Summer 2004: Volume 12, Issue 1

On CUEA Letter from the
EditorIn From the Chalkface…Jacob Schnickel
shares his rationale and strategy for a successful “green business” project. Hand-outs
are available from the CUE website.
This issue also marks the debut of Joe
Falout’s Research Digest, in which Jim
Smiley reviews the Scholar’s Aid software.
Also, John Adamson considers the natureand value of interviews he conducted withJapanese English teachers in the course of
his research. Rounding out this issue is areview of Oral Presentations for TechnicalCommunication by Kay Hammond, and areview of Richmond Stroupe’s presentationon teaching critical analysis at JALT2003 by
Mika Maruyama and Joe Falout.
I hope this issue provides you with lotsof interesting reading during the upcoming
summer vacation. Enjoy!
Note: If you joined or renewed your membership at JALT2003 and didn’t receive On
CUE 11.2, please contact Juanita Heigham
via email. The new entries didn’t appear in
the database until after 11.2 was mailed. We
will send it right out to you. Sorry for theinconvenience.
Mike Hood
On CUE Editor

1

From the Editor

Greetings Friends and Colleagues,This issue of On CUE reﬂects changes
both in form and content. Minor designchanges are intended to make the publication
more attractive and user-friendly; continued
reﬁnement of our vetting process, along withan increase in both quantity and quality ofsubmissions, is leading to more useful andinteresting articles for our readers. Here’s apreview of what’s inside.
Former editor Michael Carroll introduces
the topic that dominates this issue—The
International English Language Testing System, or IELTS. After Michael’s overview ofthe exam, Todd Squires explores the impactthat authentic test tasks found in standardized
tests may have on EAP programs, comparing
the TOEFL to the IELTS. Michael follows
up with a review of an IELTS test preparation text.
In our second feature article, Tim Stewart
reexamines an issue relevant to us all—thedebate over the scholarly value of teachers’
reﬂections on their professional experiences,challenging the traditionalist notion thatteacher research is somehow less valuable
than that conducted by professional researchers removed from the classroom.
In the Opinions & Perspectives section,
Colin Sloss challenges Michael Gueston the question of objectivity in research,while Colin Rundle reports on the remarkable level of autonomy he witnessed at theIndonesian Varsities English Debate, eyeing
possibilities for us and our students here.

Summer 2004: Volume 12, Issue 1

On CUEA Short Introduction to IELTS

Feature Article: Carroll

Michael Carroll
Momoyama Gakuin University

The English language testing scene inJapan is one of the largest in the world.
Whether the combination of high level ofdisposable wealth, a culture that values
tests exceptionally highly, and a widespreaddesire to ‘master’ English is the reason ornot, every year huge numbers of Japanesepeople take standardized English tests. The
most common are STEP, the Japanese ofﬁcial‘Standardized Test of English Proﬁciency’(eigo kentei shiken or Eiken), and the twodominant tests from the US: TOEFL (Test ofEnglish as a Foreign Language) and its lessacademic counterpart TOEIC (Test of English for International Communication). STEP
and TOEFL have a long history in Japan, andTOEIC, a relative newcomer, is gaining in
popularity. Though there are differences, thethree are similar in many respects. All rely
heavily on multiple choice questions andshort reading texts; they all have a substantial
grammatical knowledge component. TOEFL, geared toward prospective university
students, is widely known as the gatekeeper
for study overseas. However, there is anothertest widely used by overseas universities
outside the US: The International English
Language Testing System (IELTS). IELTS,
designed and administered by the Universityof Cambridge Local Examinations Syndicate(UCLES), The British Council, and the Australian International Development Program(IDP), targets the same test takers as TOEFL,
but in a more task-based way.

Any test must achieve a balance between
reliability and validity. A test is reliable to theextent that, assuming no change in underlying proﬁciency, a given test taker will scorethe same regardless of the time or place oftesting; the difference between the scores ofany two test takers will be the same on different occasions. A test is valid to the extent
that it measures the constructs it sets out tomeasure. Both IELTS and TOEFL have highlevels of reliability and validity. However,the balance between reliability and validity
is achieved differently. The TOEFL test isdesigned primarily to be administered tolarge numbers of test-takers simultaneously,
to be machine marked, and to be reliable(fair) within those constraints. It achieves
this through relying almost entirely on shortmultiple choice items aimed at measuring underlying proﬁciency. Items, carefully trialed
with very large populations of test takers, areextremely reliable. The IELTS test focuses
more on validity. It aims to test the skills
needed for academic communication, rather
than the broad notion of overall proﬁciency.
This is most clearly evident in the divisionof the test into the four macro-skills: listening, speaking, reading and writing. Whilethe listening and reading sections are, like
TOEFL, easily marked multiple choice, thewriting and speaking sections require skilled
examiners. Ensuring that these examiners
apply the same evaluation criteria is anenormous task, requiring constant training
2

Summer 2004: Volume 12, Issue 1

On CUE

rating from 1-9 for each section of the test, andtheir average is computed to derive an overallrating. A typical score for a student at roughly
the 550 level in TOEFL might be L6, S5,
R6.5, W6, Overall 6. A score of 1 represents
almost no ability at all, and a score of 9 native-speaker-like ability. Scores around the 5.5– 6.5 level indicate an ability to communicate
effectively within an academic environment
in English, albeit with marked pronunciationand grammatical inconsistencies and occasional communication gaps. (The listening
and reading sections allow ratings of .5, but
the speaking and writing sections allow only
whole numbers). Most universities require an
overall score of 6 or 6.5, or sometimes 7 forcourses requiring advanced language skills,
such as education, medicine, law and so on.
Some programs may have minimum requirements for individual sections, for instance aminimum of 6 in writing.
Like TOEFL, therefore, the IELTS test is
most suitable for students who are close to
the goal of being able to function in university courses overseas. Scores below 4 are
not very revealing and can easily vary from
one test experience to another. Above thislevel, the test is usually considered reliable.
So which test should Japanese students aim
for? There’s no absolute answer. For somestudents used to a sentence-level, analytical
approach to learning favored by some institutions, the TOEFL test may well be easierto prepare for. And the IELTS speaking andwriting sections are undoubtedly more daunting for students unaccustomed to productive
English. On the other hand, the long-term
learning effects of preparing for an IELTS
test, involving the processing of language interms of real-life discourse and the formulation of ideas and responding appropriately
to those of others, make it, in my view, a far
more useful test.
3

Feature Article: Carroll

and re-training. IELTS examiners must be
assessed and re-accredited every two years
for both the writing and speaking sections
separately.
Each section of the IELTS test aims to simulate, within the constraints of test conditions,the kinds of tasks university students are likely
to encounter. Thus the writing section consistsof two tasks: a 150-word descriptive report,
usually involving interpreting factual information presented to the test-taker graphicallyor in table form; and a 250-word discursive
essay on an academic topic of general social
interest. The reading section consists of threetexts, also on topics assumed to be accessible
to any educated reader, each with around 13
multiple-choice or short answer (up to threewords) questions. The texts, at around 800
words each, are longer than TOEFL texts,
and the questions are geared more toward
an assessment of discourse features, suchas understanding of paragraph organization,cohesion, and coherence.
The listening section is more similar
to the TOEFL model. It progresses fromshort, simple conversations from which
test-takers extract information, answer pictorial or graphical questions, or ﬁll in simple
forms, to longer lecture-style monologues
with structured gap-ﬁlling and note-taking
questions. Again, this is a combination ofmultiple choice and short answer questions.
The speaking section consists of a structured
11- to 15-minute interview with an examiner, progressing from simple introductions
through concrete descriptive questions (ofthe tell me about your hometown, or describea typical wedding in your country variety) tomore analytical discussion requiring speculation about future events, hopes and so on, or
explaining reasons for assertions.
The IELTS test is not scored like TOEFL,
but on a band-scale. Test-takers are given aSummer 2004: Volume 12, Issue 1

Feature Article: Squires

On CUEClassroom Implications ofAuthentic Listening Tasks onStandardized Proﬁciency Tests of
Academic English

Todd Squires
Ritsumeikan University

Introduction

tive washback effect. The reason for this is
obvious. If we look at the types of tasks thatappear on the TOEFL examination we cansee that more often than not they bear little
surface resemblance to the tasks that learners
will face in the future, and thus the types ofskill-building activities we work on in ourclasses are often seen by students as unimportant for achieving their more immediategoal of success on the test.
In response to this dissonance between
projected real-life uses and test tasks, ETS
is introducing a new TOEFL examination in2005 that promises to increase the numberof authentic tasks. Authenticity, of course,
has been a growing concern for experts oflanguage testing and has begun to inﬂuence
the development of standardized tests ofacademic English. For a number of years
the Cambridge ESOL Examination and its
afﬁliates have been administering the International English Language Testing System(IELTS) examination, a test of both generaland academic English skills. In stark contrast
to the TOEFL, however, the IELTS uses anumber of authentic test tasks.
With the shift toward authentic test tasks
we would be well-advised as teachers andTeachers and administrators working in
English for Academic Purposes (EAP) programs often ﬁnd themselves in a bind. All of
their efforts to create and implement programs
that will prepare students for success when
they are studying at institutions of higher
learning abroad are often haunted by thespecter of standardized English proﬁciency
tests. The gap between classroom practiceand external testing instruments has been thesource of a perennial problem. Many students
seem to understand the necessity of acquiring
skills such as academic discussion, speech,
essay writing and lecture note-taking, butwhen a test such as the Test of English as a
Foreign Language (TOEFL) will determine
whether or not they will even be able to enter auniversity or college abroad, learning of theseessential skills oftentimes takes a backseat totest-speciﬁc study.
Although the Educational Testing Service(ETS) has always maintained that learners should strive to improve their general
English proﬁciency and academic skills inorder to be successful on the TOEFL, it ishard to ignore the fact that the items on many
standardized test batteries encourage a nega4

Summer 2004: Volume 12, Issue 1

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all of which runs counter to the goals andobjectives that they have set for their classes
and activities. Antipathy toward these tests isfurther exacerbated by the fact that teachers’
performance and the success of programs areoften evaluated by students’ performance onthese instruments. Students, for their part,are keenly aware of the importance thatstandardized tests have on their future. Thus,
it often turns out that a gap exists between
what students are expecting to get in class (tohelp them pass these tests that are perceived
to be objective) and what teachers are doing(based upon their own beliefs about teaching
and learning). Consequently, this disconnect
can oftentimes undermine the goals we haveset for our programs.
The reason for the somewhat antagonistic
relationship between standardized testing
and classroom pedagogy is a long-standing
one, especially in North America. Language
testing has been based upon two fundamental
beliefs. The ﬁrst derives from theories of language and language acquisition. Inﬂuenced
by Chomskyan linguistics and cognitive
psychology, researchers in SLA have almost
unanimously accepted that language is an
innate mental process located in the individual’s underlying competence (Chomsky,1965), and for the foreign language learner,competence is represented by his or herinterlanguage (IL) (Selinker, 1969, 1972;
Ravem, 1968; Dulay & Burt, 1974; Pienemann, 1989). This systemic competence
has been uncovered in a number of studies
and has shown that foreign language learners’ progress follows regular sequences ofdevelopment that are more or less invariable
across learners. Thus, a learner’s language
proﬁciency is believed to be measurable if
one can create test items that accurately tap
into that IL. The second inﬂuence on language testing in North America has been the

Teaching, Learning, andStandardized TestingStandardized language testing has always
had a somewhat dissonant relationship withclassroom practice. Teachers tend to view
these tests as peripheral to day-to-day teaching, and indeed more likely than not believethat focusing on these tests in the classroom
leads to unnatural teaching practices, theteaching of inappropriate language learning
styles, and the use of inauthentic English—
5

Feature Article: Squires

program directors to reexamine a numberof implications of these tests. In this paper
I will explore the impact that authentic test
tasks on standardized tests can have on EAP
programs. First, I will brieﬂy discuss how
authenticity has emerged within an indirect
dialogue between changing teaching approaches and language testing research. I
conclude by arguing that locating authenticity merely as a quality of the test items
misrepresents what authenticity actuallymeans. Instead, we should not consider authenticity as an essential characteristic, but
consider more deeply how authenticity is
actively constructed in the production, use,
and interpretation of tests. By looking at
authenticity in a more holistic way, testing
can be brought into a constructive dialogue
with classroom practice. Second, I will
discuss a research study that I conducted in
an EAP program that sought to determine
how learners perceive listening comprehension test task items. The conclusions of thestudy caution that there may be problems
with learners recognizing authenticity andinteracting with test tasks in an authentic
way. Finally, I will suggest some ways toimprove the connections between learners
and our teaching methodologies in light ofthe positive impact that authentic academic
English tests can have on our curricula.

Summer 2004: Volume 12, Issue 1

Feature Article: Squires

On CUE

instruments that are assumed to be best forevaluating learners’ underlying competence.
Until recently, discrete point tests have been
the only measurements believed capable ofstanding up to the rigorous scientiﬁc criteria
of validity and reliability.
Language teaching, on the other hand, hasbeen guided by a slightly different set of assumptions. Chomsky’s inﬂuence on foreign
language teaching has been most vociferously championed by Stephen Krashen, whoargues that second language acquisition is
no different than ﬁrst language acquisition(1985). Regardless of one’s feelings about
Krashen, we must concede that he waspivotal in moving us toward focusing ourpedagogy on language as a means of communication rather than as a system of rules to belearned, practiced and internalized. Communicative language teaching (CLT) in its mostrecent incarnation has emphasized tasks as
the organizing unit for classroom activities.
Task-based language teaching (TBLT) shifts
the focus of classroom procedures away fromthe actual communication and focuses on
speciﬁc outcomes. Task has been deﬁned ina number of ways (e.g. Willis, 1996; Skehan,
1998; Long, 1985; Nunan, 1989); however,
all of these frameworks have a number ofprinciples in common: 1) the focus is on
problem-solving, 2) the focus of the activity is on meaning, 3) real-life processes oflanguage use are employed, 4) outcomesare clearly deﬁned and non-linguistic (Ellis,
2003). In short, task-based learning engages
learners in problem solving employing language as the medium through which the task
is accomplished.
Just as our understanding of the usefulnessof a wide repertory of communicative andtask-based approaches has been deepened
and enriched by developing theories of SLA
and trends in general education and learn-ing, our classroom and institutional testing
regimens have also been transformed. Today,
most teachers use a wide variety of testing
instruments that they believe accurately reﬂect how well their students have achieved
the objectives of their courses. Performanceassessment, portfolio grading, peer and self
evaluation, just to name a few, seek both to
make assessments true reﬂections of learners’ achievement and assure students thatthey will be able to perform competently
outside of the classroom.
Educational programs that emphasize
authentic assessment have slowly had anaffect on testing research. Though authenticity continues to be a term that is hotly
debated in testing theory, it is commonly
accepted as the extent to which a test task
resembles a task in the real world. Bachman(1990) argues that authenticity is distinctively different from face validity, deﬁned
as opinions about surface features of test
items being valid measures of the skill or
knowledge being tested. In many ways the
new deﬁnition of authenticity represents anattempt to bring this much maligned notion
back into testing theory by operationalizing
it as the correspondence between featuresof the test task and features of a “real life”
task. Bachman describes the preoccupation
with authenticity as reﬂecting “a sincere
concern to somehow capture or recreate
in language tests the essence of languageuse” (p. 300). He argues that authenticity isimportant as a way of ensuring that language
tests reﬂect or even replicate language use in
the target domain and that their results arethus valid for application in that domain. In
specifying how authenticity is important in
the creation of test tasks, Bachman proposesthat test takers’ perceptions of test may affecttheir performance (face validity), and it isimportant for predicting performance outside6Summer 2004: Volume 12, Issue 1

