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schmudu519
Joined: 19 Sep 2006
Posts: 3
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 Posted: Mon Oct 09, 2006 11:47 pm Post subject: TEFL Graduate in NOVA |
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Hey Peeps,
I know there have a been a few posts between the difference of what they teach in TEFL courses versus what NOVA trainers give their teachers. But I just want to know other people's opinions who have been through this experience.
I took a TEFL course in Peru and the methodologies they teach there are VERY different than what apparently NOVA is telling me. Here's a brief list of what NOVA trainers have told me that is different than TEFL teachers:
1) Don't explain WHY something is wrong, just correct the mistake.
2) Emphasize speaking and listening over reading and writing.
3) Don't have students read everything.
4) The material is VERY similar from basic learners to advanced learners.
5) Personal Note: The teachers I observed talk WAY too much.
Here's my background: Part of the reason I came to Japan was to become a better teacher (AND live abroad!!), but I'm truly questioning my primary goal of being a better teacher. From the strategies that NOVA trainers are emphasizing it seems as though the education these students are paying for is in my opinion not as well-rounded as it could be and if I choose to be in this environment, I'm wondering: what do I stand to gain by being here (in terms of being a better educator)? I've don't have ANY experience in teaching EFL courses other than the few courses they let us teach in TEFL.
I understand that the whole paragraph above consists of MY own expectations of what EFL courses are supposed to be like. But I'm wondering if I'm alone in these expectations. I also realize that my intentions are VERY different than a lot of the people who come to the BIG 3 in Japan.
I'm seriously considering sticking it out here for a little bit then applying to some TEP programs back in the states...
Alright thanks people! Happy Traveling! |
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japanman
Joined: 24 Nov 2005
Posts: 281
Location: England
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| Posted: Tue Oct 10, 2006 1:47 am Post subject: |
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| The only reason i can think of about why they are different is that the TEFL course was designed by people who know what they are doing and the NOVA one was created by a bunch of fools who have no clue about linguistics or language learning etc. Simple as that. |
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luckyloser700
Joined: 24 Mar 2006
Posts: 308
Location: Japan
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| Posted: Tue Oct 10, 2006 2:09 am Post subject: |
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| japanman wrote: |
| The only reason i can think of about why they are different is that the TEFL course was designed by people who know what they are doing and the NOVA one was created by a bunch of fools who have no clue about linguistics or language learning etc. Simple as that. |
Or it could be that most Japanese have six years of English education under their belts before attending a conversation school. Students ask for conversation practice when they go to NOVA or another eikaiwa school. They've already done the reading and writing thing for years.
Wake the f#$k up! |
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japanman
Joined: 24 Nov 2005
Posts: 281
Location: England
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| Posted: Tue Oct 10, 2006 3:43 am Post subject: |
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| Have to disagree there. I have a CELTA qualification and have taught people from several European countries. They have done stacks of reading and writing at school and ask for conversation classes, the same request as Japanese do. But with Europeans I could use the CELTA techniques very well. It was such a logical approach to teaching conversation. then when I turned up to training, evrything they told me made no sense. It's designed to keep students at low levels but progressing slowly. So that they feel come back for more tickets for a longer period of time. |
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ripslyme
Joined: 29 Jan 2005
Posts: 481
Location: Japan
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| Posted: Tue Oct 10, 2006 6:28 am Post subject: Re: TEFL Graduate in NOVA |
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| schmudu519 wrote: |
I took a TEFL course in Peru and the methodologies they teach there are VERY different than what apparently NOVA is telling me. Here's a brief list of what NOVA trainers have told me that is different than TEFL teachers:
1) Don't explain WHY something is wrong, just correct the mistake.
2) Emphasize speaking and listening over reading and writing.
3) Don't have students read everything.
4) The material is VERY similar from basic learners to advanced learners.
5) Personal Note: The teachers I observed talk WAY too much.
