OnQCUE

For the Language Professional in Higher Education

IN THIS ISSUE
Letter from the Editor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
Features
Heigham & Segger: Restructuring an
Extensive Reading Program . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
Burden: Self-perceived Attributions ofSuccess and Failure among
College Students . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
Wacholtz: Student and Teacher Beliefs
about Language Learning:
A Preliminary Study . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17

Opinion and Perspective
Ryan: An Interview with Jennifer Jenkins . . . 22

Winter 2003 Volume 11, Issue 2

Q

Conferences

Thailand TESOL: Prioritizing
Teacher Development
January 29-31
www.thaitesol.org

Temple University Applied
Linguistics Colloquium 2004
February 15th
www.tuj.ac.jp

Pan-SIG Conference:
The Interface Between
Interlanguage Pragmatics andAssessment
May 22-23
www.jalt.org/pansig/2004/

Professional Development
Evans Nachi: Writing Effective CVs . . . . . . . . 26
Ford: A Brief Guide to APA Style . . . . . . . . . . 28

From the Chalkface
Micklas: A Letter to Contributors . . . . . . . . . . 30
Venema: Incorporating Debate into theClassroom: Making it Accessible . . . . . . . . . . 30

Conference Report
Segger: A Report from the Mountain: The CUE
and LD Kobe Conference . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35

Q

Thoughts to Ponder
Language is a process of free creation; its
laws and principles are
fixed, but the manner inwhich the principles ofgeneration are used isfree and infinitely varied. Even the interpretation and use of words
involves a process offree creation.
– Noam Chomsky –Japan Association for Language Teaching College & University Educators Special Interest Group
Retail Price for Non-Members: ¥700/ $7

OnQ
CUE Call for papers

Aims: To provide a forum for the presentation and discussion of a broad range of topics
relevant to college and university educators.

Articles Sought
Features

APA-referenced articles relating to language
education at the tertiary level.
Criteria for Feature Articles

l Consideration of issues likely to beperceived by college and university educators as relevant to language teaching inJapanl Well designed and well reported
quantitative and qualitative researchl Writing situated within the context ofrelevant previous work, adding to orcommenting on the current body ofresearch.
l Thought-provoking theoretical papers,with clear, practical implications

Inquiries: Mike Hood, <mikehood85@hotmail.com>

From the Chalkface
Inquiries: Tim Micklas <tmicklas@yahoo.com>

Professional Development

Articles of 1-2000 words on further education,
professionalism, and employment.
Inquiries: Mike Hood <mikehood85@hotmail.com>

Reviews

Reviews of books, textbooks, videos, presentations, etc. 600 words; 1500 words for scholarly
review essays.
Inquiries: Steven Snyder <snyder@phoenix.ac.jp>

Cyberpipeline

Descriptions of websites useful for language
teaching and professional development.
Inquiries: Steven Snyder <snyder@phoenix.ac.jp>

Research Digest

Reviews that compare, contrast, and summarize two or more recent publications that coversimilar areas, up to 2500 words. Reviewson the researcher’s resources and tools, up to1500 words. Summaries on in-house publications, with information on how to get copies,
200-300 words.

Conference Reviews

Reviews of conferences or individual presentations
Inquiries: Phil McCasland <mccaslandpl@rocketmail.com>

Inquiries: Joe Falout <fallout@penta.ge.cst.nihon-u.ac.jp>

Editorial Review Board:

Jill Burton, University of South Australia
Michael Carroll, Andrews University
Rebecca Mlynarczyk, Kingsborough Community
College of the City University of New York
Hugh Nicoll, Miyazaki Municipal University
Dexter da Silva, Keisen University, Tokyo

Proofreaders

Andrew Obermeier, John Burrell,
Tim Micklas, coordinated by Mike
Hood

Ofﬁcer Contact Information for 2003:
Feel free to contact board members
Executive Board:

Phil McCasland, Coordinator <mccaslandpl@rocketmail.com>
Andrew Obermeier, Treasurer <Andrew@kyokyo-u.ac.jp>
Juanita Heigham, Membership Chair <jheigham@lit.sugiyama-u.ac.jp>
Mike Hood , Publications Chair <mikehood85@hotmail.com>
Tim Micklas, Publicity Chair <tmicklas@yahoo.com>

On CUE

Winter 2003: Volume 11, Issue 2

A Letter from the
Editor
one university, trace the sources of those problems, and formulate remedies. Peter Burdenpresents his research on students’ self-perception regarding success and failure in studying
English. Peter explores the connection between
student attributions for success or failure andmotivation. And Terry Wacholtz explains how
students and teachers feel about the usefulnessof popular classroom activities utilized in second
language learning and discusses the implicationsof those feelings. Later on in the Opinions andPerspectives section, Stephen Ryan recounts his
conversation with author Jennifer Jenkins, who
explains her thoughts on English as a Lingua
Franca and her controversial book The Phonology of English as an International Language.
In the Professional Development section, Heidi
Evans Nachi offers tips on writing effective
Curriculum Vitae, and one Mr. Malcolm Pedant (pseudonym for Keith Ford?) offers a brief
guide to APA documentation, for those of you
thinking about submitting to On CUE. In the
Chalkface section, James Venema explains his
successful strategy for incorporating debate into
the classroom. Michelle Segger rounds out thisissue with a review of the CUE-LD Mini-Conference held in Kobe in October.
I hope you enjoy this issue, and I’d be happy
to hear from you regarding suggestions for
improving this publication, submissions, andgeneral comments. Remember, it’s your CUE!
Mike Hood
On CUE Editor

1

From the Editor

Greetings CUE Members,
As we head into 2004, we have some changes
here at the CUE: Phil McCasland takes over as
CUE SIG Coordinator, while Andrew Obermeier
steps in as Treasurer. Juanita Heigham continues
her role as Membership Chair, and Tim Micklas
is still in charge of publicity. And we are pleased
to welcome Tim Newﬁelds as Program Chair,bringing assessment to the CUE agenda with amini-conference scheduled for May (see p.9).
We have a healthy SIG—over 300 members
and a dedicated executive team. A contagious
enthusiasm was evident in meetings and discussions at the recent JALT Conference, not justamong the leadership but also among the many
CUE members who stopped by the CUE desk. It
seems we have much to be proud of, and muchto look forward to. Expect great things in 2004
and beyond.
This issue also marks a transition for On
CUE, from Michael Carroll’s editorship to myown. Michael accomplished quite a bit during
his tenure—not only managing the daunting(I’m learning) task of putting out a quality
publication, but also elevating On CUE to thestatus of a refereed journal. Beginning with thisissue, submissions are subjected to a peer review
process intended to both improve the quality ofarticles published here and offer the best possible
constructive critique for our submitters. This isMichael’s legacy, and we owe him a debt ofgratitude.
Beginning with the next issue, Joe Falout
will assume editorship of the Research Digest
section. Joe envisions a forum where current
research trends are summarized, compared,
and critiqued. He will also present readers withreviews of useful resources and tools. And inhouse publications, which might not otherwise
see the light of day, will be summarized andmade accessible. Please contact Joe directly
regarding submissions (see call for papers).
Let’s move on to the current issue: Juanita Heigham and Michelle Segger analyze
problems in the extensive reading program at

On CUE

Winter 2003: Volume 11, Issue 2

Feature Article: Heigham & Segger

Restructuring an
Extensive Reading Program
Juanita Heigham
Sugiyama Jogakuen University
Michelle Segger
Kinjo Gakuin University
Introduction
In the last twenty years there has been agrowing interest in extensive reading (ER) in
both the teaching of English as a second language(ESL) and as a foreign language (EFL), and its
value to learners in an EFL setting has been
particularly emphasized (Schmidt, 1996, p 8182). Moreover, the use of ER as an approach to
improving reading, and English in general, has
become especially popular in Japan. In fact, manyof the most vocal proponents (Bamford and Day,
1997; Day and Bamford, 1998, 2000; Susser andRobb, 1989, 1990; Waring, 1997; Nation, 1997;
Coady, 1997) are based in Japanese colleges
and universities. At our university, a women’s
university in central Japan, an extensive reading
program (ERP) was ﬁrst implemented as part ofits Freshman English Program (FEP) over ﬁfteen
years ago. In 2001, a new FEP director, Juanita
Heigham, joined the faculty and a rigorous
evaluation of the program as a whole was begun.
In questionnaires about the program, students
gave the reading component the most negative
remarks. They criticized both the materials andthe way the class was conducted on a day-to-day
basis. The results of the questionnaire suggested
that the texts being used were not appropriate
for the students. In response, one of the teachers
in the program, Michelle Seggar, conducted astudy in two of her classes to better understandthe needs of the students.
In this paper we brieﬂy discuss approaches toteaching reading, describe the 2001 ERP at ouruniversity and give a short evaluation of that
program. We then detail the study, which clearly
showed that despite the program’s name, the students themselves were not involved in extensive
reading. We conclude by outlining how, in re-sponse to this ﬁnding, we revised the programby adapting an eclectic approach to reading that
included a mixture of extensive and intensive
techniques.

Approaches to Teaching Reading
For the purposes of this paper, approaches toteaching reading will be divided into two basic
categories: intensive reading (IR) and ER.
A reader is engaging in IR when a relatively
short text is studied line by line. A dictionary
and grammar notes may be used, and there isoften some translation into the students’ ﬁrst
language (L1). IR usually includes the practiceof dividing the reading process into discrete skills
and strategies such as previewing, predicting,scanning and vocabulary building; all of thesetechniques require the reader to analyze thetext at some level. Proponents of IR argue that
English language learners should be shown
both how to use the skills and knowledge thatthey bring from their L1 and how to develop
new reading strategies and vocabulary building
skills (Anderson, 1999; Carrell, 1985; Carrell
and Eisterhold, 1983; Floyd and Carrell, 1987;
Mikulecky and Jeffries, 1998). The practice of IR
is common in the ESL classroom (L2), and eventhough there are strong advocates of ER in Japan,
IR is used nearly exclusively in Japanese English
language education at all levels of schooling.
ER has also been referred to as “pleasure reading,” “sustained silent reading,” and “uninterrupted silent reading” (Susser and Robb, 1989,
p. 1). Strong proponents of ER suggest that it isa replacement for IR. They deny the existence ofseparate skills in reading and believe the teaching of such skills is inappropriate since reading2

On CUE

Winter 2003: Volume 11, Issue 2

in an ERP may have higher motivation to readthan those participating in IR (Day and Bamford,
1998).
A pure approach to ER, where students are
expected to read with no teacher input, can be
difﬁcult for teachers to manage in the classroom,
and as a result, it has received criticism. To aid
in manageability, class readers are often used inextensive reading programs as a supplement to
the individual reading students do independently.
These texts are targeted at the students’ level andread outside of class, but unlike the individual
reading material, they are discussed in class.
They are commonly used in ERPs for several reasons: the teacher is able to guide and encourage
students as well as highlight reading skills that
may improve their reading ability; students may
simultaneously develop all four language skills
while doing activities with classmates; ﬁnally,
students’ reading repertoire may be expanded
by exposure to topics and genres that they would
not have chosen for themselves.

1. Students silently read large quantities oflong texts on their own.
2. They select their own reading material forcontent and level.
3. They read for general understanding.
4. They read for pleasure — no discussion
or written work in class.
5. Teacher’s role is supportive, notinstructive.

The 2001 Extensive Reading
Program

In an ERP students are expected to read large
amounts of English at a level they can easily understand. There is no consensus on thenumber of pages necessary to be considered ER,
but researchers investigating university-level
learners recommend 500 pages per semester(Susser and Robb 1990, and Helgeson, 1997).
Day and Bamford (1998) say that “regardlessof the quantity…an important consideration isthat the reading assignments be long enough todiscourage intensive study or translation” (p. 85).
ER builds language skills. When learners read a
substantial amount at the appropriate level, they
see the same vocabulary repeatedly and build“sight vocabulary” (Day and Bamford, 1998, p.
16), words that the reader knows so thoroughlythat recognition time is short. The developmentof quick recognition also happens with syntactic
structures. Through this reading saturation, students naturally build their reading ability without
focusing on discrete skills. Additionally, since
students are allowed to choose their own readingmaterial in an ERP, the texts suit both their ability and their interests, improving their attitudes
toward reading. Because they are not readingat an inappropriate level nor focusing on topics
unrelated to their interests, students participating

The reading program at our university is partof the Freshman English Program, a semi-intensive English communication program for ﬁrstyear English majors. The goal of most of our students is to work in some aspect of tourism or theservice industry. The program has approximately
125 students who are tested at the beginning of
the academic year and streamed into different
levels. In 2001 the students were divided into
three levels consisting of six groups of approximately twenty students: two high-level and one
level of remaining students whose scores werequite similar. The students attended ﬁve English
classes a week covering all skill areas and were
taught by native English speakers. The extensive
reading program used in 2001 consisted of four
program-wide prescribed texts regardless of student level. These were Matilda (Dahl, 1988), The
Twelfth Day of July (Lingard, 1970), The Best
Detective Stories of Agatha Christie (Christie,
1996) and A Christmas Carol (Dickens, reprinted1977). All texts used were authentic.
The basic design of the course required thatthe students read two texts each semester at apace of about 30 pages a week; this allowed
3

Feature Article: Heigham & Segger

skills can “only be developed by extensive reading over time…people learn to read by reading,
not by doing exercises.” (Eskey and Grabe, 1988,
p. 228). Indeed, Alderson and Urquhart (1984)
state that while IR may be justiﬁed as a language
lesson, it is not reading: “the [IR] lesson consistsof a series of language points using texts as apoint of departure.”
To be an authentic ERP, a program should
contain the following tenets (based on Susser
and Robb, 1990, p. 3; Day and Bamford, 1998,
pp. 7 - 8):

On CUE

Winter 2003: Volume 11, Issue 2

approximately 7 weeks per book. As homework,
students were to read the pages listed on theirsyllabus and come to class prepared to discuss
what they had read.

problem was exacerbated by the use of teacherled class work.
Our initial evaluation of the 2001 reading
program showed it was not consistent with
ER methodology. When different aspects arecompared with the recommendations made in
the relevant literature, it is difﬁcult to understand
why this part of the program was labeled ER. The
program more closely resembled an extensive
IRP.