On CUEbe accomplished in a number of ways.
Despite these complications, there havebeen a growing number of arguments infavor of authentic performance-testing instandardized tests of academic English (e.g.
Jacoby & McNamara, 1999; MacDonald etal., 2000; Brown et al., 2002). Given the limited range of contexts in which learners will
be using English and the underlying abilities
that are agreed to be necessary at institutionsof higher learning, it has been argued that
it is possible to create authentic test tasks
that preserve both construct validity andreliability. Ultimately, a test should assure
stakeholders that its results are predictive of
success in an academic setting. Thus, questions about compromised construct validity
due to the indirect testing of backgroundknowledge and vocabulary are less relevantin that it is assumed that test takers must havethis knowledge in order to succeed in theiracademic careers.
The idea about authenticity expressed in
the research to date has located authenticity in the relationship between the test task
and a real life task. How authenticity has
been constructed in the literature still posesa number of theoretical problems, even for
EAP testing. Psychometric measurements, ofcourse, could be criticized on a number ofcounts which for the purposes of this paper
is not necessary. However it is important for
us to recognize here that the fundamental
basis for psychometric measurement and its
constellation of procedures and calculations
used to interpret the scores all rely upon aclosed system of knowledge that predetermines what knowing a language entails andprescribes the means of measurement andvalidation. Authenticity in current testing
theory might best be seen as an attempt torevive face validity by giving it legitimacy
within the system of psychometric testing.
7

Feature Article: Squiresof the testing situation (predictive utility).
Bachman & Palmer (1996) extend Bachman’s ideas of authenticity and discuss it as
one element of tests that make them useful.
An assessment instrument is useful when its
tasks are “developed with a speciﬁc purpose,a particular group of test takers, and a speciﬁclanguage use domain” (p. 18). By “speciﬁclanguage domain” the authors mean a situation or context in which the test taker will
use the language outside of the test itself. The
language learner as a language user needs tohave both declarative knowledge about the
subject matter, the target language, as well as
performative knowledge, about how to use
the language appropriately in the speciﬁcsituation. Authentic test tasks would appear tobe the easiest and most comprehensible way
to make generalizations about how the test
takers’ abilities will be accurately measured
and how that measurement, as a reﬂection of
performance on a test task, relates directly tothe speciﬁc tasks in which test takers will ﬁndthemselves engaged in the real world, beyond
the context of the testing situation.
For standardized language testing operationalizing authenticity is inherently problematic. First, the domain of real-life tasks
has to be explicitly deﬁned. In general, it isquite hard to predict in what situations test
takers will ﬁnd themselves and what formsof language they will be required to use.
Once a domain is deﬁned, a representative
sample of the domain must be made. This is
crucial, since test takers’ performance mustbe generalizable and predictive of their performance on real-life tasks. Third, criteria for
performance must be explicitly stated. This isalso difﬁcult since there may be a number ofways in which a task in the real world could
be deemed successful. Finally, there must be
some accounting for individual variables in
performance on tasks, given that tasks canSummer 2004: Volume 12, Issue 1

Feature Article: Squires

On CUE

Widdowson’s (1978) notion of authenticity suggests that it is not something that
resides inherently in any test task. Rather
it is something that is actively constructed
between a text and an individual. For any
language testing situation, we can see thatauthenticity emerges at a number of levels,
going far beyond what we could call the
micro-level: the test taker and the test item.
For the test developer, authenticity is the
product of his or her own conceptualizationof a domain of real-life tasks that he or she
assumes the test taker will be engaged in atsome future time and conﬁrmed by accepted
testing theories. Authenticity is constructed
as part of the test development project, andincludes assumptions about the types of behaviors that are required to successfully accomplish a hypothetical task. The individual
test task can then be judged to be authentic
if it shares a minimal number of features incommon with the real-life task. Likewise,
authenticity is constructed by the stakeholders of any testing instrument. Unlike thetesting specialist, institutional administrators and test takers do not in all likelihood
use the same instruments of validation thattest developers and researchers use, yet theirperceptions are equally important for understanding the socio-educational constructionof testing and the legitimacy accorded tothese instruments. Therefore, it is vital for us
to understand all stakeholders’ perceptions ofauthenticity if we are to integrate them into
our programs.
I ﬁrmly believe that there can be a positive washback effect from standardized
tests of academic English if we can better
understand how authenticity is perceived
and constructed by test takers. In order forthis to be accomplished, we must entertain
a number of questions:

1. How do learners actually perceive test
tasks?
2. What value do learners place on authentic tasks as valid measures?
3. Do learners perceive test tasks as
being transparent as to what they aremeasuring?
4. Do learners have a well-deﬁned target
language use?
5. Can learners of all proﬁciency levels
engage test tasks in authentic ways?
The research presented in the next section attempts to explore the answers to thesequestions by looking at learners’ perceptionsof listening comprehension test tasks on twoof the major standardized tests of academic
English, the TOEFL and the IELTS.

Research Study
MethodIn order to more fully understand how
test takers construct authenticity of listening comprehension test tasks, a study was
conducted using two of the most highly used
standardized tests of academic English, the
TOEFL and the IELTS. As has been noted
elsewhere (Ellis, 2003), the TOEFL is a classic example of psychometric testing. The
IELTS, on the other hand, uses a wide varietyof tasks and questions. Overall, the IELTS
has been considered a more authentic examination. I intended to elicit from students what
they considered to be their target language
use of English at a different time from when
they actually took the test in order that thequestionnaire would not have any affect on
their answers to the post-test questionnaire.
(This research study was an expanded version of my pilot study (Squires, 2003).)8

Summer 2004: Volume 12, Issue 1

On CUE

Instruments
All of the students had taken the TOEFL
exam at least two times before this experiment and the majority (38 students) had
taken two terms of a TOEFL preparatory
course (six hours a week for ten weeks).
The experiment was conducted during theirregularly scheduled listening and speaking
classes. They were given three practice listening examinations from an IELTS preparation textbook during the six weeks prior to
the experiment to become accustomed to thestyle of questions. These were introduced tothe students as additional practice for listening comprehension.

Follow-up Questionnaire
A post-test questionnaire was administered(in Japanese) immediately following thelistening test. The items included questions
about what they thought each of the sections was testing, which section(s) they felt
were most appropriate for measuring theirlistening comprehension, and the strengths
and weaknesses of each section. While they
were ﬁlling out the questionnaire, students
were allowed to refer to their tests so thatthey could refresh their memories.

Questionnaire
The students were given a questionnaire in
their L1 (Japanese) that asked them several
questions about listening comprehension.
The items on the questionnaire included
questions about what they felt was difﬁcult
about listening in English, their listening
study, listening strategies and how they felt
listening would be important for them when
they study abroad.

Procedures
During the ﬁrst week of the term, students
were given 40 minutes to answer the questionnaire as completely as possible, and extra
time was allotted for those students whowanted more time.
During the seventh week of classes, thestudents were given the 90-minute listening
comprehension test and the follow-up ques9

Feature Article: Squires

Listening Test
The test was composed of a 25-minutelistening comprehension practice test fromthe TOEFL sample test (Educational Testing
Service, 1995), and a 40-minute listening
comprehension sample test from the IELTS(IELTS, 2003). The TOEFL examinationconsisted of three parts: Part A (short conversations), Part B (longer conversations), andPart C (short talks). The IELTS consisted offour sections: Section 1 (listening to a telephone conversation and ﬁlling in a form),
Section 2 (listening to a short talk and taking
notes), Section 3 (listening to a conversation
between classmates and matching the speakers to opinions, and answering two multiple
choice questions), and Section 4 (listening
to an academic lecture while completing
lecture notes).

Participants
The participants in this study were 47
students (5 male and 42 female) in an EAP
program in Osaka, Japan. The students’ English language proﬁciency ranged from lowintermediate to high-intermediate (scores on
the most recent ITP TOEFL ranged from 430
to 530). Their ages ranged from 19 to 22. All
but one of the students had graduated fromhigh school in the past year, and therefore
they had all taken English in Japanese secondary education institutions for six years.

Summer 2004: Volume 12, Issue 1

Feature Article: Squires

On CUE

reported that they actively tried to improvetheir listening comprehension by listening tomusic and news and by watching movies at
the theater, on video/DVD and on TV. Many
students also said that they try to make nonJapanese friends. Second, they indicated anumber of strategies that they used to deal
with breakdowns in communication, including requests for clariﬁcation and repetition,and trying to pick out the main ideas even if
they could not understand everything.
The most important question related toauthenticity was the question that asked them
how listening would be important for themwhen they studied abroad. The answers fell
overwhelmingly under three basic themes:
understanding academic lectures and taking
notes, communicating with lecturers andclassmates, and functioning in everyday
life.
Students’ scores on the listening comprehension test were unremarkable in that theyreﬂected both previous scores on the TOEFL
as well as expected proﬁciency level differences. For this reason, only the scores for theentire sample are reported here.

tionnaire. Following the administration of
the test, the students were given a questionnaire that asked them a number of questions
about the test. After they had ﬁnished thequestionnaire, the tests, answers, and questionnaires were collected. The TOEFL and
IELTS examinations were scored according
to the rubrics provided with sample tests. The
mean and standard deviation were calculated
for the group as a whole, as well as for eachof the proﬁciency levels. Since most of theanswers from the questionnaire were open
ended, the responses were grouped according to the major themes found to be salient.
Other questions on the questionnaire were
quantiﬁed using a Likert scale, as well as theresults of the test.

Results
Given the small sample of students thatparticipated in this experiment, the results
were not definitive. However they weresuggestive. The initial questionnaire showed
three distinct themes in students’ answers.
First, when asked about their difﬁculties
with listening comprehension, 75% of thestudents reported that it was a lack of vocabulary which impeded their comprehension.
More importantly, even when they said theyknew the vocabulary in the listening text,
they reported that they were unable to recognize vocabulary items in listening passages
due to a number of factors, including the rateof speech and reductions. In other words,
it was not simply a lack of vocabulary thatthey perceived as causing difﬁculties, but not
being able to match mental representationsof lexical items with the aural input. Thesebottom-up processing constraints continue
to be a problem even for higher proﬁciency
learners.
Strategies for listening also revealed anumber of themes. First, many of the students

Table 1: Subjects’ listening scores
Test

No. of Items

Average

TOEFL

50

17.96 (35.91%)

IELTS

40

13.32 (33.30%)

TOTAL

90

31.28 (34.75%)

A simple equivalent forms method showedreliability between the TOEFL and IELTS
test scores, and the difference between
scores on the two tests decreased with the
proﬁciency of the subjects. It is assumed
with more familiarity and practice with the
IELTS examination, the scores would be
virtually identical.
10Summer 2004: Volume 12, Issue 1

On CUE

Perceptions of Most Appropriate Test
Tasks
The third item of the questionnaire asked
subjects to give their opinions about how
they felt each of the sections accurately
measured their English listening comprehension ability. The IELTS sections were rated
slightly higher than the TOEFL sections, andthe sections they rated most highly of theseven sections were Section 2 and Section 4of the IELTS examination. The favorable appraisal of the IELTS examination gradually
increased with the proﬁciency of the subjects. Interestingly, respondents’ perceptions
about the accuracy of measurement of eachof the sections did correspond to the sections
that were the easiest for them, so it appears
that they were more thoughtful about thereasons why they selected these two sections
as best for measuring their English listening
comprehension ability.
Questions 4 and 5 of the questionnaire
elicited subjects’ opinions about the strengths
and weaknesses of all of the sections of thetest, as well as their opinions about which test
section was the most appropriate for testing
their English listening ability. The results ofthese responses indicated that the test takers perceived the IELTS questions as moreauthentic than the TOEFL questions. The
strengths of the TOEFL correlated well withthe respondents’ perceptions of what the section was testing. For example, the most common responses for the strengths of TOEFL
sections were that the tasks were “good fordeveloping memory skills,” “getting used
to the sound of English,” “helping increase
concentration,” and “improving the ability
to respond quickly.” The weaknesses of the
TOEFL sections were also related to thesame skills and included “too much reliance
upon memory” and “the tendency to forget
what has been said.” Other responses about
11

Feature Article: Squires

Perceptions about Test Task Items
The test takers used quite different phrases
to describe the TOEFL and IELTS tests. The
subjects describe the TOFEL exam items as
testing their ability to “remember,” “make agood guess,” or use their “power of memory.” In other words, the TOEFL exam appears
to have been perceived from the perspectiveof a cognitive processing exercise. The respondents described the IELTS exam items,
however, in terms of the task-related activities that they were required to do, such as theability to “take notes well,” “to listen to thecontent and write it down,” “to understandthe content,” “to grasp the important points,”“to get a grip on the points in the content,”
and “to listen and take notes.”
When the subjects’ responses were divided into lower and higher proficiency
groups, clear differences became apparent.
The lower proﬁciency subjects described
the test tasks by talking about superﬁcial
aspects of the tapescript. For example, when
they compared Part A to Part B and C of the
TOEFL, they mentioned that the text was“short” or “long,” and therefore Part A wastesting the ability to listen to “short listening
passages,” whereas Part B and Part C were
testing the ability to listen to “long listening
passages.” Likewise, the task most often
mentioned by lower proﬁciency subjects
was “answering the question.” Conversely,
the higher proﬁciency subjects more often
mentioned the actual task of the items andtheir relationship to real world tasks, suchas “the ability to take notes.” Thus, it appears that lower proﬁciency learners spend
much more effort on bottom-up processing
and cannot focus on the authentic aspectsof the test task. With increased proﬁciency,
learners become more aware of the differences between psychometric and authentic,
performance-based test tasks.

