Volume 17, Supp. 1, March 2020 DOI: 10.56040/e-flt.171
Learning in and beyond the Classroom: Ubiquity in and beyond the Classroom
The most prominent foreign language appearing in the Japanese linguistic landscape is English – used extensively throughout areas such as shop signs, road markings, product packaging, and clothing. Whilst much of this English appears in the English alphabet, a significant amount is written in katakana, allowing the words and phrases to be integrated into Japanese syntax. This article reports on the development of a pedagogical activity which involved engaging university students with this English in the Japanese linguistic landscape, with the aim of facilitating the development of self-selected topics for the students’ final-year graduation theses. The activity was framed within a Project-Based Learning (PBL) approach to education, which engaged students directly in interacting with and critically examining their own linguistic landscapes so as to develop a deeper understanding of the forms and functions of English in this environment. They collected examples of English inscriptions from the linguistic landscape, wrote descriptions about each photograph, and brought them to class for analysis and discussion. Their comments were collected together and analysed to extract themes and areas of focus which were then returned to the students to help guide them in deciding upon a suitable working title for their graduation thesis. In this way, the linguistic landscape was exploited as a space in which to have students become researchers and critically analyse the English that surrounds them beyond the classroom.
Historically, foreign or second language education served the needs of the nation or community. However, besides serving the needs of the communities where it is based (e.g., program, school, local community), this kind of education can also have an impact on the communities. The books Language Education for the Global Citizen (Sato & Kumagai, 2011) and Language Education for Social Future (Sato, Takami, Kamiyoshi, & Kumagai, 2015) view the goals of language education as not just teaching and learning the standard forms of national language (and culture), but also actively participating in communities as a full member, using the language already mastered as well as the one being taught. Active participation includes examining the rules critically, making an effort to succeed, changing the rules as needed by negotiating with others, and taking responsibility as a member of the community. In this paper, I will discuss examples of how this vision was realized by incorporating project-based activities for the Social Issue Project and the Community Involvement Project into the existing curriculum. I will then analyze actual student work on the projects to show how foreign or second language education can influence the sociocultural and historical milieu in which it is provided.
In a highly globalised world where cross-border movements and cross-cultural contact have grown exponentially, policy-makers and educationists have increasingly focused on intercultural education and the development of intercultural competence. Foreign language (FL) education, which prepares learners for interactions and exchanges with foreign peoples and cultures, can play a pivotal role in developing interculturality. This article focuses on a mixed-method study that investigated the impact of short-term language immersion in France, Germany, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and Thailand on the intercultural development of Singapore university FL learners. Quantitative and qualitative data collected through pre-/post-immersion questionnaires, journals, interviews, and lesson/activity observations were analysed based on Byram’s (1997, 2008) model of intercultural competence, and Lave and Wenger’s (1991) Situated Learning Theory and their notion of legitimate peripheral participation. The results of the analysis suggest that the immersion programmes had a positive effect on FL learners’ development of intercultural competence. It was ascertained that learners developed positive attitudes towards the target language cultures, discovered and learned to interpret new cultural practices, and gained new perspectives to the target language and their own cultures. The key to these developments lies in the interactions with and participation in the target language societies, afforded by the instructional and cultural programmes as well as social encounters with host families, student buddies and other members of the local communities.
With the rising popularity of extensive reading (ER) in Japanese language teaching, three types of ER have been identified: classroom-based ER (instigated by the teacher), out-of-class ER (optionally organized by the teacher/facilitator out of class), and autonomous out-of-class ER (instigated by the learner). Although ER encourages learners to extensively read in the L2 both in and out of class, it is unknown whether engagement in out-of-class ER leads learners to become more autonomous in their ER. In this study, the authors investigated the effectiveness of out-of-class Japanese ER sessions with international students at a Japanese university. A group of around ten students gathered voluntarily for weekly sessions led by a facilitator to read selected books. After eight months, six participants, who were leaving the sessions, were interviewed. Seven months later, three of these six were interviewed again on whether they had continued practicing out-of-class ER autonomously. Based on the analysis, the authors discuss whether out-of-class ER may encourage autonomous ER and, if so, what aspects of it may contribute to the process. The pedagogical implications of this are discussed, including suggestions for enhancing learner autonomy beyond the classroom, as well as issues relevant for future research.
