Learning Learning 『学習の学習』 25 (2): Members’ voices

MEMBERS’ VOICES | メンバーの声
Members’ Voices offers spaces for SIG members to
introduce themselves to other members of the SIG
in a variety of accessible and personalised text
formats and lengths.
“メンバー声”、ＳＩＧ会員皆様が他会員皆さんに向けて多様な形式・文体・長さで、ご自身考えや活動をご紹介していただくためスペースです。例え、以下のような様々な声を歓迎しています.

Reflecting on Motivation andAutonomy
Richard Knobbs
Seitoku University
Email:<richard.knobbs@gmail.com>
Like many people raised in the UK, I studied
foreign languages at high school. In my case, those
two languages were French and Spanish, although
the experience of studying them couldn’t havebeen more different.
In French, we were given lists of vocabulary totranslate and remember, coupled with terribly
exciting tables full of verb conjugations. Our
experience of speaking the language was mainly
restricted to listen and repeat exercises, and ourteacher(s) mainly spoke English. As a result, I haveforgotten most of the French I studied, eventhough I spent time in France and was a huge fanof French films. We were told that if we studied
hard we could get a good grade, and knowing aforeign language would be good for our careers.
In Spanish, we were first given some facts
about Spain. This included listening to Spanish
music, watching clips of Spanish TV shows, andhaving real-life Spanish people come into our class.
The lessons were almost entirely in Spanish, andwe learned greetings and much more without evenrealizing we were studying them. We wereencouraged to experiment with the language, andthink of things we really wanted to talk and write
about. We ate Spanish food, celebrated Spanish
festivals, and learned that Spanish wasn’t justspoken in Spain, but around the world. It became
clear that if we learned Spanish, we could
effectively double our chances of making ourselves
understood in many places, and therefore greatly
improve our experience. We learned that it wasn’t
just a language, but a door to many people,
cultures, and countries. Unfortunately, I only
studied Spanish for two years in high school, but I
retained more than from my five years of French.
The approaches to teaching and learnerdevelopment were not only like night and day interms of style and content, but also in terms of
motivation and autonomy. In French, themotivating factor was clear: get a good grade andmaybe get a good job (a little premature for abunch of 13-year-olds, but there you go). In otherwords, our motivation was purely extrinsic.
Autonomy was almost non-existent. We simply
remembered and repeated. In Spanish, themotivating factors were not so expressly stated,
and were more for us to decide for ourselves. The
motivation was therefore far more intrinsic, only
amplified by our being encouraged to make thelanguage more personal.
Looking back, it’s clear that experiences likethese have shaped my own approach to teaching,and go a long way to explaining why my interests
lie in learner motivation, learner autonomy,
educational design, and educational psychology.
Yet it was only when I began my career as ateacher that I really began to reflect on my own
education. Although my first two teaching positions
were teaching law, language teaching in Japan,
first in an English school (eikaiwa) andsubsequently in public and private schools, often
jolted my memories back to high school.

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Learning Learning 『学習の学習』 25 (2): Members’ voices
Such memories came fully to the fore while I
was working as an elementary school AssistantLanguage Teacher (ALT) in Chiba. Almost
immediately I noticed that the lessons I was being
asked to teach didn’t link, had no determinablegoal, and merely centred around a nebulous idea ofbeing ‘fun’. So I started engaging the students, andasking them what they were interested in. I took
note of the questions they were asking me, andtheir reactions to certain answers and topics.
These kids were young but they certainly weren’t
stupid, and it upset me that many people were sokeen to dismiss them as just wanting to playgames. What I found was that the students werevery keen to learn, but in many cases they justhadn’t been given the material or opportunity.
I began researching and finding things they had
in common, things they were studying in othersubjects, their learning styles, their interests, andmuch more. I spoke to teachers both in elementary
school and junior high school, wanting to learn
more from their experience and interaction withstudents. Within a year, I was putting together amini ‘curriculum’ with lessons that connected bothin language and themes. The problem was that I
rotated between five schools, so it was hard tomaintain the momentum when I might only visit aschool for a couple of weeks once a semester. To
overcome this, I submitted a plan to the Board of
Education to create an English curriculum for 5th
and 6th grade students, which was immediately
accepted.
For the following two years I researched,
designed, co-wrote and developed a full, tailormade English curriculum for elementary schools in
the city I was working in, which the city introduced
in 2013. We conducted a needs analysis which took
into account the location, students’ needs andlevels, teachers’ needs and levels, usability,
developmental levels, transition from elementary
school to junior high school, CEFR-J levels, andmore.Thematically, it included many suggestions
from students and teachers, including talking about
the local area, hobbies, club activities, their likes
and dislikes, Japanese culture, and more. The
language built naturally and incrementally, andincluded speaking, listening, reading and writing. It
was great to see the reaction not only from thestudents, but also from the teachers we consulted
who saw their ideas and suggestions reflected in
the materials. It was great to see students being
able to connect with the language because they
could relate to the content.
I continue to develop learning materials, and I
am continuing to pursue research into learnermotivation, learner autonomy, educational design,and educational psychology. I look forward tointeracting with everyone in the LD SIG!

