In this issue:

CUE AT PANSIG 2019

TWO FEATURE
ARTICLESCUE CAREERS

CUE CIRCULARISSUE 8JUNE

2019News and articles from the JALT College and University Educators Special Interest Group

University of Niigata Prefecture, Niigata City. (The venue for PanSIG 2020)

Photo by Melodie Cook

Summer is coming…
Welcome to our eighth issue, coming out just after this year’s PanSIG conference. We’representing a shorter format from this issue, with two rather than three feature articles,
and the regular CUE Careers column. First up is a highly applicable and practical article
from Bill Pellowe, overflowing with ideas that you might be able to start using in classright away. Adam Smith’s article is a thoughtful insight into students’ experiences,drawing on a lot of one-on-one time with students in a writing center. The CUE Careerscolumn delves into professionalism and professional ethics.
As you read, please consider writing an article of your own for CUE Circular! Everyone
has some idea, insight, or advice that others will benefit from reading.
Please enjoy this issue of CUE Circular.

Steve Paton, Editor

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CUE at PanSIG 2019
The CUE SIG forum at PanSIG 2019 was held toshare information from a new reference book by
Paul Wadden and Chris Carl Hale. Five speakers
representing chapters from the book Teaching
English at Japanese Universities. A New
Handbook (2019, Routledge) included Curtis
Kelly, Asako Takaesu, Donna Fujimoto, Melodie
Cook, and Jenifer Larson-Hall.
Jamie Taylor (CUE SIG publicity chair) later
talked with Joe Tomei on how people should
review conference abstracts. This was an excellent
presentation about what they might face and how
to overcome the challenges. They showed how to
examine submissions and to provide critiques
whether the abstracts were accepted or not.
The CUE information table was quite active as
usual. The highlight as seen by publications chair
Glen Hill was talking to several visitors who werevery recent newcomers to Japan. Those teachers
had only 3-6 months of experience here, yet they
were quite curious about the publication process
for OnCUE Journal and CUE Circular.

Feature articles
Creative variations for textbook
conversations

3

Bill Pellowe

Observations from a university
writing center

9

Adam Taylor Smith

CUE Careers column
Professionalism & ethics inacademic employment
CUE activities at PanSIG 2019.
JALT CUE SIG

12Michael Parrish and Richard Miller!2

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Feature articles
Creative variations for
textbook conversations
Bill Pellowe, Kinki University,
Fukuoka Campus
William “Bill” Pellowe is anassociate professor at Kindai
University’s campus in Iizuka
City, Fukuoka. Bill is currently
JALT’s Acting Director of
Public Relations and runs the
PanSIG and TEVAL websites.
pellowe@fuk.kindai.ac.jp

Many of the textbooks that teachers use inlanguage classes contain some kind ofmodel dialog for students to practice.
These dialogs are usually also available inaudio form. Beyond having students
simply either listen to or read theseconversations aloud, what are the best
ways to utilize this section of the chapter?
When I began teaching in Japan in 1990,
the most popular textbook series was
Streamlines, which had a very detailed
teachers’ manual. It encouraged a very
specific approach to the dialogs,
combining traditional audio-lingual drills
with nods to the communicative approach(such as personalizing the drills to thestudents and their surroundings). Since
then, I’ve used a lot of textbooks, and theteachers’ book for each one has had
similar yet different approaches to the
dialogs.
This article combines my years ofaccumulated experience with teachers’
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manuals, conference workshops, JALT
chapter meetings, and talking with otherteachers, to give you several options formaking the most of sample dialogs.
Trying different combinations of options
can bring variety to your classroom. I’msure many of these ideas will be familiar
to veteran teachers, but I hope everyone
gets at least one new idea.
Taking the process to its most basic level,
the students will be doing four things:
1.
2.
3.
4.

looking at the artwork for context,
listening to the dialog,
reading the dialog, andstudying the language of the dialog.

