Bedtime Reading

I promise I will soon get to the huge backlog of pictures and stories I have from the winter holidays, but here's something to fill up the time in between.  I volunteered to write an article for an English teachers' newsletter in Ishikawa, and this is what I came up with.  I'm fairly happy with it, although I think that some of it is a bit too general and a stretch in terms of my examples.  Enjoy!

The Importance of Surprise, Discomfort, and Creativity

Creighton Hofeditz

In many ways, a foreign ALT in a Japanese junior high school is an agent of the unexpected, and I believe that role should be developed and expanded as much as possible. Not only does it provide a dynamic and fun school environment, helping Japanese students become comfortable and unafraid of creativity in the face of the unexpected is key to a more complete mastery of English.

The first and most obvious reaction to my presence in school was and continues to be surprise. Even now, after five months of seeing me most weekdays, students will sometimes literally jump back and yell in alarm when I come around a corner. I hear “Whoa! Creighton!” as often as I hear “Hello, Creighton”. Even something as small as the way I laugh elicits giggling and mimicking and a certain amount of curiosity. I think much of my power and influence as an educator in Japan comes from this dynamic, so in some ways I hope my students never become completely accustomed to me. Where possible, I've begun to try to push them to be more creative and present them with more surprising and perhaps uncomfortable situations.

Teaching English in junior high school is different than teaching it by immersion to young children; there are long lists of vocabulary and new grammar points almost every day, so a part of the class involves recitation and repetition. However, communicating in a language in a real-life environment involves consistently unpredictable prompting. Using an example from the New Horizon textbook, students learn to give directions using a few set phrases. However, in practical use, they might have to direct someone “through the roundabout” or “under the bridge after the fork in the road”. While this is more advanced, idiomatic speech that the students would not learn until perhaps high school or beyond, I think it is important to encourage them to adapt grammar points to their specific situation.

In Japanese junior high schools, as in many schools I have experienced, the students do not want to be wrong. There is a lot of pressure to know the right answer and have it ready at any point. Of course, the problem is that with language there are often many right answers. In one class, I was asked to prepare something for the sentence structure of “I don't know...” so I prepared a bit of a trick question. In front of the class my JTE, Ms. Yonemura, asked me what I did for my Silver Week holidays. I told her, then asked the students to share what they did on their Silver Week holidays with their desk partners. After a minute or so, I stopped them and then asked one boy what Ms. Yonemura did for the holidays. There was a small ripple of surprise and stifled laughter through the room as he stuttered and looked confused and a little afraid. I prompted him with “Do you know?”, and when he said he didn't, I explained to the class that it's alright to not know the answer, and that sometimes it's important to know how to say things like “I don't know what Ms. Yonemura did.” I think the practical example, and perhaps the rush of the initial discomfort, helped the class invest more in the lesson.

In a class focusing on comparatives and superlatives, I borrowed a lesson plan shared online where the students are directed to draw an original superhero. After completing their drawing and giving their superhero some statistics like height and age, the lesson called for them to compare their superheros with those of their partners. This was one of the first lessons I did as an ALT, and I went into class bursting with enthusiasm and high expectations for what I thought was a great lesson plan. While I believe my students understood the lesson in the end, it wasn't as immediate a success as I hoped. It took a long time for the class to comprehend the idea that they were supposed to be original and not copy something on the board or draw a superhero they knew from TV or comic books, and even after they got that point they were for the most part slow and tentative in their drawings, erasing frequently. I tried to stress that there was no wrong answer, and as the class continued more and more students became interested in drawing elaborate superheros. The payoff came when a few students used comparative sentences using words other than taller/shorter and older/younger. They asked me about new ways to describe their increasingly realized drawings, and I showed them to the rest of the class as good examples. I think their greater investment in something they created helped those students learn the grammar more deeply. At the same time, that class showed me how difficult it can be to demand creativity on the spot.

Outside of the classroom is another great place to help students to be creative with their English. If I ask someone what they are going to do during the coming weekend, I always try to ask follow up questions to expand on “I am going to study English/play soccer, etc.” They often grin and fumble for words or ask their friends, but usually come up with an answer; it's my impression that interactions like these help cement the grammar and make them understand the meaning of what they say more fully. Another important and common exchange I try to alter is the response to “How are you?” I noticed that Japanese students usually answer “I'm fine, thank you, and you?” in a sing-song recitative tone. I began to ask them to say something different, offering alternatives to “fine” like “hungry”, “happy”, and “sleepy”. After just a few days of focusing on this when I chatted with students during cleaning time, they began to respond with an original phrase without prompting. Importantly, the intonation shifted. They were saying something they felt, not just something they knew they had to repeat.

I believe a crucial part of this philosophy is consistency; I am still learning better ways to coax creativity and risk-taking from my students, but I want them to expect the unexpected from me every day. Learning doesn't become solidified until it is tested in a practical way, and as an ALT I feel I have a unique opportunity to not allow the students at my schools to be lazy about maintaining their English. It is not always the easiest task to accomplish, but I have seen the results both in class and in the hallway, both in English level and in the more intangible skill of becoming comfortable approaching an unknown situation. I'm quite sure that not all of them appreciate the extra challenge when I ask them to step outside of their normal routine, but I am sure it will help them at some point in life, even if they choose not to pursue English any further than strictly necessary.

This approach makes my day a lot more interesting too. There is nothing quite like seeing a loud, tough-guy boy raise his eyebrows in alarm, become silent, and try to focus on cleaning when he sees that the strange, mysterious creature who teaches him English is going to ask him how his day is going.