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Machiko’ Breakthrough: a magic classroom moment

by Robert E. Jones, Japan

“Hello, Machiko.  How are you today?” “Wah, sensei. Muzukashii, wa.  Issho kemmei shuduai gambatte iru kedo, naka naka atama ni hairanai.  Wah, muzukashii, yo.”  Roughly translated, this means something like:  “Wah, teacher, it’s so difficult. I work so hard on my homework but it just never seems to get into my head.  Wah, so difficult” and, until recently, that’s how most my lessons with Machiko began.

I operate a small language school in Japan where I teach both adults and young learners.  Most of my lessons are with groups but I also have a few one-to-one courses and Machiko is one of those one-to-one students.  She is sixty years old, has just become a grandmother and decided about six months ago that she’d like to start learning English.  She did study some English when she was at school but that was over forty years ago and, so, to all intents and purposes, she is a beginner.

I enjoy my lessons with Machiko.  She tries hard and I can say with sincerity that she’s making good progress.  However, I’ve always wished that she’d give up that litany of despair at the start of the lessons and show a bit more faith in herself.  A couple of months ago, something occurred which brought about a big unexpected change in Machiko’s attitude.

This happened just after we decided to start a school newsletter.  The main feature in the first issue was a report by my wife and me about a holiday trip to Shikoku and we also included a few bits of general knowledge trivia (or ‘factoids’ as I believe they are now called in Britain) and some information on selected language problems.  Machiko received a copy as did all our students.

The following week Machiko arrived about ten minutes early for class and, as I sat in the adjoining room drinking my coffee, I heard her talking to my wife in the classroom.  I couldn’t catch everything she said behind the closed door but I could hear that she was talking about the newsletter.  As I walked into class and gave my usual greeting, I expected some talk of how she would be able to cope with such material.  Instead, what I heard was “Wah,  hontoo ni sugoi desu ne, kono shimbun.”
(“Wow, this newsletter is really great, isn’t it?”).  She then gave me an account of how she’d sat down with the newsletter and gone through it with her dictionary.  It had taken time, effort and, no doubt, a great deal of perspiration but, in the end, she’d been able to understand about 90% of our holiday report.

“Well, that’s great, Machiko,” I said, somewhat taken aback.  Then she explained in Japanese:  “You see, it was about you and your wife in Shikoku and I really wanted to know all about your holiday.  So, I sat down and just worked at it very hard.”  Then, with a dismissive wave of her hand, “I didn’t bother about these bits here (the factoids); they didn’t seem very interesting.  But your trip to Shikoku - oh, yes, I wanted to read about that.”

I had walked into the classroom with a lesson plan based on the next unit of the textbook but I promptly ditched that and started looking over the newsletter with her.  We had recently done some work on the past tense of the verb ‘to be’ and so I under-
lined some examples of its occurrence in the text.  I had not actually presented the past tense of any lexical verbs but when I pointed to examples such as “went” in “We went to Shikoku for a week”, she immediately said, “Are wa ‘go’ no kakokei desu ne?”  (“That’s the past form of ‘go’ isn’t it?”).  And so, we spent the whole hour going through the newsletter, Machiko showing obvious delight at how much she was able to understand and myself enjoying the feeling of triumph which these little episodes bring.  There were a few difficult bits which we skipped over but Machiko was so delighted about how much she had been able to understand that this didn’t matter to her and at the end of the lesson both of us went away in a state of elation.

So, what caused this unexpected breakthrough?  Well, I’m reminded of Michael Swan’s observation that a lot of classroom interaction (very often mine, too, I confess) focuses on the behaviour of fictional characters in students’ textbooks when ‘the same language practice can take place more interestingly and more directly if the students are simply asked to talk about themselves’ (Swan 1985: 84).  It was precisely because the newsletter gave some information about two people she knows and likes that Machiko’s interest was engaged, resulting in the most productive lesson she had had since starting her course and making this particular teacher extremely happy.

Of course, I cannot make any lofty claim that all of Machiko’s language anxieties were dispersed in one fell swoop.  She still finds English difficult and still worries about whether she is really making progress.  However, she left the lesson that day with an optimistic air I had never seen in her before.  Now she always looks forward to the newsletter and, when I put it together, I always keep Machiko’s breakthrough at the back of my mind.  Let’s not deny the importance of having a good textbook but, equally, let us not forget that richer more immediate resource that we have:  being able to tell students about our own experiences and attitudes and encouraging them to do the same with us.

Reference

Swan, M. 1985.  A critical look at the Communicative Approach.  ELT Journal 39/2:
76-87.