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Managing
In-service Training
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There are forty-six
prefectures and eleven jurisdictional municipalities specially designated by the central
government of Japan. In each of these administrative districts, a local education center
has been established where research and in- service teacher training courses are
conducted. These courses cover almost every field of school education imaginable:
curriculum development, student counseling, teaching methods, school administration, etc.
The author worked for two years as a researcher and supervisor (R&S) at one such
education center. In the English language section, there were three Japanese R&Ss
working full time, as well as two native-speaking English instructors. The R&Ss
developed teaching resources and took turns arranging and managing in-service training
courses for high school English language teachers. |
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The ultimate goal of in-service training was to
ensure quality language instruction for the future. Each course concentrated on the
following goals:
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1. To strengthen English language skills and to
provide intellectual stimulation outside the professional area of teaching English.
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2. To acquaint teachers with the most recent
developments in English teaching methodology, pedagogical skills, classroom resources, and
career development materials.
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It was inevitable that some of the courses were
oriented more towards one of these two goals than towards the other. The orientation
depended upon the nature of each course.
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Most of the courses consisted of six to eight
units. (See table 1 for a sample
seven-unit course.) Each unit was given on afternoons of the same day of each week
consecutively. One intensive course was given during the spring vacation. This was a
five-day course, which started at 9:30 in the morning and ended at 5:00. It was open to
both senior and junior high school teachers and was so popular that some teachers had to
be put on a waiting list in order to be admitted.
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The number of teachers participating in each
course varied from 40 to 60. The contents of each course fell into two categories:
language lab sessions and lecture/presentation sessions.
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The aim of the language lab was two-fold: to
strengthen the teachers' language skills; and to provide intellectual stimulation through
language lab work. These sessions were conducted by one of the two native English-speaking
instructors. Materials used in these sessions were original and based upon videos with
"closed captions." This video format was originally intended for use by the
hearing-impaired, but it is becoming widely used now to help people with limited English
proficiency enjoy movies in English. Some TV programs in North America use closed captions
and many video movies have this option.
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This is how the system works: when you play the
video on an ordinary video cassette recorder (VCR), you can get the picture, speech, and
sound as you would on any video movie. However, when you have what is called a
"caption decoder" plugged in between the VCR and the monitor, there appear
captions that are synchronized with speech. In the lab sessions, the video was edited so
that it would be arranged into several highlighted parts, the number of which would be
equal to that of the total number of days the course was to be given. Each highlighted
section was shown daily in the same order as in the movie. The video movie was dealt with
in a three-fold process, by which participants' interests were stimulated through
pre-viewing, task-viewing, and post-viewing activities.
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Pre-viewing. Participants watched
the selected portion of the movie without captions to grasp the general idea.
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Task-viewing. A handout was
distributed listing words, phrases, and expressions. Many of these vocabulary items were
too culture- bound for Japanese to adequately understand without explanations by someone
brought up in an English-speaking environment. This process was often followed by
participants' questions. In the handout, there was also a number of context questions
relating to the video segment. Participants were asked to look for the answers to these
questions the next time they viewed the video. These context questions were of two general
types: True/False, or Wh- questions. The questions were sequenced so that when you
discovered the right answer(s), you could very easily follow the plot. Participants then
watched the video again, this time with the captions appearing on the monitor. Finally,
the native speaker instructor called upon the participants one after another and asked for
the answer to each question. The questions that elicited opinions resulted in much
discussion about society, culture, history, word usage, grammar, etc. These discussions
were so animated that time limits were often of no avail.
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Post-viewing. The participants
enjoyed watching the video a final time, now with more confidence and enthusiasm.
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Lecture/presentation sessions
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These sessions provided the participants with
recent developments in teaching methodology, pedagogical skills, and classroom resources.
A different theme was put forward for each course with lectures, discussions,
presentations and workshops involving participants, R&Ss, and native-speaking English
language instructors. Some sample themes were:
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- how a Japanese teacher of English and an assistant English teacher whose mother tongue
is English could more effectively team-teach;
- how students' reading skills could be improved;
- how communicative competence in English could be improved;
- how game activities, as a vehicle for practicing language targets, could be integrated
into a planned curriculum;
- how a grammar-translation classroom could best be transformed into a more communicative
setting.