These look like ordered steps, but wedon’t have to go through them in thatorder. You could, for example, start byhaving the students listen with theirbooks closed. On the other hand, you
could study the language of the dialog
first, then read, then close the books tolisten. You can re-order these four steps
for a total of 16 ways of doing the dialog,
so please view this article as a series of
options that are available to you at each
step, and be aware that you can rearrange
the steps.
Pre-listening
Before students listen, we should set up
the context for them. Here, we have a few
options:• Students look at the illustration in the
textbook but cover the conversation. Try
to co-construct the situation with the!3

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students (“How many people do you
see? How do they feel? What are they
doing? What do you think they’retalking about?”).
• Instead of looking at the illustrations,have students keep their books closed.
The teacher’s pre-class task is to find
three photos online to show to students.
Talk about each situation with thestudents. Tell students that they will
listen to the dialog and have to choose
which of the three photos matches theconversation best.
• You also have the option to pre-teachlanguage. Before one dialog featuring“can’t” and “must” to show certainty, I
showed the students some photos I’dfound online. One was of a man with agiant Superman logo tattooed onto hischest. (“Which superhero do you think
he likes? Does he like Superman a lot?
You think so? Me too. Look at thattattoo. He must love Superman!”) I thenhave the students repeat the key
sentence as a chorus. Another photo
showed two twin girls. “Do you thinkthey’re just friends, or are they sisters?”
This leads to, “They can’t be just friends.
They must be twin sisters.”
You can also pre-teach reduced
pronunciation (e.g., “wanna"),
unfamiliar vocabulary items, anddiscourse features (such as “Hey, guess
what?”). I usually pre-teach these by
first putting them up on the whiteboard
or on the screen, often with somecontext. An option is to tell students todiscuss the meaning in pairs.

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Later, while listening, one option is tohave the students raise their hands
when they hear the pre-taught items.
• If your textbook has videos for the
dialogs, one pre-listening option is toshow the video with no sound. Then,
you can elicit responses based on thevideo (“How do they feel? What’s
happening? What do you think they’resaying?”). Some dialogs include a shift
in emotions, such as when a character
starts off worried, but then feels
relieved, or when one character
becomes irritated with the other. If so,
re-watch the video (still without sound)and pause to ask how they feel at thatmoment. After you’ve established theshift in emotions, the students’ listening
task is to find out why this shift
happened.
Listening and ReadingThis section focuses only on the actual
listening and reading of the dialog, andwe’ll ignore everything else for the
moment.
• Your first option is to have the students
listen first without looking at the dialog.
They can either keep their textbooks
closed, or they can open the textbooks
but cover the dialog with their hands. In
my lower-motivation classes I don’t
mind if students peek at the dialog,
because this indicates curiosity. In myhigher-motivation classes, I’m pretty
strict about not letting them peek.
• When it is time for students to read the
dialog, you have three choices: they canread it silently, you can read it to themslowly while they read it silently, or they!4