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I wasn't there to observe your class nor do I think that NOVA knows all that much about TEFL but...
1) How was good/concise was your explanation? For example, taking half the period to explain how "I go to shopping" is grammatically incorrect is not the most effective use of class time.
2) Yes, this is English Conversation after all. They can read and write all they want at home.
3) The students should not be reading from the text word-for-word more often than speaking freely using the Main Language
4) The NOVA books are pretty worthless. 
5) If you are speaking more often than the students, then yes you are talking too much.
btw, I have an MA-TESOL and I worked at Nova for 1 year. |
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BritishEnglish
Joined: 08 Sep 2006
Posts: 19
Location: Queretaro, Mexico
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| Posted: Tue Oct 10, 2006 1:26 pm Post subject: |
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For all of those ex NOVA teachers myself included we all know what NOVA does wrong and usually it's what they do to the teachers, however I may well be one of the few pro NOVA people out there with regard what they do do.
I taught with NOVA for 2 years 10 months and was promoted to AT so I worked through all the old system of making up your own lesson within that 10 minute gap now I admit that was shocking but it did allow the good teacher to be able to teach properly. Using the old Quest manuals as your only resource was at least challenging more so than the new books with new teachers just reading off the LMP and as AT I saw some really crap teachers who couldn't even do that.
Anyhow back to the comparisons of TEFL to NOVA's training I did my TEFL course after NOVA and fair enough it wasn't a CELTA (I wish it was) so I can't comment on the differences with that course but everything I was taught at my TEFL course I already knew from my time at NOVA. The various techniques for facilitating conversation and it seemed that they obviously did do some things right. With regard talk time it's drilled into you to reduce talk time. It's what you get marked down everytime on every observation. Unfortunately there are teachers who could talk the hindleg of a donkey and they should be shipped out as soon as possible. But through the various workshops and follow up hours we are taught more things. Back to the gripe that money grabbing NOVA now has no time to do such workshops so valuable training even if just for an hour is lost!
The thing with NOVA that shouldn't be forgotten is that once you knew what you were doing you could teach how you wanted using the material as you saw fit or completely changing it- Unfortunately I think the new teachers at NOVA have no idea how to do this and rely on the same LMP even in repeat lessons. If you know how to teach sod NOVA and teach the proper way. You only get observed every 6 months play the NOVA game on that day and forget it the rest of the time. |
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luckyloser700
Joined: 24 Mar 2006
Posts: 308
Location: Japan
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| Posted: Tue Oct 10, 2006 4:22 pm Post subject: |
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| japanman wrote: |
| Have to disagree there. I have a CELTA qualification and have taught people from several European countries. They have done stacks of reading and writing at school and ask for conversation classes, the same request as Japanese do. But with Europeans I could use the CELTA techniques very well. It was such a logical approach to teaching conversation. then when I turned up to training, evrything they told me made no sense. It's designed to keep students at low levels but progressing slowly. So that they feel come back for more tickets for a longer period of time. |
| japanman wrote: |
| The only reason i can think of about why they are different is that the TEFL course was designed by people who know what they are doing and the NOVA one was created by a bunch of fools who have no clue about linguistics or language learning etc. Simple as that. |
Regarding the above bolded type, wouldn't it take someone with some sort of a clue about linguistics or language learning to design a system like that? I'm not about to stand up for NOVA and say that their method is great for learning conversation; I just don't think that it's a company filled with hapless morons. At least not at the corporate level. I could be wrong, though.
