1. Overview
In 2011, an English program called Eigo Katsudo is to be implemented into classrooms of 5th and 6th graders among all public elementary schools on a once a week basis in Japan. Preceding this major nationwide reformation in English teaching, we have already observed many lessons taught by 2 or even 3 teachers as a team, one of whom is a home room teacher of the class in many cases. There are not a few Eikaiwa schools in which Japanese teachers (JT) invite Native Speaker Teachers (NT) or vice versa in order to conduct Team Teaching in class. However, as is often the case, we find JT plays the role of the interpreter as L1 speakers while NT sometimes is referred to as "Human CD player".
That seems to be a typical team teaching style conducted by JT and NT up until recently. I would like to focus more on the interaction between two teachers and discuss the possibility of making your Team Teaching more effective in giving maximum "comprehensive input" (Krashen, 1985) in your classroom.
2. Teacher Talk Adjustment
We all know that just being a native speaker does not necessarily mean you can teach your mother tongue as a language teacher. That is very clear if you invite a Native speaker without any teaching experience to your classroom and let him speak on any topic freely at natural speed. It may depend on the level of your students' English level, but young learners may become overwhelmed. What if that person uses a lot of visual aids such as photos or drawings on the board, speaks slowly and clearly, and stops to check the understanding of the students? Wouldn't that make a big difference? These techniques would make his speech so much easier for students to understand. In language classes where the target language is primarily being used, teachers need to make some adjustments to make the output comprehensible for students. And this kind of adjustment is called Teacher Talk Adjustment (Chaudron, 1988). This is one of the crucial skills we, as language teachers, should acquire. If this is the case for solo teaching, how could we apply it to Team Teaching?
3. Teacher Talk Adjustment (TTA) in Team Teaching
Every English class in our school has been taught by NT and JT since its foundation in 2006. In order to make the tool for our mutual understanding and teacher training of novice teachers, a list of TTA in Team Teaching has been compiled after careful categorization of all the utterances in three videotaped lessons team taught by experienced teachers. Firstly, we made the list to see what TTA we make in general and secondly we limited the utterances used only between two teachers.
List 2 reveals that other than general roles such as one teacher walks around the classroom to monitor and help students if needed or prepares the teaching materials such as audio or visuals while the other keeps teaching. The main task we hold in team teaching is the two teachers' interaction itself. Whenever, either teacher senses the need, he initiates the conversation with the other teacher instead of checking students directly ("Do you understand it?") using question forms such as "Excuse me, what is __________?". Another ways is to say "Please say it again." or repeat what other students just said or paraphrase so that students can understand it better. That means one teacher plays the role of the student. We found that thanks to this technique children who used to ask JT "Translate it into Japanese!" can expect teacher's scaffolding and be more relaxed (and patient) in order to keep listening. This really helps students improve their listening comprehension skill as well as build up their confidence. Here is some examples of teacher talk transcribed from our videotaped lesson (in Grade 5 class);
JT What time did you come to school today?
NT Today I came early. I came to school 7:15.
JT 7:15? One five? Hmm that's early. So how do you... how do you come to school?
NT I come to school by subway.
JT By subway? Subway?
NT Yes, I take subway.
JT Subway is what? Train?
NT Train but JR train Hankyu train No. Underground (with gesture) is subway.
JT Ah, underground is subway.
S Chikatetsu?
Another finding was that two teachers are acting just like two performers on the stage. Students watch them, interact and then try to understand what's going on. When one teacher intentionally makes a mistake or gives a false answer, this is a cue for students to get involved in the act. This helps greatly to elicit the spontaneous output on the students' side. We often use this as Teacher Talk in Team Teaching in lower grades. The following transcription is the scene that a NT made a false statement regarding an animal that children are learning about. They react right away saying "No!" (Grade 1);
JT Ostriches don't swim.
NT They are good at swimming.
Ss No no no.
JT No way.
A successful class is possible only when all students and teachers get involved and enjoy together.
Team Teaching makes it so much easier for that to happen. If you ever have a chance to team teach, I hope you try what we practice and see if it works in your classroom.
References:
Chaudron, C. (1988). Second language classroom: Researching on teaching and learning. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
Krashen, S.D. (1985). The input hypothesis: issue and implications. Laredo Publishing Company, Inc. CA.
Mayumi Tabuchi
Ritsumeikan Primary School English Program advisor,
Educational Consultant, Teacher Trainer, President of her own school, and series editor for Boost!.