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Feature Article: Squires

On CUEthe strengths and weaknesses more directly
related to the format of the test. For example, some respondents felt that the multiple
choice format made it easy to answer, whileconversely some of the respondents saw
this as a drawback, saying “if you can makeguesses the test is not very realistic because
you might be able to get a correct responseeven if you do not understand.” Finally, someof the respondents were keenly focused upon
their short-term goal of passing the TOEFL
and said, “The TOEFL is the most appropriate since I am going to have to take the test
in order to get into a US university.”
Responses about the strengths and weaknesses of the IELTS items contrasted withresponses about the TOEFL items. Respondents’ opinions about the strengths of
the IELTS exam focused upon authenticity.
Respondents noted that the exam was “morerealistic and accurate measure,” “the items
more accurately measure listening ability
because they test overall English ability,”“the preview style allowed greater comprehension and the question styles made it mucheasier to understand,” and “the test items
helped with the ability to follow a conversation.” As for the weaknesses of the IELTS
items, respondents consistently noted two
drawbacks—the need to spell the responses
correctly and some of the vocabulary was
difﬁcult (Section 4).
Finally, in question 5 the test takers wereasked to select one of the seven sections thatthey felt was the most appropriate measure of
the English listening comprehension ability.
The most favorable evaluation was for the
IELTS type of test items. Those respondents
that chose the TOEFL test items focusedupon two aspects, “the quick response style,”“the need to concentrate as best for measuring true listening ability,” and the need to“pass the TOEFL exam to get into a US

university.” Second, the respondents whochose Part C of the TOEFL noted similarities
between Part C of the TOEFL and Section 4of the IELTS exam, however students notedthat either they needed to develop their“memory skills for longer passages” or “itforced them to concentrate,” and for thisreason the TOEFL questions were the mostappropriate. Respondents who favored the
IELTS exam referred directly to the test’s
authentic aspects, for example, “the need totake notes well,” and “the need to understandthe lecture as a whole, as well as the details.”
In addition, a number of respondents notedthat this section was a much more accurate
measure of listening ability since, unlike themultiple choice items of the TOEFL exam,
the IELTS does not allow for guessing.
As with perceptions of the test task items,
lower proﬁciency subjects tended to favor
the TOEFL exam test items (while a number
indicated that allowing for the possibility
for guessing was probably not a realistic
test item), and the task-based IELTS was
increasingly favored as the proﬁciency ofthe learners increased.
Based upon analysis of the data, I came toa number of preliminary conclusions. First,
the data suggest that test takers become more
focused on the task they are required to do
as their proﬁciency increases. Thus, even for
performance-based tasks, if the test taker’s
proﬁciency has not reached a certain threshold, he or she is not able to complete thetask as intended by the test developers, but
is overwhelmed with bottom-up processing.
This is true even if the test taker perceives
the authenticity of test tasks. Second, lower
proﬁciency test takers look more favorably on psychometric measures of listening
comprehension. They perceive that partial
knowledge gives them the ability to guessby catching known vocabulary or key words,
12

Summer 2004: Volume 12, Issue 1

On CUEize, however, that our students are at varying
stages of proﬁciency, and thus we need tocontinue working on basic listening skills
while at the same time keeping an eye toward
how academic listening skills are built uponthem. The following are some principles forclassroom instruction.
1. Continue working on bottom-up and topdown processing
Most of our students—even at higher
levels of proﬁciency—still need to work on
automatizing the processing of input. Rost
(1990, 2001) proposes a complex interactivemodel to explain how the listener simultaneously uses both bottom-up and top-down
processing to extract meaning from auraltexts. As the content of input becomes more
complex and technical—as with academic
listening tasks—automatic matching of input
to stored representations (Anderson, 1992;
DeKeyser, 2001) is vital for learners to attend to the processing of input as meaning.
Learners also need to increase their masteryover receptive vocabulary in the aural modality. As many of us are aware—and as myresearch has shown—this is one of the major
problems that stands in the way of Japanese
students’ general listening comprehension
and approaching tasks in an authentic way.
We could enhance our students’ learning of
vocabulary by adopting teaching methods
according to the Lexical Approach (Lewis,
1993; 2002) and teaching common collocations and lexical bundles (Biber et al., 1999)
that are found in academic listening texts
rather than by focusing only on teachingisolated vocabulary.
Top-down processing can continue to follow the general skills of identifying mainideas and details and making inferences. We
can also directly teach different discourse
types (Brown & Yule, 1983) that learners

Implications for Teaching
Listening Comprehension in
EAP Programs
The study described in the preceding section revealed that implementing authentic
listening tasks in standardized testing does
not necessarily ensure that all of the test
takers will perceive the tasks as authentic
or be able to complete them in an authentic manner. Moreover, there may be somesocio-educational factors that inﬂuence test
takers’ perceptions of validity. Student comments suggest that psychometric tests retain
a certain legitimacy, as opposed to moreauthentic tests. Even so, it appears that weare on the brink of a new era for EAP, where
standardized testing will dovetail well with
our practices in the classroom. Thus, it is mysuggestion that we reconsider how tests suchas the new TOEFL and IELTS can become
integral parts of our programs.
Authentic standardized language testing
can have a number of positive effects on
the way in which we conduct our classes
and construct our syllabi and curricula. In
general, they can provide a clear focus forthe kinds of activities and skills that we teachand practice with our students. We must real13

Feature Article: Squires

and an understanding the general meaning orvisualizing the situation enables them to havea chance of getting the correct answer. While
this appears to be a natural strategy for lower
proﬁciency learners, their perceptions arealso likely inﬂuenced by a socio-educational
legitimacy that test takers accord to discrete
point testing and the use of multiple-choicetesting in all the major testing batteries inJapan. Third, with increased proﬁciency, test
takers can both perceive the authenticity ofthe test task and interact with the test task
item in an authentic way.

Summer 2004: Volume 12, Issue 1

On CUE

Feature Article: Squires

will encounter in academic settings, workwith them on making accurate predictions
about lectures (topic, the next section, mainideas), evaluating themes and motives, anddistinguishing between main ideas and supporting ideas. (For suggestions for teaching,see, for example, Brown, 2001; Rost, 2002;
and Ur, 1996.)

3. Integrate listening comprehension withother skills
Both the IELTS and the new TOEFL integrate listening skills with the other threemajor skill areas, therefore it is important that
listening activities are not taught in isolationfrom speaking, reading and writing. Someways in which we can incorporate listening
comprehension with the other skills include:
a. lecture listening and summarizing(orally or in writing)b. listening followed by discussionc. simulations based on listening texts
d. jigsaw listening taskse. debated. speech (emphasizing critical listening
skills)

2. Introduce tasks even at lower levels of
proﬁciency
Many of us are aware of the beneﬁts of atask-based approach to teaching and learning, but we are sometimes unsure how toincorporate tasks into our lower level classes.
For the early stages, Willis (1996) suggests a
number of suitable activities. She begins witha framework that includes the pre-task phase(longer than with more advanced learners
that build schemata, background knowledge, and visual aids), a series of short tasks(gradually increasing in length, necessary
planning and reporting) and language focus(classifying words/phrases, using classroom
language, etc.). Tasks for lower-proﬁciency
learners can include:a. listing—brainstorming, memory
games
b. ordering and sorting—classifying,sequencing, collecting setsc. comparing—matching, identifying
d. problem solving—puzzles, generalknowledge quizzes, guessing games
e. surveys
Integrating tasks will orient students
toward doing meaningful tasks rather thandecontextualized exercises. (Nunan (1989)
suggests ways to grade tasks.)

4. Work on speciﬁc skills for academic
listeningThis has been the primary area in which
academic listening has been researched andfor which teaching methods have been developed (Flowerdew, 1994). Some classroom
practices that we can include are:a. lecture and note-taking skills
1. direct teaching of micro- andmacro-markers (Richards, 1983;
Chaudron & Richards, 1986; DeCarrico & Nattinger, 1988; Tauroza& Allison, 1994)
2. note-taking skills (Yorkey, 1982;
Rost, 1990; Dunkel & Davis, 1994)
b. integrative skills
1. integrating knowledge from lectures as the basis for discussions
2. jigsaw listening activities (Jacobs
et al., 2002)
3. identifying main ideas, support
for those, using critical thinking
14

Summer 2004: Volume 12, Issue 1

On CUEskills to evaluate and integrate thisnew knowledge with their own
knowledge; some ideas include
peer teaching, role-playing new
perspectives, dialogues, and simulations (Bean, 2001)
5. Work on metacognitive strategies forlistening
Constructing a syllabus that incorporates
Dornyei & Otto’s (1998) idea of “goal oriented behavior,” will help learners develop
metacognitive (Flavell, 1976; Goh, 1997)
knowledge of the language learning processthat includes an understanding of how to set
proximal and sub-proximal goals, how todeal with non-language learning goals thatcompete for their attention, how to monitor
learning, and how to evaluate progress. One
effective way to do this is for students to use
a learning journal. This journal could bebased on the ideas proposed by Dickinson(1987) on developing learner autonomy. In
this learning journal, learners reﬂect upon
what listening comprehension goals theywant to achieve during the course, how they
can achieve those goals, and what they cando speciﬁcally to achieve them.

References

Anderson, J. (1992). Automaticity and the
ACT* theory. American Journal of
Psychology, 105, 165-177.
Bachman, L.F. (1990). Fundamental
considerations in language testing. Oxford:
Oxford University Press.
Bachman, L.F., & Palmer, A.S. (1996).
Language testing in practice. Oxford:
Oxford University Press.
Bean, J.C. (2001). Engaging ideas: The
professor’s guide to integrating writing,critical thinking, and active learning in theclassroom. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
Biber, D., Johansson, S., Leech, G., Conrad,S., & Finegan, E. (1999). Longman
grammar of spoken and written English.
Harlow: Longman.
Brown, G., & Yule, G. (1983). Discourse
analysis. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press.
Brown, H.D. (2001). Teaching by principles:
An interactive approach to language
pedagogy. Harlow: Longman.
Brown, J.D., Hudson, T.D., Norris, J.M,
& Bonk, W. (2002). An investigation of
second language task-based performanceassessments. Honolulu: University of
Hawai’i Press.

6. Make students aware of the importanceof standardized tests and help them focus
clearly on the goals and objectives of the
program
In my experience, teachers and programadministrators tend to have a less than positive attitude toward standardized language
tests, which we unconsciously transmit to ourstudents when we talk to them about preparation and study for these tests. As the tasks
on these tests become more authentic, we
can begin to actively incorporate them into
15

Feature Article: Squires

our curricula and classroom procedures asmeasures of our learners’ overall proﬁciency.
Students can come to understand the value ofthese tests if we speak positively about the
tests and occasionally bring practice tests
into the classroom, administer them and talkabout them with our students.
I foresee that authentic listening comprehension test tasks on standardized language tests
have the potential to create positive washbackin our classrooms. They will help us focus ourattention on the needs of our students, reconﬁgure our curricula, set pedagogical priorities
and provide an objective measurement of theoverall success of our programs.

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Feature Article: Squires

On CUE

Flowerdew, J. (1994). Research of relevance tosecond language lecture comprehension—an overview. In Flowerdew, J. (Ed.),
Academic Listening: Research perspectives(pp. 7-33). Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
Goh, C. (1997). Metacognitive awareness andsecond language listeners. ELT Journal,
51.4, 361-369.
IELTS. (2003). IELTS: Specimen material
2003. Cambridge: UCLES.
Jacobs, G.M., Power, M.A., & Inn, L.W.
(2002). The teacher’s sourcebook forcooperative learning: Practical techniques,
basic principles, and frequently asked
questions. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin
Press.
Jacoby, S., & McNamara, T. (1999). Locatingcompetence. English for Speciﬁc Purposes,
18, 213-241.
Krashen, S. (1985). The input hypothesis:
Issues and implications. New York:
Longman.
Lewis, M. (1993). The lexical approach: The
state of ELT and a way forward. Boston:
LTP.
Lewis, M. (2002). Implementing the lexical
approach: Putting theory into practice.
Boston: LTP.
Long, M. (1985). A role for instruction insecond language acquisition: Task-based
language teaching. In Hyltenstam, K. &Pienemann, M. (Eds.), Modelling andassessing second language acquisition (pp.
77-99). Clevedon: Multilingual Matters.
MacDonald, M., Badger, R., & White, G.
(2000). English for Speciﬁc Purposes, 19,253-267.
Nunan, D. (1989). Designing tasks for thecommunicative classroom. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
Pienemann, M. (1989). Is language teachable?
Psycholinguistic experiments andhypotheses. Applied Linguistics, 10.1, 217244.

Chaudron, C., & Richards, J.C. (1986).
The effects of discourse markers on
the comprehension of lectures. Applied
Linguistics, 7, 113-127.
Chomsky, N. (1965). Aspects of the theory ofsyntax. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
DeCarrico, J., & Nattinger, J.R. (1988).
Lexical phrases for the comprehensionof academic lectures. English for Speciﬁc
Purposes, 7, 91-102.
DeKeyser, R. M. (2001). Automaticity andautomatization. In Robinson, P. (Ed.),
Cognition and second language instruction(pp. 125-151). Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
Dickinson, L. (1987). Self-instruction inlanguage learning. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
Dornyei, Z. & Otto, I. (1998). Motivation inaction: A process model of L2 motivation.
Working Papers in Applied Linguistics(Thames Valley University, London), 4, 43-69.
Dulay, H., & Burt, M. (1974). Naturalsequences in child second language
acquisition. Language Learning, 24, 37-53.
Dunkel, P.A., & Davis, J.N. (1994). The effects
of rhetorical signaling cues on the recall of
English lecture information by speakers ofEnglish as a native or second language. In
Flowerdew, J. (Ed.), Academic Listening:
Research perspectives (pp. 55-74).
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Educational Testing Service. (1995). TOEFL
sample test. Fifth edition. Princeton, NJ:
Educational Testing Service.
Ellis, R. (2003). Task-based language learningand teaching. Oxford: Oxford University
Press.
Flavell, J.H. (1976). Metacognitive aspects ofproblem solving. In Resnick, L.B. (Ed.),
The nature of intelligence (pp. 231-236).
Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.

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Tauroza, S., & Allison, D. (1994). Expectationdriven understanding in information
systems lecture comprehension. In
Flowerdew, J. (Ed.), Academic Listening:
Research perspectives (pp. 35-54).
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Ur, P. (1996). A course in language teaching:
Practice of theory. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
Widdowson, H.G. (1978). Teaching language
as communication. Oxford: Oxford
University Press.
Willis, J. (1996). A framework for task-basedlearning. Harlow: Longman.
Yorkey, R. (1982). Study skills for students ofEnglish. New York: McGraw-Hill.

Coming up at JALT 2004!
Do You Want to Publish in On CUE?
Mike Hood & On CUE section editors
Are you a previously unpublished writer? Do you have a manuscript well-suited toan audience of university educators in Japan? The editors of On CUE will tell you
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our publication. Writers of all levels of experience are encouraged to attend andmake submissions to On CUE.

17

Feature Article: Squires

Ravem, R. (1968). Language acquisition in asecond language environment.
International Review of Applied Linguistics, 6,
165-185.
Richards, J.C. (1983). Listening comprehension:
Approach, design, procedure. TESOL
Quarterly, 17.2, 219-239.
Rost, M. (1990). Listening in language
learning. Harlow: Longman.
Rost, M. (2001). Teaching and researchinglistening. Harlow: Longman.
Selinker, L. (1969). Language transfer.
General Linguistics, 9, 67-92.
Selinker, L. (1972). Interlanguage.
International Review of Applied Linguistics,
10, 209-231.
Skehan, P. (1998). A cognitive approachto language learning. Oxford: Oxford
University Press.
Squires, T. (2003). Authenticity of listening
comprehension test tasks: An exploratory
study of the perceptions of learners in an
EAP program. TUJ Studies in Applied
Linguistics: Language Assessment, 36,
1-18.

Summer 2004: Volume 12, Issue 1

On CUEIs Reﬂective Teaching
Scholarship?
Feature Article: Stewart

Timothy Stewart
Kumamoto University

The Question

generally, should give the question serious
consideration.
The very first article published in thejournal of my former institution (Otsubo,
1995) raised the question of the place of research and scholarship in the academy. The
author was tapping into a debate continuing
for several years now on the relationship ofresearch to knowledge for and about teaching. A major source of this debate has been
the dissatisfaction with a university-generated knowledge base for teaching amongst
practicing classroom teachers (Lytle &Cochran-Smith, 1992). I would characterize
this debate as one where dominant paradigms
are judging a new domain of inquiry by reasserting the conventions, expectations andlanguage of established frameworks. Let
us consider here whether the relationships
between teachers’ research, knowledge andpractice are really “new territory” (CochranSmith & Lytle, 1998, p. 27).
I will frame the general discussion that
follows within the ﬁeld of second language
education by reviewing several recent publications pertinent to this question. I begin
with a brief summary of some key argumentsin the current literature.

