Learning Learning 『学習の学習』 28(2): Looking Back

Looking Back | 報告
Reflections on the Learner
Development SIG Forum at PanSIG
2021
Challenges in Multilingual
Learner Development
May 5, 2021
6:00 p.m. - 7:30 p.m.

Rei Sandy, Nagoya University of Foreign Studies
Thank you for the presentations. I loved that I could
reflect on my language portrait and that I was able toreceive information on the various modes ofmultilingualism - especially about spaces, identities, andsocial norms.

Michael Kuziw, Jin-ai University
The focus on narrative inquiry is very effective indrawing out and analyzing the learning feedback that
occurs in learners. It gave me inspiration to consider
individual student identity.

Chie Tsurii, Momoyama Gakuin Daigaku
I really enjoyed the presentations and discussions. I am
really impressed by the course design to equip students
with knowledge of countries they plan to visit, shown in
Alexandra’s presentation.

Dominique Vola Ambinintsoa R., Kanda Universityof International Studies
I have a project called "Multilingual me,” and I think theuse of the language portrait mentioned in Andy's
presentation will help a lot with this project. I am
looking at my linguistic repertoire already, but I did notthink of the language portrait. So, thank you, Andy!

Alison Stewart, Gakushuin University
I was very taken with Kevin's account of creating
materials for and with his student Kizuna. Great use ofmultimedia - something I would like to learn more
about.

going to. I wanted to ask her more about whether she
used her own location in London or her own identity as
Greek-Ukrainian in discussing cultures and stereotypes?

Kevin Mark, Meiji University
Alison's observation of the way prospective Japaneseteachers of English found the TESOL related books theystudied to have little relevance to the Japanese context.
Lorraine's insight into how narrative reflection allows
you to become more aware of the (inner) choices
available regarding who we want to be.

Isra Wongsarnpigoon, Kanda University ofInternational Studies
The idea of teaching courses in multiple languages withmultiple teachers seems like an interesting way to help
students learn the multilingual competences that the
program is aiming for, in a way that makes sense—all at
once, as they will need to use the languages in a
multilingual society, rather than separated in different
courses.
In Tsurii and Head's presentation, it was great to see
their research on how native-speakerism was being
propagated by Japanese society, universities, andJapanese individuals; the idea of creating third culture
spaces as well as the rest of their talk dovetailed nicely
with some of the concepts Yuri and I had presented.
Interesting discussion in the final breakout rooms
about whether these spaces for certain language use aregood.

Riitta Kelly, University of Jyväskylä
That there are still invisible borders stopping us frombeing multilingual/using our multilingual language
repertoire and it's sometimes hard to say what causes
this to be difficult. It seems that in Japan this is perhaps
more strict than in many other countries or otherlanguage communities. Coming from a strongly
monolingual country myself I can kind of understand
why this works the way it does but it would beinteresting to hear more about the ways that stop
people from using languages that they know, focusing on
the strongest one alone.

I was also impressed by what Alex said about getting
her students to do research on the countries they are

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Learning Learning 『学習の学習』 28(2): Looking Back
Alexandra Shaitan, Birkbeck College, University of
LondonI attended Alison Stewart's presentation. I learned about
a practice-related review and its implementation inteaching about SLA Pedagogy at the tertiary level. Alison
reported on some findings and challenges pertaining tomonolingualism discussion she had had with her
students.

Kizuna Fuse, Meiji University
I learned that learning goals depend on who you are,and the important thing is to stay aware of why you
want to learn.

Blair Barr, Tamagawa University, Otsuma Women's
University
Kevin and Kizuna - I loved listening to the French
activity and putting the sentence puzzles together. I wasreally intrigued with the goal of practicing and learning
two languages in one place.
Alex - Learning stereotypes from pictures illustrating
nationality: It's interesting that we have to fight backagainst stereotypes from those images right from thestart. I even find these stereotypes tend to be quite
dated.
Akiko - The Korean learner of English in Japan saw
herself as “a missionary” when living in other countries?
I wanted to hear more about this individual’s
experiences, but, unfortunately, I got pulled away by
responsibilities of managing the forum.
Discussion with Michael Kuziw, Alex Shaitan, andRiita Kelly was interesting, as we are all speaking frommultilingual experiences. I was especially interested inhearing about others' experiences, like my own, where
we mix our second language with Japanese when we areliving in an environment where Japanese is more active.

