Learning Learning 学習の学習 20 (2): LOOKING BACK

Looking Back 報告
The Japanese Association of College English
Teachers (JACET) 52nd International Convention
in Kyoto, August 30 – September 1, 2013
Jim Ronald, Hiroshima Shudo University
I decided to attend this year’s JACET annual
convention, held in Kyoto at the end of August,simply because a friend on the organizing
committee asked me to. I registered with a fairnumber of preconceptions that might otherwise
have kept me from going: expectations of not many
presentations in English, of a lot of presentations
too bound up in theory and experimental data to be
applicable to the actual experience of language
learning in or beyond the classroom, and of notmuch of a showing for learner development. On all
three counts, the JACET International Convention
blew these preconceptions away. Over the threedays of the convention, there were 27 presentations
listed in the Learner Development content area, andmore listed under other headings, making it thepresentations.
"I’ve heard that in some ways this year’s

conference was different from in previous years:
deliberately more international, with a large
number of presentations given in English, by both
Japanese and non-Japanese presenters, and with abroad range of language-education associations
involved. Further, not only was there a large
number of presentations, there was also a record
number of 1,200 participants. Let’s hope that this is
not a one-off, but a sign of the direction in which
JACET is moving. Certainly, if this year is anyindication, as many LD SIG members already seemto know, the JACET International Convention has
become an important event in the learnerdevelopment calendar in Japan.
The PanSIG 2013 Collaborative Forum:
The World, the Language Learner, andRelationships
Saturday, May 18, 2013

largest content area of the conference. The vast
majority of the over 200 presentations at theconference were given in English. And many of theby Jim Ronald (facilitator)“Why make your life morecomplicated?” This slogan, forpresentations I attended were excellent, reporting
research and relating to classroom practice.
"a cosmetics brand in Britain

There are too many LD-related

two or three decades ago, waspresentations to list here, but two excellent reportsof research related to study abroad were given by

not part of the vision for thisyear’s PanSIG forum! It was acollaborative, interactive

Kay Irie with Stephen Ryan and by Chihiro Tajima,
while Mike Stockwell’s gave an inspiring accountof project work resulting in authentic output:
products with real world uses. I only stayed for thefirst two days of the conference, which meant that I
missed the symposium led by Hideo Kojima, Yuka
Kusanagi and Masuko Miyahara on support forlearner autonomy, as well as quite a few otherforum, shared by three SIGs:
Learner Development, Global Issues in Language
Education, and Pragmatics. The forum comprised
ten presentations, many spanning two or three of
the SIGs’ concerns, given by thirteen presentersfrom the three SIGs, in 4½ corners of the same

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Learning Learning 学習の学習 20 (2): LOOKING BACKroom. It was far from simple and took a lot of
preparation!

Lori Zenuk-Nishide,
Donna Tatsuki"
The collaborative make-up of the forum, inline with the overall conference theme: From Many,

The Benefits of Model
United Nations
Simulations

Andy Barfield

Exploring contradictions
between learnerautonomy and criticalpedagogy for socialjusticeLouise Haynes

Raising the topic of theFukushima Daiichi
nuclear power disaster

Jane Joritz-Nakagawa

Poetry, global issues,critical thinking andpersonal growth

Marybeth Kamibeppu,
Eleanor Kelly

Connecting drama andglobal/social issues inlanguage learning

Erina Ogawa

Helpful educational
manga textbook
activities

Kevin Mark

Integrating learnerdevelopment, global
education and languge
awareness

Ian Hurrell

Introducing pragmatics:
hearts and minds

Jim Ronald

Peer feedback: fromhurtful to helpful

Seth Cervantes,
Robert Olson

The pragmatics checklist:
building awareness ofinteractional practices

One: Collaboration,
Cooperation andCommunity, aimed tocounteract the “Twentyghettoes under oneroof” feel that may
result from the “oneSIG, one room” waythat the PanSIG
conference is usually organized. The title we settled
on for the forum was an inclusive The World, theLanguage Learner, and Relationships. We evenmade sure that each corner of the room contained amix of SIG concerns: after all, we didn’t want tofind we had “Three ghettoes in one room”!
"Deciding on the forum title and identifying