For over 10 years I worked in what might
be considered to be rather a unique teachingsituation. As a faculty member in the Department of Comparative Culture at my university, I was an ESOL educator who worked
closely with discipline-area specialists in thesocial sciences and humanities. Like most
universities, my former institution has its
own academic journal. I performed editorial
functions for that journal and others overthe past ten years. Two years after the university journal was launched, a progressive
sociology professor began the “Reﬂections
on Teaching” section of the journal. I was
invited to write one of the six manuscripts forthat original Reﬂections section. Since thattime, several colleagues have asked me about
the worth of such reﬂections to the journal.
Ensuing discussions led me to wonder: “Is
reﬂective teaching scholarship?”
Even though my former university isa small liberal arts institution with a pronounced teaching mission, some colleagues
have said that the university journal shouldhave fewer articles about teaching andmore on “academic” questions. Others haveexpressed the opposite view. This article
is one response to these contrasting views.
I make no claims to ﬁnding a satisfactory
answer to the question posed above, but asa concerned member of the academy I feelthat ESOL specialists, and CUE members

Critical Views
Positions in this debate are largely decided
by how participants pose their questions. Traditionalists deﬁne knowledge as being either
18Summer 2004: Volume 12, Issue 1

On CUE

Boyer (1990) and his Carnegie Foundationcolleagues are credited with focusing this debate in the higher education literature. They
reconsidered “teaching versus research” with
the intent of shaping a broader deﬁnition ofscholarship. The scholarship of teaching is
one of four areas of scholarship proposed byBoyer, in addition to discovery, integration
and application. He argues his point in thecontext of the history of research in universities. Boyer’s conclusion is that academics
deﬁne scholarship in a very narrow waywith basic research (discovery) generating
publishable knowledge that is then appliedin some way or, perhaps, used to enhanceteaching. In today's restricted view of scholarship, it seems that conveying knowledge
to students or the application of knowledge
are not considered to be a part of scholarship.
Schön (1995) lays out the dilemma of sucha restricted view of scholarship:
In the varied topography of professional practice, there is a high, hardground overlooking a swamp. On thehigh ground, manageable problems
lend themselves to solution throughthe use of research-based theory andtechnique. In the swampy lowlands,
problems are messy and confusing
and incapable of technical solution.
The irony of this situation is that the
problems of the high ground tend to berelatively unimportant to individuals
or to society at large, however great
their technical interest may be, whilein the swamp lie the problems of greatest human concern. The practitioner isconfronted with a choice. Shall he remain on the high ground where he cansolve relatively unimportant problems
according to his standards of rigor, or
shall he descend to the swamp of important problems where he cannot be
19

Feature Article: Stewart

formal or practical. These scholars tend tolimit their purview of scholarship to researchfalling under the rubric of formal knowledge,that is, disciplinary-based content. Othersin the academy are now arguing for an expanded and, indeed, elevated deﬁnition ofpractical knowledge. They see the formal
knowledge/practical knowledge dichotomy
as artiﬁcial and unproductive.
…the assertion [by traditionalists] thatteacher research generates practicalknowledge means it generates knowledge that is, from a certain perspective,
low status knowledge – bounded by
the everyday, excessively local andparticular, and possibly trivial. (Cochran-Smith & Lytle, 1998, p. 24)
The critique of research conducted bypracticing teachers as scholarship centerson this point. Scholars such as Fenstermacher (1994) argue that there exists formal,
theoretical and scientiﬁc knowledge that is
separate from practical knowledge. He conceptualizes teacher knowledge as: “how to do
things, the right place and time to do them,or how to see and interpret events related to
one’s own actions” (p. 12). Huberman (1996)
supports this argument by classifying teacher
knowledge as situated knowledge that, withrepeated reﬂection, could lead to practicalknowledge. He further challenges the ideaof teachers’ research by contending that itis nearly impossible to understand events
when one is a participant. Indeed, supportersof teachers’ research warn that its increasing
popularity risks serving too many educational
agendas, so that “it is in danger of becoming
anything and everything” (Cochran-Smith &Lytle, 1998, p. 21). It seems that what is now
being called the “new scholarship” (Boyer,
1990; Zeichner, 1999), is in need of a new
epistemology (Schön, 1995).

Summer 2004: Volume 12, Issue 1

On CUE

rigorous in any way he knows how to
describe? (p. 28)
Let me turn now to a consideration of thealternatives to the restricted view of scholarship as original or basic research.

positivism and scientiﬁc empiricism cannot
be established. This makes it all but impossible to achieve a level of rigor acceptable by
the positivist standards of research underlying the modern research university (Schön).
As a result, some good teachers are denied
tenure because they are unable to see theresearch potential in practice and/or cannot
carry out a program of action research. At
the same time, the positivist paradigm is so
deeply institutionalized, that even liberalarts universities have difﬁculty recognizing
the legitimacy of reﬂective action researchin practice.
Preoccupations with issues of methodological sophistication can be challenged.
These concerns are emphasized most wheninterpretation and analysis are done awayfrom research settings, and when investigators have little interest in the particular case
(Kemmis & McTaggart, 2000). This researchreality is far removed from the classroom inwhich concerned teachers attempt to understand and develop their practice. Teacherparticipants who conduct classroom action
research, must “live with the consequencesof the transformations they make” (Kemmis& McTaggart, 2000, p. 592). As Kemmis and
McTaggart (2000) explain, this direct connection with the research situation serves asa powerful check on the quality of teachers’
transformative work.
The impetus for shaping research on teaching by practitioners into a new form of scholarship stems largely from the perception that“much formal research has little bearing on
the most immediate and central problems ofeducation” (Cochran-Smith & Lytle, 1998, p.
30). Furthermore, universities view collegesof education as lacking intellectual rigor,
while classroom teachers consider what
they offer to be too theoretical and detachedfrom teaching realities. In the past, research

Feature Article: Stewart

New Perspectives on
ScholarshipAs stated earlier, Boyer (1990) introduces
four areas of scholarship: discovery, integration, application and teaching. His central
point about the scholarship of teaching isthat university faculty should stop looking onteaching as something almost anyone can do,or as some kind of annoying load tacked onto
other more important tasks. Instead, Boyeradvises university faculty to adopt the viewof teaching as “the highest form of scholarship” (Boyer quoting Aristotle, p. 23). While
afﬁrming the important place of research inuniversities (the scholarship of discovery),Boyer makes the case that “inspired teaching keeps the ﬂame of scholarship alive” (p.
24). He calls for “a more inclusive view ofwhat it means to be a scholar – a recognition
that knowledge is acquired through research,through synthesis, through practice, andthrough teaching” (p. 24).
The new scholarship must take the form ofaction research according to Schön (1995).
He emphasizes that the challenge for supporters of the new scholarship of teaching is“to introduce action research as a legitimate
and appropriately rigorous way of knowing and generating knowledge” (p. 31).
Under the current standards of scholarshipthat dominate in academia, however, thescholarship of teaching remains unacknowledged and unrewarded. That is, the puzzles
that teachers are drawn to investigate willoften need to be studied in the contexts ofpractice. Therefore, the control and distancedemanded by the epistemology of logical20Summer 2004: Volume 12, Issue 1

On CUEdevelopment more critical in the sense ofcritical inquiry (Cochran-Smith & Lytle,
1998; Gore & Zeichner, 1995). Proponentsof this stance deﬁne “professional development” as a critically reﬂective activity that
continues across the professional career-spanin support of social justice and social change(Cochran-Smith & Lytle, 1998). Situatedas a critical enterprise, localized teachers’
research can be conceptualized as knowledge that other teachers can draw from tounderstand and promote social change intheir own schools and communities. This
conception of teachers’ research reﬂects thecurrently predominant view in my own ﬁeldof English as a Second or Other Language(ESOL). I turn now to a discussion of theissues raised relative to the ﬁeld of English
language education.

Reﬂective Teaching in ESOL
We can trace the idea of reﬂective teaching back to Dewey (1933) who claims thatreﬂective thinking means giving a subject“serious and consecutive consideration”
so as to allow for action “in deliberate andintentional fashion.” Today, peer mentoring,case discussions, and teaching portfolios are
all ways in which faculty attempt to change
their teaching through reﬂective practices.
When such reﬂections on teaching are done
systematically in a disciplined cycle of action, observation, reﬂection and revision,
they might become worth publishing at somepoint. Since many of the most proliﬁc authors
in the ESOL ﬁeld work as teacher educatorsin universities, they can become distanced
from challenges facing the broader ESOL
community. This leads to a situation in which
ESOL teachers become frustrated because
the teachers’ reference books and textbooks
published are often of little use to them. For
these reasons, the reﬂective observations of
21

Feature Article: Stewart

in education, following the natural sciencesmodel, has separated theory and practice,thus viewing practice as something theories
are about (Carr, 1987). New conceptionsof teachers’ research propose that teachingpractice has both practical and theoreticalaspects. Therefore, teachers’ research generates “knowledge of both how teachers theorize practice and how they practice theory”(Cochran-Smith & Lytle, 1998, p. 30). Thisidea is central to Boyer’s (1990) conceptof the scholarship of application. In some
activities directed to serve their particularﬁeld of specialization or the larger community, professors can be engaged in researchin which “theory and practice interact, andone renews the other” (Boyer, p. 23). It is thiscycle of interaction that most interests thoseengaged in reﬂective teaching.
Anderson, Herr and Nihlem (1994) view
teachers’ research as a new genre related toqualitative research. A key difference forthem is that this new form of research is conducted by participants rather than outsiders.
They claim that standard academic criteria
for validity are meaningless because of thefundamental difference of purpose between
the academic qualitative research modelof applied knowledge and “participatoryinquiry” (Thesen & Kuzel, 1999). The academic traditions of participatory inquiry are“oriented toward reform rather than simply
toward description or meaning” (Thesen &Kuzel, 1999, p. 270). Thus, educators engaged in participatory action research seek
to change, not simply describe, schools. This
position can be traced back to Dewey’s ideas
on democracy in the classroom and the needfor reﬂective inquiry to improve teaching
and learning.
Another way in which teachers’ researchis being reconsidered is by exploring how it
can make teacher education and professional

Summer 2004: Volume 12, Issue 1

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practicing ESOL teachers are increasingly
being sought for publication.
The nature of how teachers develop andchange professionally is crucial to second
language teacher education. Reﬂection isseen as paramount to affecting change inteaching practice since changes in behavior
often follow changes in beliefs (Bailey, 1992;
Golombek, 1998). The number of books
on reﬂective practices in ESOL is growing
rapidly, following the lead of the educationﬁeld. It would be impossible to commenton all of the major works in this area, but
I would like to highlight some of the mostimportant volumes. These books spring fromtwo categories of research: action researchand narrative inquiry.
Under the rubric of action research, there
are a number of inﬂuential books. Action
Research for Language Teachers (Wallace,1998), describes action research as “thesystematic collection and analysis of data
relating to the improvement of some aspectof professional practice” (p. 1). Data may
be collected as part of a case study, throughinterviews or questionnaires, or using observation, ﬁeld-notes, logs, journals and diaries.
For example, a teacher might structure his/her ﬁeld-notes as a teaching log. Levels ofeffectiveness of a lesson can be deﬁned andused to evaluate the lesson on a time-line.
Once ﬁeld-notes have been recorded for several lessons, they can be analyzed as a sourceof issues for deeper investigation. Or, if thedata are already focused on a particular issue(e.g., teacher talk time vs. student talk time),
they can be used to decide if there’s enoughdata to see some solution. Wallace situates
action research in professional development
contexts. For teachers, professional development is an ongoing process throughout
a career. Wallace outlines a reﬂective cyclethat he calls a process of reﬂection on profes-

sional action. He stresses that action researchis concerned with applying discoveries about
practice to professional action and not withwhat is universally true, or generalizable toother contexts.
Another respected how-to book for ESOL
teachers is Reﬂective Teaching in Second
Language Classrooms (Richards & Lockhart, 1996). The authors view reflection
as essential to professional practice sinceteacher-training courses, at the very best,
can only prepare teachers to begin teaching.
Teacher-initiated action research is typically manifested in small-scale investigative
projects. The phases of typical classroom
investigations, according to Richards andLockhart, are planning, action, observation
and reﬂection. These phases recur in cycles
of investigation. Topics in this volume comefrom various important issues in ESOL,
encouraging teachers toward a “critically
reﬂective approach to teaching” (p. 202).
It follows that projects of critical reﬂection
on teaching practice guided by a disciplined
pattern of investigation could be suitably developed into manuscripts for publication.
Many advocates of action research stressthe importance of collaboration. In Collaborative Action Research for English Language
Teachers, Anne Burns (1999) presents thecase for collaborative inquiry. Like Burns,
Kemmis and McTaggart (1988) maintainthat action research cannot be action researchwithout collaboration between colleagues
or students and their teachers. Burns points
out correctly that the original goals of action research “were to bring about change
in social situations as the result of groupproblem-solving and collaboration” (p. 12).
She sees action research as a way to bridge
the divide between theory, research andpractice. She maintains that it “fulﬁls basic
research requirements in that it encompasses
22Summer 2004: Volume 12, Issue 1

On CUEthe outcomes and lead into a new cycle ofdiscovery.
Two well-known names in ESOL, Bailey
and Nunan, published Voices from the Language Classroom (1996) “to serve as a ‘sampler’ for people interested in learning more
about qualitative research in the naturalistic
inquiry tradition,” since “studies utilizing
qualitative data gathered in naturally occurring settings” had not often been publishedin the ﬁeld of ESOL (p. 1). Their book ofnarrative inquiry examines sociopoliticaland curricular aspects of language teaching, as well as the perspectives of learners
and teachers. Following this lead, Johnson
and Golombek (2002) published Teachers’
Narrative Inquiry as Professional Development. While the volume edited by Bailey andNunan features many prominent universitybased ESOL researchers, Teachers’ Narrative Inquiry includes the voices of practicing
teachers. Johnson and Golombek describe
narrative inquiry as “systematic explorationthat is conducted by teachers and for teachers through their own stories and language”(p. 6). They maintain that teachers engaging
in narrative inquiry are in fact theorizing
about their own practice. This theorizing is
not linear in nature but “reﬂects a dynamic
interplay between description, reﬂection,
dialogue with self and others, and the implementation of alternative teaching practices”(p. 7). What needs to be done is to make thefundamental theoretical knowledge base of
second language teacher education relevant
to teachers’ own social contexts. In otherwords, we need to enhance common senseand build on what teachers know-in-practice(Schön, 1995).
Another book reﬂecting this current trend
in TESOL research is Understanding the
Courses We Teach: Local Perspectives on
English Language Teaching (Murphy &23

Feature Article: Stewarta researchable question/issue, data and interpretive analysis” (p. 25). Furthermore,
many methodologists see action research as
one type of qualitative research similar to
approaches such as grounded theory, which
presumes that there is a direct link between
observed phenomena and theories of practice. Finally, according to Burns, a key pointin support of collaborative approaches toresearch is that action researchers can work
as a team to test their ﬁndings through theprocess of triangulation in order to increase
reliability and validity.
The last of the selected sources of teacher
reﬂection through action research adds an interesting dimension to complement the otherbooks. In Continuing Cooperative Development, Julian Edge (2002) supports Burns’
collaborative approach to action research. He
too advocates the use of colleagues as sounding boards to help formulate ideas aboutteaching practice. Cooperative Development(CD) is the label Edge gives to his method
for reﬂective practice. In CD, a teacher talks
about teaching with a non-judgmental colleague who listens to and helps focus thistalk, with the aim of uncovering professional
development issues for investigation. The
ultimate goal is to empower teachers throughprofessional actions based on their own understanding of their classroom teaching situation. To achieve this understanding, Edge
outlines alternative patterns of discourse forcolleagues to follow. This talk about teaching leads toward the choice of a focus foraction research. As the focus is sharpened,a concrete goal for action is set. Next in thisprocess is a spoken rehearsal “to make surethat the steps toward the set goal have beenthought through and that they are coherent”(p. 116). Following this, action research is
conducted and observations are made. CDtechniques can later be used to reﬂect onSummer 2004: Volume 12, Issue 1

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Discussion

Byrd, 2001). According to the subtitle, thisis a volume of local perspectives on English
language teaching. Murphy and Byrd envision their book as a response to the genericdiscussions that have “for too long” dominated the ESOL literature. Since the 1970s,
applied linguists programs situated in universities in the UK, USA, Australia and Canada
have been producing global approaches andmethods for second language teachers to
consume. A major theme underlying thiscollection, however, is that “all instances ofEnglish language teaching take place within
particular settings and sets of circumstances”(p. 450). The purpose of this volume is torecord diverse experiences of teaching practice. The authors intend to fulﬁll this purpose
further through a dedicated website (http://
www.gsu.edu/~wwwesl/understanding).
Teachers are encouraged to contact themfor support, guidance and resources. They
are hoping to help more teachers becometeacher-researchers.
This is a very short sample of recently
published second-language education books
representing the trend toward viewing thepractical knowledge generated from teachers’ speciﬁc situations as scholarship. Areas
that could also be cited include classroom
interaction analysis (Johnson, 1995; Spada,
1994), classroom ethnography (Hornberger,
1994; van Lier, 1988), and exploratory
teaching (Allwright & Bailey, 1991). Theinternational TESOL organization also publishes several series composed primarily ofarticles written by practitioners, including
the Case Studies series. The trend toward
publication of teachers’ reﬂections on theirpractice continues to grow in the ﬁelds ofeducation and TESOL. Does this work constitute scholarship?