Foreigners who "teach" at big eikaiwa schools are almost never referred to as teachers by the students, staff, or anyone else associated with the school. They're referred to as instructors (koushi), which are not afforded the same respect as teachers (sensei). Yes, I know. People you've met on the street have said "oh, you're eigo no sensei aren't you?" This is so as not to offend you by referring to you as not much more than an English tutor. NOVA calls the staff member in charge of foreign instructors "koushi tanto." Japanese English teachers (actually licensed teachers in Japan) who work at eikaiwa schools are often referred to as "sensei" by the staff and usually don't take crap from the staff. This is because it's an abomination in this country for a licensed teacher (an actual sensei) to take orders from someone who is just working in a sales/administration capacity. Foreigners who teach at eikaiwa schools will never be afforded this level of respect and, even with a CELTA certificate aren't regarded as being any more important than a fresh-out-of-college 22 year-old.
People who go to study at NOVA or most other eikaiwa schools know that they're not going to get high-level English instruction. Those that want that high level of instruction go to where they can get it. Those that go to to NOVA are just looking to get an hour or two of conversation practice with a native speaker each week. They'll learn a few things and fix some problems along the way, but only the truly motivated will ever reach fluency.
Don't delude yourself into thinking that anyone is expecting high-quality English instruction from you at NOVA, GEOS, or wherever. But do your best with what you're given to teach with. These are businesses, and you, as an English instructor at one of them, are a tool. |
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womblingfree
Joined: 04 Mar 2006
Posts: 826
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| Posted: Tue Oct 10, 2006 5:32 pm Post subject: Re: TEFL Graduate in NOVA |
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| schmudu519 wrote: |
I took a TEFL course in Peru and the methodologies they teach there are VERY different than what apparently NOVA is telling me. Here's a brief list of what NOVA trainers have told me that is different than TEFL teachers:
1) Don't explain WHY something is wrong, just correct the mistake.
2) Emphasize speaking and listening over reading and writing.
3) Don't have students read everything.
4) The material is VERY similar from basic learners to advanced learners.
5) Personal Note: The teachers I observed talk WAY too much. |
TEFL & CELTA teach Communicative Language Teaching (CLT). All eikaiwa teach using the Audiolingual Method which has been largely discredited for the past 50 years. Despite this it's still used globally as it's easy to get anyone with a pulse to pick it up and use.
That's the difference. |
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Glenski
Joined: 15 Jan 2003
Posts: 12844
Location: Hokkaido, JAPAN
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| Posted: Tue Oct 10, 2006 10:05 pm Post subject: |
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| Quote: |
| All eikaiwa teach using the Audiolingual Method |
A generalization that is incorrect. |
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TokyoLiz
Joined: 16 Jan 2003
Posts: 1548
Location: Tokyo, Japan
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| Posted: Wed Oct 11, 2006 1:05 am Post subject: |
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I'm a graduate of Vancouver Community College's Diploma TESL program.
Our instructors beat into us the cocept of 80-20 - students speak 80% of the time, teachers 20% in courses that mixed four skills.
When I taught full-time day school in Canada, only at the very beginning levels did we concentrate solely on listening/speaking. At low intermediate to advanced, you need to provide something topical with target vocabulary and language inbedded in it, which they can later refer for self-study.
I quite agree with some previous posts - Eikaiwas are mills for unskilled people to go through formulaic lessons and are meant to keep the customer coming back. Slow progressions, happy smiles and sales pressure are what it's about, and education is peripheral.
It's not good value for money, but then a sucker's born every minute. |
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taikibansei
Joined: 14 Sep 2004
Posts: 811
Location: Japan
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| Posted: Wed Oct 11, 2006 1:35 am Post subject: |
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| luckyloser700 wrote: |
Or it could be that most Japanese have six years of English education under their belts before attending a conversation school....They've already done the reading and writing thing for years.
