the cost of setting up a CALL environment. I think it is necessary to get good facilitators or navigators to utilize these facilities," he said.
Monitoring the results of the past three years, Okazaki has gained confidence in his approach as an effective way of teaching English. The merit of e-learning is that students can learn at their own pace and teachers can offer programs customized for each student. However, the weakness then becomes writing, according to Okazaki.
"I think many teachers who teach English using CALL are worried about how they should teach writing. Some software for writing is available but I don't think it's good enough," he said.
Okazaki emphasizes that university students already have enough knowledge about English. It's a question of getting students to activate or apply what they know.
"At a university, I think it is the teacher's role to get students to acquire practical ability in English," he said.
(Jul. 26, 2007)
Yoko Mizui Daily Yomiuri Staff Writer
About 25 sophomores of humanities courses at Tokyo Metropolitan University in Hachioji, Tokyo, seemed to be enjoying their English class. The class, which took place on July 12, was part of their Practical English II course and was conducted by lecturer Hironobu Okazaki, 44.
It was an e-learning class using a computer-assisted language laboratory (CALL). First, the students were told to open the Voice of America Special English Web site and choose one article from the site that interested them. They copied the article into a Microsoft Office Word file and then checked the word count.
As it was a speed-reading exercise, students were required to read the article quickly using a stopwatch. Some students checked words they didn't know using an online dictionary. When they finished reading one article, they clicked the completion box. The number of words per minute was then displayed on the screen and the data recorded in a study file that includes their past record. Okazaki encourages them to read at a speed of more than 120 words per minute.
"Have a conversation [in English] with your partner about the article you read," Okazaki told the students. one of them, Masafumi Hasegawa, a sociology major, talked with a classmate about the article he had selected: "Looking for Weight-Loss Answers." The article was about a recent study of popular dieting plans in the United States.
"I chose the article as it was at the top of the page and I thought it was interesting," he said.
Listening to Hasegawa's explanation, Hasegawa's classmate, Jun Akutagawa, a Japanese literature major, said that he also thought the article was interesting.
"I agree with the comment in the article that 'the most successful weight-loss plans include a well-balanced diet and exercise,'" Akutagawa said. "At this university, I belong to a table tennis club. So I'm doing the exercise part."
The VOA's Special English was originally designed for use on radio. The idea is to use clear and simple English for people whose native language was not English. Special English has become a popular tool for teaching English throughout the world, as their writers use short and simple sentences that contain one idea and avoid using idioms.
"Most students choose an article with 700 to 800 words, though some students read an article with more than 1,000 words," Okazaki said.
The next task in the class was a "shadowing" task in which students try to instantly repeat what they hear. Using the CD-ROM and textbook set Eigo Shadoingu no Tatsujin (Expert of English Shadowing), cowritten by Okazaki and Haruhiko Nitta, students practiced shadowing at their own pace.
The CD-ROM offers shadowing exercises that allow students to choose the length of phrases and sentences. Each student practices by recording their voice while shadowing, so that they can compare it with original afterward.
The last part of Okazaki's lesson was an English listening practice using American films. At the beginning of the first semester, students took an assessment test to check the weak points of their English listening. It was a dictation test, comprising only words that students had learned in middle school. The test results revealed weaknesses with specific phonemes such as "th" sounds and with contractions.
Based on the results, exercise questions that cover the weak points of each student are automatically selected from a stock of questions. Students have to fill in the blanks of dialogues by watching and listening to the voices in a movie. The blank parts differ according to each student. Students chose one of three films--You've Got Mail, Speed or Ghost--according to their level.
Students can check whether or not the lines they typed in are correct with just a mouse click.
This kind of varied approach to learning was quite new to most of the students.
"I was surprised at first by this new kind of approach, but I think this class is very interesting and useful," said Natsumi Matsukawa, a social anthropology major. She said she didn't like English when she was a high school student and had experienced difficulty understanding English used in films as it was too fast. "But I found there were some patterns in English that I just didn't understand. I now realize how much my listening ability has improved."
A classmate, psychology major Aimi Kanazawa, said: "I think this class is good because we can study English in a fun way without getting bored."
Sociology major Hisashi Tsuchiya said: "I think this class is very innovative. It's quite a convenient and efficient way of studying English as we can use online dictionaries on the spot. English in middle school and high school was so analog! We'd use textbooks and notebooks. Here we only use computers and it's so refreshing."
Hiroyuki Kodaka, a psychology major, added: "I think it's good because I can develop my studies step by step and can see my English level improving. I don't like studying, but I enjoy this class."
Okazaki, who also teaches at some other universities, said students at this university were more highly motivated to study English.
"I use films to motivate students, but if students are already really motivated, it isn't necessary to use films," Okazaki said. "More than 90 percent of the vocabulary used in films is middle school level and films have many scenes that will not help students of English. For advanced students or those who want to study English more seriously, studying films is an inefficient use of time.
"Generally speaking, university students in English classes are not very motivated. It's certainly meaningless just to repeat the same kind of English lessons they did at high school or cram school."
Okazaki has also developed a program with some other teachers that students can use to measure their English proficiency using a range of statistics.
"Students are encouraged if they can check the percentage by which their English ability has developed and see what parts of their English have improved," he said.
Although this is the fourth year that Okazaki has adopted this "blended" learning approach, he began to use films in his CALL classes more than 10 years ago. At first, he used films to teach the whole class, but he found he could not meet the various needs of students with different levels in that way. With the development of information technology, it has become much easier to make use of video.
"The moment I realized this, I thought I might be able to cater better to each student," he said.
Okazaki tried to do the necessary computer programming himself when he was in his early 30s. But he gave up.
"In the end I thought I should ask a professional programmer for help, as I didn't want to neglect my efforts in educating my students by devoting too much of my attention on programming," he said.
"What I'm aiming at is something like a general hospital. It has a listening department, a reading department, a speaking department and a writing department," Okazaki said. "In the listening department, each patient has different weak points such as slowness in comprehending English sentences or difficulty catching certain consonants. I'd like to help students overcome these specific weak points by offering them individual prescriptions."
Okazaki thinks many universities have good CALL facilities but do not make effective use of them.
"The amount of access is too low, considering the cost of setting up a CALL environment. I think it is necessary to get good facilitators or navigators to utilize these facilities," he said.
Monitoring the results of the past three years, Okazaki has gained confidence in his approach as an effective way of teaching English. The merit of e-learning is that students can learn at their own pace and teachers can offer programs customized for each student. However, the weakness then becomes writing, according to Okazaki.
"I think many teachers who teach English using CALL are worried about how they should teach writing. Some software for writing is available but I don't think it's good enough," he said.
Okazaki emphasizes that university students already have enough knowledge about English. It's a question of getting students to activate or apply what they know.
"At a university, I think it is the teacher's role to get students to acquire practical ability in English," he said.
(Jul. 26, 2007)