The purpose of this study is to investigate how the novice teachers’ experiences of conducting action research in a teacher education program affect their teaching in their individual classroom context and their ability for self-development. The M.A. Japanese language teacher education program at the institution, where the authors of this paper teach, requires students to conduct action research while they are engaged in a three-semester long teaching practicum. This requirement aims to equip students with, not only teaching skills, but also the abilities and attitudes necessary to continue growing professionally throughout their careers. We conducted in-depth interviews with the four graduates of the program, who have been engaged in Japanese language teaching either in Japan or abroad. The analysis of the data indicates that their action research experience still has an impact on their daily teaching, especially on their reflective practices. Even in an informal manner, all of them continue to reflect on their everyday teaching and think about ways to improve it. We tentatively concluded that once acquired, these reflective skills may remain and continue to be a powerful tool for their professional development in the long term.
As part of a four-year longitudinal study, the researchers investigate how learners of English at a university in Japan sustain their motivation to engage in self-directed study outside of class. Interview data are analysed drawing on the theoretical models of the self-regulation of motivation (SRM) model (Sansone, 2009; Sansone & Thoman, 2005) and research in the area of interest development (Hidi & Renninger, 2006). Results show that participants have goals-defined motivation, experience defined motivation or a combination of the two. Different phases of participants’ development of interest are also evident in the case study data.
Growing numbers of newcomers arrive in cities across the globe as temporary visitors or for longer periods of time. They often face communication challenges and need to learn a new language or improve their knowledge quickly. The article considers the domain of language learning for social integration and inclusion, what it means to be a newcomer to a city, and the role of mobile technologies in advancing a more personal approach to language learning. Mobile learning research explores innovative and practical solutions to the specific challenges faced by newcomers, and it revives, develops or reinterprets pedagogical methods and underlying learning theories. To illustrate this, three research projects conducted at The Open University, UK, focusing on migrants’ learning with mobile apps, are presented and reflected upon. Mobile learning experiences deliberately designed for newcomers to a city can support them in everyday language learning and in their efforts to explore their new environment. The article includes suggestions as to what seems to be missing from current apps for newcomers. It considers relevant issues and future directions for the design of mobile apps and services for this diverse target group.
Research has demonstrated that educational game-based apps may provide an approach to instruction in education that allows for greater learning outcomes. The focal context of this article centres around the discussion of how gamified pedagogy supports learning. The first part of this article will delve into the components of gaming, including the application of gamification to education and the methods by which digital game-based components such as scores and rewards are used to engage and motivate learners. The second part will focus on existing research on gaming pedagogy and the gaming elements of a phonetics app developed by the Resource Centre for Ubiquitous Learning and Integrated Pedagogy (ULIP) at Hong Kong Baptist University. The gamified pedagogical element of the app is designed to offer levels of challenge that motivate the players by making learning more exciting and rewarding. The game-based elements of the app not only support active student engagement but are specifically designed to offer challenges and goals for players. Moreover, the need to capture and maintain the players’ attention through visual experiences and audio designs is also an important element in the design of the app. When learners are engaged in a game-based app of this nature, they are not only reinforcing their cognitive skills, but they are also constantly drawing connections between images, text and sounds, thereby allowing students to learn and practise basic skills in order to master complex tasks.
Rapidly changing technologies are generating learning environments in which educational institutions are increasingly utilizing online learning. Therefore, to ensure efficacious learning outcomes, it is important to understand learners’ behaviour in these fast-moving learning environments. Sociocultural theory (Vygotsky, 1978) emphasizes that learning develops through social relationships and therefore, social interaction and collaboration are essential; the role of social interaction is core to learning language. A Social Network Site (SNS) that promotes strong community-based communication could offer a ‘society’, that was envisaged by Vygotsky’s notion of social interaction leading to learning. If it achieves this, language learners and native speakers form an SNS community and we could expect them to provide and receive scaffolding to share a wide range of knowledge. This article presents a study of SNS efficacy by examining the provision of scaffolding and interactions between Japanese language learners and native speakers. By analysing the data using a new activity system model, the study proposes a new approach to online discussion forums for foreign languages involving mixed proficiency levels, which are programmed to enhance learners’ motivation.