Feature Article: Heigham & Segger

Evaluation
When the 2001 ERP is compared to thegenerally accepted requirements of an ERP,
some discrepancies become apparent (See Day
and Bamford, 1998; Susser and Robb, 1989,
1990; Krashen, 1994; Bamford and Welch,
2000; Schmidt, 1996). First, the program had
only assigned texts. It is essential to an ERP
that the choice of reading material is primarily
made by the students. If this tenet is ignored,
the texts’ level will inevitably be inappropriate
for some students and their learning potential
will be affected. Additionally, prescribed texts
adversely affected student motivation. This wasparticularly acute since all required texts wereby British authors, set in Britain and quite dated.
The texts were of limited interest to teen-aged,
female, Japanese students.
The next problem was that the pace of reading
was too slow. Researchers (Susser and Robb,
1989, 1990; Helgeson, 1997) require their university students to read 500 pages per semester.
Matilda (Dahl, 1988) and Twelfth Day of July
(Lingard, 1970) combined have only 389 pages,
more than 20% less than recommended. However, the slow pace of the 2001 program waslikely necessary because the books required were
too difﬁcult for the students. Informal interviews
with students revealed that IR techniques, suchas consulting a dictionary and translating, were
employed by most students to gain only a rudimentary understanding of the text. Thus, it would
have been impossible for students to read morethan 30 pages per week. In fact, many students
were not able to complete the 30-page weekly
assignment, and most were dissatisﬁed with
their understanding of the text even after classdiscussions.
Finally, the students were required to participate in class activities designed by the teacher.
The teacher acted as instructor, not merely as asupporter to the students as they worked, breaking another widely accepted tenet of ER. The
pleasure reading element of the ERP was compromised by the use of prescribed texts, and the

The Study
The term extensive reading suggests a clear
emphasis on a large amount of reading. In orderfor students to read extensively, the level of material must be appropriate to their ability; students
must understand what they read well enough toread quickly. While there are many factors that
affect comprehension, research shows that
unknown vocabulary is the most importantfactor when comprehension breakdown occurs(Cooper, 1984; Williams and Dallas, 1984; Luppesco and Day, 1993). McCarthy (1990) points
out that vocabulary is the largest component of
any language; without it, all other knowledge isirrelevant.
Since vocabulary knowledge is an integral
factor in reading comprehension, it is felt that byhaving learners identify the number of unknown
words in a piece of text, a fairly accurate appraisal
can be made as to the text’s difﬁculty level forthem. However, simply considering the numberof unknown words can be misleading, as eachtext has a different number of words on a page.
In view of this, unknown vocabulary has been
considered as a percentage of the text by someresearchers. Recommendations from a variety ofsources are shown in Table 1 (overleaf).
In order to discern the level of materials
appropriate for students in the program, we
conducted a small study. The materials for thisincluded six pre-selected pages of text: one
from each of the prescribed texts for the 2001
reading program and for comparison, one pagefrom a level-2 Penguin graded reader, Island of
the Blue Dolphins (O’Dell, 1961) and one pagefrom a level-3 Penguin graded reader, Subject
117 (Brancato, 2000). The pages selected were
those closest to the middle of the text that had
no picture or titles.
4

On CUE

Winter 2003: Volume 11, Issue 2

Table 1. Recommendations for Maximum
Unknown Words per Page for General
Understanding
Researcher

Recommended
unknown
words
5%
2%
9
5
2 or 3
1 or 2
1 or 2

Two classes totaling 37 students were used as
subjects (approximately 30% of the programs’
population). The research was conducted duringclass, but we felt that having the subjects read
six pages in one session would yield inaccurate
results. Therefore, two pages were presented perclass, so the research took a total of three classmeetings. In the ﬁrst session they were presented
with the chosen page for Matilda (Dahl, 1988)
and The Twelfth Day of July (Lingard, 1970); inthe second with The Best Detective Stories ofAgatha Christie(1996) and A Christmas Carol(Dickens, 1977); and in the third the Penguin
graded readers (Brancato, 2000 and O’Dell,
1961). Students read each page and marked
all unknown words by underlining, circlingor highlighting them, and then wrote the total
number of unknown words at the bottom of thepage. The results of these ﬁndings are listed inTable 2 (overleaf).
This table indicates that A Christmas Carol
had the most unknown vocabulary with a meanof 31.3 (11.81%) words, then Matilda with 22.5
(9.22%). The Best Detective Stories of Agatha
Christie and The Twelfth Day of July were similar
with unknown word counts of approximately 9(3%). The graded readers had the fewest: thelevel-3 reader with a mean number of unknown
words of 4.8 (1.32%) and the level-2 reader witha mean of 1.8 words (0.69%).
Table 3 clearly illustrates that A Christmas
Carol and Matilda have such a high density of
unknown words that they do not come within
any of the recommended unknown vocabulary
parameters. The Best Detective Stories of Agatha Christie falls within the 5% limit set by Hill

Program Innovations
After reviewing the program evaluation andthe results of the study, we decided that a mixed
IR and ER approach would best suit the needsof the freshman students in our program. There
are strong arguments for both approaches, andthe two approaches complement each other inclassroom management; ER is an individual
activity done outside of class while IR activities
can be practiced in the classroom. Three goals
were set for the innovation of the reading
program: 1) build students’ reading skills, 2)
increase students’ interest in reading, 3) build
students’ vocabulary. To do this, a mixture of
ER and IR techniques and materials were added
to the program. The chart below details thematerials chosen to achieve these goals.
These three goals are not mutually exclusive
but are intertwined, so in talking about one, theothers are to some degree addressed as well.
Looking ﬁrst at goal number one, we chose an IR
reading text to directly focus on the discrete skills
necessary for strong reading ability. We selected
Basic Reading Power as the text because of its
emphasis on the use of context, its organized and5Feature Article: Heigham & Segger

Hill (2001)
Nation (1997)
Anderson (1999)
Day and Bamford (1998)
Waring (1997)
Bamford and Welch (2000)
Brown (2000)(2000) but fails to come within any other limit.
The Twelfth day of July does not meet ﬁve of theseven parameters. It is well within Hill’s 5%,
and within Anderson’s maximum nine words;
however, when referring to table one, it can beseen that even though the mean is within Anderson’s boundary, a third of the subjects could
not recognize more than nine words. The level-3
reader meets the majority of parameters but does
not meet the three most stringent; however, thelevel-2 reader falls within even the narrowestparameters.
Different pages from the texts may haveyielded less disconcerting results. However,with the unknown vocabulary of A Christmas
Carol as high as 52, it is difﬁcult to imagine
that alternative pages would yield signiﬁcantly
different results, even following Hill’s liberal
allowance of 5% unknown words per page. It
is also possible that alternative pages of text
would have shown even more conclusively
that the readers used in the 2001 program were
too difﬁcult for ER for the level of students
participating.

Feature Article: Heigham & Segger

On CUE

Winter 2003: Volume 11, Issue 2

Table 2. Number of Unknown Words on the Selected Page of Each Text
Text title
Subject
Matilda 12th Day of July Agatha Christie A Christmas Carol Level 3 Level 2
1
14
4
6
13
4
0
2
25
14
13
33
5
3
3
21
11
12
51
10
3
4
10
3
10
34
7
5
5
27
9
4
18
6
3
6
27
7
11
31
5
5
7
16
6
6
26
8
4
8
16
7
4
30
7
4
9
19
8
14
28
1
0
10
24
9
7
17
4
0
11
20
6
7
24
9
1
12
26
9
7
33
8
0
13
29
13
7
23
5
0
14
20
9
14
44
3
0
15
23
8
5
27
3
1
16
23
10
4
33
2
1
17
23
8
7
47
2
0
18
36
13
9
30
3
1
19
37
15
10
26
7
2
20
28
14
7
27
5
3
21
37
11
22
43
1
2
22
21
14
10
19
2
1
23
22
8
9
17
2
1
24
28
10
9
48
4
1
25
20
10
4
21
3
3
26
18
7
8
29
4
2
27
18
2
13
27
9
1
28
20
2
8
36
0
1
29
26
8
9
39
7
2
30
30
31
9
43
5
1
31
16
9
11
43
8
1
32
20
8
7
22
5
2
33
32
4
5
20
6
1
34
15
3
8
24
3
3
35
22
6
14
50
2
2
36
10
2
15
52
3
1
37
13
6
11
30
9
4
No. of words
per page
Mean
%

243

266

290

265

363

262

22.5
9.22

8.8
3.31

9.1
3.14

31.3
11.81

4.8
1.32

1.8
.69

required extensive reading. The class readers are
not authentic texts but graded readers and are targeted to the students’ ability level and interests.
Finding books interesting to all the students in aclass is nearly impossible, but for our program at
a Japanese women’s university, it was easier thanwell-structured approach to skill building, andthe variety of reading material. Readings andexercises are assigned from this book as homework and students check and discuss their workin class each week. In addition, we assigned nineclass readers for the year as well as 500 pages of6

On CUE

Winter 2003: Volume 11, Issue 2

Category of text
Classroom Text
Class Readers
“
“
“
“
“
“
“
“
ER

Table 4. Reading Materials used in the 2002 FEP
Book title
Basic Reading Power
Audrey Hepburn
Stories from the Five Towns
Go Lovely Rose
Moondial
The Secret Garden
Love Story
Princess Diana
Women in Business
Emma
Students’ choice

it might be in other contexts. We chose books
on subjects typically interesting to our students:
stories with predominately female characters,
writings about famous female ﬁgures, and romances. Students are required to read from thesebooks at home and answer comprehension anddiscussion questions about them in class. Thus,
the readers also directly build reading skills. The
ER portion of the curriculum exposes students tolarge quantities of reading that should strengthen
their reading ability as well.
The 500 pages of required ER were added to
fulﬁll the expectations of the reading program’s
second goal: increasing interest in reading. The
fact that regular reading can improve a broad
scope of language skills is widely accepted,
and student interest in reading is a rudimentary
goal for any sound English program. Since thefreshman students are now free to choose reading material that suits their interests and levels,

2
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes

Level
high beginner
2
2
3
3
3
3
3
4
4
multi

reading may become pleasurable. They selecttheir materials from the graded readers at our
main campus library, which has nearly 1000 titles. Based on the results of the reading portionof standardized test students are given at the beginning of the year, they are assigned a recommended reading level. Additionally, we suggest
a simple test: read a couple of pages of a book,and if there are more than 4 or 5 words per pagethat they don’t know, the level may be too high.
On the other hand, if there are no words or only
one or two words per page that they don’t know,
the level may be too low. In addition to the ER,
the nine class readers and the variety of readingmaterial in Basic Reading Power foster greater
student interest, even in the prescribed texts.
Finally, through all the reading students doin all three categories of required reading, they
are exposed to a broad range of words, and therepeated exposure indirectly builds vocabulary.
7

Feature Article: Heigham & Segger

Table 3. Do Texts Come within Recommended Unknown—Vocabulary Parameters?
Recommended
Matilda The 12th Day of Agatha Xmas 3
Unknown Words
July
Christie Carol
Hill (2001)
5%
No
Yes
Yes
No
Yes
Nation (1997)
2%
No
No
No
No
Yes
Anderson
9
No
Yes
No
No
Yes
(1999)
Day and
5
No
No
No
No
Yes
Bamford(1998)
Waring (1997)
2 or 3
No
No
No
No
No
Bamford and
1 or 2
No
No
No
No
No
Welch (2000)
Brown (2000)
1 or 2
No
No
No
No
No

Feature Article: Heigham & Segger

On CUE

Winter 2003: Volume 11, Issue 2

Additionally, teachers give speciﬁc word lists tothe students and test them regularly. As a resultof both techniques, students’ vocabulary is built
and strengthened.
At present, we are using the above curriculumin the freshman English program. One year has
been completed, and the reading component of
the program received positive feedback from thestudents in our most recent questionnaires. In fact,
the ER portion of the curriculum has proven tobe especially popular, and most students reportthat they are enjoying the reading. We intend tocontinue monitoring the reading program as it isclear that it will require some alterations. We are
now considering a reduction in the number of classreaders and an increase in the ER requirement, as
students have reported that they both enjoyed andfelt more empowered making their own reading
choices. Typically, the books our students read fortheir extensive reading requirement are among theﬁrst books they have read in English and almost
always the ﬁrst English books that they havechosen for themselves. Most students ﬁnish 8-15
books during freshman year, and completing somany books in English increases their conﬁdence
and belief in their own ability as language learners. So, despite the need to ﬁne-tune the reading
component of the FEP, we feel that the new program design better meets the needs of the students,
and we look forward to the program’s continued
evolution.