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can read it together chorally.
• One option is to add a “read while
listening” step. Note that it is actuallydifficult for many students at lower tointermediate levels to read fast enoughto actually keep up with medium-tonatural speed dialogs, so you mightwant to include pauses in the audio. An
option here is for students to readsilently while mouthing the words: aform of shadowing.
Comprehension Questions
At some point, you’ll want to ask somecomprehension questions. They are
multipurpose:
1. you learn what the students could
understand;2. students who did not understand havea chance to catch up;
3. you and the students have a chance touse some of the new language incontext.
Of course, there are different types ofquestions and options associated withthem. Please note that you could actually
do all of these question types with a single
dialog, giving students a reason to go overthe dialog multiple times.
• One option is to ask open-ended
questions (“Tell me what they talked
about” or “Discuss with the person next
to you what this dialog was about”).
This tends to work better if the students
know beforehand that you’re going to
ask the question (“After we listen twice,
I’m going to ask you this question”).
• Another option is to offer multiplechoice questions. One technique with
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multiple-choice questions is to give thestudents the questions before listening
and show them the answer choices after
listening.
For example, before listening, ask thequestion:
What theory is in Alex’s book?
After listening, show the responses:
1. Aliens helped the Egyptians build thepyramids
2. The pyramids are really UFOs.
3. Egyptian people came from anotherplanet.
• A third option is to match L1
equivalents for phrases or vocabulary
items. In a textbook dialog, one
character invites the other out todinner, and says, “My treat!” Thequestion I gave my students was:
Which “treat” means the same as “Mytreat!”?
A: Ann was treated for diarrhea.
アンは下痢の治療を受けた。
B: My father still treats me like a child.
父はいまだに私を子供扱いする。
C: I'll treat you to dinner.
夕食をおごる。
(All examples are taken from ウィズダム
英和辞典, the free dictionary included
with Mac OS X).
• I like using this option when a familiar
word is being used with a meaning thatthe students may not be aware of.
Answering Questions
How will you have students answer thesecomprehension questions? You haveseveral distinct options:!5CUE CIRCULAR 6/2019• Call on individual students. This is myleast favorite option because I feel thatstudents tend to stop paying as muchattention after they’ve been called on
because they know that they won’t becalled on again soon.
• Choral answers (all students talk atonce). This can work fine with somegroups of students, but if you have aclass with a few students who always
answer, the rest of the students may justcome to rely on those outgoing students
to carry the load.
• Use a student response system (such as
Kahoot! or a clicker system) or a lowtech version (students hold up coloredpaper or answer paddles). This is myfavorite option because it puts pressureon all of the students to maintain theirattention.
Practice
Eventually, we will want students topractice this dialog. Some teachers believein the value of having students memorize
a dialog, while others are content to havestudents rely on their books in order tospeak the parts of the dialogs. The
following options all fall somewhere on
the scale between memorizing andreading aloud.
• Easiest option: Students just read the
dialog to each other. This is the least
useful option.
• An option that uses students’ shortterm memory is the “Read, look up,
speak” technique. The rule here is thatstudents must maintain eye contact
while one of them is speaking. The
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person who is speaking can pause tolook at the dialog if needed, but they
don’t speak while reading.
• One option that is actually more fun forstudents than it sounds is the kuroko
technique. (In Japanese theater, kuroko
are the stage helpers dressed completely
in black.) In this technique, students
work in groups of three. One student is
the kuroko; she is the only one of thethree who has an open textbook. The
other two students do the dialog
without textbooks while the kuroko
provides hints (in L2 or L1). When
finished, the students rotate roles.
Continue until each student has done
each role once. (It’s my opinion that thestudents learn the most while acting as
the kuroko helper, since they hear theirclassmate’s errors and supply
corrections.)• An option that leads students fromreading to memorizing is the gradualerasing technique. Write the dialog on
the board or put it up on a screen. The
students do the dialog in pairs with the“read, look up, speak” option describedabove. When the students finish, erase acouple of parts of the dialog, and havethe students switch partners to do the
dialog again. You can keep doing thisuntil the dialog is completely erased.
• One option for the gradual erasing
technique is to replace some of the text
with hints in the form of images or
perhaps L1 words to help students
remember the dialog.

!6

CUE CIRCULAR 6/2019• If your students are flexible, they may
enjoy paraphrasing the main gist of the
dialog, focusing on the meaning overthe form. This option is actually difficult
to get students to do because they
believe that they are supposed tomemorize the dialog.
Follow-up Activities
After you have done the dialog, you havethe option to expand it through follow-up
activities.
• Students can create their own version
by substituting words or phrases. If you
have them doing this in pairs, makesure each student in the pair writes theirown copy of it, so then you can get themto switch partners, and do the new
dialogs with the “Read, look up, speak”
technique described above.
• You could re-examine the conversationin detail. For example, you could focus
on anaphors (pronouns which referback to something mentioned
previously in the conversation). In one
textbook dialog, the two characters aretalking about one person’s newneighborhood; when the woman asks if
there’s a gym in the neighborhood, theman says there isn’t, but “it’d be perfect
if there was one.” In this situation, you
could ask students “What does ‘it’mean? What does ‘one’ mean?” These
questions could be discussed in pairs, or
you could give them multiple-choicequestions with several options from theconversation.
• Have a short conversation rally.
Conversation rallies are controlled drills
with two lines of students facing each
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other. Take a short question / answer
exchange from the dialog, and havestudents modify it into their own
question with follow-up questions (forexample: “Do you like movies? What
have you seen recently?”). All of thestudents in the class stand up in twolines facing each other to have theirshort conversations. After a couple ofminutes, tell the person in the front of
the right line to go to the front of the leftline, and have everyone shift positions
so that they all have a new partner.
Dialog Performances
One of the options for a follow-up to theconversation is to have the students do aconversation performance. The pressure
on students to do the task well leads tomore effort. The performance aspects can
include a focus on gestures, intonation,and pronunciation. If you want to do a
dialog performance, you have several
options:
First, who is the audience? You have four
options here:• Pairs in front of whole class.
• Pairs in front of groups (half of theclass, one-third of the class, etc.).
• Pairs in front of only the teacher.
• Pairs on video (using students’ own
smartphones or devices supplied by theteacher). You have to decide if thevideos are to be shown to the class or
only the teacher.
I like using videos in my Business
English class because so many of the
dialogs lend themselves toperformances with gestures. One dialog
has a character introduce a coworker to!7