“New” scholarship in teacher education
makes use of naturalistic and interpretive
research methodologies including biography,
life history, ethnography, action researchand narrative inquiry. Furthermore, much ofthis research is being conducted by teachers
as scholar-practitioners instead of externalsocial science researchers. Reflection iscentral to this new scholarship of teaching. It
is useful in that it attempts to illuminate thetacit knowledge that unreﬂective practitioners often cannot describe. These features ofthe scholarship of teaching, however, makeit “inimical to the conditions of control anddistance that are essential to technical rationality” (Schön, 1995, p. 34).
The continued rejection of most practitioner knowledge on the grounds that it is“nonempirical” mirrors the epistemologicaldebate that marginalized naturalistic/qualitative research over thirty years ago (Anderson& Herr, 1999). Gaining acceptance for reﬂective practice as scholarship is indeed a struggle against very well-entrenched ideologies.
A search of major publication in the ﬁeld of
education is revealing. The 1986 Handbookof Research on Teaching (Wittrock) contains
no research compiled by practitioners. The
next volume of the handbook (Richardson,1998) has one chapter dedicated to teachers’
research; however, this chapter was not written by scholar-practitioners.
The situation is changing rapidly. Today,
courses in practitioner research are being offered in many teacher education programs,
an increasing number of books of teachers’ research are published every year, andrefereed journals are publishing more andmore practitioner research articles. There iseven an international journal, the ScholarPractitioner Quarterly, solely dedicatedto enhancing educational leadership and24

Summer 2004: Volume 12, Issue 1

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video journals on content and language acquisition?”
By recognizing that classroom research
about teaching should concern all disciplines, we can see that the research stances(e.g., inside vs. outside investigators), andpolitical differences between faculty members in most universities (e.g., power andstatus relations of PhD vs. MA, and subjectarea teacher vs. language teacher) might
not be as large as we imagine. The kind ofcollaborative research on teaching that many
MIC faculty members engage in can help
to legitimize this new scholarship. Whendiscipline specialists and ESOL specialists
research their teaching together, the rigor ofscholarly training can meld with the practicalrealities found in teaching. Research teams
like these have a unique opportunity to work
toward supplying new deﬁnitions of “rigor”
for the scholarship of teaching.
The pre-conception that writing a reﬂective piece on teaching practice has less value
than a “research article” is prevalent on thecampus of MIC too. Before leaving MIC, I
was asked by a colleague in a social science
discipline if the Reﬂections section of the
MIC journal was only open to submissions
from language teachers; others have said thatreﬂections should be conﬁned to short narrative articles only. This situation is further
evidence that the effort to legitimize teachers’ research and the scholarship of teachingis a long-term struggle to change prevailing attitudes in higher education. Throughorganizations like JALT and publications
such as On CUE, opportunities exist to embrace the emerging epistemology of the newscholarship on teaching, and to work toward
legitimizing it.

25

Feature Article: Stewart

change in schools and universities. In addition, the Journal on Excellence in College
Teaching was established to legitimize thescholarship of teaching at universities in the
United States. As this shift in the perceptionof scholarship is occurring for some in theacademy, promotion and tenure committees
continue to refuse to recognize teachers’
research as legitimate (Anderson & Herr,
1999). The situation is reaching the point
at which “some kind of showdown is imminent, reminiscent of that which occurred
when qualitative research could no longer beignored” (Anderson & Herr, p. 14).
The issues discussed in this paper ﬁnd
expression in my former educational context
at Miyazaki International College (MIC).
MIC is not a research university; it is a small
liberal arts institution, where colleagues
handcraft courses in interdisciplinary teams
composed of specialists in ESOL, humanities, social sciences and natural science
subjects. The faculty members at MIC arecertainly dedicated and resourceful teachers.
The collaborative enterprise of team teaching
brings faculty together in ways that could
not occur otherwise. By breaking down theartiﬁcial divisions between faculty that are
fortiﬁed in many universities, MIC faculty
members enjoy unique opportunities to learn
from one another. This relationship has led to
ESOL “practitioners” engaging in research
projects with their disciplinary colleagues.
Some of the collaborative research projects
have been centered in the pedagogy of thedisciplinary ﬁelds. Much of the researchcollaboration that I am aware of between
ESOL and disciplinary colleagues relates tothe courses they develop and how they havedealt with speciﬁc pedagogical issues. For
example, how effective is the “quick write”
cooperative learning technique in sociology
courses, or “what are the effects of student

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Feature Article: Stewart

References

Edge, J. (2002). Continuing cooperative
development: A discourse framework forindividuals as colleagues. Ann Arbor, MI:
Michigan University Press.
Fenstermacher, G. (1994). The knower andthe known: The nature of knowledge in
research on teaching. Review of Research in
Education, 20, 3-56.
Golombek, P. R. (1998). A study of language
teachers’ personal practical knowledge.
TESOL Quarterly, 32(3), 447-464.
Gore, J., & Zeichner, K. (1995). Connecting
action research to genuine teacher
development. In J. Smyth (Ed.), Critical
discourses on teacher development (pp.
203-214). London: Cassell.
Hornberger, N. (1994). Ethnography. TESOL
Quarterly, 28(4), 688-90.
Huberman, M. (1996). Focus on research moving
mainstream: Taking a closer look at teachers’
research. Language Arts, 73(2), 124-140.
Johnson, K. E. (1995). Understanding
communication in second language
classrooms. New York: Cambridge
University Press.
Johnson, K. E., & Golombek, P. R. (Eds.).
(2002). Teachers’ narrative inquiry as
professional development. Cambridge, UK:
Cambridge University Press.
Kemmis, S., & McTaggart, R. (Eds.). (1988).
The action research planner (3rd ed.).
Geelong, Victoria: Deakin University Press.
Kemmis, S., & McTaggart, R. (2000).
Participatory action research. In N. K.
Denzin & Y. S. Lincoln (Eds.), Handbookof qualitative research (2nd ed.) (pp.
567-605). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage
Publications.
Lytle, L., & Cochran-Smith, M. (1992).
Teachers’ research as a way of knowing.
Harvard Educational Review, 62(4).
Murphy, J., & Byrd, P. (Eds.) (2001).
Understanding the courses we teach: Local
perspectives on English language teaching.
Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan
Press.

Allwright, D., & Bailey, K. M. (1991). Focus
on the language classroom: An introduction
to classroom research for language
teachers. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge
University Press.
Anderson, G. L., & Herr, K. (1999). The newparadigm wars: Is there room for rigorous
practitioner knowledge in schools anduniversities? Educational Researcher,28(5), 12-20, 40.
Anderson, G. L., Herr, K., & Nihlem, A.
(1994). Studying your own school: An
educator’s guide to qualitative practitioners
research. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin
Press.
Bailey, K. M. (1992). The processesof innovation in language teacher
development: What, why and how teacherschange. In J. Flowerdew, M. Brock, andS. Hsia (Eds.), Perspectives on Second
Language Teacher Education (pp. 253282). Hong Kong: City Polytechnic ofHong Kong.
Bailey, K. M., & Nunan, D. (Eds.) (1996).
Voices from the language classroom. New
York: Cambridge University Press.
Boyer, E. L. (1990). Scholarship reconsidered:
Priorities of the professoriate. New
York: The Carnegie Foundation for the
Advancement of Teaching.
Burns, A. (1999). Collaborative action
research for English language teachers.
Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University
Press.
Carr, W. (1987). What is an educational
practice? Journal of the Philosophy of
Education, 21(2), 163-175.
Cochran-Smith, M., & Lytle, L. (1998).
Teachers’ research: the question thatpersists. International Journal of
Leadership in Education, 1(1), 19-36.
Dewey, J. (1933). How we think: A restatementof the relation of reﬂective thinking to theeducative process. Boston: D. C. Heath.

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Thesen, J., & Kuzel, A. J. (1999). Participatoryinquiry. In B. Crabtree & W. L. Miller,(Eds.), Doing qualitative research (2nd ed.)(pp. 269-290). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage
Publications.
van Lier, L. (1988). The classroom and thelanguage learner. London: Longman.
Wallace, M. (1998). Action research for
language teachers. Cambridge, UK:
Cambridge University Press.
Wittrock, M. C. (Ed.). (1986). Handbookof research on teaching. New York:
Macmillan.
Zeichner, K. (1999). The new scholarship inteacher education. Educational Researcher,28(9), 4-15.

Coming up at JALT2004!
Presenting Effectively: Delivering the Goods
Juanita Heigham & Heidi Evans-Nachi
Would you like to give a professional presentation, but lack the conﬁdence to try?
Have you been disappointed with the quality of some presentations you’ve heard,
but thought you couldn’t do any better? In this workshop, participants will explore
features that make (or break) presentations and ways to execute those features effectively. The presenters will help participants to identify their strengths and weakness and to develop techniques to improve their individual presentation styles.

27

Feature Article: Stewart

Otsubo, H. (1995). Japan’s higher educationand Miyazaki International College:
Problems and solutions. Comparative
Culture, 1, 1-9.
Richards, J. C., & Lockhart, C. (1996).
Reﬂective teaching in second language
classrooms. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge
University Press.
Richardson, V. (Ed.). (1998). Handbook of
research on teaching (4th ed.). Washington,
DC: American Educational Research
Association.
Schön, D. A. (1995). The new scholarship
requires a new epistemology. Change: The
Magazine of Higher Learning, 27(6), 2734.
Spada, N. (1994). Classroom interaction
analysis. TESOL Quarterly, 28(4), 685-88.

Summer 2004: Volume 12, Issue 1

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Readers Respond
Absolute Objectivity as Myth: A
Response to Michael Guest
Opinions & Perspectives

Colin Sloss

In his interesting article “Flaws, Fallacies,
and Infelicities: A Critical Look at Culture in
ELT Research,” Michael Guest makes somevaluable points about stereotyping and overgeneralizing in the ELT literature concerning
Japanese learners of English. In this brief
response, I would like to raise a number ofissues concerning the concept of objectivity
in research as referred to by the author.
At one point, Michael Guest suggests thatwhen discussing “dynamic cultures” like thatof the Japanese, we should avoid reducing
them to overly simplistic “binary opposites”(p.4). However, I would argue that he conjures up a binary opposite of his own when,in citing various studies inﬂuenced by cultural determinism, he questions as to “howscientiﬁc and objective the original studies
actually were. In fact, many of these foundational studies were largely subjective, anecdotal and based upon personal observation”(p.3). Here, it seems to me, he is contrasting
research “objectivity,” which he appears
to favor, with research based on subjective
and anecdotal methods, which he appears tobelieve lack “credibility” (p.8). Moreover, heappears to accept “objectivity” and “objective” as unproblematic terms which need nofurther qualiﬁcation or explanation. (1)It could be that Mr. Guest is unaware of
the philosophical, scientiﬁc, and postmodernist objection that “objectivity” is not as
objective as it was once made out to be. For
example, as Priddy (1999) points out:

Objectivism is the thesis that reality
can be known entirely as it is in itself,quite independently of the biases ofany observing subject. This has beenshown as untenable as philosophy.
Popular though it is, this doctrine haslong been rejected by the soundest
philosophers and also by scientists
in the forefront of physics since Eddington….
The postmodernists also have problems
with the concept of scientiﬁc objectivity:
Postmodernism enables a questioningof the scientiﬁc attitude and the scientiﬁc method, of the universal efﬁcacy
of technical-instrumental reason, andthe stance of objectivity and value
neutrality in the making of knowledge
claims. This is not so much a matterof rejection but rather of recognizingthat these are claims not truths, claims
which are socially formed, historicallylocated cultural constructs, thus partialand speciﬁc to particular discourses
and purposes. (Usher, Bryant & Johnson, 1997, p.7)
While it might not be possible to save theconcept of absolute objectivity, it might bepossible to salvage something useful. As
Kenny (1975) (in discussing Wittgenstein“On Certainty”) has pointed out, “Cartesian
doubt in a way destroys itself, since it is soradical that it is bound to call into question28

Summer 2004: Volume 12, Issue 1

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communication in a particular debate
possible, as it is almost impossible tohold everything open to doubt.
(3)“The members of any community—
cost accountants, college students, or
rap musicians, for example—develop
ways which serve their needs as agroup, and these constitute the language-game (Moore’s notes refer tothe “system” of language) they employ” (Kemerling, 2001).

References

Guest, M. (2003). Flaws, fallacies, andinfelicities: A critical look at culture in ELT
research. On CUE, 11(1), 2-9.
Kemerling, G. (2001). Ludwig Wittgenstein:
Analysis of language. Retrieved February
13, 2004, from http://philosophypages.
com/hy/6s.htm
Kenny, A. (1975). Wittgenstein. Middlesex:
Penguin.
Priddy, R. (1999). Science limited. Retrieved
February 13, 2004, from http:// home.
no.net/rrpriddy/indexlim.html
Usher, R., Bryant, I., & Johnson, R. (1997).
Adult education and the postmodern
challenge. London: Routledge.

Notes
Though to be fair to Mr. Guest, at one
point, he does slightly qualify “objective” with “more objective” (p.2).
(2)
Certain concepts that we decide are
not open to doubt in order to make(1)

Right to Reply
Pillars and Spaghetti Strands
Michael Guestof my position. In reply I would like to takethe opportunity to clarify this issue now.
First, I should say that I agree with Mr.
Sloss’ analysis of the questionable nature ofabsolute objectivity. Secondly, I would liketo state categorically that I do not “favor”—

I’d like to begin by thanking Mr. Sloss forreading my original article and for taking
the time to comment on it. Due to its length,
I was unable to engage in any speciﬁc discourse about the nature of objectivity, whichperhaps has lead to some misunderstanding
29

Opinions & Perspectives

the meanings of the words used to express it”(p.206). Much in the way that Wittgensteinused his “hinges” (2) to try to get around thisproblem, perhaps we could use “objectivity”
as a kind of “hinge” in a “language-game”(3)concerning foreign language learning.
Another way would be to retain “objectivity” as an ideal, something which while
impossible to achieve is still worth aimingfor. Nevertheless, we would still be obliged
to keep quotation marks around the word.
Alternatively, we could qualify “objective”
with “objective as possible” or “relatively
objective.”
In some cases relatively objective research
may be, at times, preferable to research basedon almost entirely subjective methods. However, this in no way devalues or discredits
the merits of research based on different ormore subjective methods.