Akiko Nakayama, Hiroshima University
It was a little bit of a rush but provocative and goodpresentations! After listening to today's presentations, I
wondered how languages can be named as one in theminds of learners, such as Japanese or English. I want tokeep thinking about multilingualism!

Lorraine de Beaufort, ATILF, Université de Lorraine,
Nancy, France
Regarding Alexandra's presentation, I did not have time
to share that I don't think it is so easy to get rid ofstereotypes concerning cultures because they arerunning discourses in our societies. I would have also
liked to make the point that you cannot share "a"culture, you can only share interpretations of that
culture. Anyone culture is different for anyone from thisculture and for anyone outside that culture. In my study,
it became clear that if my four participants seemed at
first to refer to stereotypes of French culture, what wasmore striking was that their interpretations werestrongly connected to personal issues and constraints intheir society. Would it not be more interesting inintercultural communication courses to focus onlearning to meet 'another/the other (i.e. other humanbeing)' who is different but still the same as me rather
than learn about a foreign culture which is not easily
definable?
Ken Ikeda, Otsuma Women’s University
Kevin and Kizuna - I am glad for Kevin that he wasable to overcome his initial dismay in Kizuna’s habits
which led both to develop an interest in French, sparking
Kizuna to read Camus’ L'Étranger. I am also intrigued in
Kevin’s two dimensions of teaching as spontaneous andsystematical.
Andy - I thank you for bringing to light the linguistic
repertoires of your two students. I am always drawn to
the historical and negotiation of local dialects withmainstream ones (learning about Putonghua and the
Jeju Incident for the first time). Thanks to these two
student accounts which illuminated their odysseys, I was
brought to think about the taken-for-granted attitudes of
my students for their Tokyo accent and their othering ofregional accents.
Lorraine - I was drawn to your session because you
used narrative inquiry to probe into the lives of yourstudents regarding their motives to learn French. I
regard narrative inquiry as a great tool of analysis given
my initial academic grounding in history. Your comment
about Candice’s feeling freer to write short stories in
French because this language was not commonly
understood in Hong Kong reminded me of theconnection between my wife and Norwegian (but she
refused to learn the latter because of its relatively few
speakers).
Akiko - I was moved by her telling about her feelingto be an ‘ornament’ among the English teachingcommunity in South Korea moving her to a newcommunity among Korean wives. It has caused me toreflect on my many years journeying to find a research
abode and niche, which I have found in this LD SIG.

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Learning Learning 『学習の学習』 28(2): Looking Back
Andy Barfield, Chuo University
To everyone who joined my presentation in the second
round - My apologies for leaving the Zoom room totally
spontaneously and absolutely abruptly -- ahhh! -- justafter Akiko asked a question in the discussion! My
computer suddenly died, and by the time it had
recharged enough for me to rejoin the LD Forum, thesecond round was already over! I’m really sorry about
this, but hope you could discuss further -:) If you would
like to have a copy of my slides, please feel free to email
me at <andybarfieldchuo@gmail.com>. Many thanks.
Alison - Thank you for sharing about your practicerelated review for Issue 5 of The Learner Development
Journal. It was a shame that we were pushed for time
for discussion (20 seconds!), and I hope we have anotheropportunity to follow up and explore some of the knots
that you mentioned in exploring the multilingual turnwithin a particular institutional context.
Akiko, Chie & Ellen, Lorraine, Jussi and Riitta - I
dropped by for just a few minutes in each of yoursessions in the second round. Thank you one and all. It
was a pleasure to see you all in the same place, so to
speak -:) I hope very much that you enjoyed the forum
as part of a wider process of participation around the
LDJ5 project. @Jussi and Riitta, at one point you invitedus to read one of your slides and ask questions if we hadanything we wanted to check. I greatly appreciated thesilence and the space that you offered the listeners toreflect and ask questions at that point.

