Evidence of Learning: Mine & Others’
By: Greg Rouault
In my second teaching job in Japan, at Prime Eikaiwa, the owner, Mr. Fujioka, offered lessons for kids and adults. I knew both were important customer groups, but I never imagined so much would be learned from working with the kids. These are two of the most endearing and enduring moments.
I was teaching lessons with Aleda Krause’s “Super Kids” series, which I had selected because of its contents for language development through interaction and the various flash cards for classroom support. Having already covered “colors” with a pre-schooler in a daytime lesson, we arrived at “shapes.” After eliciting to find out that the child already knew circle and triangle, I went on to some other shapes shown on individual cards. When I got to oval, the child pondered a bit and answered “long circle” to which the mother sitting in the back snickered at the seemingly non-sensical answer. Somehow, I was reminded quickly of (a) training from my sales manager, Chuck Easley, to always put a positive spin on any rejection from a customer, and (b) my own re-definition of my self-concept when my boss Mr. Reger told me I “was creative” with my use of words to explain things and think laterally. So I didn’t snicker, guffaw, or say “No” to this student, but rather smiled and said, “Yeeeesss, it does look like a long circle doesn’t it. And in English we call that an oval.”
Talk about delayed learning and surprise … When I was recounting this “cute” moment to the Office Manager, she explained to me that the Japanese word for rectangle effectively means “long square!” The revelation that this young learner had used lateral thinking to transfer what they already knew in Japanese L1 to their limited English L2 to explain an unknown word (which I would learn later in my Masters studies is an example of circumlocution) by the visual cue it presented, confirmed I had much to learn from even my youngest students.
Mr. Fujioka often recounted the great motivation he had felt to develop his English skills further when he was offered a chance to take part in drama on stage. And he hoped some of his students would also feel the same push, if provided a chance to really use their English. Although it was not our focus to practice solely for any event, I certainly believed that the students I was working with could use the English we had studied to perform short skits.
At the annual Kids’ Show that Prime Eikaiwa put on, it was time for the parents and grandparents present (and those family members undoubtedly shown the videos later) to clearly be surprised and learn something. In the Community Center, with cameras rolling, the kids performed interactive role plays such as servers and customers in a restaurant asking and answering questions, only in English, to take and place orders all on their own! The proof of what many of the adults would not have imagined possible was in the children’s excellent performances. A great promo it was!
These surprising learning experiences (for me and others) from over 20 years ago in my foreign language teaching continue to reinforce my belief in experiential learning and influence my course and classroom approach to having students focus on learning by doing for their own takeaways and my reflections on the evidence of learning I get to observe.
Greg Rouault, still learning by looking for learning