Challenge #1: DVD Production Post-poned

Let's face it, this isn't the first challenge the project has faced, but it is very frustrating, hence the blog post. Everyday seems to confront us with one more challenge: the illustrator is busy or wants more money than we can offer, the internet isn't working, the power is cut, our printer changes his initial quotes, our design and layout editor falls sick, etc. etc.

But two days ago I got an SMS from our DVD director/producer saying she would have to push back the time line by 2 months. Apparently, not everything in India works based on personal relationships and contacts....we should have insisted on a signed contract at our last meeting. Now we are scrambling to find a new film production company that can do this project for us and we were supposed to start filming in two weeks.

On the upside, we have a bit more time to finalize our content and go to print with our materials. Although we need a few more illustrators and a logo we can all agree on.

AID India's English Action Research Team

Celebrating our grant award with an afternoon ice cream outing.
(Kirsten, Sumangali, Parvathy, Priya and
Sumangali's daughter front and center)

Stay Tuned!

New and improved: This blog is being revised and revamped to host the progress and developments of the "Ready to Read" Program. This reading program aims at providing primary-age students in Tamil Nadu's government schools tools to begin reading in English through a time-bound module.

More Coming Soon!

Finished!

Sadly this blog became defunct as I packed my bags and left Japan in 2007 to travel and then finish my MA studies on campus at the University of Birmingham from January-April of 2008. After completing the second half of my coursework on campus I returned to Portland, OR, my hometown to write my dissertation. I submitted my dissertation entitled "Identifying the Socio-Linguistic Gap: A Comparative Analysis of Young Learner English Textbooks from Tamil Nadu, India" at the end of August. One week later I was on a plane to Delhi as an AIF Service Corps Fellow placed to work with the English Action Research Team of Eureka Child an AID India education initiative in the state of Tamil Nadu.

I've been living and working in Chennai since September of 2008 and after an exciting turn of events I'll be staying until March of 2010. There is more to the story....stay tuned.

Lesson Reflection #3

A few weeks ago I decided to try a lesson directly out of the Syllabus & Materials module coursebook with my adult eikaiwa. It is a task-based lesson focused on written English. While the aim of the lesson is to get the students to predict the text and then share information about the text in order to create a more complete story, it turned into a different type of lesson because the students didn't really understand what they were doing and why. At the end of the lesson they said they would like to do something like this again because now they understand what the point of all the different steps is. It was a learning process for both of us.

Step 1: I wrote the title of the article up on the board and asked students to predict what the article was about:

'Excuse me, I've just jumped off the Empire State Building'

Step 2: I divided the class into two groups (3 students in each group) and gave each group key words from the article (jig-saw activity). Each group had a different list. With this list students were supposed to create a story based on these facts. Instead of trying to piece it together, they created wild stories that might be related to these hints.

List A Clues:

John Helms, a young artist - took a lift - awoke half an hour later - 85^th floor - gave up the idea - knocked on a window - I poured myself a stiff drink - families offered him a home for the holidays.

List B Clues:

Decided to kill himself - 86th floor - a 1,000 feet below - a two feet ledge - Bill Steckman, who was working there - Christmas was not such a bad time

Step 3: After solidifying their story (adding lots of their own creativity), they sent an ambassador to the other group to exchange stories. The problem with this step was that because their stories had become so wild and off the wall, it wasn't possible to pick out the real tid-bits to improve their own stories. Perhaps the clues just didn't provide enough information to make a coherent story without adding lots of other information. Maybe they should have been given more clues to connect!

Step 4: The ambassadors returned and retold the other stories. But again, this was only useful as a retelling excercise, they couldn't take the information to improve their story because they had all made up so much information that wasn't given in the clues.

Step 5: Each group presented their story and we discussed the liklihood of each. Not very likely considering one group had decided it was Santa's sleigh who had gotten stuck on the top of the Empire State Building.

Step 6: The finally got to read the article. At this point they were curious to read the article and they read it very quickly given they had been exposed to hints and some key words/ideas already. So the steps that came before were useful in getting them to read it quickly, instead of spending a long time trying to get through each word, which they often get caught up in.

Step 7: Discuss the story and compare it to their stories. They realized at this point that their stories were totally off. And it clued into them they each group had been given different clues that might have helped them create a story similar to the original but they had decided to take a creative route instead. So maybe if we try it again it will work differently. After the reading the discussion turned to topics like suicide and the holidays and cultural differences between the US and Japan.

Module 3

Well, it's official. Paper #3 has been submitted; mistakes, typos, and all! Well, hopefully there aren't too many of those, but I'm sure I missed something. But I think it's my best paper yet! Let's see what 'the grader' thinks!

The good news: I'm officially on academic hiatus until January! I'll continue the MA course on campus. Being a distance student has been interesting and challenging, the best part--the people I've met! Thanks guys! I couldn't have made it this far without you!!

Now...time to clean the apartment and start packing!

Birmingham, here I come!! Are you ready??

Kairyudo Publishing

In preparation for my next paper I've been doing some research on the Sunshine textbook from Kairyudo Publishing. Kairyudo has been publishing English textbooks for over 50 years, since just after WWII. The first English series was called Jack & Betty. I'd love to see a copy of it, to see how English texts have changed in 50 years. I contacted Kairyudo Publishing and they directed me to the Textbook Research Center in Tokyo. I will be in Tokyo next weekend, if it's open on Saturday maybe I'll try to check it out!


Everyone is quick to judge how horrible the textbooks are in JHS, but because I haven't seen anything better in use, and nothing more innovative in approach, I'm really very skeptical that a more innovative (i.e. learner-centered) style text/syllabus would work in a JHS 3phw (3 hours per week) context (Legislation by Hypothesis: The Case of Task-based Instruction by M. Swan, 2005 ).

The standard government textbooks are developed to meet the standards of MEXT, the organization responsible for the national educational curriculum. The English curriculum is supposed to Develop Japanese with English Abilities.