Class reflection

In the class, Jodi handed out the sheets whose title is “Do you speak American?” I tried to define the words and expressions, but I could answer only one expression. After class, I asked native speaker of English, and he says that even though he is native speaker he does not know all of them. I reconfirmed that there are varieties of English in America and in order to communicate fluently, I have to study more and more.
Mai introduced interesting video in her blog. I was very suprised when I watched the video first time. I am interested in how the guy acquire English in detail. He says that he learned from films, if this is true, I would like to learn how to do it from him!!!

Week 8 reading reflection

In the reading materials, there are questions that which is the better teacher, NESTs or NNESTs. According to the apple book, both groups have advantages and disadvantages. Then, the author concluded that the balance between NESTs and NNESTs is very important in order to complement each other in their strengths and weaknesses.
Therefore, organized collaboration, team teaching have become well researched area in recent years. The author says that team teaching initiative has been developed in Japan. That is called JET program (Japan Exchange and Teaching Program).
I worked in junior high school in Japan for one month as teaching practice. There are native speaker of English as JET program. As far as I observe the class, team teaching program was dysfunction. There are some reasons.
First, the native English speaker is not professional of teaching English. Those who graduate American university can be a teacher in JET program. In other words, JET program ignore the prior majors of teachers. Everyone who has a bachelor’s degree can be a teacher.
Second, NNEST don not know how to do team teaching. It is not rare for Japanese English teacher who can not communicate foreigner in English. They can not plan the class with foreigner. This is very ridiculous.
Even though most of the JET systems in Japan are dysfunction, Japanese government continues to pay 3000 dollar per month for each teachers of JET program.

Class reflection week 7

During class, we have learned how to use library systems from one of librarian of MSU. I think that instruction was very helpful for us when we make some researches and write some articles. I would like to make the most of the library systems from now on.

In the class, we focused on language learner characteristics. I am really exited about the activity which Rachel made. Even though I read the textbooks, I sometimes forgot the contents. That is extremely sad thing for me. I have to try to internalize the every content which I read. In the activity there was a question about motivation. There are two kinds of motivation. That is integrative motivation and instrumental motivation. The first type is a desire to be socially integrated in target culture. The second type is that an individual learns second language to attain a certain goal, for instance a job promotion. I came up with a question that which motivation is more effective? I could find the one of the answer by using Schumann’s acculturation model (learners will acquire the target language to the degree that they acculturate.) Based on Schumann’s theory, the integrative motivation is more effective than the instrumental motivation because the integrative motivation is much more acculturate rather than the instrumental motivation. However, Lukmani(1972) says that if someone with extraordinary high instrumental motivation may perform well than someone with integrative motivation. I reconfirmed that there is individual differences in second language acquisition.

WEEK 7 READINGS REVIW

According to the week 7 readings, we could learn that there are many reasons on individual differences in second language acquisition. This is because that the lack of clear definitions and methods for measuring individual characteristics and characteristics are not independent of one another complexly. Then, teachers’ objectives is to take learners’ individual differences into account and create a learning environment in which more learners can be successful in learning second language acquisition. In order to this, teachers have to know the characteristics of learners.
In the personality section (L and S), the author mention about inhibition that is a negative force for at least second language pronunciation performance. Some researcher studies about the effective of Alcohol in reducing inhibition. According to them, alcohol is effective to reduce inhibition. I really try this method. However they also mention that when larger doses of alcohol were administrated, pronunciation rapidly deteriorated. In other word, too much drinking is too bad!!! I have to consider that point!