Bates, A. (2000). Go lovely rose. (2nd simpliﬁeded.). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Bennett, A. (2000). Stories from the ﬁve towns.
Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Brancato, C. (2000). Subject 11. London: Penguin.
Brown, R. (2000). Extensive reading in the
EFL class. JALT International Conference,
Shizuoka, Japan. Retrieved from http://
www.kyoto-su.ac.jp/information/er/rbrown.html
Carrell, P.L. (1985). Facilitating ESL reading byteaching text structure. TESOL Quarterly, 19:4,
727-752.
Carrell, P.L. & Eisterhold, J.C. (1983). Schema
theory and ESL reading pedagogy. TESOL
Quarterly, 17:4, 553-573.
Christie, A. (1996). Best detective stories of Agatha
Christie. Essex: Longman.
Coady, J. (1997). Extensive reading. In Coady,J. & Huckin, T. (Eds.). Second Language
Acquisition: A Rational for Pedagogy.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Cooper, M. (1984). Linguistic competence ofpracticed and unpracticed non-native readersof English. In J.C. Alderson & A.H. Urquhart(Eds.). (1984). Reading in a Foreign Language(pp. 122-135). New York: Longman.
Cresswell, H. (2000). Moondial. (simpliﬁed ed.).
Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Dahl, R. (1988). Matilda. New York: Penguin.
Day, R.R. & Bamford, J. (1998). Extensive readingin the second language classroom. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
Day, R.R. & Bamford, J. (2000). Reluctant
readers. Forum, 38:3. Retrieved from <http://exchanges.state.gov/forum/vols/vol38/no3/p12.htm>
Dickens, C. (1977). A Christmas carol. Tokyo:
Yohan.
Eskey, D.E. & Grabe, W. (1988). Interactivemodels for second language reading:
perspective on instruction. In P. L. Carrell,
J. Devine & D.E. Eskey (Eds.). Interactive
approaches to second language reading.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Evans, D. (2001). Women in business. Essex
Person Education Limited.
Floyd, P. & Carrell, P.L. (1987). Effects on ESL
reading of teaching ultural content schemata.
Language Learning, 37:1, 89-108.
Gilchrist, C. (1998). Princess Diana. Essex:
Addison Wesley Longman.
Helgeson, M. (1997). What one extensive reading
program looks like. The Language Teacher, 21:
5, 31-33.

References

Alderson, J.C. & Urquhart, A.H. (Eds.). (1984).
Reading in a foreign language. New York
Longman.
Anderson, N. (1999). Exploring second language
reading: Issues and strategies. Toronto: Heinleand Heinle.
Austen, J. (1998). Emma. (simpliﬁed ed.). Essex:
Addison Wesley Longman.
Bamford, J. & Day, R. R. (1997). Extensive
reading: What is it? Why bother? The Language
Teacher, 21:5, 6-8.
Bamford, J. & Welch, R. (2000). Starting
extensive reading programs at universities,
vocational schools and language schools. JALT
Conference, Shizuoka; Extensive Reading
Colloquium. 2000 November 3 (online).
<http://www.kyoto-su.ac.jp/information/er/
bamfordWelch.html>.
8

On CUE

Winter 2003: Volume 11, Issue 2

Pan-SIG Conference:
May 22-23, 2004
The Interface Between Interlanguage
Pragmatics and Assessment
The Testing, Pragmatics, CUE SIGs, and the Tokyo and WestTokyo Chapters will host a mini-conference aimed at ﬁnding
more communicative ways of language teaching and testing.
Dr. Andrew Cohen, author of Assessing Language Ability in
the Classroom (Heinle and Heinle), and Interfaces Between
Language Teaching and Language Testing Research(Cambridge, with L. Bachman), will give a plenary and aworkshop. Details concerning submissions can be found at<www.jalt.org/pansig/2004/>

9

Feature Article: Heigham & Segger

Rice, C. (2000). Audrey Hepburn. Essex: Addison
Wesley Longman.
Schmidt, K. (1996). Extensive reading in English:
Rationale and possibilities for a program at
Shirayuri Gakuen. Sendai Gakuen Journal of
General Research, 24:2, 81-92.
Segal, E. (1990). Love story. (simpliﬁed ed.).
Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Susser, B. & Robb, T.N. (1989). Extensive
homework. The Language Teacher, 13: 8, 7-9.
Susser, B. & Robb, T.N. (1990). EFL extensive
reading instruction: research and procedure.
JALT Journal, 12:2. Retrieved from http://www.kyoto-su.ac.jp/~trobb/sussrobb.html
Waring, R. (1997). Graded and extensive
reading—questions and answers. The Language
Teacher, 21:5, 9-12.
Williams, R. & Dallas, D. (1984). Aspects ofvocabulary in the readability of content area
L2 educational textbooks: A case study. In J.C.
Alderson & A.H. Urquhart (Eds.). Reading in
a Foreign Language (pp. 199-210). New York:
Longman.

Hill, D.R. (2001). Graded readers. ELT Journal,
55:3, 300-324.
Hodgson Burnett, F. (2000). Secret garden.
(simpliﬁed ed.). Oxford: Oxford University
Press.
Krashen, S. (1994). The power of reading. Plenary
Session 10, TESOL 94- Teachers of English
to Speakers of Other Languages, 28th Annual
Convention, Baltimore, April, 1994.
Lingard, J. (1970). The twelfth day of July.
London: Penguin.
Luppesco, S. & Day, R.R. (1993). Reading
dictionaries and vocabulary learning. Language
Learning, 43:2, 263-287.
McCarthy, M. (1990). Vocabulary. Oxford: Oxford
University Press.
Mikulecky, B.S. & Jeffries, L. (1998). Basicreading power. White Plains, N.Y.: Pearson.
Nation, P. (1997). The language learning beneﬁts
of extensive reading. The Language Teacher,
21:5, 13-16.
O’Dell, S. (1961). Island of the blue dolphins.
(simpliﬁed ed.) London:Penguin.

On CUE

Winter 2003: Volume 11, Issue 2

Self-perceived Attributions ofSuccess and Failure among College
Students
Feature Article: BurdenPeter Burden
Okayama Shoka University

While motivation is important in the classroom,in learning it is often used by teachers to deﬁnepoor performance or a lack of on-task persistence.
Motivation needs to be stimulated; yet “without
knowing where the roots of motivation lie, how
can the teacher water those roots?”(Oxford &Shearin, 1994, p.15) A difﬁculty in deﬁnitionis illustrated by Spolsky (1989) who states that
motivation includes “various affective factors
such as personality, attitudes, and anxiety”
without which “learning cannot take place”(p.15). Arguably one of the roots of motivation
is task persistence. Motivation can be seen as“an internal state that impels learners towards
action” (Covington, 1998, p.11) as evidenced
by the exhibition of energy towards the task. A
central assumption of attribution theory is that“the search for understanding is the (or a) basic‘spring of action’.” (Weiner, 1979, p.3) Personality and achievement are central concerns, andthe search for understanding leads to questionsof attribution: Why did I succeed or fail? Accomplishments are seen in terms of the meanings
that each person ascribes to success and failure,
notions of success or the probability of successand the accompanying sense of achievement
are important for task persistence. During theperformance of a learning task, failure-oriented
or helpless students typically tend to seek attributions. This is connected with self-esteem, andinvolves ascribing causes to our actions and theactions of others (Covington 1992, p.51). The
literature notes that master-oriented individuals
do not seem to engage in this activity. Weiner(1979, 1992) notes that when reﬂecting on priorsuccesses or failures, the individual assesses ability level, the amount of effort expended, task
difﬁculty, and sense of luck.

Future notions of success or failure are basedon the perceived level of ability in relation
to perceived task-difficulty. The sense of
success or the probability of success and theaccompanying sense of achievement is crucial
for task persistence.
Learners estimate task difﬁculty by considering the similarity of the task at hand to previous
tasks and performances. Attributional inferences
are often retrospective and are closely tied toself-esteem. These personal beliefs will affect thelearner’s sense of potential, which in turn will
determine the degree to which the learner will
strive for achievement in the future (Dörnyei,1994).

Research Objectives
If the cognitive side of our nature controls
motivation, it is necessary to analyse causes ofsuccess and failure among students: What reasons do learners construct for their successes
and failures in learning a new language? (Williams & Burden, 1999). Unfortunately ability isoften confused with worth, thus motivation inlearning is no longer conﬁned to an integrative/
instrumental dichotomy. Yet few studies haveexamined what students have to say about theirown attributions of success and failure.
I decided to apply Williams, Burden, Poulet
and Maun’s unpublished (2002) survey (seeFigure 1) at two Japanese universities wherestudents are studying English. Three researchquestions were formulated:a) What are the learners’ views of theirlearning of English up to the present time?
b) What are the key attributions for success?
c) When students do not feel successful,what are the attributions?
10On CUE

Winter 2003: Volume 11, Issue 2

Participants
tered the questionnaire during an English Conversation class in week 14 of a 15-week single
semester program. All participants study English
for at least 90 minutes a week, in classes thatemphasize speaking and listening skills. Students
were asked to consider their level of success instudying English, and to list the attributions for
feelings of perceived success and failure. Figure
1 illustrates the questionnaire.

An opportunity sample of 231 students at one
private and one national university in WesternJapan completed the questionnaire. The students
were studying English as either a requirement or
as an elective. None were English majors. Most
students were studying Commerce or Law; others were studying Engineering, Economics orTourism. 156 males and 75 females took part.
Four native English speaker teachers adminis-

M/F 性別Major 専攻・学部

̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲
̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲

1. Put a circle ( O ) in one answer

下記から一つ選んで(０）をしてください

I usually feel successful in English class

私は英語の授業でたいていうまくいった感じがする

I sometimes feel successful in English class

私は英語の授業で時々うまくいった感じがする

I rarely feel successful in English class

私は英語の授業であまりうまくいかない感じがする

I never feel successful in English class

私は英語の授業で全然うまくいかない感じがする

2. If I feel successful at learning English, the main reasons are:

英語を習うことにうまくいった感じがするなら、どうしてですか。主な理由をあげてください。
１)＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲

２)＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲

３)＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲

４)＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲

５)＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲

3. If I don't feel successful at English, the main reasons are:

英語を習うことにうまくいかない感じがするなら、どうしてですか。主な理由をあげてください。
１)＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲

２)＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲

３)＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲

４)＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲

５)＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲̲

11

Feature Article: Burden

Figure 1. The Questionnaire

On CUE

Winter 2003: Volume 11, Issue 2

Feature Article: Burden

Data Analysis

students saw themselves as being sometimes
successful, while approximately 28% saw
themselves as rarely successful, 19% as usually
successful and around 3% as never successful atstudying English.

Qualitative analysis of student responses to theopen questions revealed patterns in the data. Key
word analysis was used to generate categories
of response in the statements made by students(see Nunan, 1992). Categories were then grouped
together with reference to attributions of successand failure. The ﬁndings were not submitted toinferential statistical analysis, as the focus of thestudy was to stimulate ideas for teaching practiceand suggest transferability to other contexts.
Statistics of percentages and means were used
as a way of aiding description. The same teachers
who helped in the earlier translation translated
responses to the open Japanese questions into
English, and categories were assigned only when
all ﬁve teachers had reached agreement.

Attributions for Success
Fourteen categories of attributions for successwere deﬁned from the data (see Table 2). Out of
318 attributions, over a third cited ability usually
expressed in terms of I can . . . perform a taskor language function. Typical answers involved
catching the words or meaning, understanding
the communication and the content as well as
being able to reply, express themselves or speak.
They noted having the ability to understand andif necessary offer a response, and the comprehending the teacher’s speaking, the listening task
or the written text.
Interest was noted in 15% of the attributions.
The third category was the internal attribute ofResults
How do learners view their learning ofEnglish? As seen in Table 1 nearly half of theTable 1. Sample
Number ofmales

Number of
females

Subtotal

Percentage
of total

Never feel successful in English

5

3

8

3.46

Rarely feel successful

50

14

64

27.71

Sometimes feel successful

85

30

115

49.78

Usually feel successful

16

28

44

19.04

Total

156

75

231

100.00

Table 2. Attributions Noted for Feeling Successful (n=231)
Attribution
Ability
Interest
EffortMastery
The task
The teacher
Ease
Strategies
Peers
The class
Translation
Native speaker
Future beneﬁts
GradesTotalsNumber
107
47
38
24
21
19
17
10
10
8
6
6
3
2
318

Percentage
33.6
14.8
11.9
7.5
6.6
6.0
5.3
3.1
3.1
2.5
1.9
1.9
0.9
0.6
100.0
12

Internal/external
I
I/E
I
I
E
E
E
I
E
E
I
E
E
E

On CUE

Winter 2003: Volume 11, Issue 2

the teacher’s pronunciation as a model for futurereference, trying to speak whenever possible,
wanting to speak more, and utilizing memory
to learn vocabulary.
Table 3 reveals that students who usually
feel successful had proportionately the greatest
number of attributions, while the 8 students
who never felt success did not cite a single
attribution.
When attributions are classiﬁed according
to the students’ perceptions of whether or notthey are successful in class, we see that 64 outof 115 attributions of students who sometimes
feel successful were due to perceived ability, as
opposed to 24 out of 32 attributions for thosestudents who rarely feel successful (see Table4). For students who usually feel successful, 25
attributions were to interest followed by 19 toability out of a total of 44 attributions. The useof strategies was poor across all perceived ability

Table 3. Attribution to Success According to Feeling of Success
Number of attributions

Number of respondents

Never feel successful in English

08

Rarely feel successful

32

64

Sometimes feel successful

185

115

Usually feel successful

101

44

Total

318

231

Attribution

Ability
Interest
EffortMastery
The teacher
The task
Ease
Strategies
Peers
The classtranslation
Native speaker
Future beneﬁts
Grades
Total

Table 4. Attributions for Success Named by Students
Students who
Students who
Students who
usually feelsometimes feelrarely feel
successful (44)successful (115)
successful (64)
Number (%)
Number (%)
Number (%)
19 (18.8)
64 (34.6)
24 (75)25 (24.8)
20 (10.8)
2 (6.3)
11 (10.9)
27 (14.6)
05 (4.9)18 (9.7)
1 (3.1)9 (8.9)10 (5.4)04 (4)15 (8.1)
2 (6.3)8 (7.9)8 (4.3)1 (3.1)7 (6.9)3 (1.6)0
3 (2.9)7 (3.8)00
8 (4.3)0
2 (1.9)2 (1.1)2 (6.3)6 (5.9)000
3 (1.6)0
2 (1.9)
0
0
101
185
32
13

Students who
never feel
successful (8)Number (%)
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0

