Month: September 2019

Professional Development Weekend – Hosted by MY English School – Featuring Michael Griffin

MY English School is hosting a two-day professional development weekend with featured guest Michael Griffin on October 18-19. Both days of the event are free and open to the public.

Anyone wishing to stay overnight at the hotel and onsen is welcome to join us for the opportunity to interact with the presenter and other attendees in a more relaxed setting. The deadline for a hotel & dinner banquet reservation is October 11. Please contact Chris Saunders regarding reservations and details.

Event Speaker: Michael Griffin

Session Topics:

  • Practicing Reflection
  • (Re)considering “bad teaching practices”
  • Behavioral Economics

When :

Friday, October 18th, 2pm – 5pm

  • Behavioral Economics

Saturday, October 19th, 10am – 5pm

  • (Re)considering “bad teaching practices
  • Practicing Reflection.

Where: Zao Onsen, Forest Inn Sangoro
〒990-0017 Yamagata, Kamihozawa, 不動上国有林28
https://goo.gl/maps/e2oQxusYiM7HdcrRA

Driving Directions:

https://goo.gl/maps/bn65uD156ZpvJnkdA

Contact or questions: Chris Saunders
saunders@myeigo.com

Event Theme: Professional Development

Admission: Free for everyone

Overnight Cost: 10,000 yen, including: Nomihoudai Dinner, Breakfast, Hotel room.

Abstracts:

Practicing Reflection: Reflective Practice is something of a buzzword in ELT. “What does it mean, and how do we do it?” are two very reasonable questions. Reflective Practice seems to mean different things to different people, though most agree it’s important and useful. In this interactive session, we will broadly define the term and think about what it means to us before diving into activities that will offer hands-on practice reflecting. Through this practice participants will find ways to include reflection as a pillar of their own teaching. This session will offer guidance, tips, questions to consider, feedback, and strategies for becoming a (more) reflective practitioner. There will also be a great deal of practice.  Through practicing reflection in a guided way and learning strategies and techniques for further reflection, participants will become more comfortable and skillful reflecting on their own in their regular work.

(Re)considering “bad teaching practices: There is no shortage of received wisdom about what the “bad” teaching practices are in EFL. Training courses, conferences, workshops, and colleagues are common sources to learn what’s “bad” and should thus be avoided. Chances to step back and consider why this is so are not as common. Many teachers internalize the “rules” about these “bad” practices but don’t examine specific cases and contexts were these practices might not be so bad. In this interactive workshop, participants will be asked to consider the potential positives of widely-known and negatively-viewed teaching practices. Ideas and assumptions about what constitutes “bad” teaching will be challenged, and participants can expect to walk away with a clearer idea of their own beliefs on common and commonly mentioned practices.

Behavioral Economics: Are there things Kahneman, Thaler, Harford, and Levitt can teach us about English language teaching that Thornbury, Nation, Graves, and Ur cannot? What can insights can behavioral economics provide to English teachers?  In this interactive workshop, the world of Behavioral Economics will be connected to the world of English Language Teaching. Prominent and accessible theories from the field of Behavioral Economics, like the endowment effect, sunk-cost fallacy, endowment theory, and loss aversion, will be applied to English teaching. Questions about how such theories can be applied will be raised and considered. Participants can expect to walk away with insights from Behavioral Economics and new ways of framing and attempting to work through challenges they encounter in the world of English language teaching.

About the speaker:

Michael Griffin has been involved with English teaching for 20 years. He has worked as a teacher, teacher trainer, trainer-trainer, curriculum developer, substitute teacher, assistant director, and mentor. Intercultural awareness, world Englishes, curriculum development, alternative ways of teacher development, and reflective practice are some of his main interests. Currently, Michael works online with the New School’s MATESOL program and for World Learning on American English E-Teacher courses sponsored by the US Department of State.  He blogs at http://eltrantsreviewsreflections.wordpress.com.

Hotel Website:

http://www.sangoro.co.jp/index.html/

Photos of the hotel and venue:

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The importance of igloos

When we teach phonics, the main goal is to get students reading faster and more independently. Every phonics sound is paired with a keyword as a mnemonic device. Kids remember the sound “i” a lot better because it is paired with “igloo.”

But why “igloo”? In other phonics books, I see a lot of other “i” words – insect, ink, or sometimes iguana. Using “igloo” is not too common outside the Finding Out textbook series. “Igloo” seems like a silly choice of a word because there are not many contexts in which we can talk about igloos meaningfully. “Cats” and “dogs” are much easier to bring into conversation. So why “igloo”?

I was not inside David Paul’s head when he made the keyword choices while writing the Finding Out 1 textbook. This year, however, I stumbled onto a couple hints that make me think “igloo” is a very carefully chosen word.

At our last training day, Ryan, MY’s owner, talked briefly about pronunciation. One of the examples he offered was the difference between the English sound “n” and the Japanese “ん,” which could be pronounced “n,” “m,” or “ng,” depending on the Japanese word. It’s an odd Japanese character in that its pronunciation varies from word to word, and so distinguishing “n,” “m,” and “ng” is especially challenging for Japanese students.

There is no “n” in igloo. But here is the weird thing I noticed this year: Japanese students often mispronounce “igloo” as if it did. Somewhere around a quarter of my first-year elementary students say, even upon an initial correction, “ingloo.” Listen to my first-year student say, “ingloo.” (Jump to the 3:00 mark in the video.) I start to correct her, and she she still says, “ingaloo.” Even when this student finally gets rid of the “ng,” she holds onto a third syllable: “i-ga-loo.” The extra syllable is common for many Japanese students in many words, but “ng” in “igloo”?

Why students hear “igloo” as “ingloo,” introducing the “ng” sound in place of the glottal stop “g,” is curious. Japanese does not have a glottal stop consonant sound. My guess is that Japanese kids often add the “ng” because that is what they hear. There is no “n” in “igloo,” but there is also no glottal “g” in Japanese. Some Japanese students don’t hear the glottal stop, and so their brains substitute a more familiar sound instead. The “g” gets blurred into “ん” for these students. Weird, right?

In the past, I noticed students often mispronouncing “igloo,” but I usually didn’t fight them about pronuciation too much. As long as students are getting the “i” sound, that’s what’s important, right? So what if the rest of the word is a bit off? I’m not so sure anymore, and I am taking extra time this year to correct the “ingloo” mispronuncation with my first-year elementary students. Here is my theory:

When we teach phonics, many spelling problems later on start from pronunciation problems in the earlier stages.

If my theory right, “ingloo” is actually a big warning sign that this student may struggle with spelling and pronunciation for many years after. If I help the student hear the correct English “g” sound now, can I help the student avoid some of these problems in the future? That’s my hope.

So, yes, the “i” sound is the primary phonics target, but the phonics keywords are chosen with other goals in mind, too. Students also need to start hearing English glottal stops. They need to develop correct pronunciation for sounds and words that are easily misheard and mispronounced by Japanese speakers. David Paul’s choices of keywords in Finding Out are not random. They are intentionally chosen to challenge Japanese speakers with sounds they don’t normally encounter in their native language.

“Igloo” is something new I learned this year. “Igloo” is important. What are some of the other “igloos” among the Finding Out vocabulary?

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