Finding a Better Way for HighSchool Students in Japan
Miki Iwamoto
Email: <miki198611@gmail.com>

My name is Miki Iwamoto and I am
currently working on my master’s degree in TESOL
at Temple University. I am also now working at a
public high school in Hyogo prefecture. I started
teaching English at high school nine years ago.
Since I started working as a high school teacher,and because teaching is a very busy job, I haverealized that it is difficult to make time forstudying and improving my teaching skills and havefelt the gap between what I want to teach andwhat students need.
In my classes I want my students to expand
their knowledge and world view by learning asecond language. This idea is from my experience
as a student. When I was at high school myself, I
learned English only through intensive reading andgrammar translation methods: I did not like English
lessons because there was only one answer andstudents were nervous about making mistakes.
However, because I was interested in learning
about other cultures, I chose to study international

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Learning Learning 『学習の学習』 25 (2): Members’ voices
relations at university. While studying international
relations, I had opportunities to gather
informations for class and I realized I could get
more information by reading through articles orsearching the Internet in English. To collect the
information, I needed to use English and this was
the first time I used English as a tool for gathering
the information, not for studying English itself. In
addition, when I studied in Australia for one year inuniversity, I realized that what I want to tell isimportant and English is just a tool for conveying
my thoughts, feelings and ideas. From theseexperience in the university and studying abroad, I
realized that English is a tool for acquiringknowledge and I could understand the need for not
only learning English, but also using it in English
classes at school and university. Since then, I havebelieved that the accuracy of English is not asimportant as communicating effectively. I also
hope this way of thinking can decrease mylearners’ anxiety about making mistakes.
Therefore, I always tell my students not to focus on
the accuracy of their English too much and explainthat using language for their own purpose isimportant. To have students put this into practicefor themselves, I try to increase the opportunities
for them to express their own ideas in English in myclasses, and encourage them not to be scared ofmaking mistakes.
However, as a high school teacher, I need tounderstand the ultimate goal of teaching English inthis context is to improve students’ scores on
university entrance examinations and that is what
students need, too. Even though language teachingis highly dependent on the school curriculum andthe teacher’s approach, acquisition of a second
language depends on the learners’ interest andmotivation (Dörnyei, 2001). For instance, eventhough I want to encourage my students to focus
on expressing their thinking in English and notexcessively worry about grammatical mistakes too
much, there is a strong need from my students
themselves to work on English grammar or
vocabulary for preparing the entrance
examinations. Therefore, students tend to spend
more time to study grammar or vocabulary rather
than speaking or writing. This can be boring andstudents may become scared of making mistakes aswell as lose their motivation, but it is difficult tochange my students’ needs because they will need
the knowledge to pass the university entrance
examinations.
I have been trying to find an effective way tosolve these problems by attending seminars forhigh school teachers and sharing these difficulties
with other high school teachers. In the seminars, I
felt relieved when I found out that other teachers
have similar problems and because I could sharethe difficulty of teaching English for the entrance
examinations, but I also realized that I was lack oflearning about education and teaching English. I
could learn some effective and interesting
activities in the seminars, but I neither understood
why these activities are effective for students nor
how to develop my own way of teaching further.
From this experience in the seminar, I felt that I
need to study about teaching English from the
beginning.
From last fall, I started a master’s program of
TESOL and joined JALT to find effective ways toteach high school students and understand learnerdevelopment more fully. For now, I have started
understanding English education theoretically andpractically. For example, I have understood that
there are method and theories to approachteaching English based on empirical research, and I
can consider which method or theories are
effective to my students and my teaching context.
Learning about TESOL has changed myperception of teaching. I also have more
confidence in what I am doing in my lessons
because now I understand the effectiveness ofactivities and can tell my students why we focus onthem in the lesson. I am excited to improve myteaching style more and see the reaction of mystudents toward English classes, especially how
their motivation to English may change with some
activities. Since this school year, I have introduced
shadowing and dictation in my lessons. Against my
expectations, students have remained confusedand not that motivated very much, but I hope I can
increase their motivation by improving how I
introduce these activities and explain their