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Each course put stress upon systematic analysis
of actual practices in relationship to important theories in language learning and
teaching. Usually lecturer(s) and presenter(s) were invited to the course and an
honorarium was paid from the course budget. The lecturer was someone with profound
theoretical knowledge on a particular theme, or someone who had undertaken academic study
and analysis and could discuss the recent approach(es) to language learning. Usually this
lecturer was from a university or college. Since there are three teachers' colleges and
several universities with pre-service teacher training programs in the immediate area, it
was not difficult to find highly qualified people. Lecturers, especially from teachers'
colleges, were pleased to enjoy a reunion with some of their former students; and some of
these lecturers were well-known across the nation. When it was announced beforehand that a
prominent person would lecture for the course, the number of applicants usually increased.
Lecturers were chosen regardless of whether their mother tongue was Japanese or English.
Attracting a large number of participants was our top priority, so we carefully chose whom
to invite for the chosen theme.
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Some presenters were prominent teachers at local
high schools who had successfully put theory into practice in the area of the theme we had
chosen. Some of these people were at first hesitant to make a presentation, but when they
completed their talk, they expressed gratitude to us because they had the opportunity to
look back and analyze their own classroom teaching in an affirmative manner. The result
was that they become more confident and creative- important elements of quality teaching.
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Listening to invited teachers from local high
schools, participants felt encouraged to look at their own teaching practices from a new
perspective. As a result, they were given added impetus to become more effective. If we
had invited only lecturers/presenters from a university or college, some participants
might have been dissatisfied. In Japanese, there is a saying which states, "That's a
nice drawing of a rice cake." Applied to their work, this means that something may
appear good in theory, but could be useless in practice. Both theory and practice are
necessary if one is to improve his/her professional expertise.
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After the day's session came to an end, many
participants invited the guest lecturers or presenters to a nearby coffee house to thank
them for the time, thought and energy expended in preparing the sessions, and to carry on
our discussion of teaching in an informal manner. The R&Ss joined these informal
get-togethers, and also exchanged ideas and opinions. Usually at the end of the last day
of a course, the participants, native English-speaking instructors, and R&Ss threw a
party at a restaurant. This provided an opportunity to exchange various impressions and
opinions about the course.
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As R&Ss, our role in the course was
two-fold: course design, and lecturing.
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Course design. R&Ss took turns
being in charge of a course. When the period and the number of units for the course had
been decided on, we discussed the course contents. For example, we talked about what video
movie would be chosen, and what theme put forward. In choosing the video, preference was
given to those that enjoyed popularity with people of all age groups, and those that
featured social and/or cultural issues of current interest. Some videos used were Roman
Holiday, Dances with Wolves, Lawrence of Arabia, The Sound of Music, AFiddler on the Roof,
and Driving Miss Daisy . There were dozens of videos to choose from, all of which
had been purchased in North America. Since one of the native English-speaking instructors
was in charge of the video sessions, his opinions about which video(s) to use were
seriously listened to.
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The R&S in charge of the course then edited
the movie for each unit. Worksheet preparation was the responsibility of the
instructor(s), who chose the words, phrases, expressions and context- questions to be
listed for each unit. Quite often instructors collected some materials for the discussion
of cultural and/or social issues relating to the video session.
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Deciding on the theme for the
lecture/presentation sessions was as difficult as selecting the video. We had to consider
who would be best qualified to talk on that theme-a person from a university/college, or a
person from high school. We tried to have information on local teachers and their
specialty area(s). In order to do this, we made extensive use of journals and publications
available at the library, and we attended a number of academic meetings in the field of
English education.
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Lecture/presentation. Lectures were given
by R&Ss as well as by specially invited people from outside. The purpose of these
R&S lecture sessions was to bridge the gap between theoretical study/analysis by the
university/college specialist and the classroom teaching experiences presented by the high
school teachers. Sometimes classroom teaching experiences were examined and discussed
through the use of videos not manufactured for commercial use but in-house productions
that showed actual classroom participation and teaching. These self-made videos were taped
at high schools either by the teacher who showed them, or by one of the R&Ss.
Watching, analyzing and then discussing this kind of video was one of the most intriguing
and useful of all course activities. It was also a lot of fun. This was partly due to the
fact that the teacher in the video was a fellow teacher of the participants. The behavior
in the video was similar to what participants actually did in class. Furthermore, by
watching these videos, participants became aware of practical teaching situations in other
schools (i.e. level of the students, discipline, motivation), and in particular what kind
of teaching was being successfully implemented in other class settings. Participants were
open-minded enough to engage in this self- examination, and allow others to
"video-analyze" their teaching so that all could later benefit.