Ellen Head, Miyazaki International College
As we get used to meeting in virtual reality, the theme ofembodied cognition continues to interest me. Where
does language belong, in the space, and in the physicaland mental map of the self? In Andy Barfield'spresentation, he introduced language portraits made by
two multilingual students. Language portraits are a
deceptively simple idea (drawing a simple figure andcolouring in different colours to show which parts of the
body one's various languages and dialects seem to be
associated with). I first heard about this idea in apresentation by Alice Chik "Multilingual Sydney",https://www.multilingualsydney.org/
languagesofsydney . Andy went one step further by

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connecting this with sociopolitical factors impacting
language use and emotions related to language use foreach student. One student had learned Shanghainese asa child but been required to use Putonhua (astandardized form of Mandarin) as a student. I was very
interested because I lived in Shanghai for a couple ofyears and noticed the extremely swift and visible
changes to the old communities. It was interesting thateven someone as young as 20 could have experienced ashift during their lifetime.
Isra Wongsarnpigoon and Yuri Imamura described
two spaces in their SALC, space dedicated tomultilingual communication and a space for "onlyEnglish communication". They discussed how over time
"only English" seemed to be given more kudos by
students than "multilingual space". This was fascinating
because in my presentation with Chie Tsurii we had
discussed native-speakerism. In the final ultra-shortreflection session, I was grouped with a young man who
is still studying in a college with a choice of "English
only" and "multilingual" dedicated spaces. It seemedthat having particular spaces helped him to get in theright frame of mind for using his L2. We did not havetime to ask how he would feel if L3 was suddenly used!
The forum was a very intense 90 minutes and as always
with zoom, the sudden vanishing of the hallucinatory
presence of my friends and colleagues in my living room
left me feeling a little sad. I am hoping I can catch up
with some of the presentations which I was not able toattend through LDJ 5 and other future publications.
Returning to the theme of spaces and language learning,
I am looking forward to the publication of this book by
Phil Benson in June 2021, which may stimulate further
discussion https://www.multilingual-matters.com/page/detail/Language-Learning-Environments/?
k=9781788924894

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Learning Learning 『学習の学習』 28(2): Looking Back

July 4th 2021 Get-together Report
In attendance: Tim Cleminson, Cecilia Fujishima, Tetsuko
Fukawa, Ellen Head, Ian Hurrell, Ken Ikeda, Koki Tomita

Discussion topics in the meeting
There were 2 main topics at the meeting. Firstly, Tim
Cleminson shared the work he has been doing with
exploratory practice. Then, the group discussed thepossible limits of learner autonomy.

listen to the answers of the other students, they map
out a self-evaluation.
Tim also shared an article by Judith Hanks,
introducing a wide range of theoretical issues related to
EP. There are a lot of case studies here to see the way
the approach has been implemented by different
practitioners. Judith Hanks (2018). From research-aspractice to exploratory practice-as-research in language
teaching and beyond

Reflections from participants

1) Exploratory Practice (EP) - Hero’s Journey
Game
Tim has been working on a board game for the first ‘real’lesson in a class. It’s a self-intro game. The board gamealso introduces students to a broader view of the skills
and challenges related to using English. It’s designed todevelop more common ground and expectations
between teachers and students. Like what exactly are
we doing in this lesson? The game is a combination ofindividual and group questions. As students answer andIan: This was an interesting topic as I remember theworkshop that Alison Stewart gave on the topic a few
years ago. The idea of identifying puzzles together withthe students and helping students to consider theprocess of learning more deeply is one that I try to
implement into all of my learning programs.
However, it can sometimes be difficult tocommunicate some of these unfamiliar concepts to thestudents. The game that Tim showed in the meeting wasan effective and elegant method to communicate theideas of self-reflection and metacognition for language
learning which would be perfect for orientation lessons.
I look forward to trying to implement some of theseideas in my classes next semester.

