Teaching in the Age of Social Distancing Rishma Hansil (Tokyo)
For many ALT teachers across Japan, there have been massive changes to our language learning lessons post COVID-19 lockdown. Students have returned to schools with a strict list of measures in place to reduce the spread of infection. In many schools, activities such as group work, speaking activities and interactive games are strictly prohibited. On the other hand, many other teachers are still teaching remotely. Our role as ALTs has always been to adapt to the needs of our classes, and this situation is no different. I’d like to share four tips from my social-distancing classrooms:
1. Embracing technology Amidst the lockdown, teachers had no choice but to take their show on the “digital” road. Classes were taught through an array of digital platforms, using anything that could help students and teachers connect in a meaningful way. For classes with over 30 students, teachers used Zoom and Google Classroom to conduct lessons by separating the classes into teams and sending them to “breakout rooms” in Zoom in order to better facilitate essay writing and discussion. For students who couldn’t make the live sessions, videos were uploaded to YouTube 12
via a private link. Having a digital database of resources helped students study on their own time and gave teachers some fluidity in preparing lesson materials. In these situations, the ALTs’ primary roles included assisting the JTE with video recording, modeling grammar and starring in interactive skits. Club activities, like our school’s Language Club, relied on LINE to communicate with each other, share resources and even send voice notes for pronunciation practice. ALT teachers would also make themselves available for one hour a day on a zoom call, during which students could join the meeting for free conversation practice and get help with any assignments they were working on. Meetings were scheduled by grade to ensure the same level of students were participating in the conversation.
2. Listening instead of speaking In the first month back at school, speaking in the classroom was prohibited. This was challenging as ALTs predominantly did speaking and conversation practice with students. To work around this, we decided to replace our speaking practice with more focused listening practice in our lessons. For a bit of fun, we watched YouTube videos, which were used as listening comprehension practice and gap-fills for the higher level students. Some videos included Aesop’s Fables, scenes from popular movies and snippets from National Geographic documentaries. Another listening practice we used in our lessons was shadowing. The ALT would read a few sentences and students would map out the pauses, highlight the intonation of words and underline the points of emphasis in each sentence. This technique made the students hyper aware of the ALTs speech, and over the course of three weeks students were able to listen to more complex pieces of dialogue. This activity was repeated again when speaking was allowed in the classroom and students were able to reproduce the patterns of speech modeled by the ALT.