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Learning Learning 『学習の学習』 25 (2): Members’ voices
effectiveness. For now, I am interested in learners’
motivation and autonomy to learn language. I want
my students to become motivated to learn English
and try to study English outside of school, too. I am
looking forward to learning more from taking partin the Learner Development SIG and meeting other
SIG members.
Reference
Dörnyei, Z. (2001). Motivational strategies in the language
classroom. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

Reflecting on Reflecting
Paul Crook
English Village
Email:<peregrine2424@yahoo.com.au>
A few years ago, while teaching in Hong Kong, I
was asked to deliver some workshops on Analytical
Reading. In order to graduate, all students wererequired to pass a course which required them toread important texts across many fields and thenwrite a number of essays. This might seem awonderful way in which to broaden students'
minds, but the sad truth was that the majority ofstudents found many of the texts extremely
difficult to comprehend, let alone write aworthwhile commentary about. (And in truth, I
wonder how many undergraduates today atuniversities in countries where English is themother tongue would be able to write somethingcogent and meaningful about Plato, Darwin, Hume,or others.)
In any case, a meeting was held after the firstworkshop and comments invited from those
professors and lecturers responsible for delivering
this course. Their comments were favourable
overall, but the one than most struck me was madeby one of the senior professors, who said that whatmost impressed him was the fact that I had advised
students to always ask questions about what they
were reading; to be active readers, in other words,
rather than passive.

I was glad he was glad I had made this point,
but at the same time, it remains inconceivable tome that any student at a supposedly well-reputed
university anywhere in the world should need to be
told this.
Picture, if you will, a classroom in the United
Kingdom in the 1960s. The room is full of children,
aged about five or six. They are in Form 2. The
headmaster of the school walks in one afternoon,excuses himself, and asks the teacher if he may
address the class for a few minutes. It turns out tobe about twenty. During this time he explains theimportance of education, and exhorts us, as young
adults, to do our best. Then, towards the end of histalk, he wrote one single word on the blackboard:
believe.
Then told us not to believe everything we weretold, not to believe everything we read in books ornewspapers, not to believe everything we saw on
TV or at the movies (and today, of course, theInternet would have been at the top of the list!).
Why?
And then he drew a circle around the threeletters in the middle.
Because, he continued, people will often lie toyou. Or tell you half-truths. Or they will twist thetruth. So it is important that you think for yourself.
As far as I was concerned, this was not news. I
was already a long-time convert. My father had
told me before I even entered school, at the age of
4½, not to blindly follow everyone else, but tothink for myself. Furthermore, this same mantra
was intoned by many of my teachers throughout myschool years. And it has stood me well, both as a
student and in other aspects of my life. (And no, I
won't bore you with examples!)For me this is educational bedrock. The very
foundation and purpose of a good, meaningfuleducation. And yet I worry about today. For aroundthe world, in far too many countries andinstitutions, there seems to be a growing focus onscores. Education, now, is a business. Students arecustomers, and as such need to be satisfied andNewsletter of the JALT Learner Development SIG <http://ld-sig.org/>

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Learning Learning 『学習の学習』 25 (2): Members’ voices
placated. Gaining an education, particularly atuniversity, is increasingly costly, and to keep these"customers" flocking they need to be made to feelthat they are getting value for money – or at least
what they perceive to be value for money. And thatmeans scores. Good scores. Great scores!