2) Limits of learner autonomy
The group discussed the limits of autonomy, the role ofcooperation in autonomy - being “cooperatively
autonomous.” We also discussed the role of the teacher.
The teacher as an expert in language, as a motivator
who can help students find their own path to a moreenlightened purpose for their study, as a provider of aframework that enables them to reach higher goals.
Ellen introduced the book Maintaining Control:
Autonomy and Language Learning (https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt1xw9m0) Which has many
interesting ideas regarding this topic.

Reflections from participants
Ian:This is an issue that I often grapple with in myapproach to teaching. I am a strong believer indeveloping learner autonomy; helping my students totake control over their learning journeys. However, I alsofeel conflicted with giving my students control and myrole as an expert in language learning. For example, if I
see a student going in a direction that I haveexperienced to be unproductive, do I intervene and try

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Learning Learning 『学習の学習』 28(2): Looking Backto push the student in a “better” direction, or do I let
the student go through the experience themselves.
This is a conversation that I am always having withmyself when considering my teaching. Ellen introduced
an interesting book, edited by our very own Andy
Barfield, that seems to tackle this very issue:
Maintaining Control, Autonomy and Language learning.
If I can find a copy, I would be interested to read how
others feel about this topic
Ken: Ian and I were concerned if the teacher ought toallow students to create and develop their own ideas
without guidance, especially if seemingly the same
student ideas are re-created, or if the teacher could
provide advice so as to foster their own development.
I think the European University Association (EUA) ,which published a piece about “promoting active
learning in universities”, offers a radical approach of
instructors as, “[individuals who] change from that of aprovider of knowledge to that of a facilitator of learning.
Students need to be considered co-creators of their own
knowledge and be given the opportunity to explore thisrole through, e.g. research-, problem- or inquiry-basedlearning and participation in decision-making
processes.”More than active learning, I regard this as active
negotiation to carry over into learning, lest students
think of autonomy as atomized (I credit this idea to
Cecilia).

Sept 26th 2021 Get-together Report
In attendance: Tim Cleminson, Ellen Head, Ian Hurrell,
Ken Ikeda, Koki Tomita, Lorna Asami, James Underwood
Regrets: Cecilia Smith Fujishima

Discussion topics in the meeting
In this meeting we mainly discussed 3 topics. First, we
discussed teaching hybrid classes and how to encouragelearner engagement when some students are physicallyin the classroom and others are online. We then talked
about exploratory practice and metacognition andstudents’ struggles with thinking about and reflecting on
their own learning. Finally we looked at the topic ofimplementing CEFR standards into language teaching,such as can-do lists and SMART (Specific, Measurable,
Achievable, Relevant, Time-bound) goals.

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After the meeting, the participants provided some
excellent reflections on the topics mentioned above, so I
think I will let them do the talking!

Reflections from participants
Tim - It was great to talk about some of my researchideas and get feedback from others about how they
approach similar challenges. I am someone who likes tothink aloud and get a lot from working things out in
dialogue. Although we are all facing similar challenges,
we approach them from different angles. Sharing
perspectives with other practitioners is a really powerful
way to interrogate your own ideas. I'm sometimes pretty
direct in my own responses to others, but that comesfrom being engaged and caring about what they say.
I feel that's reciprocated in the group - it's a space inwhich we trust each other enough to share our ideas
and engage critically with each other. It's also a great
space for sharing teaching paradigms. Each paradigm
has something you can learn from. I often feel like I
know nothing, so hearing about what others do and thetools they use to teach develops my knowledge of the
field and my conception of what's credible.
Lorna - Today’s LD get-together was a comfortable,casual time of seeing familiar faces and meeting new
people (Hello Tim, it was nice to meet you!) We sortedout various details for upcoming events and publications
and talked shop as much as time allowed.
Ken’s helpful tips to Ian on hybrid online teachingwere from his experience as well as student feedback,
Tim Cleminson’s critical incident questionnaire will be
put to good use in my classes this term, and Koki
Tomita’s comments regarding CEFR “can do” statements
as well as his initial needs-analysis helped me to think
about a different way to set up goals for courses.
This LD get-together was a stimulating afternoon of
inquiry, consultation, and camaraderie, encouraging uswith positivity for this autumn term of learnerdevelopment in our classrooms.
Ellen - Talking about exploratory practice is always great!
It was interesting to hear how several of us have usedsimilar tools in different ways or at different stages in theclass, with the aim of helping learners to understandtheir own learning process. Tools which were mentioned
were CEFR can-do lists, motivation graphs, SMART goals.
Lorna talked about students' difficulties in articulating
meta-cognitive understanding in English when linking
the SMART goal to the lesson objective, and the "aha"moment when they realized they had already got it. Tim