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On CUE

as he suggests—objectivity in EFL/ESL
culture research per se. However, what I do
object to is the assumption found in much of
the EFL/ESL culture research that citing apreviously published work provides grounds
for claims of objectivity. To substantiate thisclaim I ask readers to refer to the originalarticle (Guest, 2003).
Writers of EFL/ESL culture literature
regularly make citations presenting established research as premises in syllogistic
arguments. For example, let us say a claim
made by Hofstede in 1986 is cited and serves
as a premise in the development of a writer’s
thesis. But what if Hofstede’s claim itself
lacks objectivity? For only if a premise istrue can it follow that any conclusion basedon it be considered sound. Nevertheless, suchcitations are often presented baldly as established facts, which then act as supposedly
objective foundations on which the writerestablishes a thesis. But as I have argued(Guest, 2002, 2003), many works cited inthis manner actually lack the degree or theintention of objectivity claimed by thoseciting them.
Certainly, it is natural that EFL/ESL academic journals demand that writers try to
be as objective as possible in their research;hence the often hefty number of references
provided in order to establish a greater senseof “objectivity.” Unfortunately though, thiscan mean that a simple reference to an itemthat was originally anecdotal or subjective innature ends up becoming a central pillar in
the writer’s argument. This can then lead thatwriter to make unwarranted claims of objectivity regarding their conclusions. It is thistendency that I have criticized in my articles,
and it is this pillar argument which seems,
upon further reﬂection, to establish about asmuch support as a strand of spaghetti. Now,
spaghetti may please the taste buds but it is

not a sound foundation for architecture.
In short then, it is not that I demand greater
objectivity in EFL/ESL culture research.
Rather, I question the dubious foundationsof those who make claims of objectivity regarding their own research, research which
often rests upon non-objective criteria. In
fact, I agree with Mr. Sloss that subjective
approaches can have merit in this rather
nebulous ﬁeld and that the nature of objectivity might not be as sacrosanct as we are
inclined to think. So how about just dropping
the pretense of objectivity in such researchwhen the premises on which it is based areclearly far from being objective by any deﬁnition of the word.

References

Guest, M. (2002). Culture research: A hotbedof myths, folk wisdom and stereotypes?
In M. Swanson, D. MacMurray, & K.
Lane (Eds.), The Proceedings of PAC3
– JALT2001 (CD-ROM) (pp.602-620).
Tokyo: JALT.
Guest, M. (2003). Flaws, fallacies, andinfelicities: A critical look at culture in ELT
research. On CUE, 11(1), 2-9.

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Summer 2004: Volume 12, Issue 1

On CUEThe Indonesian Varsity English
Debate: A Showcase of Student
Autonomy

I would like to emphasize that my purpose
here is not to directly compare the Japaneseand Indonesian events or suggest one approach is better than the other. Rather, it is
to show that IVED, with a similar mission
but severely restricted resources, provides
an instructive example of turning adversity
into opportunity. Albeit by necessity, IVED
showcases many of the techniques embraced
by English instructors committed to developing autonomy in students: it is student-led,
employs peer tutoring, and is entirely peerassessed.
On arrival at the Indonesian Islamic University, this year’s host of IVED, I immediately sought out the organizing committee
to talk to the English faculty about how they
prepared for this event. The committee room
was thronging with 10-20 Indonesian students, who after brieﬁng me on the morningsemi-ﬁnals and the ﬁnal that evening, proclaimed that they were solely responsible forthe organization of the event and that there
were no “back up” faculty or supporters.
Impressed by this student leadership, I
made my way to one of the semi-ﬁnals, planning to seat myself with the teachers who
would no doubt be conspicuous. While waiting I chatted with debaters sidelined in earlier
rounds and their coaches. The coaches were
all senior students who had competed in previous debates. Later, interviews with otherI recently attended the 7th Indonesian Varsity English Debate (IVED) which was heldfrom 6-9 February in Yogyakarta, Central
Java, attracting 44 teams from across thatvast archipelago. Here in Tokyo I teach adiverse class of Japanese and other Asianstudents, including Indonesians, so I wasparticularly interested to glimpse how Indonesian students develop the kind of assertiveness that is rare among their Japanese classmates. The unbridled student enthusiasm that
I witnessed at IVED was a notable contrast to
the formality of many institutions in Japan. I
suggest that this could have some profound
implications for developing autonomy andassertiveness in Japanese students.
The English Speaking Union of Japan(ESUJ) hosts a comparable event, whichlast year featured 30 teams from across thecountry. It brings over a “debate squad” fromselect British universities to give demonstration debates and lectures, and features aneminent native-speaker MC and volunteer
native-speaker adjudicators. The tournament
director and assistants are Japanese students
of English who receive back-up from the
Debating Committee Chair, a member of
ESUJ’s high-powered board of professors,
diplomats and business people. This is aninvaluable forum and a credit to ESUJ’s
commitment to developing English andcritical thinking skills in Japan. Therefore,
31

Opinions & Perspectives

Colin Rundle
Foundation for Advanced Studies on International Development

Summer 2004: Volume 12, Issue 1

Opinions & Perspectives

On CUE

teams and the event chair, Ipong Irfansyah
Kurnia, conﬁrmed this “peer tutoring” wasindeed the norm amongst IVED competitors.
What’s more, none of the universities offeredclasses in debating, nor were any lecturers
present for the debates, let alone supporting
the teams. Hearing all this, dissonance crept
upon me: this was the national level English
language event, but the only people present,in any capacity, were students!
In a lecture hall packed with about 150
spectators, the MC of the semiﬁnal introduced the adjudicators; all of these “ofﬁcials” were also senior students who had
competed the previous year. Then the debate
commenced; all debaters spoke fluently
with convincing, passionate and animatedarticulation. Each team featured at least one“returnee,” who, in the absence of professors,native speakers, or other experts, dazzled
the collegial audience with their native-likeaccents and command of collocation. They
were complemented by their less idiomatic
members whose strength was anchoring
their teams’ arguments in sound logic as theydebated topics such as whether “Indonesia’s
farmers should be protected.”That night at the ﬁnal held at the University’s mosque the ﬁrst sign of “authority” wasvisible. The Third Dean for Student Affairs,
invited to present the awards, sat in the front
row ﬂanked by a junior lecturer. However,the ﬁnal proceeded in the same student-led
manner as the semi-ﬁnals that morning. Afterthe impassioned ﬁnal debate, “The list of
crooked politicians should be publicised,”the Dean began his speech with an apology
for his halting English, and then continued inIndonesian to name the National Accounting
College as the 2004 champions, with Atma
Jaya Catholic University as the runners up.
The theme of his speech was how the“specter” of English hung over Indonesians:

It is crucial for personal and national advancement, yet beyond their material means
and innate abilities. Educational resources
are indeed desperately scarce, as are many
resources in Indonesia, but by “innate ability,” was he suggesting his students ﬁt thestereotype of “passive Asians?” The ﬂuency
and persuasiveness that I had witnessed suggested otherwise. The student ownership ofthe event had both displayed and generated
the immense motivation and passion of thestudents, which seemed to compensate forany lack of resources. In fact, perhaps thesestrengths were not in spite of the lack of resources, but, in part at least, because of it.
After the event, some students did admit that they longed for more institutional
involvement in coaching and attendance.
Perhaps the contrast of the self-deprecating Dean and the ﬁrebrand student debaters
provides one clue for teacher absence. Add
to this that an Indonesian professor’s salaryis equivalent to less than ¥20,000/month,and it becomes clear that student autonomy
ﬂourishes by necessity.
From my privileged vantage point inJapan, this example of autonomy showsthat less can indeed be more. I am not suggesting that ESUJ needs to learn from thisevent. Rather, it communicates a clear message to instructors of English in Japan: thatis, to search for creative ways to hand overto students the responsibility for their own
learning, and to carefully identify opportunities to offer support without reducing student
motivation. This may be one small step toinstilling assertiveness, or even passion, inJapanese students.

32

Summer 2004: Volume 12, Issue 1

On CUE

FROM THE CHALKFACE
Green Business: A Classroom
Project
Introduction

Each group was to:
1. Envision a company in response to a
speciﬁc environmental threat;
2. Plan their company’s primary productor service;
3. Write a business plan for their company;
4. Record a radio commercial;
5. Create a poster, featuring a logo, tointroduce the company and its productor service;
6. Give a group presentation.
I chose to have the class undertake thisproject for a number of different reasons.

My purpose here is to describe a unit on
green business that I did with a group of 25
freshman English students at a Tokyo women’s university. The students were generally
quite motivated, and they took assignments
seriously. For the most part, the quality of
their work was good. This was an intermediate class that met twice a week. Relative
to the rest of the freshman class, my group
was roughly in the middle in terms of theirlevel.
The group project itself comprised eightclasses. This does not, however, include
the classes during which students read anddiscussed a number of articles on green
business, including two from a unit on green
business in the freshman text, Global Outlook 1 (Bushell & Dyer, 2003). The unit was
required reading for all freshman classes,
and I supplied four short supplementary
articles.
After reading and discussing the required
and supplemental materials, students shouldhave had a good basic understanding of whata green business is. As deﬁned in the text, “Agreen business is environmentally responsible. A green business limits its pollution anduses renewable resources in the manufactureof its products. The rule of a green businessis to ‘reduce, reuse, recycle.’”The project had six basic components.

Creative Output and CriticalThinking
The two required readings came from authentic sources and were quite challenging interms of vocabulary, idiomatic expressions
and grammatical structures. The ﬁrst was
about a nonproﬁt corporation called Cultural Survival (Bushell & Dyer, 2003, pp.
76-78), which buys rainforest commodities
like nuts and oils from Amazonian villagers
in an effort to preserve the forests and to
involve locals in the process. The second
article was about a Japanese cooperative
called Seikaktsu Club (Bushell & Dyer, B.,
2003, pp. 85-87), which has been involved
33

From the Chalkface

Jacob Schnickel
University of the Sacred HeartSummer 2004: Volume 12, Issue 1

From the Chalkface

On CUE

in numerous efforts to protect and improvethe environment.
In groups and as individuals, the students
worked hard to decipher meaning. Though
the text presented students opportunities toreﬂect on and discuss the issues and concepts
featured in the articles, I felt that the ratio oftime decoding the text to that spent dealing
with the issues raised in the articles was imbalanced. In my opinion, the intellectual payoff
for hours spent diligently struggling with thetext was poor. My beliefs and experiences as
an educator told me that time spent engaged
with the issues raised in the articles as opposedto the linguistic challenges they presented
would give the students a deeper sense of accomplishment. With this in mind, I made thedecision to devote a considerable amount ofclass time to the project, hoping that students
would value the creative latitude as well as theopportunity to manage their own time.

3. Group projectIn addition to being a common
academic mode, working in a groupseemed to provide a social opportunity that many of the students valued.
4. Presentation
This project offered students a chance
to give presentations in a very supportive environment. For many students, this was their ﬁrst opportunity
to give a presentation in an academic
setting.
This is my ﬁrst presentation. We learned
Green Business and we considered
what we can do for environment. Group
work is good chance to exchange
each opinion and many ideas ﬂoated.
-Yuka
Before we try to this activity I couldn’t
have few friends and I didn’t talk with
my classmates because I am shy. But
this time, through group works I talkwith many people about environment,
our business plan and myself. -Ai

The most difﬁcult things in the projectis the ﬁst step. We questioned aboutthat are there a good green project we
can make proﬁt and protect the earth.
-Izumi

The Project

Academic Skills

Students worked in groups of ﬁve or six.
(I felt six was too many, but absences andother issues complicated planning). Beyond
making a few general suggestions, I let thestudents decide how to manage their owngroups. I told them that they might need tomeet outside of class, though I did not say it
was necessary. I was surprised and pleased
to learn that some groups did in fact meet on
their own time to, as one student put it, “getdown to our work.”

This project provided students the opportunity to develop key academic skills in
hands-on tasks. Skills required in this unit:
1. Word-processed (as opposed to handwritten) assignments
It was clear that some students had little or no experience word processing
documents in English.
2. Writing as a process
The business plan provided an excellent opportunity for students toexperience writing as a process, frombrainstorming, to rough draft, to ﬁnal
product.

Reading
In addition to the two lengthy articles
from Global Outlook 1, I assigned four short34

Summer 2004: Volume 12, Issue 1

On CUEto see if the they were essentially the samein terms of meaning. Finally, in plenary, I
checked to make sure they had all understoodthe basic story.
The groups examined the relationshipbetween the environmental threat – “theworld’s litter mountain,” as it was referred
to in the headline – and the product that wasdeveloped in response – the water-soluble
trays. I then provided a worksheet featuring
the article and a three-column grid so students could take notes on their ideas about
environmental problems, possible solutions
and potential products. As a ﬁnal prompt, I
included on the worksheet an example ofa conversation to demonstrate the type ofthought process they might go through intheir groups. They spent the rest of classbrainstorming in their groups, keeping in
mind that they were working towards ideas
for the businesses they would plan and the
products or services they would provide.

Pre-planning: Day One
Having read and discussed a number ofarticles about green business, we were readyto begin the group project. As a ﬁrst step, I
distributed descriptions of the project, which
I asked them to read and discuss in theirgroups. I answered their questions.
I wanted students to understand the link
between environmental threats and the creation of businesses, products and services. To
this end, I simpliﬁed a short article about anew product, a plastic-like substance madefrom cornstarch, which had been created in
response to problems associated with thegrowing mass of petrochemical-based refuse.
This material was designed to be formed into
small trays for packaging chocolate candy.
I chose to make this a listening activity andpresented the text of the article to the classin the form of a dictogloss-style exercise. I
pre-taught some of the key vocabulary, suchas “cornstarch,” “water-soluble” and “petrochemical,” and then read the text twice.
The ﬁrst time, I asked them to simply listen.
Before the second reading, I instructed themto take notes. After that, in groups, they compared notes and tried to reconstruct the text.
After they had completed this task, I asked
groups to compare texts with other groups

Creating Products and Planning
Services: Day Two
In the next phase of the project, the groups
were to move into more focused discussions
about what kinds of products or services theywould provide. I allotted the entire classperiod, save a few minutes at the beginningand end of class for short warm-up and cooldown activities, to the task of coming up witha basic plan for the kinds of companies theywould establish. I circulated, offering advice
and input as needed. At the end of class,each group handed in a short, handwritten
description of their business and its main
product or service.
As a cool-down activity for the day, students paired with someone from a different
group and described their business plans
to each other. They seemed to enjoy thisopportunity to share their ideas and to hear
35

From the Chalkface

articles, which are available on the CUE
website, about creative recycling projects
in Japan. I chose to assign the shorter readings prior to the longer ones for two basic
reasons. First, as the readings were short andaccessible, they would help establish someconcepts and themes that would assist themin understanding the longer articles. Second,
I wished to introduce the class to the jigsaw
method, a style of group work I often use.
I believe that the four short articles alone
could be used as a basis for the green business project.

