The Tokyo Nakasendo Conference 2011 - The Road Less Traveled Bill Mboutsiadis University of Toronto, Canada/Meisei University, Tokyo, Japan Bill Mboutsiadis, M.A.TESOL candidate (TC Columbia), is from Toronto, Canada. He has worked in Slovakia, Greece, and Germany, and presented and taught in the Philippines. He has been an English language instructor at the University of Toronto since 1996. Bill is currently teaching at Meisei University, Tokyo, in an exchange agreement with the University of Toronto, and is chair of CALL at Meisei. He is also a TESL Ontario high school certified educator. Email: bill.mboutsiadis@utoronto.ca
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akasendo is a small-scale co-operative conference that is put together each year in Tokyo by several different local teachers’ groups and associations. Involving ‘new’ groups of professionals like Filipino teachers of English and teachers of children, as well as different special interest groups from larger organisations like JALT, the Nakasendo conference has an appealing “we-are-all-creating-this-conference-together” feeling that is quite distinct from larger more commercially oriented conferences. The “Road Not Taken” - obviously borrowed from the famous poem by Robert Frost - was the theme of the 2011 Nakasendo conference, and the aim was to spotlight new trends, approaches, explorations and reflections on the changing dynamic of our English Language Teaching (ELT) field. Some of the changes in the Japanese ELT scene that were addressed at the conference include: the Internet in its so-called original and Web 2.0 forms, the introduction of mandatory L2 English instruction into the Japanese elementary school curricula from April 2011, and the introduction of English as a corporate language within companies engaged in business over a number of Japanese industries and markets. The two main speakers spoke to the conference theme of roads less traveled. The first featured speaker was Steven Herder, Doshisha Women’s College of Liberal Arts, who reflected on his own teacher’s journey. Herder began by looking at the many different factors that shape a teacher’s identity - education, experience, context, peers, ongoing professional development and self-perceptions - and explored how our professional identities ultimately undergo many
twists and turns. The roads Herder had traveled since coming to Japan in 1989 had influenced his beliefs as a teacher: first he had a long uphill climb from teaching private lessons exclusively for the first few years, then he taught solo in elementary, junior and senior high school contexts, and, among them, had many different teaching assignments that gave him endless opportunities to learn and grow. His current level of self-confidence, his sense of legitimacy as a professional EFL teacher-researcher and the increasing motivation to learn more had all been shaped, Steven explained, by three main paths that he had chosen to take: defining his beliefs, using collaboration for professional development and choosing a niche in ELT. Herder hoped that other teachers might recognize the value of reflecting over their own career paths to better understand where they now stand in their own teaching journey, and to consider what could lie ahead for them in the further choices that they will make. The other main speaker of the day was Dr. Makiko Tanaka of Kanda University of International Studies. In contrast to Herder, Tanaka focused on the old, current and new roads in Japan’s elementary education landscape. This was a timely focus as compulsory elementary school English education started in this April 2011 academic year for 5th and 6th grade school students. According to Tanaka, this is the Japanese government’s first attempt in history to officially incorporate English into the core curriculum, although English is not going to be taught as a regular subject. After presenting a brief history of teaching English to children in Japan along with recent innovations and changes, the speaker
discussed how well-positioned education in Japan now is to enact compulsory L2 English teaching in elementary schools, and finally what needs to be improved in order for the stated intentions of the Ministry of Education to be met. This discussion provided clear details of what was happening at the elementary school level and what will happen in 2013 at the high school level. There is some confusion among educators about how to implement the new policies. The Japanese Education Ministry has not provided any implementation guidelines, standard language outcomes or teacher training outlines with their policy directives. In their place, the implementation has been left to university scholars in education to now come up with a plan that includes training and standards for English teachers and learner outcomes within certain standard language benchmarks. Currently, there is some movement occurring at this level but it will take time to have any effect, so Tanaka concluded by focusing on the pressing need for improved pre-service and in-service training to help teachers with the changes that are already being required of them. Later in the day, a 5-member forum (of which I was part) entitled Language policy in Japan: shifting paradigms summarized past language education trends and current policy initiatives, as