Feature Article: Burden

effort or trying hard and such attributions for
success including doing preparation, revision,and homework; trying hard in class; practicing
before class; studying seriously and attending
every class. Mastery was mentioned 24 times andinvolved feelings of improvement, enhancement,or success—verbalized as having mastereda task and is attributed to having mastered askill, having good pronunciation, being able touse a dictionary well and feeling satisﬁed thatmy English is not so bad. The task itself wasseen as an attribution for success with relevant,interesting, and enjoyable task content, smooth
progress through the task, and chances toimprove as pair work was used.
The use of strategies was mentioned only 10
times, receiving 3% of the cited attributions.
This was differentiated from effort in that there
was a sense of direction or concrete action. This
category of citations included taking notes, using

On CUE

Winter 2003: Volume 11, Issue 2

groups; it was not mentioned at all by students
who are generally unsuccessful and by only 10
students overall.

embarrassment, confusion, being lost and lapsing
into silence. Other comments stated that there
were too many difﬁcult words in tasks; they
had not had English classes (until now) that
required a verbal response; they were unable
to understand or catch what the teacher said.
Also, they felt an inability to translate and thatJapanese sentence structure was too different toallow comprehension.
Looking at Table 6 below we can see that thosestudents who usually or sometimes feel successful cited proportionately fewer attributions for
failure than students who rarely or seldom feel
successful.
Looking at the results in Table 7, we can seethat across the perceived ability range students
attributed lack of ability to failure at learning
English, a stable internal cause and one that
could affect their future motivation toward
English. Across the range of students, lack ofability was overwhelmingly the most frequent attribute, and even those who felt they were usually
successful noted ability in 82% of attributions
to failure. This is a worrying belief as students
who are motivated toward success generally attribute failure to effort, and if they tried harder
they would subsequently succeed. By increasing
effort on the next occasion, they believe, theirability will carry them through. Failure-oriented

Feature Article: Burden

Attributions for Failure
Ten attributions for not feeling successful
emerged from the data (See Table 5) with lackof ability mentioned in 71.6% of attributions,or 139 times out of a total of 194 attributions.
Ability was cited 14 times out of 17 attributions
for those students who usually feel successful,and 64 times out of 90 for those who rarely feel
successful. Typically students replied in the open
questions that they were poor at English, that
English was their weak point, they did not know
the basics, and had an inability to pronounce,
speak, read, listen, or catch meaning. They felt an
inability to understand grammar and complainedof words not coming out. Many students felt an
inability to remember vocabulary, which may
be linked to poor strategy use. However, these
attributions were classiﬁed as a perceived lack ofability by students who do not see it as a concrete
tool to be utilized.
A lack of effort was noted by 7% of students
including not preparing or not participating.
They do not know English (and therefore do nottry), and do not study after class. Lack of mastery
attributions include feelings of resistance, stress,

Table 5. Attributions for Feeling Unsuccessful (n=231)
Attribution(Lack of) ability(Lack of) effort(Lack of) mastery
Task
Teacher
Strategies
Interest
The classJapanese
Translation
Total

Number
139
18
10
6
5
5
4
4
2
1
194

Percentage
71.6
9.3
3.9
2.6
2.2
2.2
2.1
2.1
0.9
0.4
100.0

Internal/external
I
I
I
E
E
I
I/E
E
E
E

Table 6. Attributions for Failure According to Level of Success
Never feel successful in English
Rarely feel successful
Sometimes feel successful
Usually feel successful
Total

Number of attributes
15
90
72
17
194
14

Number of respondents
8
64
115
44
231

On CUE

Winter 2003: Volume 11, Issue 2

students, however, attribute failure to a lack ofability, and we see here a picture of students
who may suffer from a lack of self-worth due
to persistent feelings of lack of ability—a direct
threat to feelings of competence.

Implications: Watering the Rootsof Motivation
In the introduction it was noted that affective
factors inﬂuence motivation, which in turn need
to be stimulated. To begin, a distinction must
be made between generic ability and foreign
language aptitude. Perhaps learners may feelthey do not have the ability to learn foreign
languages but at the same time feel they aregood at other subjects in school. In this case,learners may develop an avoidance strategy andfocus their efforts on the subjects they are good
at. Consequently an overall learned helplessness
and lack of efﬁcacy might not arise. By contrast,
if a learner attributes failure to a general lackof ability, the problem is much more severe.
Ascribing failure to a lack of ability results inlearned helplessness (Good & Brophy, 1990,
p. 389), Covington (1998) writes that for somestudents, the highest priority is the protectionof the sense of ability. 71.6% of attributes for
failure (Table 5) cited the lack the ability tolearn a language, and so these learners may
actually “handicap themselves by not studying
in order to have an excuse for failing” (p.16). If
students believe ability is ﬁxed, self-perceptionsof incompetence will trigger humiliation, which
will lead to a downward spiral of effort as they

Table 7. Attributions for Failure Named by Students
Attributions(Lack of) ability(Lack of) effort(Lack of) mastery
Task
Teacher
Strategies
Interest
Japanese
Translation
The class
Total

Students who
usually feel
successful
14 (82.4)
1 (5.9)1 (5.9)00
000
1 (5.9)017Students who
sometimes feel
successful
50 (69.4)
10 (13.9)
1 (1.4)3 (4.2)0
1 (1.4)2 (2.8)2 (2.8)0
3 (4.2)72
15

Students whorarely feel
successful
64 (71.1)
6 (6.7)7 (7.8)3 (3.3)5 (5.6)4 (4.4)000
1 (1.1)90Students who
never feel
successful
11 (73.3)
1 (6.7)1 (6.7)000
2 (13.3)
00015

Feature Article: Burden

attempt to deﬂect questions of ability—if they
do not try, they cannot be seen as incompetent,
rather they are merely disinterested. Therefore
we can perhaps see unreceptive, passive students
as being over-motivated as opposed to somehow
being under-motivated. The absence of behavior
should be viewed as just as reﬂecting motivation just as “a lively, abundance” of behavior(p.16).
Therefore how does the teacher water theroots of motivation? To start with, a belief
that success is due to hard work will lead to an
intention to work hard again. Covington (1998,p.71) suggests that there is a need to “ascribe
one’s failures to inadequate learning strategies”
thus focusing not only on the adequacy of effort
but also on the quality of effort. By doing so,
the “concept of learner strategies bridges thedomain of effort and ability so that trying hard
but in sophisticated strategic ways is tantamountto increasing one’s ability to learn” (p.71). While
there is dispute over whether it is better to saythat motivation predicts success or that successpredicts motivation, there is no doubt that among
learners who initially had little desire to learn
English, those who experienced some kind of
success were more likely to continue studying.
If students are able to analyze problems, identify
areas of difﬁculty and create necessary actions
to overcome difﬁcult obstacles, even if a task isinitially seen as being too difﬁcult, the student
can adopt an alternative explanation of perceived
causes of failure besides ability. However it isimportant to remember that exhorting learners toOn CUE

Winter 2003: Volume 11, Issue 2

Feature Article: Burden

try harder is insufﬁcient. Students need strategyrelated messages to use task-appropriate skills.
In the classroom the teacher should not focus on
failure, but rather point out where students fell
short of the goals to complete the task. Bruner(1966, p.53) suggests that “instruction is a provisional state to make the learner or problem
solver self-sufﬁcient” and to take charge of theirown learning. If not, “the result of instruction is
to create a form of mastery that is contingent on
the perpetual presence of a teacher.”the student with skills inadequate to manage
learning, which heightens feelings of frustration, inadequacy and boredom.

References

Bruner, J. (1966). Towards a theory of instruction.
Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.
Covington, M. (1992). Making the grade: A selfworth perspective on motivation and school
reform. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Covington, M. (1998). The will to learn. A guidefor motivating young people. New York:
Cambridge University Press.
Dörnyei, Z. (1994). Motivation and motivatingin the foreign language classroom. Modern
Language Journal, 78 (3), 275-284.
Gillette, B. (1994). The role of learner goals in
L2 success. In J. Lantolf & G. Appel (Eds.)
Vygotskian approaches to second language
research (pp.195-215). Norwood: Ablex
Publishing.
Good T., & Brophy, J. (1990). Educational
psychology. New York: Longman.
Nunan, D. (1992). Research methods in language
learning. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press.
Oxford, R. & Shearin, J. (1994). Language
learning motivation: expanding the theoreticalframework. The Modern Language Journal, 78(1), 12 - 28.
Spolsky, B. (1989). Conditions for second
language learning. Oxford: Oxford University
Press.
Weiner, B. (1979). A theory of motivation for someclassroom experiences. Journal of Educational
Psychology, 71 (1), 3-25.
Weiner, B. (1992). Human motivation. Thousand
Oaks: Sage.
Williams, M. & Burden, R. (1999). Students’developing conceptions of themselves as
language learners. Modern Language Journal,
83 (2), 193-201.
Williams. M., Burden, R., Poulet. G., & Maun, I.
(2002). Learners’ perceptions of their successes
and failures in foreign language learning.
Manuscript submitted for publication.

Conclusion
This small study has attempted to show thatteachers need to create a motivational condition encouraging internal attributes of ability
and effort to enhance the values, attitudes anddeveloping learners’ ability to learn effectively.
A key aspect of the paper has been an attempt
to shed light on ways in which learners interpret
their success and failure and how learners makesense of their learning situation. As Williams
and Burden (1999) note “the messages thatteachers convey explicitly and implicitly intheir classroom about what they consider issuccessful learning will profoundly affect thelearners’ developing notions of themselves aslearners as well as their progress in learninga language” (p.194). The teacher must create
an effective environment for the student bybuilding conﬁdence and explaining that errors
are a necessary part of language acquisition andshould recognize that constructive errors are an
inevitable part of a learner’s interlanguage.
Low strategy use among the subjects undoubtedly inﬂuenced the number of attributions
for success, yet successful learners were more
conscious of, and willing to describe, actual
strategies or learning techniques. Students occasionally cited being able to, or complained ofbeing unable to, translate in their accounts for
success and failure which Gillette (1994) notes
is a trait of ineffective learners as they “cling totheir L1 (ﬁrst language) as a reference system”(p. 196), thereby relying heavily on translation;
whereas more effective learners favour language
use and communicative activities in class. Poor
students are often very passive, overly dependent
on the teacher and leave the work of organisinglearning in the hands of the teacher. This leaves
16

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Winter 2003: Volume 11, Issue 2

Student and Teacher Beliefs about
Language Learning: A Preliminary
Study

Terry Wacholtz
Chukyo Universityof one predominant style may inhibit learning
to a great extent. Likewise, Richards and Lockhart (1994) found that the predominance of one
teaching style might discourage learners fromusing strategies of their choice that could consequently inhibit learning. Furthermore, Chiba
and Matsumura’s (1998) study comparing nativeand Japanese teachers of English found someinteresting differences. Namely, native English
teachers felt more strongly that game-orientatedactivities and group work were effective for
language learning. They discourage the use of
the students’ native language in the classroom.
Their Japanese counterparts however, condoned
the use of L1. Chiba and Matsuura also found thatJapanese teachers were stricter regarding student
errors than native English teachers, who showed
more lenience.
In a large-scale study of 517 learners conducted in Australia by Willing (1988), various
classroom activities were examined. Students
responded most positively to the following
activities:

The old adage that we are products of our experience goes a long way in explaining our attitudes and beliefs about how we should conduct
ourselves in our daily lives and, for the purposeof this study, our various beliefs about how languages should be learned. Each of us is inﬂuenced in various ways throughout our lives, byauthority ﬁgures; teachers, parents, coaches, by
our environment; home, educational, economic,
social; and by the personal values we hold—bethey social, moral, or spiritual. This incomplete
list demonstrates the range of factors that inﬂuence our attitudes towards learning, whether
we prefer formal or informal approaches, one
methodology or strategy over another, or our acceptance or rejection of new pedagogical stances.
For the purpose of examining the classroom
dynamic, this study will concentrate on how
students and teachers feel about the usefulnessof popular classroom activities utilized in second
language learning and discuss the implicationsof those feelings.

Teacher vs. Learner Beliefs about
Language Learning• I like to practice sounds andpronunciation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62%• I like the teacher to tell me my mistakes .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61%• In class I like to learn by conversations . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55%• I like the teacher to explain everything to
us . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
54%

Student and teacher beliefs about language
learning have been examined by a number of
researchers, who have shown that students andteachers bring with them distinct and varying setsof ideas and preconceptions about how best tolearn. Horowitz (1988) stated that investigating
learners’ beliefs has “relevance to the understanding of their expectations of, commitment
to, success in and satisfaction with language
classes” (p.293). Oxford (1990) found that there
are a number of strategies available for students
to use in language learning and therefore the use

However, students responded negatively to thefollowing activities:• I like the teacher to let me ﬁnd my mistakes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27%• In class, I like to learn by pictures, ﬁlms
17

Feature Article: Wacholtz

Introduction

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Winter 2003: Volume 11, Issue 2

Feature Article: Wacholtz

and videos. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
19%• I like to learn English by talking in pairs.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15%• In class I like to learn by games. . . . 10%• I like to study English by myself . . . . 3%
(Willing, 1988, p. 117)

and 32 native speaking English teachers about theusefulness of various classroom activities in language learning. The students were all 18 year-old
English majors from two women’s universities
in Nagoya. The questionnaire was voluntary. All
agreed to participate. The teachers were native
English speakers from Australia, Canada, The
United States, and Britain with an average ageof 41. As a group, all taught at various universities in Nagoya City and Aichi Prefecture, had
an average of 12 years of teaching experience,
and at least a Masters Degree. Instructions to theteachers were given either verbally or in writing.
If oral communication was not possible, written
instructions were given explaining the purposeof the study, and indicating that replying would
be optional and results anonymous. Thirty-twoof 38 teachers replied.