Wake the f#$k up! |
Here are some questions I like to ask people who make the above point:
Kawasaki, 2000; Mulvey 1999, 2001; Okada, 1995; Takagi, 2001 and Yamada, 1993--among many others--have found no evidence of English writing skills being taught in Japanese junior and senior high schools. In addition, Gorsuch, 1998; Guest, 2000; Jannuzi, 1994; Kitao, K. & Kitao, S. K. 1995; Kitao, K., Yoshida, S., & Yoshida, H., 1986; Kitao, S. K., Kitao, K., Nozawa, K., & Yamamoto, M., 1985; Kitao and Yoshida, 1985; Law, 1994, 1995; Mulvey, 1998, 1999, 2001; Nishijima, 1995; Saeki, 1992; Yoshida, H., 1985; Yoshida, S., 1985; and Yoshida & Kitao, 1986--again, among many others--have demonstrated exhaustively that the "reading preparation" at these schools usually does not include either bottom-up or top-down approaches to handling written materials. (A pretty difficult feat, if you think about--makes you wonder what exactly is going on....)
Now, given this, what is your proof that "they've done the reading and writing thing for years"? How, for instance, do you define the "writing thing"? At which schools is this "writing thing" taught? By whom, and with what qualifications? What reading skills preparation have you witnessed? Were students allowed to demonstrate text comprehension levels through, say, active class discussion, or was their participation confined to a daily struggle with archaic vocabulary lists, dictation exercises and line-by-line translation? Was the teacher's role merely to "provide a model translation and to correct the student's translation" (Hino, 1988)? Was the "focus of attention only initially on the codes of the foreign language; most of the productive energy...directed towards the recoded Japanese version" (Law, 1994)? Or have you experienced something else?
The research shows that most (though not all) people will answer no to that last question.
Sorry for the long post--this is just a pet peeve of mine. For those few interested, I've posted a complete bibliography on this topic several years ago. PM me if you want a copy. |
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luckyloser700
Joined: 24 Mar 2006
Posts: 308
Location: Japan
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| Posted: Wed Oct 11, 2006 2:03 am Post subject: |
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| taikibansei wrote: |
| luckyloser700 wrote: |
Or it could be that most Japanese have six years of English education under their belts before attending a conversation school....They've already done the reading and writing thing for years.
Wake the f#$k up! |
Here are some questions I like to ask people who make the above point:
Kawasaki, 2000; Mulvey 1999, 2001; Okada, 1995; Takagi, 2001 and Yamada, 1993--among many others--have found no evidence of English writing skills being taught in Japanese junior and senior high schools. In addition, Gorsuch, 1998; Guest, 2000; Jannuzi, 1994; Kitao, K. & Kitao, S. K. 1995; Kitao, K., Yoshida, S., & Yoshida, H., 1986; Kitao, S. K., Kitao, K., Nozawa, K., & Yamamoto, M., 1985; Kitao and Yoshida, 1985; Law, 1994, 1995; Mulvey, 1998, 1999, 2001; Nishijima, 1995; Saeki, 1992; Yoshida, H., 1985; Yoshida, S., 1985; and Yoshida & Kitao, 1986--again, among many others--have demonstrated exhaustively that the "reading preparation" at these schools usually does not include either bottom-up or top-down approaches to handling written materials. (A pretty difficult feat, if you think about--makes you wonder what exactly is going on....)
Now, given this, what is your proof that "they've done the reading and writing thing for years"? How, for instance, do you define the "writing thing"? At which schools is this "writing thing" taught? By whom, and with what qualifications? What reading skills preparation have you witnessed? Were students allowed to demonstrate text comprehension levels through, say, active class discussion, or was their participation confined to a daily struggle with archaic vocabulary lists, dictation exercises and line-by-line translation? Was the teacher's role merely to "provide a model translation and to correct the student's translation" (Hino, 1988)? Was the "focus of attention only initially on the codes of the foreign language; most of the productive energy...directed towards the recoded Japanese version" (Law, 1994)? Or have you experienced something else?
The research shows that most (though not all) people will answer no to that last question.
Sorry for the long post--this is just a pet peeve of mine. For those few interested, I've posted a complete bibliography on this topic several years ago. PM me if you want a copy. |
Do you spend so much time being an anal-retentive type that it's impossible for you to understand a point being made?
