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Eigo Noto classes are not to discourage students from further English study, nor are the lessons meant to be Conversation Lessons. But what about students who CAN and WANT TO speak English?

Do you, or the HRTs you work with, ever insist that the Eigo Noto students interact in English? I sometimes hear Home Room Teachers exhorting kids to speak English together.
There are times when we want a student to speak English in the Eigo Noto lessons, to be sure- when listening and repeating words and phrases, or when checking accuracy in pronunciation, for example. And looking at the workbook itself, you could easily get the idea that the kids are supposed to be speaking English.
But as for student-to-student interaction in English,

Speaking and listening, ie. conversation, are a high-speed interpersonal interaction.  When choosing sequential activities for lesson plans, be mindful to grade activities through the lesson from slower, low/non-affective activities (see LDK #2) to the higher-speed activities of conversational interaction.  And also to Teach or Test- at the right time!

Go to the next post in the Lesson Development Keys series.

    The common rule that receptive vocabulary and ability is always greater than productive ability gives a simple guidance as to how lesson progression or sequencing of lessons should usually proceed-- from listening introductions in the beginning to free production as a final activity.  Between these two will include:

When introducing or teaching new knowledge and ideas, give students a foundation upon which to build.
Always having the Japanese translation of anything written in English is one way of doing this.  Other ways to do this are:

• using similar usage (using ‘will’ is very similar in usage to the use of ‘can’) or similar sounds (book -> cook);
• words they already know (especially English words commonly used in Japanese); and
• something they can or have experienced (‘How many pens do you have?’ or, eating in a restaurant).

Go to the next post in the Lesson Development Keys series.

Why use chants in the language classroom? Chants

• Help students to remember 
• Teach sound, rhythm, accents, and word stress
  
• Are especially good for things in series (months’ & days’ names, for example)

Rhythm is key.  Use clapping, tamborines, or... the Eigo Noto CD by Kairyudo!? But what if there are problems with the chant on the CD?!
Make up your own chants (Keep reading for tips. Are you rhthmically challenged? More help!).
Or check out the original chants here for you to use at EIGONOTO.COM.

If you want to make up your own chants, here are some points on why chants work well:

Engage students in the learning process by telling them beforehand what activities or material will be studied. At the beginning of class, simply write on the blackboard the names of the activities you’ll do in that lesson. Then cross them off as you finish them. 
Use activity names (and the communication and life-long learning skill names) often.  Write the target patterns on the blackboard in English and Japanese, especially for elementary school.  Keeping a current English bulletin board in the classroom, with current lesson content, will help students be aware of what they’re currently studying, too.

Go to the next post in the Lesson Development Keys series.

There are many things going on inside students when they are in your classroom. These are often called Affective Factors.  Even a brief explanation is more than this short post can do justice.  They include, but are not limited to:

• motivation
• risk-taking
• low- or high-anxiety
• feelings of success or failure
• competition
• inadequacy
• self-esteem
• communal support
• boredom vs. challenged engagement

Each of these, and more, are part of students emotional lives. Not to consider them when planning or acting in class is not only disrespectful, but done repeatedly will work to create an emotional barrier to learning.


Go to the next post in the Lesson Development Keys series.

Relevance
As much as possible, use content that has relevance to the students’ lives in your lessons;  ie., something that is part of their life experience.  Pictures and photos, and realia (real objects) can help with this.  But also consider students’ culture, ages, living area, gender, etc.. Popular examples from my students include:

This is the introduction to a nine-part series titled Lesson Development Keys. Each of the nine keys, or LDK, is a guideline for creating communicative activities and multi-activity lesson plans.  Being familiar with and using the concepts will help to make your activities and lessons

• more meaningful and engaging for the students,
• help to keep student motivation high, and
• make lessons and activities effective and enjoyable learning experiences.

Go to the first post in the Lesson Development Keys series.

Having a set routine to your English classes helps you prepare the lesson, and also empowers students by giving them a routine to become familiar with.
Here are three patterns for lessons that are tried-and-true:

The Eigo Note text commonly uses this pattern for a lesson:

1. Greetings & Warm-up
2. Introduction
3. Expansion
4. Practice
5. Wrap-up & Farewells

My own pattern for teaching a lesson:

1. Greetings
2. Warm-up/Review and/or Recycle/Conversation Skills Training
3. Teaching/Introduction
4. Practice
5. Accuracy Testing
6. Production
7. Wrap-up/Closing

My friend Michael Sullivan offers the following lesson pattern:

1. Greetings
2. Review (repeat activity from last class for a short time)
3. Introduce new language
4. Main Activity
5. Wrap-up/Good-bye

We all learn language as babies first by listening. This is the natural way to introduce new material to your students, too. Do your best to provide some context to give extra clues to what the language might mean. Some of the activities below do that very well-

• Storyboards/かみしばい- Read a story.
• Model the language with another teacher or student in a skit or dialogue.
• Play a short video.
• Songs- Listen to, then sing a song.
• Listen & Repeat- write these patterns on the blackboard, and play Listen & Repeat CROSSFIRE. Say each pattern in order, then the second time through, change one part: I play tennis. I play tennis, too. I don’t play tennis. Do you play tennis? Yes, I do. No, I don’t.
• Listen and Respond- Students respond by pointing to a picture, touching an object, raising hands or standing, etc., to indicate comprehension.
• Translation- Ask all students to tell the meaning in Japanese, then ask for single volunteers to translate
• Don’t have a teaching partner to do dialogues with? Try using a pair of puppets. Or wear different hats to represent different characters.

The following list is simple, but true for any language. This simple breakdown does a lot to help me choose appropriate activities for my lessons.

• Words/Vocabulary/Alphabet
• Yes/No Question;
• Wh- Question;
• Sentence and/or Negative;
• Commands.

Which do you think is the most important? One writer I read said vocabulary is the most important. It’s difficult for me to disagree. As the daily speaker of a foreign language myself, knowing the right word to say works better than trying to say something another way every time.
Maybe we should remember this the next time a student says something to us with the right words but with grammatical errors, and we still understand. In terms of communicative ability, was the student really mistaken?

I always walk into class with a pair of dice in my pocket. Here are the ways they can be used:

-Roll two dice to choose a student-very effective in choosing a volunteer (for O/X Game, to choose the cross-point student to begin CROSSFIRE, etc.). With a little use, the students become resigned to the fact that their turn to perform was chosen at random by the dice.
With students sitting in rows of 6 across, and 4-7 deep:

• One die counts the rows of students from left-to-right. The second die counts the rows of students from front-to-back. Thus the front row lefthand-most student is number 1-1, the back row righthand-most student is number 6-6, and so on.

-Roll one die to choose a row to stand up for LINEFIRE.

-If you give out points, you can offer a choice of a set reward (6 points, for example) or the total of 2 rolled dice.

-When doing chants with Yes/No answers, roll a die to choose the Yes or No answer- 1, 3 or 5 = Yes, 2, 4 or 6 = No. This does a lot to keep students engaged while doing a chant.

-When doing an activity such as a Quiz Show that awards points to the (usually) higher-skilled team, give them points equal to two rolled dice. BUT, if the dice roll any pair (1-1, 2-2, etc.) take away ALL of the points awarded until that time!

In my classrooms we use dice for choosing students and offering a chance to get bonus points. See the post above for explanations.

The kitchen timer serves the function of a countdown clock- when the time is over, the bell rings and the activity is finished. Using this feature together with a points/reward system, the students are encouraged to think and speak more quickly. Sounds simple, but give the Hot Potato activity a go and you'll see how it works!