Nunan (1988) followed up on Willings’s study
and, mirroring the items, surveyed 60 teachers
and asked them to rate the importance of thefollowing activities in classroom teaching: pronunciation practice, explanations to the class,conversation practice, error correction, vocabulary development, listening to/using cassettes,
student self discovery of errors, using pictures,
ﬁlm and video, pair work, and language games.
Interestingly, when comparing the results of thetwo studies, there is some disagreement withevery activity except one: conversation practice,which both groups rated as very high. Students
and teachers also gave language games an almost
identical rating of very low and low respectively.
There is almost total disagreement regarding 3
activities: pair work, student self discovery oferrors, and listening to/using cassettes. Students’
low rating contradicted the teachers’ high andvery high ratings. And the students’ very highrating on error correction contradicted the teachers’ low rating.
Clearly a large gap exists between
teachers’ and students’ language learning beliefs.
Therefore, it is worthwhile investigating thesedifferences in greater detail so that we may
decide how we can best achieve our common
goal.

Methods
The questionnaire is a combination of the
one used by Willing (1988) and Nunan (1988)
including 16 items (See Table 1). All students
were given a bilingual questionnaire while theteachers were given only English versions. Theinterviews were open ended, done in English(one to one), on site during class time and lasted
between ten and ﬁfteen minutes. Interview data
were recorded via notes. Only half of the student
participants (67) were interviewed because they
were under my direct supervision. Some typicalquestions were: What classroom activities do you
feel help you learn most? Why? What classroom
activities do you think are least helpful? Why?
What other activities would you like to include?
What activities would you like to omit? Why?
The questionnaire asked the participants thefollowing question: What degree of importancewould you rate the following classroom activities
in language learning? The participants chose a reply from a 5-point scale that included; very high,high, medium, low or very low. No time limit wasgiven for the students, however most ﬁnishedwithin 10 minutes. The teachers completed thequestionnaire at their leisure and simply dropped
it off in a mailbox. The study originally called forthe use of statistical descriptive analysis and thus
used a 5-item questionnaire. However, becauseof technical difﬁculties, it was abandoned andreplaced with percentage comparisons. Therefore

Research Questions
The research questions for this project are:
1. What classroom activities do students andteachers believe are helpful in language
learning and teaching?
2. What differences exist between the twogroups?

Participants
The present study used a one-time questionnaire to investigate the attitudes and beliefs of
134 ﬁrst-year Japanese female university students
18

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Winter 2003: Volume 11, Issue 2

only high, very high and low, very low responses
were used.

Table 2
Rank order of classroom activities accessed the lowest scores
By students
role playing
using pictures, ﬁlm and video 18%
pair work
language games
vocabulary development

30%
17%
16%
12%

By teachers
making speeches
working alone
44%
error correction by teacher
listening to/using tapes
using pictures, ﬁlm and video 25%
19

53%
31%
28%

Feature Article: Wacholtz

activities that were given the “lowest scores” ,rated “very low” or “ low” and thus were seenas the least helpful.
It is clear that there are dramatic differences inResults
theway teachers and students believe languages
The results of the questionnaire given to bothteachers and students can be found in Tables 1 should be learned. As seen in the Willing andand 2 below. Table 1 illustrates the classroom Nunan studies, only one activity, conversation
activities, ranked in order from the most help- practice, was seen as very helpful by teachersful, rated very high or high. Table 2 denotes and students. This coincides with research done
those activities given the highest number of by Eltis and Low (1985), Alcorso and Kalantis(1985), Willing (1988) and Nunan (1988). For
low scores.
Table 2 denotes, in rank order, those classroom the students in this study pronunciation practice
was a close second,
Table 1just below conversaRank order of classroom activities given very high or high scores and seen tion, but well below
as most helpful for language learning by students. Teacher responses in for the teachers at
ﬁfth with 30% fewer% for the same activity.
respondents ranking
it as helpful. The
Students ( N=134) Teachers ( N=32)
students also felt
1. conversation practice . . . . . . . . . . . . 85% . . . . . . . . . .91%
that working alone
2. pronunciation practice . . . . . . . . . . . . 80% . . . . . . . . . .53%
and error correc3. working alone . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78% . . . . . . . . . .28%
tions by the teacher
were important, at
4. error correction by teacher . . . . . . . . 76% . . . . . . . . . .28%
number three and5. explanations to the class . . . . . . . . . . 70% . . . . . . . . . .51%
four respectively.
6. reading. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68% . . . . . . . . . .19%
However, teach7. making speeches . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67% . . . . . . . . . .28%
ers ranked both of
8. listening to/using tapes . . . . . . . . . . . 64% . . . . . . . . . .38%
these toward thebottom. Since the9. writing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59% . . . . . . . . . .30%
communicative ap10. student self discovery of errors . . . . 56% . . . . . . . . . .59%
proach to language
11. problem solving. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55% . . . . . . . . . .50%
learning domi12. language games . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47% . . . . . . . . . .34%
nates instructional
13. vocabulary development . . . . . . . . . 44% . . . . . . . . . .78%
pedagogy, it is not
surprising that pair
14. pair work . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44% . . . . . . . . . .81%
work, conversation
15. role playing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42% . . . . . . . . . .38%
practice, and to a
16. using pictures, ﬁlm and video . . . . . 38% . . . . . . . . . .31%
lesser degree role(Adapted from Willing 1988:116 and Nunan 1988a: 92)
playing, are seen as

Feature Article: Wacholtz

On CUE

Winter 2003: Volume 11, Issue 2

valuable activities for teachers. However, have avirtually opposite position on these activities.
Table 2 highlights those activities that received
the highest number of low scores and thus areseen to be the least helpful. Here again there
are few similarities, with the exception of using
pictures, ﬁlm and video, Surprisingly, someof the most favored activities for language
teachers—role-playing and pair work—are
seen as being the least helpful by students. Also,
games which are considered by many educators
as a way to make language learning fun appear
to be thought of as less useful by those on thereceiving end. Teachers, on the other hand, feltthat making speeches and working alone wereleast helpful classroom activities. Students
clearly feel differently, ranking working alone
third most important and making speeches half
way down the list at number 7.

even preferred lecture-style classes to pair work
because they felt that they may be able to learn
more by obtaining extra information or ideas
from the teacher or by getting a chance to ask
questions. This clearly demonstrates a preference
for traditional learning strategies whereby theteacher is the dispenser of knowledge. It may
explain why working alone is rated so highly by
students. This questions the value of using thecommunicative approach as the sole pedagogicaltool many teachers employ in the classroom(Eltis and Low, 1985). Secondly, the students
felt that some activities such as using pictures,
ﬁlm and video could be done by themselves atschool language lab facilities, in the library, orat home; such activities were seen as a waste
of classroom time. Also, although the students
mostly enjoyed language games, many did notunderstand the learning value of the activity andtherefore thought them a wasteful classroom
activity.
Some contradictions were evident in thedata as well, and it has been suggested that arange of intra-group differences exist in addition to the inter-group differences noted in thisstudy. For example, although role-playing andlanguage games were given the lowest scores,
the percentage of students who rated it high was
greater than that of teachers. Willing (1988) also
acknowledges that among students and teachers
alike, a variation of differences about learning
beliefs also exists. This study did not account forsuch occurrences and thus such contradictions
could be more properly addressed in future studies by utilizing appropriate statistical analysis.
Therefore, even though the ﬁndings conﬁrm
what other researchers have found, it cannot be
said with certainty that the results found here
represent the situation in Japanese universities
in general. One reason is that only female students and native English speakers participatedhardly a representative sample. Secondly, only
basic quantitative and qualitative analysis wasdone. More in-depth data collection and analysis
representing a sample which includes both genders and native and non-native teachers would
provide a more accurate picture of the situationin Japan. This task falls to future projects.

Discussion
The mismatches found in this project mirror
those found in other studies comparing learnerwith teacher beliefs (Eltis and Low, 1985;
Horowitz, 1988; Willing, 1988; Nunan, 1988).
Teachers rated pair and group work, role plays,
conversation practice and vocabulary development as being important while students rated
more traditional activities such as error correction, pronunciation practice, and explanations
to the class as more useful. Likewise, the only
activity found to be important to both teachersand students was conversation practice. Here too,
there are misconceptions as to what conversation practice means, as was found in subsequentinterviews.
In follow up, one-on-one interviews with mystudents (67 of 134) revealed valuable insights.
At ﬁrst glance it might seem odd that students
rated conversation practice so highly, yetillustrated such a low preference for pair workand role playing, two activities which provide
students optimal opportunity for conversation
practice. What the interviews revealed wasthat conversation practice in the students
minds meant talking with the teacher, not otherstudents. Despite the fact that they enjoyedtalking with other students in the class, they
did not think that they could learn anything ofsigniﬁcance by talking with other students. They20

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Winter 2003: Volume 11, Issue 2

Conclusion

References

Note: I would like to express my appreciation to
the teachers and students in Nagoya and Aichi
Prefecture who participated in this study for
their patience in ﬁlling out the questionnaireand for providing such helpful and insightfulcomments. I am also thankful for the valuable
insights provided by the anonymous reviewersof this paper.

21

Feature Article: Wacholtz

Alcorso, C. and M. Kalantis (1985). The learning
process and being a learner in the AMEP.
Report to the Committee of Review of the Adult
Migrant Education Program. Department of
Immigration and Ethnic Affairs: Canberra.
Chiba, R. and Matsumura, H. (1998). Native andnonnative ideas about teaching goals of EFL in
Japan. Paper presented at the 5th Internaitonal
Conference on World Englishes, Champaign,
Illinois.
Eltis, K. & B. Low, (1885). A review of theteaching process in the adult migrant education
program. Report to the Committee of Reviewof the the Adult Migrant Education Program.
Department of Immigration and Ethnic Affairs,
Canberra.
Kohonen, V. (Ed) (2000) Experimental learning inforeign language education. London: Longman.
Horowitz, E. K. (1988). The beliefs about language
learning of beginning university foreign
language students. The Modern Language
Journal, 72, 283-294.
Nunan, D. (1988). The learner centeredcurriculum. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press.
Oxford, R. L. (1990). Language learning
strategies: What every teacher should know.
Boston, MA: Heinle & Heinle.
Richards, J. C. & C. Lockhart, (1994). Reﬂective
teaching in second language classrooms.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Willing, K. (1988). Learning styles in adultmigrant education. Adelaide: National
Curriculum Resource Center for the adult
Migrant Education Program.
Williams, M. & Burden, R. (1999). Students'
developing conceptions of themselves as
language learners. Modern Language Journal,
83, 193-201.

Knowing that students and teachers have differing ideas about how best to learn languages
presents educators with a dilemma about how toadequately approach methodology and activities
in the classroom. However, the results of thissmall survey do provide us with some insights.
First, since there is no conclusive evidence
one way or another for a correct pedagogicalmethod as both traditional and communicative
approaches have resulted in successful learners,
it might be best to seek middle ground, utilizing traditional methods and activities preferredby students while using communicative approaches in conversation practice held dear bymany teachers. Secondly, research has shownthat it is difﬁcult for both teachers and students
to dramatically change how they teach and learn(Oxford, 1990). However, more recent studies(Kohonen, 2000,;Williams & Burden, 1999)
have also shown that teachers are consideredexpert ﬁgures in the classroom and as such play
an inﬂuential role both implicitly and explicitly.
Therefore, the messages and suggestions thatthey convey can have powerful inﬂuences onlearners. This leaves a window of opportunity forteachers to design classroom activities that meettheir pedagogical goals, be they proﬁciency tests
or communicative competence. Lastly, teachers
should make efforts to illustrate that certain activities they value are worth doing by explaining
the language learning goals and letting students
see for themselves their value.

On CUE

Winter 2003: Volume 11, Issue 2

OPINION & PERSPECTIVE:
An Interview with Jennifer Jenkins

Opinion & Perspective

Stephen Ryan
Seitoku Universityof her concern. In response I was treated to ahighly amusing account of some of the morebizarre phonology-related research proposals
emanating from these shores. This brought her
round to the topic of her book: The Phonology
of English as an International Language was agreat title because it attracted a whole audiencethat would never have read anything written by
me. It was completely unintentional but that
title got me ‘behind enemy lines.’ If it had beencalled something like The Sociology of English
as an International Language then it would havereached a fairly predictable audience.”
I asked if that same title had not put off someof the book’s ‘natural’ audience; people likemyself and perhaps other readers of On CUE.
She agreed: “Sure. But I think these things
eventually get around by word of mouth.” Forreaders unfamiliar with the book, The Phonology
of English as an International Language isostensibly about phonology, but it encompasses
so much more. The book deals with a host ofsociolinguistic issues surrounding the spreadand ownership of English as an international
language. The central thrust of the book is thatsince the majority of the communication thattakes place in English no longer involves native
speakers, we should not be teaching an Englishthat refers to native-speaker norms. Jenkins
argues that English language teaching has for
too long focused on EFL (English as a Foreign
Language) when it should be concerned withELF (English as a Lingua Franca); the distinction
being that EFL sees successful communication
with a native speaker as its ultimate goal, while
ELF targets successful communication between
non-native speakers. Jenkins prefers the term
Bilingual English Speaker (BES) to non-native
speaker: “I wanted to develop the idea thatthe native speaker, the Monolingual English
Speaker, was, in fact, a disadvantaged speakerof the language.”In the OP column for this issue CUE Stephen
Ryan raises some important pedagogical issues as he catches up with phonetician Jennifer
Jenkins, who gives her views on English as aninternational language and the questionable roleof the native-speaker teacher.
Jennifer Jenkins’ The Phonology of English
as an International Language (2000) caused agreat stir when it was ﬁrst published almost three
years ago. To a certain extent the controversy waspredictable, as the book challenges many of thefundamental assumptions that underlie English
language teaching. Like many truly great ideas,
the beauty of The Phonology of English as an
International Language lies in its simplicity, andindeed much of it now seems so obvious that you
wonder why it was not written much earlier.
Jennifer Jenkins was in Japan this summer on
a gruelling nationwide lecture tour and through a
combination of sheer good fortune, coincidence
and other people’s poor organizational skills, I wasable to spend several hours in conversation withher. I had expected to ﬁnd her a little reluctant toshare her few precious hours of free time with ahumble CUE member such as myself, but I could
not have been more wrong; she proved not only
to be pleasant company but more than willing toshare both her time and ideas.
Despite displaying the usual Londoner’s
awed fascination at the sight of cleanliness
and working machines, Jenkins seemed a little
under whelmed by her new surroundings: “I hope
you’re not going to ask me how I am ﬁnding
Tokyo! I don’t know how many times I havebeen asked that question today and I still don’tknow what to say.”After this no-nonsense opening, she continued in typically enthusiastic fashion outlining
her plans for her visit. However, amidst theenthusiasm I thought I detected a hint of apprehension and attempted to discover the source22