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a visitor from an overseas branch office.
What dialog? There are three options:• Use the textbook dialog as is. This
option is pretty boring.
• In pairs, students write their own
variation of the textbook dialog.
• In pairs, students make their own
creation based loosely on the textbook
dialog theme, language, or situation.
To memorize or not?
• Students memorize the conversation,and you let them choose which side
each person will perform.
• Another memorization option is to haveboth students in the pair memorize bothparts. Before the performance, roll adice to see which part each student will
perform.
• An option with less pressure is to allow
students to hold a written dialog or
written notes.
The last option to consider withperformances is whether or not to give a
grade for the performance. You have four
options here:• No grades; the performance is its own
reward.
• Give a grade to the pair (in other words,
the same grade for both students).
• Give a grade to individuals (so, possibly
a different grade to each student in thepair).
• Do peer feedback. Peer feedback iseasier if there is a video of the dialog.
To conclude
All teachers reading this have their own
way of approaching the textbook dialogs,

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but I hope this article gave you some newideas or new variations on old ideas.

Endnote:Many of these ideas were originallyposted in a podcast episode on ELT
Podcast: The Teachers’ Lounge, “Using
Textbook Dialogs in EFLClassrooms” (Bill Pellowe, Kevin Ryan,
and Dominic Marini; February 12, 2007;
available http://www.eltpodcast.com/
archive/lounge/dialogs.html)
These ideas were originally presented at
the JALT 2014 Conference. Variations
were later presented at a few otherlocations in Japan.

Submit an article!
What’s happening in your teaching?
What obstacles have you overcome, andhow?
What ideas or opinions do you have that
others might be interested to read?
What have you read, heard, or seen
recently that’s changed your approach toteaching, either in or out of theclassroom?
CUE Circular aims to publish quality,interesting, practical articles about theday-to-day nature of teaching in our
sector.

w w w .j a l t c u e .o rg /c u e c i rc u l a r!8

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Observations from a
university writing
centerAdam Taylor Smith, Toyo
University
Adam Taylor Smith has
been teaching English in
Japan since 2014. He iscurrently completing a
Masters of Applied
Linguistics at the
University of
Massachusetts, Boston.
TeachingTalent@gmail.com