Synchronous online writing platforms (e.g. Google Docs) have provided a dynamic approach to deliver peer feedback and negotiation for students in a group project. Previous research on collaborative writing and language learning has discussed collaboration among second language learners in classroom settings, with a focus on either their editing history or collaborative dialogue. This article considers both the oral and written interaction in the collaborative writing between native speakers (NS) of English and high proficiency nonnative speakers (NNS) of English on the synchronous writing platform Google Docs. This article used Language-Related Episodes (LREs) to analyze the patterns of interaction between the participants during their collaboration on a co-constructed essay. Follow-up questionnaires and interviews with participants provided insight into their perception of their collaboration in the context of online technologies. The results showed that 1) there were more Lexical LREs during the oral dialogue, while more Form and Mechanical LREs in written form on the Google platform, 2) NNSs reported to have benefited more from the feedback on their vocabulary and expressions, while NSs more from the feedback on organization and ideas, and 3) factors such as power relationship and partner’s openness to correction influenced the interaction in collaborative writing.
This study examines the impact of learners’ information processing styles in learning English as a foreign language (L2) within multimodal environments. Simultaneous knowledge representation with verbal and visual annotations has been regarded as an effective way of retaining knowledge and it has been verified by various studies in different settings. However, this study claims that the manipulation of images for successful L2 learning depends on learners’ tendencies in processing knowledge with imagery: viz., whether they are high imagers or low imagers. Thus, this study investigates the impact of learners’ information processing styles by developing two types of mobile-based applications to learn phrasal verbs. One application consists of sample sentences and images depicting the prototypical senses; the other consists of the sentences and their prototypical senses described verbally. From the results of fill-in-the-blank tests conducted one and two weeks after the treatment, it was found that the use of images accelerated the process of arriving at the correct answers whereas low-imagers processed knowledge better with the verbally oriented application than with the image-oriented application. These findings suggest that successful L2 learning requires multimodal knowledge representation and may be enhanced by materials that differ according to learners’ cognitive styles.
This article explores a ‘Teaching with Technology’ course taught at Nanzan University, Japan. Although our students are considered to be ‘digital natives’ many of them do not know how to use technology effectively in a teaching environment. Students (n=12) in this elective course were asked to consider their thoughts on technology in general, and how they would incorporate technology into English courses in Japan. The students gave presentations on using technology to support learners at Japanese junior high and senior high schools. Five main data collection sources were used: 1) a questionnaire on attitudes to technology; 2) videos of students’ presentations; 3) reflective material generated throughout the course; 4) end-of-course peer interviews; and 5) end-of-course self-reflection reports. These five main data sources were analysed using a grounded theory approach. The article examines the students’ thoughts on educational technology, future trends in education, ubiquitous technology, and ubiquitous learning.
Moodle: The Ubiquitous Teacher (pp. 190–204)
This article describes how Moodle is used in a Medical English course at a Japanese university to increase the time, the quality, and the effectiveness of students' preparations outside of the class. It also highlights how different settings can influence student behaviour and motivation. The examples and the discussion of the settings serve the purpose of encouraging teachers to make the big leap from giving homework in the traditional way to this digital platform. The author also shows how the “virtual extension” of the teacher, Moodle, can control students' home studies in ways that would be impossible with the traditional homework on one hand, and how much insight the teacher can get about the students' behaviour based on information automatically saved in the computer system on the other. Finally, the results of a student survey carried out after the first semester answered the author’s question that motivated this research: “How satisfied are the students with the use of Moodle for homework assignments?”
With the widespread access to internet and the impact of such access on different aspects of life, technology has become part of the language classroom. One such manifestation of the introduction of technology into the classroom is blended learning (BL). Defined as “the integrated combination of traditional learning with web-based online approaches” (Whitelock & Jelfs, 2003, p. 99), the combination of media and tools deployed in an e-learning environment (Alavi & Gallupe, 2003) and the combination of a number of pedagogical approaches, irrespective of the learning technology used in each case (Alavi & Gallupe, 2003; Arbaugh, 2005, cited in Abu Bakar, H. et al., 2006; Whitelock & Jelfs, 2003) BL has been “identified as one of the top 10 emerging trends in the knowledge delivery industry by the American Society for Training and Development” (Rooney, 2003, cited in Alebaikan, 2010, p. 8). In this article, the researcher will summarize how applying BL helped address challenges that were faced by him, along with some observations from that experience.