On CUE

Winter 2003: Volume 11, Issue 2teacher reminded me of my own early encounterswith applied linguistics texts. A recurring ﬁgurein those texts was the tyrannical, authoritarian
language teacher bent on denying the creativity
and individuality of learners through a strict
diet of grammar-based, teacher-fronted lessons.
Neither the teacher nor the learners appearing
in those texts were recognisable from my own
classroom experience. Was Jenkins not in dangerof creating another similar myth: the myth of
the native speaker teacher attempting to impose
values and norms on an unwilling learner? Is thedemand for native speaker teachers, and theirnorms, not coming from learners such as thosein Japan? “I’m not saying that it is the individual
teachers that are imposing themselves, but that
there is a part of the ELT industry that promotes
native-speaker English as ‘real’ English.” If it
were not the teachers imposing their values, I
wondered where she thought this pressure wascoming from. “Linguistic corpora can offer us

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23

Opinion & Perspective

I asked her to elaborate on the distinction
between EFL and ELF; was it not just one
more acronym to add to a ﬁeld already loadedwith redundant jargon? “ELF was something I
originally threw up in a discussion. I just said
that we spent too much time talking about EFL
when we should be talking about ELF. And
nobody knew what I was talking about. I thinka strict interpretation would hold that ELF cannot
involve a native speaker; that the involvement of
the native speaker disqualiﬁes the term English
as a lingua franca. The native speaker can be
involved in EIL (English as an International
Language) but not ELF.”
As a native speaker of English making a living
out of promoting these native-speaker norms, I
was anxious to hear her views on the role of thenative-speaker teacher: “I met some teachers
yesterday who said to me, ‘You’ll be putting
us out of our jobs!’ I didn’t really know how toanswer that one, but there is some truth there.”
Did she not envisage any role for the nativespeaker in teaching situations such as here in Japan?
“It seems obvious to me that it must be much more
motivating for a Japanese learner to see anotherJapanese speaker of English in the classroom, rather
than someone from Britain, Australia or the States.
In my view the best teacher is the one who shares
her students’ L1. By that I mean an L2 BES; thisteacher has the best accent to serve as a classroommodel in this case a Japanese-English accent. By
bringing in that native speaker teacher you are
sending a message that learning this language is
difﬁcult, perhaps even beyond the learner. The
presence of that native speaker is sending out asignal that it is ultimately the native speaker thatowns the language.”
So, was it time for us native-speaker teachersin Japan to start looking for new jobs? “Theproblems start when distinctions are madebetween the native and non-native speaker. This
is why I prefer to make the monolingual/bilingual
distinction. There’s a lot of research going on
into ‘non-native’ speaker speech at the moment.
I’m not really sure that any of this is helpful as
it still maintains that distinction between nativeand non-native speaker speech. There seems to
be an implication that there must be something
wrong with non-native speaker speech.”
Our discussion of the role of the native-speakerOpinion & Perspective

On CUE

Winter 2003: Volume 11, Issue 2

all kinds of insights into how we use language,
but the problem comes with how they are used.
My concern is when they are used to present, toauthorise certain forms of English over others.
Corpora are often used to show native-speaker
English as ‘real’ English or ‘natural’ English.
What does this say about other forms of English?
Are they ‘unreal’? Unnatural?”I sensed we had touched on an area of deep
concern as she suddenly appeared much moreanimated: “A lot of the data from corpora gets
fed into ELT textbooks as ‘real’ English. Much ofthat comes in the form of idiomatic language that
I’m not sure has any relevance to ELF. I mean,
expressions like just a sec, or give me a hand.
This just seems to be a recipe for confusion andmisunderstanding. This idea that we should beteaching real idiomatic language seems to be agreat disservice to our learners. I really feel verystrongly about this. By promoting idiomatic English as an ideal, we are setting up our students
for ridicule.”
As if to prove the point, our conversation
deteriorated into a genre familiar whereverlanguage teachers gather the collection ofhumorous student errors with idioms.
Jenkins believes that there are great opportunities
for the development of teaching materials which,rather than conﬁrm the authority of the native
speaker, promote the acceptance of ELF models:“I don’t see much evidence of anything happening
here but I am always telling the publishers that
there is a great opening. I don’t think that they arereally listening but there are so many possibilities
for someone with the imagination.”
Coincidentally, as if to illustrate the point aboutpublishers’ collective failure of imagination,
there was a pile of well-known textbooks on a
nearby desk which had been adapted for use inJapan by the insertion of the word ‘American’
into their titles. Professor Jenkins suggests that
there are more rewarding paths to follow: “Ivisited a university yesterday and saw somevery interesting materials which used Japanese
speakers of English. This is the kind of thing I
would like to see more of.”As the title of her book suggests, Jenkins
places great emphasis on the role of phonology
in the teaching of English as an international
language. For many teachers, such as myself andmost of the teachers I come into regular contact

with, phonology is not exactly taboo, but simply
something that we prefer not to talk about. In mycase, this has come about through a combinationof a lack of conﬁdence and a lack of success. The
origins of my lack of conﬁdence can be traced
back to the fact that, although from the UK, I
am not a ‘native’ RP speaker. For example, I
remember being in my mid-twenties before I knewthat the words look and luck could be pronounced
differently, and I am still not sure which is which.
I have never felt comfortable posing as a model
for a variety of English over which I do not havecomplete mastery and I am certainly not alone inbeing a ‘non-native’ native-speaker teacher.
As for a lack of success in incorporating aphonological component into my teaching, I
confess that in over ﬁfteen years of language
teaching, I have had almost no success teachingcertain discrete phonetic items. No matter what
I have tried, no matter how successful it may
have appeared in the classroom, the learners
would soon retreat into their old ways. I was
reassured to hear that my experience was familiar
to Professor Jenkins: “I remember doing allthese bizarre pronunciation exercises in class,for example, pressing your ﬁnger to your lips,
and if your finger got wet, that meant yourpronunciation of /th/ was correct.”
Professor Jenkins admitted that phonology
was not her ﬁrst interest and that her arrival in theﬁeld was something of an accident: “I came fromsociolinguistics. I get in trouble sometimes whenI’m presenting at events full of phoneticians. I get
accused of all kinds of things, from undermining
standards to… well much worse.”
The mention of standards prompted me to probe
a little further. Language as a system of communication depends on a set of shared, mutually agreedupon standards; if we are to reject the authorityof the native speaker, then what do we replace it
with? “This is where the LF (lingua franca) corecomes in,” Jenkins explained. The Phonology ofEnglish as an International Language proposes acore of phonological items necessary for the useof English for international communication. Oneof the ﬁrst things we have to realise is that thesenative-speaker norms just cannot be taught. They
cannot be learned. All the research points to a critical period around about eight years old, and afterthat it is very difﬁcult to acquire a new phonetic
system. Of course, there are exceptions but the vast24

On CUE

Winter 2003: Volume 11, Issue 2

References

Jenkins, J. (2000). The phonology of English as
an international language. Oxford: Oxford
University Press.

Further Reading

McKay, S. (2002). Teaching English as aninternational language. Oxford: Oxford
University Press.
Seidlhofer, B. (2001). Closing a conceptual gap:
the case for a description of English as a
lingua franca. International Journal of Applied
Linguistics, 11 (2), 133-158.

25

Opinion & Perspectiveﬁrst-time visitors to Japan. I was wrong on bothoccasions; instead, I found it impossible not to be
impressed by her boundless energy and a genuine
desire to return here for a less hectic, extended
stay. For the sake of a healthy debate surrounding
the role of English and language teaching inJapan, we must hope she gets her wish.
When I think of all the books that I have readabout language and language teaching, I have toadmit that many have been a struggle. Most of
those books contain huge chunks that have either
left me cold or I have skipped altogether. There is
only one book that I can remember reading fromcover to cover, and then doing so again. That book
was The Phonology of English as an International
Language. After meeting with Jennifer Jenkins, I
was prompted to return to its pages once again andthis time it did not make comfortable reading. I
was forced not simply to question what and how I
teach; I found myself having reservations about myvery professional existence. What is it that we, thenative-speaker teachers, do that could not be done
more effectively by Japanese teachers of English?
What is the value of the native-speaker teacher ina Japanese classroom beyond the cosmetic andthe commercial? What message is our presencein the classroom sending to our students? Is ourpresence there not, in fact, doing more harm than
good? I am still asking myself these questions andhoping that there may be some readers of On CUE
out there with a few answers.

majority just can’t do it.”Jenkins’s lingua franca core presents a set ofitems which are considered realistic and relevant
to communication between non-native speakers
of English; the goal being “a pedagogical core ofphonological intelligibility for speakers of EIL”
(2000, p. 123) rather than imitation of the native
speaker. I was interested to know how she had
obtained the empirical data that provided thefoundation for the lingua franca core. “My data
comes from proﬁcient users of English; bilingual
speakers who are accustomed to using English
with other bilingual speakers of English.”Given my own lack of success teachingpronunciation and the apparently limited goals ofher phonological core, I wondered about the needfor any form of pronunciation teaching at all; wasit not possible for learners to use contextual clues
to overcome phonological interference? “There arecountless examples in the data of the phonology
impeding successful communication– even where
you would think that the context would make themeaning obvious.”
Finally, I was curious to know how she felt
about the success of her book and the controversy
it had aroused. “When you put a book out, it’s out
there and people are free to take it out of context
and to misunderstand.”Did she feel that she had been misunderstood?
“Well, I’ve never once said that people shouldn’t
learn native-speaker models. What I do say is that
there should be choice and that native speakermodels shouldn’t be promoted over others. If
somebody here in Japan decides that they wantto learn RP, it’s not for me to stop them. I would
disagree with the choice but I would never try
to remove that choice.”
Jenkins has been consistent throughout her
work in maintaining a distinction between
models and norms. It may be perfectly acceptableand proper to offer a native-speaker variety ofEnglish as a model, as a reference point, but topromote this variety as a norm is to suggest that
other varieties are somehow inferior or incorrect;
it denies the learner choice.
On first meeting Professor Jenkins, I had
anticipated someone a little more frail and jetlagged. On meeting up with her again at theend of her visit, I had anticipated ﬁnding her
brimming with the usual frustrations found inOn CUE

Winter 2003: Volume 11, Issue 2

Professional Development
Writing Effective CVs

Professional Development

Heidi Evans Nachi
Kwansei Gakuin University
School of Policy Studies
Securing a full-time position in a Japanese
university has become increasingly competitivein recent years as student numbers fall andteaching positions are cut. To keep up with thecompetition and be prepared for the unexpected
job opening, all teaching professionals should
maintain a current, professional-looking CV.
This article outlines features that strengthen
and weaken applications, with speciﬁc focus
on CVs, and reﬂects what one hiring committee
for a private university has generally foundeffective after reviewing hundreds of resumes
over the past few years. Included here are somebasic guidelines for creating an effective CV for
language teachers. For other perspectives andmore information on ﬁnding a job, see the listof resources following this article.
Application requirements and procedures vary
according to institution and position. Similarly,
CV formats reﬂect cultural as well as individual
differences. Formatting peculiarities aside,hiring committees are looking at the content,
processing the application materials in two steps:
ﬁrst, to determine whether the applicant meetsthe minimum criteria speciﬁed in the position
announcement; and second, to rank the CVs
and identify viable candidates to be interviewed.
Because hiring committees members have otherteaching and administrative commitments, they
are often pressed for time while looking for
applicants with clear, well-written CVs that
display a candidate’s experience and potential.

of university teaching experience, it’s critical tobe accurate, clear, and speciﬁc when outlining
current and past work experience. Organize work
experience by year and include both the monthand year for start and stop dates, as well as yourofﬁcial title, and whether each position waspart-time and full-time. Finally, don’t forget tomention the city and country for each position.
Regarding your education background, indicate
the date each degree was awarded as well as
the location of the institution. Without thisinformation, you may mislead or confuse thereviewers about your work history, making it
difﬁcult to assess whether you may be a potential
candidate.

Balance
When describing current and past work
contexts and responsibilities, aim for concrete andspeciﬁc descriptions and avoid including details
that are obvious or will have little meaning forthe reviewers. Clarify the setting, if needed (i.e.
a university EAP program, a language institute,an IEP, etc.) and indicate the department, school,or faculty afﬁliation. Explain your work duties
for each position brieﬂy and provide an overview
of current and previous courses taught, but limit
course descriptions to a sentence or two. It may
be more appropriate and feasible to elaborate on
work responsibilities and courses taught in the
cover letter.

Style

Transparency

You may not have time to focus on yourCV design, but think about the overall visual
impression your CV will make. San-serif fonts
are generally easier to read, bullets, boldface,
and underlining can set off information in a waythat will make your CV easy to digest. Consider

Foremost, hiring committees valuetransparency. CVs should be clearly written withthe relevant information logically organized.
Since reviewers begin by looking for speciﬁc
information, such as minimum number of years
26

On CUE

Winter 2003: Volume 11, Issue 2

using boldface or underlining features, or a larger
font size, to emphasize your work setting, title,or education. Experiment with capital lettersor mixing fonts (but no more than two fonts,
please!), or other design features. Pay attention to
how headings, white space, or lines can be used
to separate and organize information.