Summer 2004: Volume 12, Issue 1

On CUERadio Commercials: Days Fourand Five

From the Chalkface

those of others.
When we started to think about Green
Business, we had no idea. But now, wehave just completed I have many ideas
about nature or Green Business. I think
it was the beneﬁt of this lesson. And
in my process of the [presentation] I
learned many English words about nature. These were precious experiences
for me. This project was difﬁcult for me,
but I could enjoy it!! -Yuko

Including a marketing component in thisproject seemed an obvious choice, but a radio commercial was not the ﬁrst format that
leapt to mind. I had originally imagined theywould design some sort of printed brochure.
However, when I considered the similarities
between designing a poster and a brochure, I
chose instead to have them plan and record
radio commercials.
To help them prepare, I gave them a seriesof questions. I wanted to maximize the sharing of ideas on this topic, so I asked them todiscuss the questions, which I presented as a
dictation task, in new groups. After doing so,they returned to their original project groups
to report and compare their results.
For the rest of the class, students workedon their business plans, which I had marked
and returned, and their radio commercials.

Developing Business Plans:
Days Three and Four
The brief descriptions they gave me would
become the basis for their business plans. I
took some time to read them and to prepare
for each group a feedback sheet, which
consisted of a brief, encouraging remark
and a series of about four questions that I
thought would help them reﬁne their ideas
and tighten their focus.
Their assignment for the next class wasto produce a word-processed rough draft oftheir business plans. The term “rough draft”
was new to everyone, and they seemed quite
relieved when they learned that it was nota ﬁnal product. At this point, I suggested
that they divide the writing task among themembers of the group, but I did not requirethem to do this.

I love our company’s poster and radio
commercial! –Mai

Final Preparations Days Six andSeven
For the remaining two periods, students
worked in their groups, ﬁnishing their posters, ﬁnalizing their business plans, recording
their radio commercials, and planning theirpresentations. I made myself available toanswer questions and offer suggestions.

When we thought business plan, especially we were careful about thegrammar. And when we practiced thepresentation and presented I could use
more English than before. Actually, I’m
not good at speaking in public but I
tried to do so this time. -Junko

Presentations, Feedback andReﬂection: Day EightOn the ﬁnal day of the project, I suggested
that groups practice their presentations forthe ﬁrst 15 or 20 minutes of class. After
that, they all put their posters up on the back36

Summer 2004: Volume 12, Issue 1

On CUE

Conclusion
Based on reﬂection papers and year-end
questionnaires, it seems most students had
a positive experience with the green business project. The student comments I haveincluded here reﬂect some of the themes thatemerged in post-project feedback, including
the value of cooperation, the importance of
seeking environmentally friendly alternatives as consumers, and the satisfaction ofcompleting a challenging, long-term groupproject.
I felt slightly nervous as students contemplated the blank canvas of the new project. I
was excited as they began to generate ideas.
And when they settled into a rhythm, I wondered if I had done the right thing in assigning the project. I struggled somewhat withthe fact that whole classes passed without
my saying much. In the end, however, when
students displayed their posters, gave theirpresentations and played their radio commercials, I shared the relief and satisfaction
many of them seemed to be experiencing.

References

Experiencing this group project, I had
a lot of fun, and I learned about presentations. –Marina

Bushell, B., & Dyer, B. (2003). Global
Outlook 1. New York: McGraw-Hill.

37

From the Chalkface

wall of the classroom, gathered around, andbegan giving and listening to the presentations. After each one, I played the group’sradio commercial, which prompted laughterand praise among the students. There was a
short question and answer period after eachpresentation.
In preparation for the ﬁnal activity of theday, I distributed sheets with a few examplesof ways to compliment others on their goodwork. After some choral repetition practice,
I asked groups of three or four, comprising
members of different project teams, to get
together and give complimentary feedback
to one another.
For homework, I asked each student towrite a reﬂection paper on the project we hadjust ﬁnished. I also reminded them to ﬁll inthe self-assessment forms I’d distributed at
the beginning of the project.
In the following class, I gave each student
a copy of my comments for her group. And,
as a ﬁnal step, I asked pairs of students toread each other’s reﬂection papers and to
make some brief comments.

Summer 2004: Volume 12, Issue 1

On CUERESEARCH DIGEST
Keeping it Together: A Review ofScholar’s Aid
Research Digest

Jim Smiley
Ohu University

Judith Bell's book on how to do research It makes reference lists effortlessly. It links
lists the card index as the ﬁrst item in her notes via hyperlinks. It saves web pages aschapter on keeping records. This was in research notes.
Scholar’s Aid comes in two sections; a
1999! How many of us still input reference
lists manually, laboriously each time we notes program and a library program. Let’s
write a paper? How many of us still have look at each in turn. The notes program
card indexes or even home-made computer allows you to input seven kinds of notes:
ﬁles listing our books? How many of us even quotations, summaries, tables, glossaries,
write our research notes on scraps of paper? web notes, My Ideas and general types.
If you are still working with pen and paper, General notes differs from My Ideas only
reading on may beneﬁt you. Even for those of in the color of the note type. The idea is to
us who have gone electronic, have you ever separate general note-taking from one’s own
forgotten where you read that key point for thoughts. The interface has your notes’ titles
your thesis? Are you ever annoyed by having on the left-hand side, allowing you to see
to look up the exact format for a bibliography your paper’s overall structure at a glance.
and references within your text? Do you ever There is the facility to arrange a larger projectget rufﬂed and forget toGraphic 1. Notes Windowlink a reference withthe bibliography?
Welcome to the 21st
century! Welcome to
Scholar’s Aid, a productwhich does a whole hostof wonderful things thata modern-day researcher will ﬁnd invaluable.
It allows you to keep
your bibliographicaldata and research notes
together, and to insert
your information into
your word processor
at the click of a button.
38

Summer 2004: Volume 12, Issue 1

On CUEThe third item is the facility to connect withany library’s catalogue which uses Z39.50
protocol. This means that users can accessmany of the world’s library catalogues fromtheir desktop.
All of this retails at 149USD (student
price of 99USD is also available), comparing nicely with EndNote, which retails at
239USD. As we would expect from the pricedifference, Scholar’s Aid does not offer someof the advanced functions and capabilities of
EndNote. For instance, Scholar’s Aid does
not have Palm Handheld compatibility.
Learning to use the program’s basic functions took almost no time at all for me, but
I consider myself reasonably adept with thecomputer. The more advanced functions, likemanually adapting the references and bibliography editor to match JALT’s The Language
Teacher requirements, took a lot more time,and I found that the interface was not so userfriendly. A further drawback of Scholar’s Aid
is its use of ‘in-house’ terminology, which
is not intuitive at times. I struggled for a bitwith terms ‘stitch’ and ‘splitters’ and the difference between ‘note trees’ and ‘note lists’.
‘Search pane’ only
Graphic 2. Library Window
became clear when I
realized that they had
omitted the final ‘l’.
Otherwise, commands,
functions, tabs and soon are clearly labeled.
As expected with any
modern software program, a full tutorial
package, help support,
and free web updates
are also included.
A 30-day free trial
offer enables you totry out the package
and overcome some of
39

Research Digest

into folders. On the right is the main window
for writing your paper. Each word of eachnote can be hyperlinked to any other note.
This feature is very useful in keeping trackof longer and more complex arguments. Eachnote type has its own color, helping you ﬁnd,for example, quotations (see Graphic 1).
Personalized note types may be added. The
most valuable component, and the rationale
for the program, is the ability to link any notewith a source reference text which is stored
in the Library program.
The library program has three key features.
The ﬁrst is the library itself. Each item iscategorized into its particular source type;books, articles, reviews, theses, dissertations,
reports, government documents, Internet andmiscellaneous. Each type has enough subsections to satisfy most detailed categorizations(see Graphic 2). If needed, categories canbe added. The second feature allows references, reference lists and bibliographies tobe customized. Five styles are included withthe package; MLA, APA, Chicago, Harvard
and MHRA, but each can be altered, andnew styles can be set up (see Graphic 3).

Summer 2004: Volume 12, Issue 1

On CUEthe learning curve before you buy.
Details can be found at
http://www.scholarsaid.com/

Graphic 3. Style Editor Dialogue

Reference

Research Digest

Bell, J. (1999). Doing yourresearch project. 3rd Edition.
Buckingham: Open University
Press.

Note
A trial version of EndNote canbe downloaded from http://www.
endnote.com/

Conference Calendar
Cultural Diversity and Language Education Conference
The Imin International Conference Center,
University of Hawai'i at Manoa,
September 17 – 19, 2004
nﬂrc.hawaii.edu/prodev/CDALE/
The 3rd Annual Peace as a Global Language Conference
Kyoto Museum for World Peace
Ritsumeikan University in Kyoto, Japan
September 24 – 26, 2004
www.eltcalendar.com/PGL2004
The 1st International Online Conference on Second and Foreign Language Teaching
and Research
September 25 – 26, 2004
www.readingmatrix.com/onlineconference/index.html
International Conference on Educational Technology 2004
Suntec, Singapore
September 9 – 10, 2004
www.icet.com.sg
40Summer 2004: Volume 12, Issue 1

On CUEInterviewing Japanese Teachers ofEnglish: Data Collection or Teacher
Development?

John Adamson
Shinshu Honan College

as it allows for the creation of an informal
atmosphere in which subjects can freely ask
questions and engineer the interview discussion. The interviewer’s role is that of a guideleading the interviewee through the topics.
The emphasis is on the creation of rapport
and taking a non-judgmental approach towhatever the interviewee says. With thesepoints in mind I decided to embark uponinterviews with Japanese teachers of English,
believing that semi-structured interviewing
would be the best way to elicit input frompotentially nervous subjects.
My research topic is to ﬁnd out what beliefs and attitudes teachers of English havetowards teacher training and qualiﬁcations.
It is an exploration into the “hidden side”(Freeman, 2002) of teacher cognition, done
especially to inform those involved in teacher
training as to how teacher training courses
are perceived among English language
teachers, both native and non-native speakers of English and those who have received
that training or not. I have chosen teachers
working at a mixture of colleges, universities, schools and private language institutes
to obtain a broad perspective of opinions.
For the purpose of this article I will focus
on the interviewing process conducted with
ﬁve Japanese teachers of English working
in the tertiary sector in Nagano Prefecture.
The topics chosen as a basis for the interview
were as follows:
41

Research Digest

I have recently been interviewing Japaneseteachers of English at the tertiary level aspart of a research project into teacher beliefs
about training and qualiﬁcations. This has
been, and will hopefully continue to be, arewarding process since it informs me not
only about the research topic, but also about
intercultural interviewing as a separate focus
of interest. In this short paper I would liketo share some of the insights I have gainedso far.
Before looking at these insights, it is essential to contextualize the interviews by
describing the research topic and interview
style employed. These are fundamental inﬂuences on how any interview is conducted.
The degree of familiarity or awareness of the
topic under discussion naturally affects how
conﬁdent the interviewee feels to provide input. Also, the researcher’s style of interviewing, ranging from the strictly structured to theopen, therapeutic styles have great inﬂuence
over the amount and type of talk the interviewee provides. My particular approach has
been to use a semi-structured approach, i.e.
one that addresses a number of related topics
rather than set, scripted questions. This “freeform” (Drever, 1995) allows the interviewer
to deviate and explore topics. It can involve
additional cues and prompts suited to the
linguistic level and ability of the interviewee.
In brief, it is a popular approach among
researchers conducting qualitative studies

Summer 2004: Volume 12, Issue 1

Research Digest

On CUE

contention and provides as much insight into
teacher beliefs towards training and qualiﬁcations as some of those interviewed. The
overall suggestion was that the issue of qualiﬁcations was not related to the research ﬁeldof either applied linguistics or linguistics andwas, therefore, not worth pursuing.
Of the ﬁve who ﬁnally accepted, four
were female and one male. Of those who refused, three were male and two female. Thisimplied immediately that female lecturers
were more conducive to being interviewed
and that male lecturers perhaps felt that the
research question probed too deeply into
their personal beliefs.
Once underway, it became clear that female
lecturers expanded quite quickly on the topics
into areas concerning their personal treatment
by male staff at their workplaces. Issues of discrimination, sexism and the existence of maledominated cliques were raised which werestrongly believed to inﬂuence their attitudes
and respect towards male staff members. The
semi-structured interviewing style seemed toact as a means for these lecturers to expand
deeper into the given topics and steer towards
areas of concern affecting their own careerdevelopment and identity.

1. Beliefs toward teachers who havequaliﬁcations;
2. Beliefs toward teachers who teachwithout qualiﬁcations;3. The interviewee’s qualiﬁcations;
4. Experiences working with qualiﬁed
and unqualiﬁed teachers;
5. The ideal training course content for
the interviewee;
6. The methodological superiority of
those with postgraduate qualiﬁcations;
7. Teacher hierarchies;
8. Personal teacher development.
Before the interviews were conducted,
interviewees were informed of their rightto remain anonymous. All interviews were
taped and held at a site chosen by the interviewees themselves.
Actually finding Japanese teachers ofEnglish willing to be interviewed was quite
problematic. More than ten lecturers, bothpart-time and full-time, were invited throughpersonal contacts, ﬁve refusing on various
grounds such as:
1. Their perceived inability to understand or communicate in English on
the research topics;
2. Lack of experience in teaching;
3. Confusion about why the research
topic would be of any relevance to theEnglish language research community;
4. The research topic delved too deeply
into private beliefs about sensitive issues;
5. Lack of time to be interviewed.

Interviewee: I am pressured to act likea traditional woman here… but myresearch (requires me to) have critical(thinking)…
Interviewer: What do you mean… I
mean, what is the relationship between critical thinking?
Interviewee: Ah yes, thinking, thinking,yes…
Interviewer: Yes, critical thinking andtraditional female roles?
Interviewee: (short pause) I mean… they
think I should have children, not be

The third reason stated above by an elderly
male was clearly the potential cause of much42

Summer 2004: Volume 12, Issue 1

On CUE(a) researcher. Also, I need to argue
my opinion… for my research.

interview, saying that she wanted her colleague to go through the same process since
it was rewarding. If the process is perceived
as rewarding, interview-based research employing a semi-structured approach takeson the role of a teacher development tool,
an overlooked yet healthy by-product of
qualitative research.

A male interviewee put forward the opinion that when asked about teacher hierarchies
and cliques:
There are no clique(s) here. Everyone
the same.

References

Baker, C. D. and Johnson, G. (1998). Interview
talk as professional practice. Language and
Education, 12 (4), 229-242.
Clark, H. H. (1996). Communities,
commonalities, and communication. In
Gumperz, J. J. and Levinson, S. C. (Eds.)
Rethinking Linguistic Relativity (pp. 324355). Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press.
Cowie, N. (2002). Tell me about your life:
Narratives of English language teacher
development. In Mackenzie, A. S.
and McCafferty, E. (Eds.) Developing
Autonomy (pp. 233-236). Tokyo: JALT Cue
SIG.
Drever, E. (1995). Using semi-structured
interviews in small-scale research
Edinburgh: The Scottish Council for
Research in Education.
Freeman, D. (2002). The hidden side of thework: Teacher knowledge and learning toteach. Language Teaching, 35, 1-13.

