Newsletter	  of	  the	  JALT	  Learner	  Development	  SIG	  	  Looking	  back 	  	  	  報 告	 My	  Reflections	  of	  the	  January	  29th	  Get-­‐Together	  Teachers	  College	  Columbia	  University	  Tokyo	  Campus,	  January	  29th,	  2012	  	 １月２９日エリア・ミーティ
ン グ 振 り 返 っ て 	  コ ロ ン ビ ア 大
学ティーチャーズ・カレッジ（於：東京）２０１２年１月
２９日	 	 

Rachelle	 Jorgenson	 
昭和女子大学	  Rachelle	  Jorgenson	  Showa	  Women’s	  University	  	  Key words: collaboration, discussion,
research interests, learning, reflection,observation

Andy
BarfieldandStacey
Vye started off
the Tokyo LD-SIG
get-together with an
introduction of theSIG and what goals
they envision for theget-togethers.
Thegoal of the gettogethers
isforparticipants to discuss our teaching contexts
and research interests related to learnerdevelopment issues – how our students learn
and understand language and how we asteachers learn too. By getting together, we canbetter collaborate, develop ideas for researchor classroom practice and support each other.
Reflection: For me this is really important. In
my Teacher’s College Columbia University
days I had my classmates to bounce ideas offof and I found that discussing different
concepts with others helped me a lot to clarify
not only my understanding but also focus in on
what was really important and how I wanted toapproach my own classroom. I did a lot ofpresentations and research projects with myclassmates in the final year of my master’s	  degree and I found working in a group to be
not only extremely helpful for confidencebuilding but also fun. The LD SIG gettogethers are providing me with the same kindof learning and researching atmosphere that I
enjoyed at Columbia.
Since there were a lot of new members joining
the get-together, Andy and Stacey had thenew participants make a group with a person
who had attended the December meeting tobring them up to speed. My group was MikeNix, Masuko Miyahara, Fumiko Kurosawa andme. Fumiko had attended the December
meeting so she told us what they did and thenproceeded to tell us about what she wasinterested in researching. She is interested in“tandem learning.” It was very interesting tohear that there is an international associationof tandem learning that pairs language
learners up with native speakers over theInternet. Masuko also had a chance to tell us
her research interest, which was “Autonomyand Identity.” It was very inspiring to hear thather university wants to implement autonomous
learning underlying the whole curriculum at heruniversity. Unfortunately, Mike and I didn’t
have a chance to talk about our researchinterests.
Reflection: I felt this activity really helped
make the new members feel welcomed intothe fold. Even though we had missed theDecember meeting, we could still catch up andparticipate in the get-togethers to follow.
Fumiko and Masuko’s stories were reallyinspiring!
In the nextpart of thegettogether,
wewereasked
towrite a fewofourresearchinterests
on a A3 paper and walk around the room withthe paper facing outwards so that others could
see if they had similar research interests. My
A3 paper had two areas of interest. The firstwas helping my students establish more
effective vocabulary learning practices outside
the classroom and how does encouraging
feelings of happiness, excitement andenergized focus affect memory. My second
research interest was helping my students
become better critical thinkers and agents ofchange. I ended up talking to Andy and Lee

LEARNING	  LEARNING	  19(1)	   49	  JALT学習者ティヘロフメントSIGの会報	 	  Arnold a lot as they were both interested in
vocabulary too. But I talked to a lot of otherpeople as well.
Reflection: I thought this was an efficient andcreative way of getting a large group of people
to quickly find others with similar interests. I
also enjoyed the fact that I met a lot of different
people though briefly. As the contact person
for the get-together, it was great to meet
people and start connecting the names ofpeople I had contacted by email with theirfaces. I wanted to have more time to talk withpeople but we had to keep things focused.
After the A3 paper activity, we sat down ingroups of people with similar researchinterests. My group was Andy Barfield, James
Underwood, Lee Arnold and me. I hadn’t
talked to James at all before so I wasn’t sureexactly what specifically he was interested in.
Lee and I had talked a lot. We are bothteaching content classes in which the students
were having difficulty discussing topics due tolack of vocabulary. We wondered how wecould better help our students. I could bemistaken but I think James was interested in
vocabulary acquisition strategies. Andy had
been doing research related to vocabulary forone year already. His students had written
reflections about the way that they learn
vocabulary. He is teaching a content class inwhich students have to do a research project
on some social, political or global issue andthough vocabulary is not explicitly taught,
students have to be able to explain theirresearch to their classmates in presentation
format. In preparation for this activity, students
initially felt that they needed to study “new anddifficult” words but when they went through theprocess of explaining their research to others,
they realized that their vocabulary focus shiftedto “important and useful for explaining myresearch.”
Reflection: My initial feeling in this meeting
was that I needed to start doing a lot of reading
on my own so that I could get a feel for whatkind of research is being done in this area andwhat I would like to do with my own classes.
Andy had mentioned reading Paul Nation’s
Learning Vocabulary in Another Language asa good base for the field. Later on herecommended
anothersource,
Folse’s
Vocabulary Myths. I plan to get a hold of theseresources and others and start familiarizing
myself with the field.
In the later part of the get-together, John
Fanselow, in his usual unique and creativeway, asked us to watch a video clip of an “ideal50	   LEARNING	  LEARNING	  19(1)	  	  class.” He had us transcribe what the teacher
and students were saying. Although the classseemed very positive, we learned that bytranscribing it, there were “issues.” Theteacher was not really listening to her students’
responses but instead focused on the answer
to the question she had asked. His point is thatwhen we audio or video tape our classes anddo a bit of transcribing, we can realize a wealthof information that is not readily available to us
compared to if we just reflect about our classafterwards. He encouraged us to ask thequestion, “What do students learn from thiskind of teaching? Is the instruction useful andhelpful or is it stupid and useless?”
Reflection: This exercise reminded me ofwhen I took the Observation course at TC. I
had some basic questions about mymovements in the classroom and how I
interacted with students. I video taped myclass and was quite surprised by what I
learned. I think that when we are teaching, weoften are in our own “zone” thinking about what
we have to accomplish in that time period
allotted. We do things that we don’t realize andI was reminded that either video or audio
taping my classes is an excellent way ofcollecting data for research!
Final reflection: I thoroughly enjoyed thethJanuary 29
Tokyo get-together! It was
inspiring on many levels. My current work
situation is so busy and sometimes I feel that it
is all I can do just to keep up with myresponsibilities. But this gathering helped me
get back my motivation to start exploring mystudents’ learning and researching again. I
teach a class about social and cultural issues
in which students read a lot of articles and thendiscuss and debate them. The students find it
difficult to discuss and debate various topics
due to a lack of vocabulary. I want to help
them with their productive vocabulary andvocabulary coping strategies. I still have a lotof reading to do but I look forward to future
gatherings for more support and inspiration! Rachelle Jorgenson is an assistant professor
at Showa Women's University in Tokyo. Her
current research interests are learnerautonomy, vocabulary building and criticalthinking.

References
Folse, Keith S. (2004). Vocabulary myths.
Michigan: The University of Michigan Press.
Nation, Paul I. S. (2001). Learning vocabulary
in another language. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.