A Brief Reflection on My
Initial English
Learning Years

And so the focus is on tests. Anything notdirectly connected with the coming assessment isspurned. You want to teach me how to think formyself? Forget it. Just tell me what to do! How to
get top marks!!

Allen Ying
Faculty of Foreign Studies, Kyorin
University
Email: <ying.allen@gmail.com>

And so pedagogically driven teachers, or atleast those who are still around, can often findthemselves in a quandary. Do they just put up andshut up, knowing that they are failing theirstudents (even if their charges are singularly
unaware of this fact, and would probably not be
the least concerned if they were aware)? In turnthese less than optimally educated students willoften fail to meet the requirements and desires of
employers, and in this and other ways will
ultimately fail their respective societies.

Growing up in British colonized Hong Kong did
not automatically mean that I was a proficient
English speaker. Children in countries like
Singapore, where bilingualism was made into
official policy from the 1960s, were required tolearn English and their mother tongue, such as
Mandarin or Bahasa Malay (National Library Board
Singapore, 2016). Children in Hong Kong, who are
predominantly Cantonese speakers like myself, are
not required to learn English, and only private
schools and the top public schools provide
sufficient English lessons (Sheung, 2014). Thismeans that the majority of the Hongkongers,
especially those who attend public schools, do notreach high English proficiency, because English istreated as a subject and not used in other classes. I
myself was an example of this, as I had learned
some basic English in kindergarten and the 1st
grade, but seldom used English outside of class. So,
it was no surprise that I was unprepared to attend
regular 2nd grade classes in English when I arrived
in Melbourne, Australia, at the age of 7. I was
initially accepted into a 2nd grade class at a local
school in my neighborhood, but was placed in 1st
grade after the first day, because I was barely able
to understand my teacher. I was referred to a
nearby ESL school within 2 weeks and spent thenext 6 months there. It was through some kind ofcritical age magic that I was able to reach minimal
proficiency to get back on track after those 6months. The subsequent two years of immersive
education in English were formative years that
helped shape my learner beliefs about education,and retrospectively showing me the importance of
having near-peer role models (Murphey, 1995).

Though in looking at what is happening aroundthe world today, perhaps this is precisely what ourcountries' leaders want. If not, then why would
education be so chronically underfunded, andinstitutions forced to adopt business models in thefirst place?
I am so glad I was educated when and where I
was.