My point was that Japanese conversation school attendees, for the most part, aren't asking for detailed grammar lessons. They are interested in developing their conversational skills. Many might feel the way that you do about the quality of English education in public schools, and are now only interested in diving into conversation.
I addressed the issue of conversation school English teaching in Japan and what students come to those schools for. They've learned grammar structures in school, they've learned reading and writing basics, and are no longer interested in paying for what they believe to be a repeat of their junior and high school English experience.
A lot of people who are hired to teach in English conversation schools in Japan seem to understand less about their role as instructor than the students of those schools do. You can go on and on about the quality of English education in Japanese public schools, but you're telling it to the wrong person, my friend. Write a letter or two to someone who can make a difference, if you have such a pet peeve. |
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taikibansei
Joined: 14 Sep 2004
Posts: 811
Location: Japan
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| Posted: Wed Oct 11, 2006 2:42 am Post subject: |
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| luckyloser700 wrote: |
Do you spend so much time being an anal-retentive type that it's impossible for you to understand a point being made? |
Quite possibly, though that's not the case here.
| luckyloser700 wrote: |
| My point was that Japanese conversation school attendees, for the most part, aren't asking for detailed grammar lessons. |
No, that wasn't your point. Nice try, though.
| luckyloser700 wrote: |
| I addressed the issue of conversation school English teaching in Japan and what students come to those schools for. They've learned grammar structures in school, they've learned reading and writing basics, and are no longer interested in paying for what they believe to be a repeat of their junior and high school English experience. |
And I'm saying that most of these English conversation students, despite 6-10 years of schooling, haven't learned *beep*--which is why (as others keep suggesting as well) they have so much difficulty "learning" English conversation in your classes. I mean, with their inadequate vocabularies, lack of real reading and writing skills, and with years of grammar "skills" learned in isolation and without opportunities for usage, expecting students to get anything out of the Eikaiwa experience (besides a good time and/or sex) is a bit much.
| TokyoLiz wrote: |
When I taught full-time day school in Canada, only at the very beginning levels did we concentrate solely on listening/speaking. At low intermediate to advanced, you need to provide something topical with target vocabulary and language inbedded in it, which they can later refer for self-study.
I quite agree with some previous posts - Eikaiwas are mills for unskilled people to go through formulaic lessons and are meant to keep the customer coming back. Slow progressions, happy smiles and sales pressure are what it's about, and education is peripheral. |
TokyoLiz puts it perfectly in the above. Eikaiwa is a business, one that continues to exist at least partly thanks to the persistence of the myth luckloser espouses--i.e., that Japanese students learn/master reading and writing in school and just need to hone those speaking skills to be fluent. Yeah, right.  |
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luckyloser700
Joined: 24 Mar 2006
Posts: 308
Location: Japan
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| Posted: Wed Oct 11, 2006 3:22 pm Post subject: |
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| Using the most effective English teaching methods possible, in what time frame do you expect the average Japanese English student to achieve success in becoming fluent? What percentage of of eikaiwa students have been studying at the same school for that amount of time, or longer? What percentage of students at eikaiwa schools are being strung along purposely, just as you say? And how would this intentional watering down of lessons benefit an eikaiwa company if, in fact, the average student drops out somewhere between 6 months and 1 year of study? I believe most of the larger eikaiwa schools make a living off of new students. Continuing students don't account for much of eikaiwa profit. If you have evidence to the contrary, let's see it. |
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luckyloser700
Joined: 24 Mar 2006
Posts: 308
Location: Japan
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| Posted: Wed Oct 11, 2006 3:41 pm Post subject: |
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Anyway, I'm not defending the quality of education in eikaiwas. There's a hell of a lot of room for improvement. Just as there is in the English education programs for public schools.
Eikaiwa schools exist and lots of Japanese people pay money to study at these schools. Thinking that most of them that do so are naive and are allowing themselves to be duped is pretty narrow-minded. It's arrogant. |
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