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Learning Learning 『学習の学習』 28(2): Looking Backtalked about exploring reflection using creative means.
Ken talked about using a values questionnaire to build
up [pyramid discussions I think], which he uses as a way
to show students that they do actually have opinions.
One of the things I like about the get-togethers is that if
you attend a few times you can get insight into how
other people's projects are developing, and so you learn
more than you might learn from a single presentation.
Koki - We talked about high-flex teaching, exploratory
practice and the CEFR in our discussions. I've personallynever experienced high-flex teaching, so the participants
shared a lot of insightful information. Careful
preliminary research and preparation on top of normalclass preparation are necessary before conducting it. In
particular, teachers need to be keen on how online andface-to-face students like to interact with each other.
Also, setting up the environment for smooth interaction
between students taking classes online is important.
Exploratory practice is another topic by which I was
intrigued. Listening to Tim's experience using EP in theclassroom, I recalled that I hadn't included this type ofteaching and learning practice in my lessons for so long
and would like to read more on this concept for deeper
understanding.
Ken - I was impressed by Lorna telling us about a student
who thought watching 20 videos was anaccomplishment. It's great she encourages students tomove from being a fly on the wall to taking control of
their own learning. One idea that sprouted in my mind is
to ask my students to write 10-15 words/ideas that theycame to learn to use well in my course. Some of theseideas might come directly from those taught in thecourse, but I would hope they might develop their own
insights. Fashioning those words into parsimonious form
might be a good way for students to develop
mindfulness in their own learning.
I liked Lorna's suggestion that relevancy is notconnecting, but tying, which requires concerted focus(like with our shoes) as well as effort. I thought about
how I harp on my students to write how relevant theirresearch summary is to their thesis, when instead they
could find strands to tie their readings to constructing
their methodology.

students cannot enter the country so they need to join
the classes virtually. I already have some ideas about
how I will approach this. With the number of students
online being so small, I was hoping that I could bring acomputer to the class and have the students join
virtually through the computer screen. For some of theclasses, the students are required to bring a computer toclass, so I thought that I could have students log into
Zoom in the classroom when doing group work with thestudents overseas.
However, I still haven't had the chance to experienceteaching hybrid classes so I was eager to hear theexperiences of the other participants in the get-together
and get their advice. There were several usefulsuggestions; some mentioned that I should involve thestudents with choosing the method of interaction withthe class. I thought this was an excellent idea and very
LD! Employing Google apps such as Google Forms andGoogle Docs so that the online students can better
participate in online activities was another suggestion.
Finally Tim recommended using a Critical Incident
Questionnaire to keep track of the students feelings. He
also provided some useful resources: https://teach.its.uiowa.edu/sites/teach.its.uiowa.edu/files/
docs/docs/Critical_Incident_Questionnaire_ed.pdf ,http://www.stephenbrookfield.com/critical-incidentquestionnaire. I want to express a big thank you to allparticipants for offering their suggestions for teachingHybrid classes, and I look forward to trying them withmy students.

Ian - In this get-together, I wanted to discuss theprospect of teaching hybrid classes this semester. Withthe vaccination rate improving, both students andteachers are eager to get back on campus for face-toface classes. However, I have some classes where 1 or 2

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