themes took a lot of discussion between SIG
representatives, as did planning the timing andmanagement of the forum. Our communication
with presenters was not always all it could havebeen, which meant that although we,representatives, knew how the forum would be,some presenters felt unsure about important details
such as timing or corner-sharing. However, once wegot started, everything fell into place, and thecorners were well attended, with a good chance forall presenters to join at least one other presentation,
to discuss the issues raised in their corner, and"Finally, to return to the question that did
cross at least one of our minds during the lengthy

finally to hear from each of the other corners. In thisway, the various goals of the forum were largely

exchanges of emails as we prepared for the forum,met.

Looking back, and thinking of what we learned,"

A combined introduction to each of thepresentations of the forum is being prepared for theconference proceedings but here, for now, is a list ofpresenters and topics:“Why make your life more complicated?”…
and of the relationships that were developed
through all the preparations and through the forum
itself, maybe we can answer that question with,“Well, this time it was worth it!”

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Learning Learning 学習の学習 20 (2): LOOKING BACK
Reflections on the LD Forum at CALL2013
Or “Can discourses of best practices in CALL
leave room for autonomous learning?"
Hugh Nicoll, Miyazaki Municipal University
Forum Title: Digital literacies for autonomous learning
Presenters: Joe Tomei, Kevin Ryan, Robert Cochrane,
Paul Beaufait, & Hugh Nicoll
CALL 2013, Shinshu University, Matsumoto-shi,
Nagano 1 June 2013<http://conference2013.jaltcall.org/>
Presenters and participants in the LD Forum atthis year’s JALTCALL conference considered ways
in which teachers may (or may not) be in a position
to implement effective practices to support digital
literacies for autonomous learning. When I began
putting together our presenter team, I was
primarily concerned with how to frame the notionof “best practices” in CALL – the conference theme
this year – in relation to the goal of fostering
autonomous learning in our classrooms. In
reflecting on the forum three months down theroad, it was clear that we were wrestling yet again
with outcomes vs. process approaches to learningand teaching, and that as soon as we tried to pinthese contrasts down, paradoxes and contradictions
would pop right back up again.
Joe Tomei began our session by discussing
what he described as mismatches between CALL
and LD. He noted that whereas both LD and CALL
researchers often use the same language and same
vocabulary, they end up with different conclusions
on how to foster autonomous learning. Both talkabout autonomy and autonomous learning, about
the importance of learning outside the classroom,and encourage teachers to re-evaluate their roles.
Joe characterised these differences as centrifugal(LD) vs. centripetal (CALL), noting the tendency ofLD oriented teachers to emphasise group work,whereas CALL-resourced language practiceactivities tend to bring individual learners together.
Acknowledging that these characterisations arestereotypes, Tomei noted the primary importancethat metaphors of space, time, and the pace oftechnological change play in both discourses.

LD, according to Tomei, has a number of things
to tell (or remind) CALL folk: (1) The fundamental
importance of interaction in courses; (2) The rolemodeling plays in learners' development of new
skills and practices; and, finally (3) The potential
usefulness of narrative academic writing styles(common in LD) for CALL researchers seeking tobetter understand their learners' struggles to learn
and work with new tool sets, both in and outside
the language classroom. Addressing the things that
LD practitioners might learn from CALL advocates,
Joe suggested that LD practitioners should
relinquish authority for a reason, not as a matter ofprinciple, and embrace the ways in which CALL
protocols for organizing classroom practice andoptimizing data collection will enhance teachers'
abilities to collect data and work more
appropriately with students on an individual basis.
Kevin Ryan then offered a brief description ofMOOCS, Massive Open Online Courses. MOOCs
started up in Canada, with groups of about 1,000.
Recently, new platforms such as Coursera havecome to dominate this emerging model for
providing education to the masses. One widely
discussed problem with MOOCs is that the course
completion rate is low, averaging 10% or less.
Nonetheless, Kevin feels that MOOCs offer aninteresting example of hybridity between learnerautonomy and CALL approaches to teaching andlearning. He also noted that while the ‘C’ stands for“courses,” MOOCS really function as communitiesof learners, learning together online, with students
typically organising themselves into study groups.
In a fascinating aside, Kevin commented that
"open" in English fails to convey the sense ofopenness, the metaphorical sense that the door isopen and that anyone can come in, a sense, heclaimed, better expressed in French (ouvert) or in
Spanish (abierto).
The final three presentations addressed the useof CALL tools and resources for extending the work
we do in our classrooms. Robert Cochrane
discussed CALL-sourced and supported learning
activities with low-level learners; Paul Beaufait
described a pilot study using English Central; andfinally, I discussed in-class and outside-of-classactivities designed to encourage interactivity in a
lecture course setting.