Working at a university writing center has
given me a new perspective on helping
Japanese university students improvetheir English. In contrast to teaching in
more traditional classroom settings, theone-on-one environment here has allowed
me to more directly connect withstudents, learn about their academic lives,and observe clear results of instruction
and feedback that I give. What follows aresome of the realizations that I have madethrough helping university students
improve their academic writing in thissetting.
Japanese academic writing is very
different
In my first few months in this position, I
was surprised to find that many students
who possessed relatively high levels of
proficiency in the language were unawareof basic principles of formal English
writing. They often did not know that aparagraph consists of a topic sentence
followed by supporting sentences, and
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that one paragraph should cover only one
topic. I had made the mistake of falsely
assuming that there must be a similar
logic to writing in Japanese.
Kimura and Kondo (2004) detailed
several fundamental differences between
how English writers and Japanese writers
are taught to write. The authors notedthat Japanese essay writers, rather thans e e ki n g t o p re s e n t a m e s s a g e o r
information clearly, generally aim to
move readers. In addition, they found thatJapanese writers of English tended toconfuse the concept of a paragraph withthat of danraku, a much more flexible
Jap ane s e c o mp o s it io nal s t ru c t u recontaining nothing equivalent to a topic
sentence or supporting sentences. Suchunderlying differences highlight the needfor teachers to check students’
foundational understanding of English
writing when beginning to work withthem and to review or teach essential
principles if necessary.
Having students make an outline is
crucialTeaching students to make a clear outlineof what they intend to write in their essay
is the single most effective technique I
have found for instilling organizational
conventions of academic writing in
English. I start by showing them anexample essay and a corresponding
outline, drawing their attention to howeach piece of information in the outline(essay topic, paragraph topics, andsupporting points) is written out in theexample essay. I then ask them to create
their own outline for their essay topic.
Once they have done this, I make sure!9

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that I understand each paragraph topic
and supporting point in their outline, andhelp them rewrite their ideas in a morenatural way if necessary. Taking this stepis extremely helpful not only for the
students but also for me: it ensures that I
will be able to follow what students writein the actual essay, mitigating the risk ofme being stumped by unintelligible text
later on.

particular student has made in the pastand to direct the student to check theirwriting for the errors listed on the sheet
before submission (Smith, 2018).
Additional rules to check for can be added
over time so that students compile acomprehensive picture of the kinds of
mistakes they tend to make, so they can
become adept at avoiding making themagain.

Go for quality over quantity
When first starting to teach at the writing
center, I was of the opinion that the more
students wrote, the better at writing theywould become. While I still believe
extensive writing has benefits, when it
came time to provide feedback on
students’ academic writing I quickly cameto appreciate quality over quantity. In ourbrief 30-minute lessons we often havetime to go over only one or twoparagraphs, so there is little point inrequesting students to write much morethan that. In addition, shorter writing
assignments allow me to highlight theimportance of being concise in academic
writing and to put greater emphasis on
students making the time and effort tocarefully proofread their own work.

Progress is often slow
Even though I do often have thesatisfaction of witnessing improvements
in my students’ writing, I am also
regularly reminded that significant
progress is not measured in days or weeks
but in months and years. Effective
academic writing is a very nuanced andchallenging skill to master. Students
inevitably need a great deal of time,
motivation, feedback, practice, andexposure to examples of strong academic
writing in English in order to makesubstantial strides forward.

Students can self-correct errors intheir writing
When students have already proofread
their writing before seeing me, our lesson
time can be used more effectively. I havefound that students are often capable ofspotting and correcting many of their own
writing mistakes if given proper incentive
to do so. One way of encouraging thishabit is to create a “proofreading rules”
sheet customized toward mistakes that a
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Students appreciate the personalconnection
Based on their feedback, I have found thatmany students appreciate having somespeaking time at the start of our lesson
where they can transition into “Englishmode” and make a personal connection
with the teacher. Connecting personallyallows students to feel that theirinstructor cares about them and is notjust here to mark their paper up with red
ink. Having created a warm, supportive,and empathetic environment at the startof the lesson, I can then move forwardwith a great deal of corrective feedback on
their writing without the risk of students!10CUE CIRCULAR 6/2019

taking such criticism personally.
Moreover, the one-on-one setting ofwriting centers can encourage students toenjoy sharing experiences from their lives
that they would not normally discuss withteachers in larger classroom settings.
Most students face time pressuresoutside academics
One thing that has struck me fromlistening to Japanese university students
talk about their daily lives is that many
are juggling multiple responsibilities
outside of their studies. A large number
participate in club activities that can takeup a great deal of their free time. In
addition, most are working part-time jobs
where many, due to the nation’s labor
shortage, are pressured to put in extra
shifts, resulting in work schedules thatcan sound as if they are more full-timethan part-time. I had one sleepy student
tell me that she had stayed up until 4:00
a.m. speaking on the phone with officers
in her club, who had been unable to start
their call until a key member arrived
home at 1:00 a.m. after finishing the late
shift of his part-time job. While in an
ideal world their studies would always
come first, hearing about situations suchas this has helped me keep in mind mystudents’ busy schedules when giving out
assignments or assessing the quality of
their work.