well as presented recent research by Japanese scholars on the new education policy. One controversial policy mandate is the use English as a medium of instruction in all English language classes at the high school level by 2013. This has caused a lot of nervous concern among Japanese teachers of English. Among different recommendations that have been made to help implement the mandate is the development of 74 precise teaching competency descriptors based on a CEFR format for both pre-service and in-service training. This approach also includes teacher self-assessments and calls for integrating the Common European Framework's European Portfolio for Student Teachers of Languages (EPOSTL) into the Japanese foreign language education context. Other policy recommendations include adapting the Classroom Language Assessment Benchmark (CLAB) to the Japanese foreign language instruction context to help to improve the classroom language proficiency of ‘non-native’ teachers of English. The CLAB utilizes a battery of criterion-referenced writing and speaking tests to assess potential teachers’ linguistic abilities as well as observations to assess their use of classroom language. Using CLAB may
offer a useful approach for raising trainees’ awareness of their classroom English and for helping them to strive for improved classroom language proficiency and practice, but it has also been strongly suggested that CLAB should be used not as a tool for their qualification assessment but as a tool for professional development. If teachers are to take such a road, then they may well benefit from reflecting on their own personal language learning. Serendipitously, such reflection formed a major part of the JALT Learner Development SIG roundtable, Personal Language Learning for Teachers and Learners. This session was unique in its presentation structure. The room was made open-access with five simultaneous displays, which participants could visit and discuss. As part of this interactive process, forum participants were asked to reflect upon and talk about their own L2 learning experiences in a similar way to how many language instructors ask their learners to exchange ways for improving their personal language learning. Participants and audience members also considered how these experiences helped them understand the learning processes of their students and how, in turn, these experiences informed their views on classroom practices, language learning theories, and new research. The five display areas each had unique features, but were all connected through the underlying theme of reflection by learners and educators. Andy Barfield’s display of re-constructing his own and his learners’ vocabulary learning histories (VLHs), together with contrasting learner reflections on their vocabulary development and use, made us aware of the diversity of students’ learning and using experiences. Mike Mondejar’s display explored the creative use of student self-drawn comics as a means for self-reflection on language learning and development. Colin Rundle looked at how his own experiences of learning German, Indonesian and Japanese contrasted with his interpretations of his students’ learning of English. Colin analyzed the differences between his early informed notions of structured ‘methods’ and individual cognitions, and his current understanding of sociolinguistic concepts of identity and community. Stacey Vye presented on her 10-year experiences of using LLHs in class. She enthusiastically explained how students have gained clarity for future learning goals, developed a connection to their teachers’ LLH when it is shared, and experienced a shift of control in the learning process from instructor to learner. Finally I looked at digital storytelling as a
motivational and creative means for learners to go into their language learning experiences and contact history with English. The structure of the Learner Development SIG forum avoided creating a single focus on one person or panel but at the same time involved much more than simply a room with posters. It was highly engaging and interactive. After circulating and actively discussing in random pairings, we later got into small groups with people we hadn’t spoken to and had discussions about issues from the various displays and our own language learning histories. At the very end, we all wrote our own reflections on the forum so that these could be later shared with each other by email and on blogs. Looking at the conference in total, I had originally only intended to participate in the poster session on my own individual presentation theme of ‘kamishibai’ (traditional Japanese storytelling) for cross-cultural learning and narrative skill development. However, the road to the conference took me to different places. My Teachers College Columbia University 5-member research team’s conference proposal on Japanese language policy was accepted for an 80-minute forum. Then later, I was included in a different 3-member presentation on digital storytelling, as well as invited to take part in the Learner Development SIG forum. This led to a road I had never taken before: five presentations in one day! By the end of the conference I had literally lost my voice. It took me a good few days to regain speech, and there was a lot of extensive reading in my classes that next week, too …