Professionalism
The reviewers will form opinions about you
based on the content, design, and scope of yourCV. When listing publications and presentations,for example, select relevant examples and stickwith a standardized format. APA or MLA styleis clearer than your own invented style andenhances the professional quality of your CV;
distinguishing among papers, demonstrations,workshops, or poster presentations willfurther clarify your professional development
achievements. Moreover, do not to inﬂate yourachievements and experiences. Unless you havegood reason, avoid cluttering your CV withinformation concerning unpublished papers
or private lesson/tutor classes. Finally, always
personalize your cover letter by including theinstitution name and addressing concretely andfully the information or questions outlined in theposition announcement.

Additional Resources
Glick, C. (2002). Considerations for securing
an English teaching position at a Japanese
university (part 1). The Language Teacher,26(8), 7-10.
Stapleton, P. (2001). Applying for a university job
in Japan: A view from the inside. The Language
Teacher, 25(9), 29-32.

Tomei, J. (2001). The ever-widening gyre: The
job search. On Cue 9(3), 25-26.

Appropriateness
Hiring committees often have different
application requirements and expectations.
Ensure that you understand what should be
included in an application package and follow
the directions. As you ﬁnalize your materials,
include only the information and materials
requested. Do not include copies of transcripts,
research papers, or letters of recommendation
unless you are specifically asked to do so.
These materials can be brought to the interview
if needed. Consider whether to include personal
information on your CV—in many Westerncontexts, information such as age, marital status,
race, and hobbies does not belong on a CV. In
Japan, however, some hiring institutions ask forpersonal information, so it should be included
if requested. It’s important to understand thecontext and provide the required information andmaterials in the preferred format, as expressedby the recruiters.
27

Professional Development

These guidelines reﬂect the standards andpractices of one university hiring committee,
staffed by foreign tenured and contract teachers.
Following these guidelines may beneﬁt applicants
vying for some university positions by helping
reviewers better understand CV content. In
today’s competitive market, it’s not uncommon
for committees to review 50 to 80 application
packages for a single position. Consequently, if
information is unclear, forcing reviewers to huntfor or speculate about your education, teachingexperience, or professional development, it’s
possible your application will not receive serious
consideration. Find out as much as possible about
the context for the positions you’re interested inand think about whether these simple guidelines
your CV writing effort.

On CUE

Winter 2003: Volume 11, Issue 2

Pedant, M. (2004). Referencing: A basic
guide to APA. On CUE, 11 (2), 29-30.

Professional Development

As On CUE becomes a refereed journal, this is
an opportune time to remind readers/contributorsof the importance of accuracy and good referencing.

Susser, B. (1998). EFL’s othering of Japan:
Orientalism in English language teaching. JALT
Journal, 20(1), 49-82.

Articles in an edited book
Swain, M. (2000). The output hypothesis andbeyond: Mediating acquisition throughcollaborative dialogue. In J. Lantolf (Ed.),
Sociocultural theory and second language
learning (pp. 97-114). Oxford: Oxford
University Press.
Tarone, E. (1983). Some thoughts on the notionof “communication strategy.” In C. Faerch &G. Kasper (Eds.), Strategies in interlanguage
communication (pp. 61-74). London: Longman.

For On CUE—as with The Language
Teacher and JALT Journal—we will be using
the American Psychological Association (APA)
style of referencing. Though this dictate maysound rather imposing, implying some kind of
tortuous self-analysis, referencing the APA way
does not really necessitate the kind of mental
fatigue that leaves you resorting to the medicine
cabinet. Obviously, if you trawl through the backissues of the above journals, you will ﬁnd an
example somewhere of all the reference types
you seek. However, to make matters a little
easier—hopefully—below are some basic
example references followed by a list of someof the main points to consider in compiling areference list. Please note that this brief article
only deals with the reference list aspect of APA
documentation. Check the APA Manual for
information on parenthetical documentationand footnotes.

Article in Japanese
Ochiai, N. (2000). AET to JTE no kyoudou no
genjou: Kasukabe shi no rei wo moto ni [Thestate of cooperation among AETs and JTEs as
observed in Kasukabe City]. The Language
Teacher, 24(8), 20-24.

Presentation
Swain, M. (2000). What happens to feedback? A
paper presented at the Scaffolding Conference,
University of Technology, Sydney, Dec. 6-8,
2000.

Magazine article

Example References

Death of a philosopher. (1955, October 31). Time,66(18), pp. 22, 25.

Books
Dore, R.P., & Sako, M. (1989). Education in
Tokugawa Japan. London: Routledge.
Weaver, C. (1980). Psycholinguistics and reading:
From process to practice. Cambridge, MA:
Winthrop.

Newspaper article

An edited book

Kasai, M. (2001). Global education: Rationale andtheory. Unpublished master’s thesis, Ohio State
University, Columbus.

Model misbehaviour. (2002, September 17). The
Daily Yomiuri, p.17.

Unpublished master’s or Ph.D thesis

Carter, R., & McCarthy, M. (Eds.). (1988).
Vocabulary and language teaching. London:
Longman.

Electronic sources
Though there are various types of web-basedreferences, all should deﬁnitely include title,
date (either when the site was accessed or apublication date if available) and the URL. Use
the word ‘Retrieved’ to indicate the date when thesite was accessed. Here are a couple of common
examples:A book with no clearly stated author
Collins COBUILD Dictionary English Dictionary(2nd ed.). (1998). London: Harper Collins.

Articles in journals
Reid, J. (1987). The learning style preference of
ESL students. TESOL Quarterly, 24(2), 323-338.
28

On CUE

Winter 2003: Volume 11, Issue 2

Article from a journal found only on theinternet
Weschler, R. (197). Uses of Japanese (L1) in the
English classroom. The Internet TESL Journal,
3(11). Retrieved December 4, 2003, from http://iteslj.org/Articles/Weschler-UsingL1.html

Article based on a printed source
Goodmacher, G. (1998). Designing environmentalﬁeld trips [Electronic version]. Global Issues
in Language Education, 33, 12-13. Retrieved
December 5, 2003, from http://www.jalt.org/
global/33Des.htm

Notes
1)

The general order to follow for a book
is: Name of author – Year – Title – Placeof publication – Publisher.
2) In the reference list, surnames of authors
should be listed in alphabetical order.
3) The names of the authors of each bookor article should be in the order they
appear on the work.
4) Do not use full ﬁrst names of authors
but initials. More than one initial can beused.
5) List all authors of the article or book.
6) The titles of books or journals should
be in italics, and the titles of articles instandard print.
7) In the title of the book or article capitalletters are only used for the ﬁrst word,
for proper nouns and for the ﬁrst word
following a colon in the subtitle.
8) For journals, if there is an issue number
as well as a volume number, then it
comes in brackets after the volume
number.
9) Use the ‘&’ sign rather than ‘and’ to indicate two or more authors of the samework.
10) If there is a secondary heading or
subtitle, use a colon to precede it.
The ﬁrst letter after the colon will bea capital even if it is an article (a, an,the), a preposition (e.g. from, to, at) or
coordinating conjunction (e.g. and, but,or).

Cross-checking references
As you proofread your paper before final
submission, carefully cross-check yourreferences in the body of the text with your listof references at the end of your article. Two
common errors are references made in the textthat do not appear in the list of references andreferences listed at the end of the article whichhave not been referred to in the body of the text
itself. One practical way of checking for theseis to read through your text and highlight eachreference as it appears and then immediately
go to your reference list and highlight it there
also. As you do this, check that the spelling of
the authors’ names and the years of the works
referenced are consistent.

29

Professional Development

11) When listing names of editors of a bookfrom which an article is referenced,
their names are initial ﬁrst, followed bysurname.
12) When referencing two works by thesame author, list in chronologicalorder. When there are two works in thesame year by the same author, use year
followed immediately by the letters a orb.
13) Works without a clearly stated author
begin with the name of the book,placing it alphabetically in relation toauthors of other works in the referencelist.
14) If you wish to cite a particular edition ofa book, do so directly after the title andin standard print.
15) If there is an article that does not run
over consecutive pages, show this byusing a comma between pages, notdashes.
16) Where possible, with articles orbooks in Japanese, provide an English
translation in squared brackets.

On CUE

Winter 2003: Volume 11, Issue 2

From the Chalkface

From the Chalkface:
Dear Teachers . . .
Dear Teachers,
In the past this column has been a place forteachers to document lessons that worked. Indeed there have been some very good techniquespresented. Surely I’m not the only one who has
used some of them successfully in my university
classes. Lack of quality has never been an issue.
However, it’s time to move beyond isolated techniques and lessons to more in-depth explorationsof projects, courses and curricula. As always,
this column will document efforts to combine
educational theory and practice. In this edition
James Venema describes his experiences using
debate in a general English class. Additionally
the CUE web-site is a searchable, interactive site.
This will be a place to download lesson plans andmaterials, and also a place for interested teachers
to post questions and comments. Ideally it will
become an online forum and resource for educators here in Japan. Copies of articles, lesson plans

Tim Micklas
Section Editor

and classroom materials will soon be available at<http://allagash.miyazaki-mu.ac.jp/CUE/>.
We hope that the column and web page will
be fundamental to a series of CUE-sponsoredworkshops and retreats which will culminate ina conference sometime in 2005. The theme ofthis conference has yet to be fully developed,
but for now we are interested in trying to cultivate a more sophisticated understanding of what
exactly tertiary EFL in Japan is. Issues of scope,sequence and relevance will be at the top of ouragenda. However, without you, the CUE membership at large, none of these ideas will cometo fruition. There are over 300 CUE members
reading this; we all have our own understandingof tertiary education in Japan. Take this opportunity to let us know your thoughts, opinions, andresearch interests. Check out the web-page andplease contact the editors with your ideas.

Incorporating Debate in theClassroom: Making it Accessible
James Venema
Nagoya Institute of Technology
Advocates of incorporating debate in language
classes have focused on three general aspects thatmake it ideal for the classroom: First, debate is a
popular activity that can effectively motivate students (see Stewart and Pleisch, 1998; Resolved,
1997); second, debate helps develop academic
skills such as critical thinking, teamwork, andexpression of opinion (Resolved, 1997; Stewart
and Pleisch, 1998); ﬁnally, debate effectively
promotes language development (Venema, 2003;

Stewart and Pleisch, 1998). However, there may
remain a reluctance to incorporate debate in
low-intermediate or high-beginner classes due
to concerns over difﬁculty. In my experience
debate has proven a popular and viable activity,
even among large low-level classes. This paper
explores the development of a course incorporating debate in a number of classes of non-English
majors at two national universities.

30

On CUE

Winter 2003: Volume 11, Issue 2

The Students

on two crucial aspects of debate: arguing acase and refuting an argument. I then divided
these aspects into two distinct speeches. In theﬁrst speech, each team argued their case withsupporting reasons. After a break for preparation,
the teams refuted the opposing team’s points. The
following format is the result:
1. Afﬁrmative teams make their points
2. Negative teams make their points
3. Break for preparation
4. Afﬁrmative refutation of negative points
5. Negative refutation of afﬁrmative points
While this procedure leaves out the option ofa responding to a refutation or a defense, it has
the advantage of making the debate process moreaccessible and minimizing the amount of timerequired to conduct the debate.

Debate Format

Preparing Students to Speak

To avoid the confusion sometimes surrounding
the discussion of debate it is necessary to deﬁne
the term at the outset:

In a typical class of false beginners and/or lowintermediate students (particularly when larger
classes make one-on-one interaction between
students and teacher difﬁcult) it is probably notenough to simply present a resolution and let
the students go about debating. I have foundthree things are critical in developing coherent
speeches: 1) ample preparation time; 2) model
speeches that give clear examples of the speechformat; and 3) language samples of potential
arguments.

A formal presentation of arguments on
both sides of a question by speakers
before an audience. (Compact Dictionaryof Canadian English, 1976)
In this context debate is not group discussion but
instead formal public speeches following speciﬁcrules of procedure. There are two general typesof debate, parliamentary and academic, the latterincorporating more structure and preparation
time (Resolved, 1997). In the classroom, while
it is important to outline rules of procedure, it
is often necessary for teachers to alter the rulesof debate to accommodate student levels andclassroom restrictions. One starting point is
the American parliamentary format as outlined
by Lubetsky et al (2000). This format includes
six speeches—three each by the affirmativeand negative teams. As the debate is ongoingand dynamic (including not only arguing one’s
own side and refuting the other team’s case but
also responding to refutations and defenses)
the speeches tend to progressively increasein complexity. For lower level non-English
majors it is clear that a more accessible format
is required. In this course I chose to concentrate

1) Preparation time
Particularly when tackling complex issues(such as the ever popular resolution: “Japan
should retain the death penalty”) it may be
impossible to introduce and debate a topic
within a single 90-minute class, even with theabbreviated format outlined above. In fact, earlyin the semester, when students are still unfamiliar
with debate, a single debate has sometimes lasted
over three periods, being introduced in the latterstages of the ﬁrst and concluded at the beginningof the third. This gives students plenty of time
to research a given topic (typically by making
use of the Internet) and prepare their arguments
and refutations.

31

From the Chalkface

The students, generally in the high-beginner
to low-intermediate level, were perhaps typical national university students in a number ofways. They were generally willing and able totackle most tasks set before them; however, as
non-English majors in a required class, there
were mixed levels of motivation and ability. A
signiﬁcant number of the students were reluctant
to participate actively in loosely organized conversations or discussion tasks. Students could,
however, be enticed to contribute more actively
and effectively when given clearly organizedtasks with concrete goals, and when they were
held accountable in some way for how effectively they completed the task. Debate offered thecritical combination of organization and accountability while providing the additional stimulationof focusing on meaningful issues.

