Article 7

July 19

This next experience is again located in Japan, but for a college elective for advanced listening comprehension. The chapter accounts the experience of Barbara Fujiwara and is entitled "Planning an advanced listening comprehension elective for Japanese college students."

This chapter attempts to understand the unique responsibility of teachers/course developers in the selection of materials and why decision this is critical. Also, it gives insight on how teachers organize the course and the role of the students in the developmental system.

Fujiwara sets up the course as a new experience for her and therefore she begins by observing language lab (LL) courses. She notes that LLs impressed her with the use of technology. However, because she was pressed for time in the development of the course, she was not able to review enough audio and video materials to be used in class assignments. And hence, this is where the students' role came in. Through input and suggestions by an essay assignment which functioned like an entrance exam for the elective in order to thin the over-enrollment, Fujiwara took some of these suggestions for her class- assigning group projects to analyze and present video or audio materials to the class. So, eventually, Fujiwara ended up with a textbook that she had chosen entitled How to Listen and a few other materials she had also chosen, and the rest of the materials were chosen by the students to base their projects on.

Fujiwara found that the choosing of materials was very critical. She also found that the choice was dynamic, depending on the students' needs and capabilities at a particular time. What I liked about this article was the process that Fujiwara went through, in which it was realistic. She started out with planning and mind-mapping in order to better conceptualize the course. Then she took students' suggestions to make the course workable for the students and to help her decide on the materials to use. She had deep and thoughtful self-reflections, taking into account her concerns and emotions, how she combined theories, decisions, and practice, and most of all observed how the course was affecting her students. Lastly, we could see through her honest journaling that her decisions were not perfect which I find very realistic. And although perfection was not the case, she strived for the betterment of the course in attaining her goals. The course was at its earliest stages, but she learned a lot and therefore understood how to make the following semesters better. For example, she decided to drop one of the textbooks, although she found the contents useful but because of its difficulty to be comprehended and the ability of her students, she chose to do away with it (164).

By the end of the course, her students said that it had been very helpful for them. They also greatly appreciated that their inputs were thought to be important. And they gave more suggestions in improving the course. With the students' reports, the goal of Fujiwara for the course- which is to "increase and improve [student] listening strategies and skills" through a variety of audio and video materials focusing on contemporary lifestyles and issues in the United States and the United Kingdom, and students will also be expected to practice these skills outside of the class- was achieved, and the variety of feedback reflects the unique needs of each learner (153, 165).

I also agree that having the right materials is very important for the learning of students. When I used to tutor ELLs, I found that the decisions for the right materials were vital. For example, because the private school that my students went to did not have a more comprehensible material for ESL, the students and I had such a hard time in getting an understandable, workable, and learnable information for them.

Images

McNamee, Win. March 2010. Cherry blossoms begin to bloom throughout Washington. [Photograph]. Getty Images. Retrieved from http://cache3.asset-cache.net/xc/80389902.jpg.

Image of language lab. [Photograph]. Retrieved from http://ninitalk.files.wordpress.com/2009/07/language_lab.jpg.

Image of textbooks. [Photograph]. Retrieved from http://www.estudiainglesonline.com/textbooks.jpg.