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Our greatest concern was to bring a large number
of participants into the training program. While we hoped to have 40 to 60 participants,
the actual number was often much lower (except for the intensive course). If the number of
participants remained low, and if there were no indication of any increase, there was a
real possibility of a budget cut that would have limited course contents or forced a cut
in personnel. Fortunately, enough teachers did sign up for each course.
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We conducted a survey at the end of each course
in order to ascertain why this was happening. The reason given most often was that
teachers were simply too busy with daily school work: marking and grading papers,
mimeographing materials (handouts, test-papers, announcements), attending staff and
committee meetings of one kind or another, dealing with student disciplinary problems, and
managing/coaching sports teams. Regarding the last-mentioned "chore," teachers
in Japan are expected to be responsible for extracurricular activities, which sometimes
means they must be at school, well beyond their regular work hours-including weekends.
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Another reason for lower attendance was that
many teachers now have opportunities to attend intensive language courses outside Japan
during vacation time; more and more teachers seem to be participating in such summer-time
study courses. An advantage to studying outside Japan is that they can concentrate on
their coursework without having to be distracted by school activities. Overseas seminars
and intensive courses also provide participants an opportunity to engage in a number of
extracurricular activities designed to give the participants time to both relax and
reflect on their studies.
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The third reason given for lower attendance was
that there is now more opportunity in Japan, for teachers to not only talk to native
English speakers but also discuss with them matters of mutual professional concern. The
introduction of a new national program in 1987 has afforded English language high school
teachers in Japan with many more opportunities to actually work with and jointly plan and
implement classroom teaching with native-speaker instructors. More high schools in Japan
have access to these Assistant English Teachers (AETs). As a result, it appears that many
Japanese English language teachers no longer feel the urgency of studying at our center as
they once did.
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The only apparent way to attract more
participants to the course is to offer programs that provide unique perspectives on
language learning and teaching. Here are two proposals for courses that meet this
objective:
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English education in the Japanese context.
If English education is considered in the context of language learning in Japan, valuable
insights can be gained regarding the particular needs of Japanese learners. Very few of
the intensive English courses for teachers abroad focus exclusively on English education
in Japan. Some teachers commented that such courses offer little if anything new or
worthwhile because they do not take into account practical considerations here in Japan.
Courses offered at the education center should focus on the problems that arise in the
classroom setting in Japan.
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An introduction to computer-assisted
instruction (CAI): Although CAI is still in the developmental stage there is
little doubt that it will play an important role in education. These days more and more
high schools have computer capability and have been provided with the means to link into a
local area computer network system. The problem still remains that there are not enough
teachers who have sufficient information on how to effectively use this hardware; nor do
enough teachers know about available software to assist their students. In fact, although
many schools have an abundance of machinery and/or software, they are far from effectively
utilized.
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On the other hand, there is a growing number of
teachers who recognize the need to incorporate more CAI into their teaching and their
students' learning. There are many computer-education study groups across Japan; and in
many cases, teachers are creating original software to bolster the effectiveness of
language programs.
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Yoshio
Okita teaches in the Pre-service Teacher Education course,Kwansei Gaukuin
University |
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table 1
A sample schedule of an in-service
teachers' training course
Unit
Date |
Language Lab Session
Time (Location) |
Lecture/Presentation Session
Time (Location) |
Unit 1
Sep 30 |
Orientation* & Language Lab (Video part #1)
14:00-15:45
(Language Lab) |
Lecture*
16:00-17:00
(Room #101) |
Unit 2
Oct 7 |
Language Lab
(Video part #2)
14:00-15:30 (Language Lab) |
Lecture/Presentation*
15:45-17:00
(Room #101) |
Unit 3
Oct 14 |
Language Lab
(Video part #3)
14:00-15:30
(Language Lab) |
Lecture**
15:45-17:00
(Room #102) |
Unit 4
Oct 21 |
Language Lab
(Video part #4)
14:00-15:30
(Language Lab) |
Presentation***
15:45-17:00
(Room #101) |
Unit 5
Oct 28 |
Language Lab
(Video part #5)
14:00-15:30
(Language Lab) |
Lecture/Presentation*
15:45-17:00
(Room #103) |
Unit 6
Nov 4 |
Language Lab
(Video part #6)
14:00-15:30
(Language Lab) |
Presentation***
15:45-17:00
(Room #101) |
Unit 7
Nov 11 |
Language Lab
(Video part #7)
14:00-15:30
(Language Lab) |
Lecture/Presentation*
15:45-17:00
(Room #102) |
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| Note: session with |
* |
is by a researcher & supervisor |
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is by a college or university professor |
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is by a school teacher |
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