Well, (smiling)…you know I should not
say bad things for your interview.
The opinions about the issue of hierarchies
were starkly different between the male andthe female interviewees. This shows, however, not simply a contrast in belief systems
towards the topic but how the interviewing
style allows the expression of such beliefs.
What starts as an inquiry into a research area
yields more than data to analyze. The actual
process by which the interview is co-constructed presents the participants (including
the interviewer) with the opportunity to express their “natural voice” (Cowie, 2001).
This is argued as representing “culture inaction” or the “site of professional practice”(Baker & Johnson, 1998) in itself. What is
touched upon is more than the provisionof data, but an insight into the experiential
and moral worlds of teachers. The process of such interviewing potentially, as in
the case of some of the female lecturers,
created a temporary “communal common
ground” (Clark, 1996) in which I, as a maleresearcher, felt as if the interviewees wanted
to expose a little of their angst and “hidden
world” (Freeman, 2002).
These interviews are still in progress. Of
particular satisfaction to me is the fact that
one female interviewee later recommended
another lecturer in her department for an
43

Research Digest

A female lecturer from the same institution
replied to the same question:

Summer 2004: Volume 12, Issue 1

On CUEBook Reviews

BOOK REVIEWSIELTS on Track Test PracticeSlater, S., Millen, D., and Tyrie, P. (2003) Melbourne: Language
Australia in association with CELUSA ISBN 1-876768-36-3
Reviewed by Michael Carroll
Momoyama Gakuin University
How do you prepare for a standardized
language test? It’s certainly not hard toﬁnd test preparation materials on bookshop
shelves. Of course most of these are for
TOEFL, TOEIC, STEP or other tests popularin Japan. Still the contrasts between most
test preparation books and IELTS on Trackare quite striking. Many such books focus
almost wholly on repetitive practice of itemsof the same types as those found in the test,
while others, especially common in Japan,
aim to build vocabulary in the range supposedly targeted by the test. While both of theseapproaches have beneﬁts when they are partof a rounded preparation program, they areof limited use when seen as a core part ofit. This book, like most IELTS preparationmaterials, has a strong focus on strategies forapproaching the test, understanding what thetest requires, and learning from your own andother test-takers’ experiences.
The book is organized along the division
into the four macro-skills, listening, speaking, reading and writing, like the test itself.
Each skill has a short introduction to that partof the test, and a number of practice tests,
together with a ‘Fast Track’ section which isthe strategies part. For listening and readingthese are straightforward, with the advice
section covering time management, focusing on the questions, guessing and predicting, skimming and scanning and so on. The

suggested method of using the tests makes
good pedagogic sense – trying to analyze
your mistakes, retaking the test after a day’s
break, and ﬁnally using the transcript or text
and dictionaries for detailed analysis.
One feature of the book that seems to me
especially valuable is one called ‘Tips fromtest takers’. It’s not that the advice is any
different from what a teacher, or the authorsof this book, might give; but coming fromother students gives the advice an immediacy
and a sense of recognition. When one student
begins her tip with ‘I had a really bad start… I started to panic,’ I could recognize her
experience immediately from my own experience, and her advice was that much moreeasy to imbibe.
The writing and speaking skills sections
are organized rather differently. It’s an intelligent strategy. The ways of testing these skills
are so different from the still moderately traditional ways of testing listening and speaking, that quite different preparation is called
for. I’ve always thought, as a teacher andexaminer, that these are the easiest parts ofthe test to ‘prep’ for. With the right preparation, students at virtually any level should be
able to improve their score through good test
strategies, especially in writing. (Conversely,
even the best speakers and writers may bedisadvantaged if they have not familiarized
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listening and speaking material for students
across the whole range, including the mosthesitant of freshman English learners. The
early items in the IELTS listening test are
not overly taxing, but at the same time are
genuinely natural sounding, full of communicatively useful phrases and structures thatwould beneﬁt our learners greatly, and thestrategies for test success overlap with sensible strategies for building basic conversational listening skills. The speaking material
is easily generalizable from the test to basic
ﬂuency strategies. The topics in the early partof the speaking test – family, friends, travel,
weekends – are very likely frequent topics
in most university classrooms, and the commentary, transcript analysis and assessment
criteria discussed in this book, are precisely
the kinds of teaching interventions that may
be most useful to students in pursuing greater
ﬂuency.

Oral Presentations for TechnicalCommunication

Laura J. Gurak, Boston: Allyn & Bacon. 2000. pp xxiv +263. ISBN 0-205-29415-4
Reviewed by Kay Hammond,International Christian University
Oral Presentations for Technical Communication is one of the books included in the
Allyn & Bacon series in technical communication. This series aims to provide instruction based on research and experience that
explains not only the practical application ofconcepts, but also the theories behind them.
Although this series is based on a response to
the needs of North American undergraduate

and graduate students, it covers the elementsof good technical presentations that are applicable to a far wider audience.
The book is divided into ﬁve parts that
contain four chapters each. Each chapter contains an overview, chapter contents, a shortsummary, a questions/exercises/assignments
section, and references. At the conclusion of
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Book Reviews

tations beforehand.) Both of these sections
include a ‘What is the examiner looking for?’page—essential given the necessary elementof subjectivity in the assessment of productive skills. In both sections, advice fromexaminers, and advice about them (what they
are looking for) takes greater prominence
than student experiences. This is as it shouldbe. A big part of success in these sections
involves getting into the head of the examiners, not as individuals, but as players of thestandard role of IELTS examiner. Tips fromthe examiners allow the writers to not only
give advice about what to do, but also aboutcommon mistakes, about which examiners
have the most useful knowledge.
Would I recommend the book? Unreservedly, for those preparing for IELTS, or thoseteaching students at the relatively high levels
who may take the test. But in addition, I can
see ways in which this book could be used byteachers looking for well constructed, gradedSummer 2004: Volume 12, Issue 1

Book Reviews

On CUEa professional is given. Throughout the bookthere are information boxes that give more
information on topics and show how mastering the skills of technical presentations
are necessary in the professional world. In
addition, there are scenarios showing casestudies, and summary checklists.
The ﬁrst part of the book is entitled, “Presenting You, Presenting your Message,”
and it covers the basic elements of presentation skills. The ﬁrst chapter outlines thecharacteristics of technical presentations.
The second chapter deals with overcoming
anxiety. The third chapter focuses on using
character, memory and delivery skills. The
ﬁnal chapter provides useful techniques forbuilding conﬁdence as a presenter.
The second part, “Audience, Purpose,
Beginnings, Endings,” provides the basic
building blocks for readers to create theirown presentations. The ﬁrst two chapters
cover familiarity with the audience and the
purpose of the presentation, respectively.
The third chapter stresses the importance ofstrong introductions and conclusions. The
fourth chapter covers the body section of
the presentation in terms of ﬁnding material,organization, citations, preparing handouts
and outlines.
The third part of the book is entitled “Typesof Technical Presentations,” and covers four
different types of technical presentation.
There is a chapter on each type of presentation that: informs; persuades; offers a plan ofaction; and explains how to perform a task.
These basic four provide a solid base fromwhich other types of presentations could bemastered.
“Science, Technology, and Non-Expert
Audiences” is the title of the fourth part ofthe book. This section offers readers usefultechniques to bridge the gap between experts
making scientiﬁc and highly technical pres-entations and the non-expert public audience.
The chapters in this section introduce various strategies used by journalists who skillfully capture public attention about scientiﬁcmatters. These strategies include: adding
mystery, humor, and current events in attention grabbing introductions; shifting genre
from formal academic writing to the spoken
level; the shift in focus from the empiricalclassiﬁcations to the more practical aspectsof how it will affect the audience; the use ofanalogies, and the use of visuals.
The ﬁnal part is entitled, “Presentations
and Technologies.” This section covers
aspects of using presentation software andhardware, copyright and ethical issues. The
beneﬁts and pitfalls of various types of presentation technology are covered, and lists ofuseful tips are provided.
Oral Presentations for Technical Communication goes beyond the provision ofbasic public speaking skills. The examples
are drawn from technical and scientiﬁc areas,
clearly presenting a link between general
presentation skills and their application tomore specialized topic areas. The book provides a balanced approach to communicationthat includes both the human and technological sides of technical presentations. In doing
so, this book is an all-in-one reference thatsaves the reader from having to acquire several works to cover all the essential areas.
Further instructional material is available
from the companion website <www.abacon.
com/gurak>. This site provides activities,
worksheets, online discussions, related
websites, and sample presentations. The
companion website makes a promising start;
however, it is not much more than an overview of the book itself. Although it is professionally presented, it merely repeats someof the exercises already given in the book,and only two worksheets are available. The
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Summer 2004: Volume 12, Issue 1

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may wish to bring this interest into their English studies. As a textbook for ESL students,
it would be more suitable for upper intermediate to advanced students. Despite thetechnical nature of the subject material, thestyle of writing is reader-friendly. The comprehensive nature of the book also makes it
an excellent reference for instructors to baselesson plans on for any level of student. In
addition, many instructors themselves would
beneﬁt from mastering the skills presented
in this book.

CONFERENCE REVIEWOn Their Own: “Developing Opinions
and Critical Analysis Skills”
Richmond Stroupe at JALT2003
Mika Maruyama
Independent Translator
Joe Falout
College of Science and Technology, Nihon University
Lifetime employment has collapsed inJapan, and unemployment remains high(Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare,2003). But job opportunities await in foreigncompanies based here or abroad. After arecent revision of regulations, an increasing
number of foreign businesses are coming
to Japan. Favored job applicants will show
problem solving skills and ability to act autonomously. In other words, these employers

want to hire people who critically analyze
issues and express their opinions. Dr. Stroupe
made these assertions at JALT 2003 in his
presentation, “Developing Opinions andCritical Analysis Skills.”
Critical thinking brings you more thanjob opportunities. In the era of Information
Technology, false information runs rampant.
Following the wrong information can bedamaging, or even fatal. If you have critical
47

Book Reviews / Conference Review

strength of the website is that the worksheets
are of good quality, and the sample syllabus
is an impressive offering of class policies, atimetable of classes, presentation instruction
sheets, and a peer review sheet. Overall, thewebsite is not a good reﬂection of the book,and it should not be considered a reason toeither get the book or reject it.
This book would be extremely useful forstudents and teachers who are engaged intechnical and scientiﬁc presentations. Thisis the case for many teachers of English in
Japan whose students are science majors andSummer 2004: Volume 12, Issue 1

Conference Review

On CUE

thinking skills, you can better differentiate logic from fallacy, truth from lie. You
can act more competently wherever you
go. Less crucially, this ability makes you
a well-rounded individual. But Japanese
universities, ﬁnds Brian McVeigh (2002),
fail to train their students to write critically,argue coherently, or express themselves (p.
13). Nor are the students taught the value ofcritical thinking (p. 9).
Dr. Stroupe said critical thinking manifests
in a variety of practices, from supporting
opinions with plausible reasons, to analyzing and discussing current issues. English
teachers might consider teaching these skills
to advanced learners, but not to low-level
learners. Low-level learners, teachers feel,are impeded by language barriers. To thecontrary, Dr. Stroupe believes language is not
the issue. Critical thinking requires knowing
how to think logically and analytically—
processes and skills that can be developed
through a coordinated education program.
Learners at all levels are ready.
Students entering university already haveroutine experience with pursuing researchand sharing opinions. As opposed to the passive, repressive environments of secondary
school students, primary school students participate in autonomous settings, with moreinterest, enjoyment, creativity, spontaneity,
cognitive ﬂexibility, trust, and self-esteem(Edwards, 2004, p. 21). One participant at
Dr. Stroupe’s presentation pointed out thatprimary schools offer classes where students
initiate their own projects, based on theirinterests, pursue an analysis and present theirﬁndings. He said that students who enterjunior high school are full of curiosity, butby the end of their ﬁrst year they lose thespark in their eyes, the spark of their criticalthinking.

The rest of us agreed it is not that ourstudents never had critical thinking skills;
they developed them, but learned to suppress them in the course of their education.
They spent most of their secondary school
lives passively; sitting quietly, listening toteachers, and doing things they were told to
do without asking questions. Yet they neverlost the ability to think and choose for themselves. Even now they do so all the time:
where to surf on the Internet; what to do andwith whom to do it; which CD to listen to.
There is no end to things that require theirratiocination. They just do not do it methodically, nor can they retrace their thoughts forobjective scrutiny.
During the presentation, Dr. Stroupe solicited our teaching methods. It became clearthat we teachers already incorporate—without realizing—approaches that stimulate oreven capitalize on the critical thinking skillsof our students, such as when they: ask forclariﬁcation; state reasons for their preferences or actions; compose simple sentencesfrom sets of words; and write essays. Unfortunately, we do these activities not systematically, but individually and sporadically.
There is little continuity across the weeks
and years.
Dr. Stroupe described a long-term approach—a curriculum based on TOFEL
scores and set to Bloom’s Taxonomy of Educational Objectives (Bloom, 1956, cited byStroupe) to teach critical thinking as explicit
processes and skills. Bloom’s Taxonomy
relates behaviors to levels of cognition sothat one can measure the level of cognition
against speciﬁc learning objectives. Thistaxonomy is divided into six progressive
levels, from lowest to highest: Knowledge,
Comprehension, Application, Analysis, Synthesis, and Evaluation.

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Composition classes, conversation classes,
and TOFEL preparation classes compriseeach level, with speciﬁc goals and practicalexamples. For instance, Basic level includes
predicting outcomes of conversations, andranking explanations according to orderof importance; Elementary level includes
agreeing and disagreeing with statements bygiving support, and explaining decision processes; Intermediate level includes proposing
possible solutions to global problems, andevaluating paragraph structure; Advanced
level includes evaluating social norms, andsupporting main points in an essay withappropriate evidence in an essay, and Advanced Intensive level includes developing
and supporting referenced argumentative
essays, judging credibility of a source, andformulating new ideas.
With this method of scaffolding, students
build their critical thinking skills progressively and explicitly. The students might face
difﬁculties in the beginning because this typeof thinking is something they are not used
to. But they can grasp it when objectives are
made transparent. The course at the Basiclevel has objectives such as agreeing or disagreeing with statements. With clearly stated,attainable objectives at each level, students
know exactly how to pull themselves up theladder of critical thinking.
Dr. Stroupe hopes to see more coordinatedprograms that systematically develop criticalthinking process and skills across the school
years. Starting such a program, he says,requires the understanding and cooperationof teachers and policy makers. It requires
the time and commitment of everyone at aschool—an enormous effort, but worth it.
A proverb reads, “It takes a village to raisea child.” Like this village, the school that
expends concerted effort is doing so for theinterest of the students. An English programthat integrates critical analysis skills prepares
students to step outside school, to reach out
to the global community, and to reach into
themselves to think on their own.

References

49

Conference Review

Bloom, B. (1956). A Taxonomy of Educational
Objectives. Handbook I: Cognitive Domain.
New York: McKay.
Edwards, N. (2004). Rediscovering thecreative heart of Japanese education:
Fostering intrinsic motivation through alove of language. The Language Teacher,28(1), 19-23.
McVeigh, B. (2002). Japanese Higher
Education as Myth. London: M.E. Sharpe.
Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare(2003). White Paper on the Labour
Economy 2003. Retrieved June 10, 2004,
from http://www.mhlw.go.jp/english/wp/
wp-l/index.html

Summer 2004: Volume 12, Issue 1

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Conference Calendar

Conference Calendar

Cultural Diversity and Language Education Conference
The Imin International Conference Center,
University of Hawai'i at Manoa,
September 17 – 19, 2004
nﬂrc.hawaii.edu/prodev/CDALE/
The 3rd Annual Peace as a Global Language Conference
Kyoto Museum for World Peace
Ritsumeikan University in Kyoto, Japan
September 24 – 26, 2004
www.eltcalendar.com/PGL2004
The 1st International Online Conference on Second and Foreign Language Teaching andResearch
September 25 – 26, 2004
www.readingmatrix.com/onlineconference/index.html
International Conference on Educational Technology 2004
Suntec, Singapore
September 9 – 10, 2004
www.icet.com.sg

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