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Learning Learning 『学習の学習』 25 (2): Members’ voices
I attended class with European and Asianstudents who did not speak the same L1 at the ESL
school, which meant that we had to communicate
in our shared L2, English. This gave us
opportunities to develop our L2 abilities throughtrial and error, fostering our self-efficacy andlanguage learning beliefs. Having the same low L2
proficiency as my classmates and seeing
perceptible progress in my English acquisition
helped me maintain a positive outlook on mylanguage abilities. This is a crucial factor for
language learning success according to KondoBrown (2006) and Mori (1999). Culturally, as a
Hongkonger, I was a believer in discipline, hard
work and not relying on talent, so I had a growthmindset and was not afraid to make mistakes(Dweck, 2006). Although I was mostly introverted,
gaining more vocabulary turned nerve-racking
activities such as show-and-tell into enjoyable
experiences, as they were good opportunities forme to use my newfound knowledge. My increased
proficiency and the acknowledgement from myteacher and peers helped me gain more selfefficacy, and I became more willing to use English
outside of class. Being able to leave the ESL schoolin 6 months was the confidence booster I needed,
and was probably what helped tie the idea of
persistence to achievability for me. My proficiency
level was still only at the Common European
Framework of Reference (CEFR) B1 level after 2
years, so I had issues with English composition andlacked the vocabulary to be an advanced English
user in middle school. However, when I returned to
Hong Kong and continued my education at an
American international school, I realized it was not
so different from my experience in Australia and I
would be able to make progress in language
learning as long as I worked hard and persisted. I
was required by my school to attend an elective
ESL course for the first 6 months, but using English
came naturally by that point. It probably took me
until high school to reach native-like proficiency,
but because all my courses were taught in English,
my language learning experience progressed much
more naturally compared to ESL or EFL learning.
Looking back now, I had the type of mindset thatDweck (2006) described as potentially leading tolanguage learning success.
With my willingness to work hard and persist, I
was also motivated to get back into a ‘normal’class by two individuals who I could call my nearpeer role models. One role model was the son of
our coincidental Hong Kong neighbor, who wasalmost the same age as me. He had studied inAustralia for only a few years and was seemingly
speaking English proficiently with an Australianaccent. He was the perfect example of success inlanguage acquisition to me and was the same age,gender and ethnicity as myself (Murphey & Arao,
2001). The second role model was my mother, who
put a lot of effort into studying English during herhigh school days to be a cabin attendant. She had ahigher English competency compared to my father,which meant that she was usually the parent who
socialized with the English-speaking neighbors andfriends. According to Murphey and Arao (2001),
children often learn from the people closest tothem, such as parents, relatives and friends, anddevelop efficacy beliefs from observing otherpeople’s accomplishments. The examples ofsuccessful language learning that I saw in thesepeople helped strengthen my growth mindset andreinforced the notion that English acquisition wasachievable through hard work and persistence. This
gave me the idea of a possible future self, which isanother motivator for language learning success(Dweck, 2006; Mystkowska, 2014).
In this brief reflection on my initial L2 English
learning years, I have discussed two factors which
had helped me eventually become a highproficiency English user. I was studying at a time
when the population in Melbourne, Australia, waspredominantly Caucasian and there was no Internet
or social media. The factors influencing English
learners in 2018 are undoubted different compared
to my experience in 1984, but I think learner
beliefs and near-peer role models are equallyimportant factors for language learning today.
References
Dweck, C. S. (2006). Mindsets: The new psychology of success.
New York, NY: Random House.

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Learning Learning 『学習の学習』 25 (2): Members’ voices
Kondo-Brown, K. (2006). Affective variables and Japanese L2
reading ability. Reading in a Foreign Language, 18(1),55-71.
Mori, Y. (1999). Epistemological beliefs and language learning
beliefs: What do language learnings believe about theirlearning? Language Learning, 49(3), 377-415.
Murphey, T. (1995). Identity and beliefs in language learning.
The Language Teacher, 19(4), 34-36.
Murphey, T., & Arao, H. (2001). Reported belief changes
through near peer role modeling. The Electronic Journal
for English as a Second Language, 5(3). Retrieved fromhttp://www.tesl-ej.org/wordpress/issues/volume5/ej19/
ej19a1/
Mystkowska, A. (2014). The role of mindsets in foreign
language learning: A person-in-context perspective. In W.
Szubko-Sitarek, L. Salski, & P. Stalmaszczyk (Eds.),
Language learning, discourse and communication (pp.
133-147). Basel, Switzerland: Springer International.
Sheung, R. (2014, June 4). Myth of the bilingual Hongkonger.
South China Morning Post. Retrieved from https://www.scmp.com/comment/article/1525187/mythbilingual-hongkonger
Sim, C. (2016, August 31). Bilingual policy. National Library
Board Singapore. Retrieved from http://
eresources.nlb.gov.sg/infopedia/articles/
SIP_2016-09-01_093402.html