apply advice that they are given. Even
though progress can often be slow, I havethe satisfaction of witnessing my students’
confidence in their written English growlittle by little.
References
Kimura, K., & Kondo, M. (2004). Effective
writing instruction: From Japanesedanraku to English paragraphs. In 2004
JALT PanSIG Conference Proceedings(pp. 8-15). Retrieved from https://
hosted.jalt.org/pansig/2004/HTML/
KimKon.htm
Smith, A. T. (2018, March). Student-led
error checking: Is it beneficial? Paper
presented at the 10th Symposium on
Writing Centers in Asia, Tokyo, Japan.

CUE Circular
www.jaltcue.org/cuecircularStudents take advice to heart
The vast majority of the students whocome to our writing center are doing so of
their own free will, out of an honest desire
to improve their English writing ability. It
is a joy to work with such motivatedlearners and to see them endeavor to
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CUE Careers
Professionalism &ethics in academic
employment
Recent headlines throughout mass media
worldwide have exposed serious ethicalfailures occurring in work environmentsthat have spanned industries fromentertainment to government. Exposureof these incidents has led to ruined
careers and loss of income for theperpetrators, and some measure ofvindication for the victims. The
scintillating news stories are egregious
examples of unprofessional behavior andethical lapses, and present us with clear
lessons on how not to behave in theworkplace, how to be ethical, and how tocreate a more professional career image.
Firstly, how do we define professionalismand ethics? Professionalism is thecompetence or skill expected of aprofessional as opposed to a layperson; it
implies a higher standard of behavior,higher quality performance, and more
responsibilities. Ethics are the moral
principles that regulate a person’s
behavior or the way they perform anactivity (dictionary.com). As educators,
we have both formal and informal
expectations for our ethics andprofessionalism. These expectations
govern how we interact with colleagues
and students and how we behave both
inside and outside the classroom.

JALT CUE SIG

In this regular column, Michael Parrish andRichard Miller offer insights on theemployment market for college anduniversity language teachers in Japan, as
well as general career guidance, advice, andstrategies.
Contributions from readers with specificareas of expertise, or regarding specificissues or changes in the job market, areencouraged.
Michael Parrish and Richard
Miller are the current cocoordinators of the Job
Information Center at the
JALT National Conference,
and are former editors of the
Career Development column
in The Language Teacher.
email: cuecareers@gmail.com

Professionalism
One way both concepts can be exemplified
is through the use of an academic CV(ACV) and the balanced scorecard (Miller,
2011a; Miller 2011b; Parrish, 2014). These
documents provide a way to define what is
expected of us professionally as well as
helping us to determine in which areas wemight improve in our careers. Educators
are expected to participate in professional
development in the form of research,study, training, attending conferences, or
publishing. Professional academics arealso expected to volunteer to help better
their institutions. These activities arereflected as items on the ACV (Parrish &Miller, 2017).
Other aspects of educational
professionalism are competency andflexibility. First and foremost, educators
should be seen as competent by both their!12