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Learning Learning 学習の学習 20 (2): LOOKING BACK
Robert's question was how to scaffold from thegrammar-translation, examination-centered school
experiences of what he described as low level,
unsuccessful learners to the creation ofenvironments and practice activities which
encourage increased language awareness anddevelopment of the concept of strategy use.
Cochrane's solution to his teaching context's
constraints has been to introduce task-basedlearning homework assignments using Keller's
ARCS (attention, relevance, confidence, andsatisfaction) approach to courseware andhomework design. His goal was to create
achievable challenges for his learners to choose
from, by integrating internet resources into theirout-of-class learning practice through a course blog,
and encouraging the use of smartphones for selfregulation and self-monitoring by learners. He
reported some successes, via student feedback
responses to post-course surveys, with learners selfreporting some satisfaction in goal setting andachievement.
Paul Beaufait described a pilot project using
EnglishCentral, and asked "What happens when
you let students go?" He divided students into twogroups, one with explicit learning targets and one
without. Learners then engaged in various online
learning activities: video-viewing, vocabulary
study, and speaking practice. Paul's mostinteresting finding was that the group without
explicit goals studied only 60% of the words (wordfamilies) that the group with explicit goals did,
however, their learning performance was, in fact,better. During his presentation and the follow-up
discussions, the importance of task design,
motivation, and practice outcomes were explored.
In my presentation, I discussed the use ofonline resources, made available to students
enrolled in my Introduction to American Studies
lecture course though the course Moodle site.
Students were also required to participate in group
work: for in-class discussions of lecture materials;
the completion of three group research projects
consisting of reports and slide-shows uploaded tothe Moodle site; and, follow-up forums on theirproject work and course reading assignments. At
the time of the presentation, we were only sevenweeks into the semester, and even now, though theterm has been completed, it will take some time forme to evaluate the students' work and their
responses to the post-course survey. The more
motivated students used the hypertext versions ofreading assignments, participated in forum
discussions, contributed to glossaries, and ingeneral, were more active in in-class discussions
and contributed longer, more articulate exploratory
feedback writings. How successful my attempts toencourage the development of digital literacies,interactivity and learner autonomy were remains
an open question, which I will be exploring atgreater length in a future article, as well as in therevision of course protocols for the coming
academic year.
My tentative conclusion regarding the forum isthat while we did not manage to resolve any
mysteries, the cracks, flaws, and tensions in ourpresentations did facilitate a useful discussion withparticipants. A common question running throughthose discussions was the efficacy and value of theCALL resources we feel we have spent so muchtime learning and creating. Trying to grapple withthat and other related questions sent me back to‘the parrot book’ (Barfield & Brown, 2007). Rereading David Little and Kelleen Toohey’scontributions to that volume I was reminded thatthe core relationships between learner and teacher
development, classroom practice(s), and self-accessmaterials and systems (both analog and digital) areat the heart of any “successful” implementation oflearner autonomy. During the follow-updiscussions, Darren Elliott noted that as teachers wecannot create communities (of practice, ofautonomous learners, . . . ), communities create
themselves. This stands now in memory as a usefulreminder to beware the inevitable temptation forteacher-researchers to over-simplify on-going
events in our quest for understanding.
Note: The conference website is available forbrowsing, and the conference handbook is alsoavailable for downloading in PDF format.
Reference:
Barfield, A., & Brown, S. H. (2007).
Reconstructing autonomy in language education:
Inquiry and innovation. Basingstoke: Palgrave
Macmillan.

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