Learning to Teach, Teaching
to Learn
Masayo Kanno
Graduate School of Engineering,
University of Fukui
Email:<masayo_kanno@hotmail.com>
In this Members’ Voices piece,
I am sharing my journey from a reluctant learner ofEnglish to a teacher-learner of English. I appreciate
all the opportunities that have brought me to mycurrent profession. I have been both a good andbad learner of English. I enjoyed studying English
for exams and was doing well, but never had theopportunity to use English communicatively. Maybe
I was a typical Japanese school student at thattime. After I got in to a university as a law major, I
lost my interest in English and made just enougheffort to obtain the required credits (and wassometimes absent from a class).
As I was settling into my first job at agovernment organization, I thought I wanted tolearn ‘something’ and decided to study for the
TOEIC test. My long journey of being a learner anda teacher restarted here. I got married andchanged jobs, but was still learning English to
improve my communication skills. It was
stimulating to learn about cultural differences andbroaden my perspectives through the language I
had already studied but had never used.
I began to teach English before and after I had
children and became interested in one simple
question “How can Japanese people improve
English communication skills?”. To me, there wasan invisible barrier between those who could speak
English and those who couldn’t. When I was withthe little babies at home, I came across many
advertisements of English learning resources forkids. The question arose again and I pushed myself
into a teacher’s side to explore the answer. I
started to teach at a private English language
school. Then I expanded my interest too much andfinished my master’s degree in TESOL.
Now I am teaching undergraduate and graduate
students in the faculty of engineering at the
University of Fukui and am working on my doctoral
degree at UCL Institute of Education. My researchinterests lie in learner identity and agency. Most of
my students are quiet and look uninterested – justlike I used to be. But I do hope they will become
able to use English as an engineer. The interview
data for my current study has shown that most of
the students are aware of that, but few actuallytake time to study. I am analyzing the data to findout if there are any hidden meanings behind that.
My initial question “How can Japanese people
improve English communication skills?” turned out
to be too difficult to answer. But I think this has
been a central concern of recent curriculum reform
efforts by MEXT. I do believe a small effort brings
about a small difference. I am exploring betterways to approach my students through my research
as well as my experiences as a teacher and alearner. I hope I can be of some help to mystudents’ long journey to become a better user ofEnglish.

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Learning Learning 『学習の学習』 25 (2): Members’ voices

Learning Goal Orientation
as a Precursor to
Metacognition
James W. Thomas
Kokusai Junior College, Tokyo
Email:<jaebez.thomas@gmail.com>
I have been teaching at Kokusai Junior College
for nearly three years after experiencing more thana decade teaching in corporate and eikaiwa
settings. Along this teaching journey, I attended
numerous seminars, workshops, and conferences onteaching English. A few of the topics and speakers
that stuck out were those addressing "the negativemindset" students tend to develop in junior highschool and high school that remains with themthroughout their English studies. Additionally,
professional workers would self-deprecatingly
comment on their poor English skills albeit having
invested long-term in studying English. For somereason, this topic resonated within me as a wakeup call to motivate those students who disliked
English. As a result, in 2010, I embarked on a
mission to consume all the relevant literature that
was applicable and related to language
learners’ (L2) motivation. I read the works of
Dörnyei (2005), Gardner (1985), Deci and Ryan
(1985), and Ushioda (2001). While these works
provided me lenses for viewing L2 motivation, I felt
they lacked practical tools for alleviating the ills
inherent in "the emotional baggage" language
learners brought to the classroom (Suzuki, 2017).
Additionally, Matsuno (2018) in the July / August
issue of The Language Learner presents her
research on when "students begin to like or dislike
English" and "the reasons associated with theirpreferences and motivation" (p. 19). These are theissues that I have been pondering for more than adecade: (1) Why the dislike of English? (2) How tomotivate students to learn English? and (3) Whatpractical approaches could be used in theclassroom to create a positive environment forlearning English?
Last year, I focused my research on creating a
positive mindset from the beginning of thesemester. Naturally, students who do not like
English are not motivated to learn English.
Unsurprisingly, a lot of research associated withlearning English and motivation has been
conducted in the last decade in terms of Likert
questionnaires to gauge students' favorability oflearning English. While the research seems to focus
on the attitudes of individual learners, I feel very
little research has focused on practical application
as it relates to curriculum design.
At the same time, I ran across Dweck's (2006)
research on how fixed mindset inclines to be
associated with a negative attitude toward learningin which a student’s dialogue of negative self-talk
could sound like, “I’m not good at English. I don’t
have the talent, and I’ll never be good at English.”
As a result, a teacher could only imagine thecountless "negative deposits" that have been madein the span of six years (from junior high school tohigh school) when students start to seriously learn
English(Suzuki, 2017; Matsuno, 2018). Given this"emotional baggage" that students are likely tobring to the college classroom, I decided from lastyear to design my classes to redress those students
who disliked English. While combing the research
related to English learning and goal-setting, I read
Harford (2008) in which she iterated that students
should take ownership of their learning throughreflection and goal-setting. In this regard, I
decided regardless of the students' background andprevious encounters in learning English, the firstclass is always about goal-setting for the semester,
the immediate future, and the long-term. The
reason, I mention the long-term, is a goal of "active
learning" is connecting learning to skills thatstudents' can home later in their lives.
Learning English is a long-term process thatinvolves a lot of trial and error. Through thisprocess, a systematic understanding of English
develops. If a learner wishes to master English,
they must be motivated and be willing to dedicate

