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Andy: One other idea for the mix is creating on
the LD website some “publication resources” withlinks to different kinds of exploratory writing about
learner development - within different SIG
publications and in the wider field. Those kind ofnear-peer role models could be a useful reference
for helping writers to break into new kinds ofwriting. “Developing (multi-interactive)
communities of exploratory writing, responding andediting practices” seems a rich area for ongoing
discussions - and feels closely connected to moving
beyond reifying “full-length papers” as therequirement for first drafts by LDJ contributors.
Hugh: (not feeling sure if he wants to give theappearance of having the last word) . . . but as I
read/scroll through this lengthening text, am
grateful for the wide-ranging scope of thediscussion, and the fact that after several weeks ofdevelopment, this document has grown more andmore dialogic. We have, for example, Darren
pointing out the practical difficulties for editors as
writers with different experiences and histories of‘academic’ writing contribute to the journal, andthe challenges that are the inevitable result. This
perspective, considered in relation to Tim’s andAndy’s observations (above), suggest to me thatsome practice/perspective of expansion (ofinclusiveness?) is the key to meeting the ideals weare struggling to articulate and realise as we work
towards the publication of volume 2 and focus on
the necessary next steps in bringing volume 3
towards completion. Though it remains difficult for
all of us to allocate time and energy – and tocoordinate the efforts our SIG projects require, themodels of co-operation (of “working in teams”)
both in the SIG as a whole, and on finalizing
individual publications, offer the best models ofpractice for the future. Perhaps the Google Docsmodel we’re using to work on Learning Learning
offers one simple solution to the “near-peer rolemodels” approach Andy describes as a practicalway forward in the development of “multiinteractive communities of interactive writing (andediting).”

Tokyo July 2018 Get-together
Reflections and Plans for2019
Andy Barfield, Martin Cater, Ken Ikeda, Kio Iwai, &Koki Tomita
Note: These reflections focus on discussions at the July
get-together about learners’ linguistic repertoires andplans for the get-togethers in 2019.

Koki: I joined the Get-together a half hour late.
The members had already started their discussions
about Andy’s ongoing research. It was pleasant tosee that the research has evolved since Andy
shared it with us during the April Get Together. The
main topic was Andy’s student research
participant’s language identity and her perceptionsof standard Japanese and her Japanese dialect.
Here, Lee talked about the hard time he had in hischildhood in formulating his identity in the U.S. asa son of an Australian mother and an American
father. This involved selecting “appropriate”
lexicon and avoiding deviating from social norms toblend into the culture and the society. Ken also
shared a story from his childhood where his teacher
in the U.S. told his parents to use only English intheir household to improve Ken’s English
competency because Ken was not linguisticallyfunctioning well at school at that time. Both cases
exemplify how much the standard language(s)pushes off other politically, socially andeconomically weak dialects or deviated languages
in a society.
In the second half of the meeting, we talked
about the continuity of future Tokyo Get-Togethers
and CCLT4. We agreed that we need morecommunication and a different way to attract moremembers to come to the get-togethers. One of theways to achieve the goal is dividing the meeting
into the input and discussion parts. In the input
part, we will have a few presenters and get themto share their research-oriented or practical handson presentations to the audience, and discuss thecontent with more depth.

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Learning Learning 『学習の学習』 25 (2): Free Space
In considering our plans for CCLT4, we came tothe conclusion that local LD SIG members can use
each Get-Together as a chance to generate a topic
that they can present at the CCLT 4 which they canreceive various feedback from the professionals inthe field. It will be wonderful to have more officers
and members join the organization of theDecember event. I am very excited to create theevent with Ken and other members in the SIG.
Andy: Around the discussion of the gettogethers we came to the conclusion that it would
help if each person attending the get-togethers
made a commitment to leading a discussion/presenting on their learner development interests
in an interactive style for (part of) one of the gettogethers in the year. Kio’s suggestion was that this
“input” should be 10 minutes or so at most in
length and be aimed at fostering discussion among
participants. So, the proposal is to have mini-inputs
for leading discussions of 30 minutes or more at
get-togethers. The difference will be to ask
everyone to make a commitment to giving one such
input and leading one such discussion one time in acalendar year, with a view to (hopefully) having
everyone take part in an end-of-year informal halfday conference in the final get-together in
December, i.e., Creating Community: LearningTogether. (On reflection participants should also
have the choice not to do this if they prefer not to… something to discuss further in any case.)
A big thank you to everyone for a highly
stimulating discussion of the “I-poems” that I
shared from an interview with a student about her
linguistic repertoire and use of language in her life.
The “I-poems” were created from theinterviewee’s use of “I” in a 60-minute interview,so each I-poem brought together a cluster of “Istatements” around a particular topic orexperience that the interviewee talked about inthe interview. Extracting the I-statements in orderfrom the interview and creating poems from themis intended to help the interviewer (and readers) todevelop a “more sensitised” understanding of theinterviewee’s “linguistic repertoire lifeworld.”