On CUE

Winter 2003: Volume 11, Issue 2

From the Chalkface2) Model speeches

Rephrase: They said that soccer tickets
are much better than baseball tickets
because they are cheaper.

Lubetsky et al have included model speeches,and exercises to clarify speciﬁc aspects of the
speeches, in their classroom text. In the class inquestion two models were borrowed and adaptedfrom Lubetsky et al: one focusing on developing
arguments and another on refuting arguments.
The model for arguing points includes a signpost,
reason, and support(s), as in the following
example of the deliberately accessible refutation“soccer is better than baseball”:

Negation (and why): That is not relevant.
The fact that a sport is cheaper in no way
suggests that it is better.
Rationale: On the contrary the fact thatpeople are willing to pay more for baseballtickets indicates that baseball is, indeed,
the better sport!

Signpost: Our ﬁrst point is cost.

In addition to acting as a platform from which
to build their arguments (see Venema, 2003;
Boyle, 1996) this model serves to increase thecoherence of student arguments by incorporating
a number of aspects of cohesion.

Reason: Soccer tickets are much cheaper
than baseball tickets.
Support: In this city, the price of a ticket
to a baseball game is about three times
higher than the price of a ticket to a soccer
game.

3) Language samples
Arguments on a topic such as capital
punishment are complex, requiring language that
may be beyond the ability of low-level students.
To facilitate the development of these arguments
I have used activities from Johnson (1995) which
ask students to read arguments and divide theminto afﬁrmative and negative arguments, such as
the following on the resolution, “Japan should
keep the death penalty”:

The introduction and conclusion will outline
the arguments to follow and recapitulate thosealready made by incorporating the signposts(cost, excitement, simplicity and color) as
follows:
Thank you ladies and gentlemen. Today
we are debating the resolution, “Soccer
is better than baseball.” We, on theaffirmative team strongly support thisresolution. We have four reasons: cost,
excitement, simplicity, and color.

The death penalty will make people think
twice before committing atrocious crimes
like murder and kidnapping.
Research shows that killers rarely consider
whether there is a death penalty or not
before they kill.

Our ﬁrst point is cost. Soccer tickets aremuch cheaper than baseball tickets. In thiscity, the price of a ticket to a baseball gameis about three times higher than the priceof a ticket to a soccer game.

Examples such as these allow students to begin
to construct arguments and counter arguments
based on complex issues such as deterrence.

…

Choosing Topics and Organizing
Classes

We have talked about cost, excitement,
simplicity, and color. We have shown thatsoccer is a much better sport than baseball.
For these reasons, we beg to propose.

The importance of incorporating topics thatthe students ﬁnd relevant and interesting is obvious. In my classes this is done in the ﬁrst classin which students select favorite topics from atext such as Johnson’s (see above). Students thenvote, and the topics (typically ﬁve or six for asemester) are chosen based on overall popularity.
It is important to distinguish between topics and

In Lubetsky et al, a refutation model included
four stages as in the following example (myown):
Signpost: Their ﬁrst point was cost.

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On CUE

Winter 2003: Volume 11, Issue 2

Evaluating Students
Regular classes demand a fair bit of effort andpreparation on the part of the students, consequently attendance and participation constitutes
a signiﬁcant portion of their ﬁnal grade. Students
are also asked to evaluate each other’s speeches
in classes by choosing a winner between two opposing groups. Winners are noted and students
who record a large number of wins are given
extra credit for participation. In addition a ﬁnal
debate is held during the last two classes of thesemester. With students acting as judges, oneclass debates the other. Students may choose
which topic and positions (afﬁrmative or negative) they want to debate, with the stipulationthat each of the resolutions discussed in class becovered in the ﬁnal debate as well. Students areevaluated based on peer judging of their debates,
teacher notes of their performance, and the quality of the insights offered when judging others.
Students were asked to evaluate other teams on
the basis of three components: judgments on
the quality of the arguments, the language andstyle in which those arguments are presented,
and the overall organization of the speeches (see33

From the Chalkface

the classrooms and have generally found students
to be focused and on task.
A critical and potentially problematiccharacteristic of the speeches is their overall
comprehensibility for L2 listeners. It isnecessary to have a formal question and answer
period immediately after the speeches. During
this time students can ask for clarification,
repetition, and even translation of crucial
vocabulary. Allowing time for overcoming
communication problems within the task itself
has the advantage of encouraging them to do
so in more ﬂuid discussions (Foster, 1998). In
addition students are encouraged to make theirspeech as visual as impossible. Students typicallywrite their signposts on the chalkboard as well as
important ﬁgures, graphs, pictures, diagrams anddifﬁcult vocabulary. Finally students, who tend
to read too quickly from prepared speeches, arerepeatedly encouraged to adjust the pace of the
speech to accommodate the needs of L2 listeners.
In fact, when judging each other (see below)
students make frequent mention of the overallclarity and comprehensibility of the speeches.

resolutions (i.e. “capital punishment” and “Japan
should retain the death penalty”) and helpful togive students the opportunity to construct resolutions (the opinions to be debated) themselvesfrom a list of topics. This clariﬁes that debate
involves opinions to be argued for and against
rather than topics to be discussed. Students understand on the ﬁrst day of class that their own
opinion will be, by and large, irrelevant as they
will be assigned a position on a resolution at
random. The critical skill to be developed is theability to argue for and against a given resolution,
regardless of personal convictions. This works
to de-personalize the debate process and defuse
the culturally imbedded reluctance to challengea stated position directly.
Throughout the course students work in groupsof two or three, changing groups upon completing a given resolution. The development ofcliques is inevitable, so it helps to select groups
at random. Students work together to develop
reasons and supports for arguments and are dependent on partners to show up to class on time
and well prepared. In the language of cooperative
learning an element of positive interdependence
is built into the task.
In a large class a critical concern is how to
conduct the debates with many different teams.
One option is to have students conduct their debates simultaneously in smaller groups. In thiscase the sole audience is, in fact, the opposing
team and, intermittently, the teacher as I walkaround the class monitoring different debates.
This has the advantage of reducing the anxiety
inherent in public speaking in addition to being
an efﬁcient use of class time. The disadvantage
is that it is difﬁcult for the teacher to monitor
the speeches, and students are more likely torely on L1. Another option is to have students
conduct their speeches consecutively in front of
the class. In order to use time more efﬁciently
individual teams may prepare their own points
and/or refutations while other groups are speaking. The pressure inherent in a public performance tends to energize the students’ preparation
efforts and decrease dependency on L1. As acompromise, when the adjacent classroom isavailable, I divide the class into two groups,
halving the time otherwise required without
the distraction of simultaneous speeches. I canmonitor the speeches by slipping in and out of

On CUE

Winter 2003: Volume 11, Issue 2

References

Lubetsky et al, p. 116). As each student judge
was asked to choose a winner, teams were given
bonus points for winning the debate, the resultsof which were computed immediately after thedebate.

Boyle, R. (1996). Modelling oral presentations.
ELT Journal, 50(2), 115-126.
Compact dictionary of Canadian English. 1976.
Toronto: Holt, Rinehart and Winston of Canada,
Limited.
Foster, P. (1998). A classroom perspective on thenegotiation of meaning. Applied Linguistics,
19(1), 1-23.
Johnson, V. 1995. Viewpoints for and against:
Forming opinions on current issues. Tokyo,
Kinseido.
Le, V. (1995). Doable debates. The Language
Teacher, 19(7), 12-16.
Lubetsky, M., LeBeau, C., & Harrington, D.
(2000). Discover debate: Basic skills forsupporting and refuting opinions. Santa
Barbara: Language Solutions Inc.
Resolved: that debate works. (1997, March 15) The
Daily Yomiuri.
Stewart, T., & Pleisch, G. (1998). Developing
academic language skills and ﬂuency throughdebate. The Language Teacher, 22(10), 27-32.
Venema, J.6 (2003). Resolved: Debate is aneffective language classroom task! Explorationsin Teacher Education, 11(1), 12-17.

From the Chalkface

Conclusion
The most common feedback from students has
been that the course was difﬁcult. Yet students
also write that debate is an interesting, important,and relevant skill. Over the course of thesemester most students respond to the inherent
competitiveness of debate with increased energy
and appear to appreciate the opportunity tocommunicate in-depth on relevant topics. Most
importantly the vast majority of students, by
the end of the course, demonstrate the ability
to perform debate speeches at a much higher
level than they could at the outset. That kindof improvement is a compelling argument fora course on formal debate. Another advantage
of debate, with its formalized procedure, is thatstudents can operate autonomously by the endof the course. Having concentrated on providing
students with the essential skills and knowledge
required early in the semester, my role graduallydiminishes to the point where I ﬁnd myself being
essentially an observer by the end of the term.
Despite the challenges inherent in a linguisticallydemanding task, debate is an attractive option forteachers of large, low-level classes.

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On CUE

Winter 2003: Volume 11, Issue 2

A Report from the Mountain:
The CUE and LD Kobe Conference
Learner Development: Context,
Curricula, Content
As a recent CUE recruit, unsure what to expect at my ﬁrst JALT SIG mini-conference, I
was certainly pleasantly surprised. The Learner
Development: Context, Curricula and Content
conference was held October 17, 18, and 19 at
the YMCA on a mist-shrouded Mt Rokko in
Kobe, a beautiful site, though it was bit cold.
The atmosphere was relaxed; as guests arrived
they were greeted with popcorn, the promise of abarbeque (with home-cooked food) and whisked
off to locate their assigned bunks. The accommodations were simple, and this was reﬂectedin the very reasonable price that included twonights accommodation, all meals and all conference fees. As a ﬁrst time presenter, I was a little
worried initially and envied the three speakers
scheduled for the ﬁrst sessions Saturday morning. However, by Sunday morning (when it was
my turn to present), I felt that I somehow knew
everyone in the room, since we had all tasted thehomemade sauerkraut on Friday evening, drunk
rather too much wine on Saturday night, andeaten countless pretzels all weekend from theextremely large bag that sat in the lobby enticing
everyone who walked by!
There were twenty-three presentations
and ﬁve poster sessions spread out over the
weekend. However, this review will outline
three presentations that I feel are representativeof the conference as a whole.
On Saturday morning, Mary Burch Harmon’spresentation entitled Optional Activities Promote Autonomy gave a wonderful insight into
the resources available to teachers at Kanda
University of International Studies. She beganwith a description of their new self-access center,
which includes individual soundproofed audio
booths, group video booths, small conference
rooms, computers, and a host of other resources
supported by a full-time technical staff. The descriptions, complemented by PowerPoint slides,
were very impressive, and Mary answered thedelegates many questions about the varied andhigh-tech resources. Then an important issue wasraised and discussed: Kanda teachers have begun
to worry that despite this wealth of resources thatallows them to cater to the needs of individuals,
many students are actually working within avery structured, teacher-led curriculum. Mary
explained that having recognized this problem,
teachers at Kanda are now working together tobuild a ﬂexible curriculum that allows students
to make choices about what and how they learn,
simultaneously increasing the usefulness of theresources and developing learner autonomy.
Late Saturday afternoon, Terry Wacholtz
eased everyone out of post-lunch apathy witha relaxed and well-planned presentation thatpacked a punch. His research into student andteacher beliefs about language learning indicatesthat students disagree with their teachers on whatkinds of classroom language learning activities
are most beneﬁcial. This was no surprise; theparticipants could have predicted this. The
surprise was that students do not conform toteachers’ expectations. This preliminary study
showed that students believe more traditional
activities are beneficial, whereas teachers
preferred a more communicative approach. This
was an illuminating session that left participants
35

Conference Review

Michelle Segger
Kinjo University

Conference Review

On CUE

Winter 2003: Volume 11, Issue 2

thinking about how to bridge this gap in beliefs.
Terry’s study is printed in the Features sectionof this issue.
The DramaWorks workshop capped theconference and was, for me, the most entertaining
presentation of the weekend. Sandra Ingram andMarc Sheffner’s aim was to demonstrate how toutilize their drama-based textbooks, entitled Star
Taxi and PopStars in the classroom. Those who
attended this presentation were walked througha sample lesson, the presenter acting as teacher
and the participants acting as students. The model
class began with a warm-up game designed toprovide pronunciation practice of language thatcauses the most problems for students. This game
recycled the same problematic phrases over andover in an entertaining manner. Next, we went on
to perform a scene from one of the DramaWorks
textbooks. Delegates paired up and shadowed theteacher, dramatizing the scene several times solines were memorized unconsciously. We werethen allowed to practice in pairs and encouraged
to add our own improvisations. Finally volunteers
performed their version of the scene for the restof the group. Several participants purchased
the textbooks immediately afterward, with theintention of using them in their own classrooms.
The DramaWorks texts provide a most effective
and entertaining supplement to any course as away to improve pronunciation and intonation,practice language functions, and encourage
appropriate body language.
The ﬁnal wrap-up on Sunday afternoon beganwith reports from the theme coordinators. They
each gave a summary of all the presentations fromtheir theme. This proved valuable, especially tothose of us who found ourselves in a conference
dilemma: forced to make a choice between two
equally interesting sessions scheduled at thesame time. It also served to refresh our memoriesof the day’s events. Some participants, while
reﬂecting on the day, mentioned the passion
and dedication demonstrated by both presentersand participants, a passion for helping theirstudents develop learner independence. Many of
the sessions provided practical ideas that could
be immediately implemented in our classrooms.
Finally, we shared some theme ideas for future
conferences.
Many thanks to the organizers of the event.
The hard work of Mike Nix, Phil McCasland,
Andrew Obermeier, and Tim Micklas wasappreciated by us all, and the staff at Rokko
YMCA was wonderfully patient with the manyand varied demands made of them. Everything
went smoothly this time, but I recommend thatwhen you attend the next CUE conference you
bring a thick sweater and something for thebarbeque.

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