As an educator, it is really encouraging to see students help each other out with their assigned tasks, be it homework or classwork without resorting to any copying. The most obvious implication of this is that the students doing the helping have developed their own personal understanding of what they have acquired in class.

Naturally, this assistance will not necessarily be perfect. In the EAL context here in Japan, some students will still have issues with their spelling. They may not be able to find the correct English translation for what they want to say. Some of the grammar introduced at the upper primary level will not be expanded upon until the students have started junior high school, resulting in minor technical errors.

With all that said, given the difference in sentence structures between English and Japanese, my personal stance is that if the students can get the sentence structure and the prescribed conjugation, or at least the verb tense, correct, that is more than half of the battle won, which can make it slightly easier for them to focus on the minor details.

In the case of today’s lessons with the sixth graders, I can proudly say that there were students who were brave enough to help out their friends, attempting to explicitly explain how the sentence structures worked. As a result, this meant less things for the students to correct whenever I would walk by to check their progress; if anything, this made it easier for me to teach them the English vocabulary that they wanted to use.

It’s a shame that I will no longer be teaching at this school from January 2022 onwards - I would’ve liked to see how they would have handled the last two units of the textbook.

Of particular note, there is one student who presents the image of being unsure as to what is going on in the classroom. However, I’ve been able to get through to him from time to time, slowly eliciting ideas from him and helping to scaffold his sentence structures. Given that he is actually capable of speaking clearly in English, the boosts in confidence he has gotten through my assistance with his writing has given him the confidence to occasionally answer questions when inclined to do so.

For my next post, tentatively due on Wednesday the 8th, I’ll be sharing my thoughts on the state of the teaching profession back home in my home state of Victoria, Australia.

Take care,

Zach

Posted December 6th 2021 (JST)