When I hear local languages
when I hear local languages or just when I saw
Nagano or Azumino I feel happyI feel happy if there is some posters or the letterin another areas, then “oh my hometown isoutstanding”
I feel connected with these lettersafter I came to Tokyo
I found my hometown is kind of special
I didn’t think my local perspectives are kind of
special before I came to Tokyo
I went many cities
I’ve never told this feelings
I felt “ahh here is my hometown or here is where I
want to live or where I want to spend time”
I don’t feel anything from the languages thatpeople use here
I started to stop using dialectwhen I came to Tokyo I had strong bias like thepeople from other areas can’t use their own
languages dialects
I felt a little bit nervous to use that word thenwhen I came to not just Tokyo also like big cities
I started to stop using dialect
sometimes I use Nagano’s dialect without any
special reason
that’s why I put this in my center
I didn’t know that’s dialect then I just speaking
that way
そんなことしなんでいいよ

しなんでいいよit’s not correct
it’s not 標準語
I don’t know why I feel negative feeling to use
local languagejust not cool

Here are three of the I-poems that we looked atand discussed at the get-together:

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Learning Learning 『学習の学習』 25 (2): Free SpaceI have to use keigo to senpai
often feel I should use
I have to use keigo to sempai often sempai
sometimes I can use not keigo to teacher
but for sempai I can’t
I think it’s strongly connected with my experiencein my junior high school age
I joined volleyball cluband these sports club have strong hierarchy systemif younger people doesn’t use keigo to seniorpeople
senior people just angry for not using keigo
I think it’s stupid
but I just get used to this way of using keigo
because I have gap age when I entered thisuniversity I was worried
I was worried for using keigo to third years student
because they’re same age to me
I just want to use keigo
I think it’s from my experiencethat’s why I can’t use the straight Japanese
I just use keigo
but it’s not the sign of respect
I didn’t show respect to him
but I just use keigo
Our discussions of these and the other I-poems
covered a wide range of issues. One was the use of
方言札 / hōgen fuda for eliminating use of local
languages or local dialects/varieties in different
education systems. The standard language ideology
had strong resonances for all of us, with Ken’s storyof forced assimilation particularly astonishing for
all the complex and long-lasting consequences that
followed from his elementary school teacher’sinterdiction. In my interviewee’s case, she gives
voice to a sense of conflict about using her localdialect in her new student life in Tokyo. She feelsthat she should avoid using it, but is unsure why
she has this sense (“I started to stop using dialect“and “I don’t know why I feel negative feeling touse local language”). In effect, she is experiencing
how her use of her local variety of Japanese has

become/is being stigmatised and dislocated. This
ongoing transition brings her to identify more withthe branding of her local area for tourism (“I feel
happy if there is some posters or the letter inanother areas, then “oh my hometown isoutstanding”) than with using her local dialect inher own life.
Ken: I’ve told my vignette before, but its importseems to have resonated much more in the contextof Andy’s student’s “I” poem. As I was growing up
in Los Angeles, I recall being told by my parents
that my well-meaning homeroom teacher had
asked them to use only English at home with me sothat I could pass the 2nd grade in my elementary
school. This may seem unfathomable to bothpresent-day thinking about respecting the homelanguage, equally unthinkable in Japanese schoolsfrom grades 1-9 of the possibility of being heldback one year. But in those days, even on the heelsof the civil rights movement in the United States,
my parents’ acquiescence with my teacher’s
proscription was likely along the lines of ‘when inRome, do as the Romans do’. My mother was a real‘kyoiku mama’, so everything the teacher told us
was the gospel to her. By the end of my 2nd grade,my language problems at school straightened out.
My teacher was pleased, but her decision had
destroyed the language fabric in my family. English
was my mother’s first love, but my father neverdeveloped a facility with the language, having notstudied it at all until he came to the States as awar refugee (he sojourned in northeast China in hisyouth and teen years). My mother became theintermediary between my father and I,
transmitting messages back and forth in Japaneseand English. For the next forty years, my fatherand I never had a long conversation with eachother. It was only after my mother passed away, mywife coaxed me to speak with him, which broke thewall of intransigence (maybe old-fashionedmachismo of not wanting to admit one’sstubbornness) that had built up between us. As I
reflect on the wonderful conversations with myfather in the remaining ten years of his life, I canalso sadly imagine how cut off he must have been,feeling not at liberty to express his thoughts to his

