Reflection on Experiential Module

A surprising process

My experiential module (EM) has been a very surprising process, even though the outcome captures exactly what I intended, and happily, even more. While working on my EM, I was excited, frustrated, elated, stimulated, pessimistic, and back to optimistic, all emotions that go with teaching and learning, I suppose. In this reflection, I will share how this EM has impacted me, my teaching practice, my ability to make decisions about my practice, and my participation in professional communities.

My EM project is a blog website aimed at Japanese-as-foreign language teachers who want to explore non-traditional teaching and learning approaches. For the time being, I am using the term “comprehensible input approaches” to signal a mindset that prioritizes acquisition over learning and as a nod to the CI community at large, of which I am a member. My blog website has the following menu categories which represent my priorities as a teacher. My advisor had me inventory my teaching files and helped me identify categories. Looking at the menus on my website reminds me of my values:

· to blog as a reflection on my practices

· to carefully select high-leverage language to target, but not overload

· to select a variety of stimulating input and deliver it comprehensibly

· to always keep learner needs foremost in my practice

· to probe the challenges and benefits of literacy in Japanese

· to use technology to access and interact with the language, other users of the language

Having my priorities lined up in front of me on a website is satisfying and empowering. Although I came to the MAFLT program with many of these notions already having taken root, they were growing haphazardly in my practice. I am now aware of the relevant theories behind them and my work on my EM allowed me to prune and replant my teaching philosophy into a framework that I can articulate with self-assurance.

A continuous process

Knowing that my blog website with all my teaching and learning priorities is available for anyone to see means that I am committed to these ideas and can explain them. At the same time, it does not mean that I am “done.” To the contrary, this sense of confidence allows me to be even more curious about instructed second language acquisition, instead of just looking for the single best method of teaching. Now I know where to go and how to delve more deeply. I believe my EM project represents my emerging courage and continuing curiosity, two things that are necessary when making decisions in the classroom.

The thing about a blog website is that it is never finished. In fact, this is just the beginning.

I began my EM module with the plan to update and revise an out-of-print Japanese TPRS textbook using high-frequency words. My plan was to incorporate the understandings I had acquired in the MAFLT program and to create a new-and-improved curriculum, a static work blending tasks and TPRS with a backbone of high-frequency words. However, upon closer inspection of the frequency dictionary based on a corpus, I came to realize that my premise was problematic. First of all, TPRS stories are something that you co-create with your students. I could write stories specifically for others to use, but that is not the point of TPRS. Second, high frequency words, especially function words, are not the starting place for a curriculum; instead, they are the result of the language input hitting the sweet spot, the intersection of comprehension, interest, and repetition. Now, what I want to say about high frequency function words are that they are vitally important to a language, they contain the seeds of grammar, and they can only be acquired in context, which means we have to give the students as much comprehensible input with them as possible.

This realization struck me midway through my EM project, which meant I had to adjust my plan. I was keen to execute a project that would incorporate my particular areas of interest. Still focusing on high-frequency words, I decided to make a generic multiple-choice assessment tool for teachers to use to see if their students were acquiring high-frequency function words. I made a mini pilot test and used it on some of my students (using the skills I had acquired in the Assessment class). But my advisor was not enthusiastic about my abrupt change of plans so, I went back to the drawing board, where I remembered an article about blogging that we read in the spring Language Program Administration class. The article recommended that program leaders start a blog and described the process of starting one. The idea of writing appealed to me, but I am not a program leader so I assumed I had nothing to blog about. And then, as ideas do, one popped into my mind: instead of a static curriculum, why not present my ideas in a blog format? The more I thought about it, the more it made sense. I am so glad that my advisor held me to my original intention and encouraged me to dig deeper.

A reciprocal process

For my purposes, the blog format is the ultimate reflection process. Even if no one reads my blog, the chance that someone could compels me to sharpen my thoughts. Of course, though, I hope that people will read my blog or parts of it. I also hope that it will become a place for other curious and open-minded Japanese teachers to share and convene. I want to give blog space to others, too, and just be a hostess. Finally, I would like to use the site as a place to share student stories for Free Voluntary Reading, a public library. What began as a curriculum framework became a blog website framework with many more possibilities for growth. A few years ago, Dr. Krashen recommended that I start such a site a few years ago when the two of us shared a four-hour shuttle ride home from a conference. Finally, as I exit the MAFLT program, that time has come.