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Learning Learning 『学習の学習』 25 (2): Members’ voices
countless numbers of years in order to reach thisgoal. In any given English course, students will havedifferent reasons for taking a course. While
teachers set goals and objectives for their courses
to run and manage the classroom, it is the
responsibility of individual learners to define goals
and objectives above and beyond their current
course. Setting these long-term goals andobjectives could be the motivating force thatmoves learners toward a more positive learning
experience. Most important is that goal orientation
gets students to think about the big picture. It
provides an anchor for the semester's journey.
Thus, one means of creating a more positive
learning experience is having students individually
define and set learning outcomes in terms of goals
and expectations for a course and plans for future
improvements at the beginning of the course.
Doing this serves a few purposes: (1) It allows
students to define their sources of motivation; (2)It allows teachers to understand their students’needs in order to design a more positive learning
experience; and (3) It is a record as reminder forboth the teacher and the student on establishing a
positive learning environment.
Goal-setting at the beginning of a course isbetter for building on the framework for fostering a
student-centered classroom in which English as a
Foreign Language (EFL) is mainly taught, as somestudents may never have experienced a studentcentered classroom. Moreover, teachers andstudents can better understand expectations andshare the responsibility of creating a positive
learning environment and experience. Further,teachers can understand their students’ needs andattitudes about learning English at the beginning ofa course, so instructors can plan lessons tochallenge students with positive attitudes toward
English while simultaneously motivating students
with negative attitudes toward English. Finally,
progress happens little by little as goals areachieved and motivation builds. I believe goalsetting is a precursor for teaching metacognitive
skills. Thus, they are mutually inclusive. As aresult, goal-setting in tandem with acquiring
metacognitive skills for learning English, I believe,
could possibly be the silver bullets for

improvement and motivation. However, if students
are skewed toward fixed negative mindsets, it
might be in the best interests of instructors to view
learning goal orientation as a precursor andcatalyst for teaching metacognitive skills.
As of April 2018, I have embarked on thejourney of teaching metacognitive skills. This
process has taken the initial form of "getting
students to think about what they are learning" byfilling in an "English Learning Log" chart that I
designed, which is self-reflective and goal
orientated. The students near the end of each classreflect, discuss, and fill in their charts using
keywords. Before concluding the class, I will have arapid fire Q&A with the students about the
keywords they wrote. By acquiring metacognitive
skills, students gain learning strategies andmotivation that will gradually allow them tobecome autonomous learners. Ultimately, the goalof education is that autonomous learners become
lifelong learners.
References
Deci, E. L., & Ryan, R. M. (1985). Intrinsic motivation and selfdetermination in human behavior. New York, NY: Plenum.
Dörnyei, Z. (2005) The psychology of the language learner:
Individual differences in second language acquisition.
Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
Dweck, C. S. (2006). Mindset: the new psychology of success.
New York, NY: Random House.
Gardner, R. C. (1985). Social psychology and language
learning: The role of attitudes and motivation. London,
UK: Edward Arnold.
Harford. M. (2008). Ownership through reflection and goalsetting. English Journal, 98(1), 61-65.
Matsuno, S. (2018). Japanese learners' consciousness toward
English: When do they begin to like or dislike English? The
Language Teacher, 42(4), 19-23.
Suzuki, S. (2017). Emerged challenges for English education in
Japan: The emotional baggage of language learners. Apples– Journal of Applied Language Studies, 11(1), 5-11.
Ushioda, E. (2001). Language learning at university: Exploring
the role of motivational thinking. In Z. Dörnyei & R.
Schmidt (Eds.), Motivation and second language acquisition(pp. 93-125). Honolulu, HI: University of Hawaii, Second
Language Teaching and Curriculum Center.

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