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eldest child in so many life moments: my highschool graduation (he himself was unable tocomplete his secondary school education as he wasdrafted into the Japanese army during WW2), myuniversity graduation, wedding, getting job
acceptances, etc. How unfathomable are theadverse consequences created by the blithe
decisions of others.

amazing how wide a range of topics these "I-poems"of one student brought about: language varieties
and standard language, language shift, language
policing, learners' rights, student's perception of"global", etc. Not only did the "I-poems" generate
lively discussions, but they also inspired me tothink about my own background of learning andteaching languages.

Andy’s explanation about the social oppression
hougen fuda resonated with poignancy a few days
after our get-together meeting when I was having alunchtime discussion with one of my students. Oneof the students she has interviewed for her thesis
research spoke of having been sorely stung by her
English pronunciation instructor’s remark during
her freshman year in university. She was told herEnglish speaking was “inaka kusai”, that of acountry provincial. I happened to know that thisparticular student comes from the city of MinamiSoma which was severely afflicted by theFukushima nuclear reactor debacle. The student
was so deflated by the insulting remark that she
dropped out of the English teacher certification
program and gave up on English learning. But she
has regained interest in English in her final year inuniversity after being told receiving her job offerthat she needed to use English in the workplace.
She has been motivated to speak it by participants
who encouraged her at an international barbecue
gathering.

This is a big reason why I supported Koki's
suggestion to introduce some kind of presentations
into our Get-Togethers. It would be nice if two or
three members interactively shared their on-goingprojects, thoughts or ideas related to learnerdevelopment in the first half of each Get-together,and everyone could discuss the topics either insmall groups or in a big group in the latter half of
the Get-Together. Members would get a chance to"bring something" to the Get-Together and get
feedback from other members. What does
everyone think?

I welcome Koki’s and Kio’s suggestions to steer
this get-together in new directions that could very
well stoke interest in discussions, spawn researchdirections and encourage members to come andparticipate. Koki’s willingness to help with thecoordination of a possible CCLT4 could kick-start
the nature of future get-togethers. Kio’s idea of
having participants tell what they are doing in theirteaching situations, share learners are experiencing(as expressed in Andy’s I-poems). I hope thosereading our reflections can get excited thinking ofprospects in these get-togethers.
Kio: We had substantial discussions with allparticipants sharing their own stories on variety oftopics. I would especially like to thank Andy forsharing his "I-poems" project with us. It wasMartin: I particularly enjoyed the first part ofthe session, consisting of discussion of the I-Poems.
The thoughts and feelings the student had about
dialects and discrimination were very familiar tome, as I think many people from the UK have had
similar experiences. I was also interested in theperception of “English as global language”,
something the interviewee felt particularly positive
about, compared with their perceptions of otherlanguages. It was a stimulating discussion; I would
certainly be keen to examine more of these poems
at a later date, including They-Poems from theseinterviews or other sources.
After a short break, we discussed the future of
the Tokyo Get-Togethers, which have seen a
reduction in participant numbers over the past
couple of years. Ideas of how to shape thegatherings into 2019 were put forward, which havebeen described above by other participants in thiswrite-up. I am in agreement that members shouldtake responsibility for leading a session however
they choose, offering some kind of input which
would lead to discussion. There are not a large
number of sessions in the calendar year; I think it
would be feasible for volunteers to step up andlead one discussion during the period.

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