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students and their employers. They
should have pedagogical competency
combined with the ability to remain calmand project confidence and authority evenunder adverse conditions. A professional
educator resolves to ensure that goals aremet; this may require flexibility and extra
costs so that the lesson goes forward, inspite of equipment malfunctions or otherroadblocks. A professional educator
makes sure that commitments to assist acolleague or student are met, even if
outside consultation is required.
Professionalism occasionally requires
doing more than what is stated in thecontract. This may require spending
longer on something than ‘regular’
working hours. If there are transportation
issues, it might entail taking a taxi toensure you arrive on time. Just as when
we deal with students, there are no ‘thedog ate my homework’ excuses for
professional academics. Keep in mind that
staff, students, and colleagues are not very
interested in the underlying reasons fornot meeting a commitment. They do notwant to hear that the printer did not workand therefore there is no handout. They
want the lesson to go smoothly, with orwithout a handout. Spending the entire
time complaining about the equipment is
not professional. A professional is always
prepared, and when unexpected
exigencies arise, they have a viable backup plan.
Ethics
Ethics in the educational workplacefocuses mainly on honesty and humanrelations. Academic honesty means not
misrepresenting degrees earned or work
experience on your CV. A quick online
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search can quickly reveal inconsistencies.
It means avoiding plagiarism in yourpublications and respecting copyright inyour use of classroom materials. It means
expecting the same of your students.
In terms of human relations, education isa very personal profession. We constantly
have to be aware that as teachers, we are
not only authority figures with ourstudents, but also looked up to by thesociety. This power is often abused. The
stereotype of a professor sleeping withstudents for grades is, unfortunately, notentirely false but is entirely unethical. All
students should be treated equallyregardless of gender, and sexual innuendoor extra-curricular social relationships
should be avoided. It also includes givingmarks based solely on performance, notother monetary or social considerations.
Private email or SNS contact withstudents not related to classroom-related
issues should be avoided.
Aside from sexual harassment, there is
the issue of power harassment. While westrive to inspire and motivate ourstudents with positive reinforcement, attimes they sometimes disappoint us.
Ensure that criticism and scolding relates
to a behavior or a particular action anddoes not become a personal attack.
Remember that an angry response canhave unintended effects because of thepower dynamic. Be careful of personal
jokes about appearance, ethnicity, ororigin. There was a case reported in The
Japan Times where a teacher made an illconsidered joke about a student from
Fukushima to ‘break the ice’. The student
was deeply offended and the instructor!13

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was penalized financially and his contract
was not renewed (“University Disciplines
Teacher”, 2017).
Taking professional short-cuts and doing
unethical things may be convenient orexpeditious, but the long-term rewards ofprofessionalism and ethics are less stressand a longer career. Keep in mind that inthis internet-connected world, any
unethical action will likely find its way
onto the web. This applies to behavior
both in and outside of the classroom.
Criminal acts, even relatively minor
misdemeanors that occur away fromschool, could affect your employment
status. You represent your institution
wherever you are. Remember, that clerk
at the convenience store or the waitress at
a local izakaya may be your student, or afriend of theirs. You do not want to do
things you would not want your mother tofind out about on the evening news.
References
Miller, R. (2011a). Using the balanced
scorecard to keep your career on track.
The Language Teacher, 35(3). Retrieved
from http://jalt-publications.org/tlt/
departments/job-info-centre/articles/
823-using-balanced-scorecard-keep-yourcareer-track
Miller, R. (2011b). The basics of theacademic CV. The Language Teacher,35(4). Retrieved from http://jaltpublications.org/tlt/departments/jobinfo-centre/articles/992-basics-academiccv
Parrish, M. (2014). Balancing youracademic scorecard at JALT2014. The
JALT CUE SIG

Language Teacher, 38(4). Retrieved fromhttp://jalt-publications.org/tlt/
departments/career-development-corner/
articles/3866-balancing-your-academicscorecard-jalt2014
Parrish, M. & Miller, R. (2017). Reflective
practices and planning for professional
development. CUE Circular, 2, 12-14.
University disciplines teacher who madediscriminatory remark about Fukushima
student glowing in the dark. (2017,
February 21). The Japan Times. Retrieved
from https://www.japantimes.co.jp/
news/2017/02/21/national/universitydisciplines-teacher-made-discriminatoryremark-fukushima-student-glowingdark/#.XPHWSC1L3OS

CUE Circular
Issue #8, June 2019
A publication of the JALT College andUniversity Educators Special Interest GroupISSN 2432-5570
All rights re se rve dw w w .j a l t c u e .o rg /c u e c i rc u l a r

EditorSteve Paton

Assistant Editors

Dion Clingwall
Mark Howarth

Proofreading

Mary Hillis
Ryan Richardson
Glen Hill!14