901 Write up

Report on First Week Feedback - Japanese Functional English Course

This report summarizes feedback received during the first week of the Japanese Functional English Course. The course is a 9-week program designed to equip engineering students with practical communication skills for an upcoming year abroad.

Student Feedback and Course Focus

Students expressed a desire to utilize authentic learning materials like jargon, jokes, idioms, and content from real-world sources such as lyrics, movies, and articles on serious topics like health, lifestyle, society, finance, environment, and design. Their primary focus was on improving fluency through increased exposure to input materials (reading and listening). Additionally, students found interruptions caused by classroom management to be disruptive to their learning.

Proposed Adjustments

Based on this feedback, the instructor proposes to introduce project-based learning that incorporates the "serious" content students requested. This approach aims to increase engagement and provide a more authentic learning experience. The instructor plans to minimize interruptions by allowing minor inattentiveness while addressing disruptive behavior.  This will allow for a smoother learning experience.  The five required assessment areas will still be addressed. All five required assessment areas will still be covered throughout the course.

Course Background and Expectations

The Functional English course prioritizes practical communication skills for engineers, focusing on using English for tasks like information sharing, idea exchange, and collaboration, rather than formal grammar or vocabulary instruction. This program prepares students for a year-long program in a different cultural environment with a distinct teaching style. This includes experiencing a wider range of teaching styles, a shift in focus from form to content, and an emphasis on independent learning and self-evaluation, which is common practice in Western education systems.

It is important to note that most instructors in this program expect students to maintain orderly conduct, actively participate in class discussions, and take initiative in their learning.

900 Feedback notes

Feedback from first week

Japanese students 

• Wish for authentic materials (jargon, jokes, idioms, lyrics, movies). 
• Wish for 'serious' content i.e. health, lifestyle, society, finance, environment, design. 
• Want more input (reading, listening) rather than output. 
• Wish to increase fluency. 
• Wish less interruptions due to teacher stopping to silence/command attention from inattentive students.

Therefore teacher proposes

• Clearly give aims
• To introduce serious content via project work.
• Ignore inattention (yet will ask disruptive students to leave)
• Address the 5 assessment course requirement. 

Functional English 

• Is a 9 weeks course concentrating on usage of English in an Engineering context i.e. appropriate communication of ideas, information, cooperation, not formal grammar and vocabulary teaching. 
• Sets students up for a year in different culture classroom with different set of values, foci etc. E.g. teacher variation of teaching styles. 
• Content rather than form. 
• Research and initiate rather than being fed knowhow. 
• Also self, colleague, teacher and course evaluation is common in Western culture education system.
• Most teachers require 3 things: orderly conduct, responsive interaction, initiative.

899

I am listening to Harry Potter in Japanese, one chapter at a time, at normal speed. I hope to have completed the first two books of the series (only two have been narrated) before we visit Japan at the end of the year. 

For the first time, I notice that it is possible to gain the best meaning by concentrating only on kanji. It is possible to skip ahead and prepare to listen by missing out the hiragana in between.

898

It was interesting for me to read your corrections of Mei Keneko’s journal entry. Altogether, you made corrections in 18 different areas: style, verb form, clause use, preposition, vocabulary, articles, capitals, plurality, markers, adjectives, punctuation, clarification, word order, hyphenation, sentence, excess words, verb/object and spelling (Sachi).

Ema and Saran did something even more interesting. They changed the text completely to make it true for them. In other words, the boys corrected the text for grammar, but the girls corrected the text for meaning i.e. meaning as it relates to them.

Perhaps you have different-type brains!

897

Sometimes it may be difficult to know what to write in a journal. Here are some ideas. You could write about something you . . .

1. did
2. thought about
3. felt
4. remembered or were reminded of
5. were interested in
6. were puzzled by
7. enjoyed / didn't enjoy
8. dreaded
9. looked forward to
10. planned
11. were bored by
12. thought was weird
13. tried
14. sampled
15. ate
16. experienced (maybe for the first time)
17. were bored by
18. were critical of
19. were impressed by
20. became tired doing
21. learned
22. played
23. watched
24. (someone) you met
25. (somewhere) you went

Shogo April 17th

896

The seven Kanazawa students who arrived in Dunedin on Sunday were welcomed to Otago Polytechnic with a mihi this morning. I made sure to arrive before time, and with a book in my pocket to while away the minutes. (It had to be small to into my pocket.)

The book I chose was The Bodyguard by Robert Tine. The French translation. It’s been a while since I looked at the language.

I got a sense of the meaning of the first couple of pages. After finding the original – in English – on the Internet Archive, I was able to understand more.

895

At the hub, waiting to catch the next bus to Saint Clair, I discovered myself without a book to read. However, I had my Kindle. The only problem was that it had nothing new in English. So I opened Hare Pota (in Japanese). I started reading from a random position. 

To my surprise, I managed very well indeed. It seems that the intensive reading I’ve been doing – I’m over 3000 sentences – have paid off. From now on, now that I’ve found my feet, I must cover more ground. Rather than trawl through sentences I must steam ahead much more speedily.

894

 It's been a month since I posted, after having posted daily for the previous five months. What gives?

This past month I've continued doing Māori - so no problem there. I've continued to enjoy working through Hare Pota (I'm up to page 200). However, due mainly to uncertainty in the workplace regards mandatory vaccination, I've been somewhat distracted. My daily Māori practice has helped me to remain sane, but I do find that I only spend between twenty minutes to half an hour.

I have not wrapped up my six-month experiment with a final evaluation, but I won't push myself. I will continue to learn Māori, however. I'm happily addicted to that.

With this blog, I shall post without pressure, whenever I feel like it. It won't be once a day.

893

 If I'm honest, I must admit that it has lately become more difficult to remain enthusiastic and motivated about this project. It isn't that the project itself is failing to inspire me. Rather, it's the fact that it has become almost intolerable to live an ordinary, unvaccinated life.

892

Apropos of nothing much, I learned the other day that one difference between Māori and Cook Island Maori is that more, if not all, double vowel combinations are pronounced distinctly separate. The word 'koutou', for example, has four syllables ko-u-to-u.