■ 研究ノ―ト

Ethical Culture and Class Practice of Teaching Low-level

Japanese University Students English Speaking

Ran FAN ＊

Abstract
Teaching low-level Japanese university students English speaking is challenging. Teachers face students
with different personal experiences, learning backgrounds and purposes. Students do not only need to
improve their linguistic ability. Their motivations are changeable. Psychologically, they are very sensitive
and easily frustrated. Therefore, the class is sometimes low efficient. The goals of the course design are
hardly achieved. However, many teachers are making great efforts to create an English speaking class
helpful for their low-level students. Seigel’s definition of the mind may be inspirational for teachers.
Teachers can design some tasks to make students aware of how the mind works and help students
evaluate their class performances objectively and critically. This article discussed the ethic of an English
class from the mind’s perspective. It is also regarded as the theoretical basis to guide task-based class
practice. After one academic semester, the teacher enlightened students’ awareness of energy and
information flow when they speak English. Students began to think about what is happening to them.
They became proactive and self-regulated.

Keywords
low-level students; ethical culture; mind

Teacher: “Why do you want to go there?”

Section One
Student Characteristics
Limiting to my English speaking class, low-level
students have the following characteristics. From
the linguistic perspective, they have problems with
clear pronunciation and proper intonation. Their
grammar knowledge is limited. Their vocabulary
size is small. Some of the students are good
communicators when they speak Japanese.
However, they can only passively answer teachers’
questions with a few English words. The following
example came from the teacher-student free talk
in my class:
Teacher: “Where do you want to travel?”
Student: “NY.”
Teacher: “Why?”
Student: “sightseeing.”
Teacher: “Which place do you want to go?”
Student: “the Time square.”
Student: “many people, famous.”
However, the reading ability of many students is
not as low as their speaking ability. For instance,
most students have no comprehension problems
when reading the following passage (https://www.
newsinlevels.com), although they may not know
some words.
A man from Australia buys lettuce in a
supermarket. The lettuce is in a plastic bag. The
man brings the bag home. Something is moving
inside.
The man and his girlfriend think that it is a
worm. Then they see a tongue. They know that
the animal is a snake. It is 20 centimeters long.
A hole is in the bag. The snake can get out. The
man quickly puts the bag into another plastic
bag.
The snake is venomous. It is very dangerous.
Officials say that the snake travels 870

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Osaka Seikei University, Faculty of Global Tourism and Management

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 大阪成蹊大学紀要
kilometers. It gets in the bag in a wrapping
factory in another Australian city. (105 words)
(Level 1; 22-04-2021 15:00)
Classroom observations proved that most
students finish reading the news within five
minutes. There are few vocabulary and grammar
obstacles.
From motivational and psychological
perspectives, low-level students have high
expectations of improving their speaking ability.
Quite a few students regard native teachers as
their models. Therefore, the gap between students’
speaking level and the level of the native speaker
models is so large that it leads to students’
pressure (Iimuro & Berger, 2010). Some students
become too nervous to say anything under the
pressure. They perform poorly. When students
experience frustration several times, they become
reluctant to do speaking activities. Some students
expect to learn how to speak a language from
native teachers. As a result, they choose to listen
more instead of practicing speaking in class. In my
English class, most students have such learning
experiences.
My students have little confidence in speaking
English. Through the informal talks between the
teacher and students, I find students have three
worries: (a) They think their pronunciation is not
good enough, (b) They want to express their
thought in English. However, they can neither
think of corresponding English words nor organize
a sentence. They think they need to enlarge their
vocabulary, (c) They are afraid of using the wrong
grammar when speaking. However, by observing
their performances in class, I find many students
underestimate their speaking ability. They pay
more attention to form rather than meaning. They
are unwilling to challenge speaking more than
basic vocabulary and simple expressions.
Therefore, the low-level students in my class are
those who have linguistic problems as well as the
high affective filter (Krashen, 1982) when they
speak English.
Section Two
Ethical Culture of the English Speaking
Class Teaching Low-level Japanese
Students
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国際観光学部篇 第9号
As a foreign language teacher, I have spent
more than ten years helping university students or
adult learners from different countries learn
Chinese, English, and Japanese. At the same time,
I am a foreign language learner, spending more
than ten years learning English, Japanese and
French. This long-time practical experience of
learning a language and teaching how to learn a
language makes me reflect much on what an
English speaking class for the low-level Japanese
students is and why the students should join the
class. I will discuss the three points by class
observations in this section: (a) course design, (b)
teacher-student relationship, (c) students chaos.
2.1 Course Design
Recent teachers face students with different
personal experiences, learning backgrounds and
purposes. More and more teachers pay attention
to the ideology of respecting students’ humanity
and individuality when they design a course.
Teachers may find that a teacher-driven course
design is not always efficient.
First of all, students’ motivation is not stable. In
my class, students’ motivation is changing. During
the three-to-four-year language learning period in
university, many students are willing to speak
when they start learning a language. However,
they lack to keep moving on to discuss various
topics. Some students go on language learning
after a one-year quit. More commonly, students
choose a language course in their first year and
stop learning when they step into the 2nd year. All
these make a step-by-step course design hard to
carry out. Even in a 90-minute lesson, students’
performances are different. Some of them focus on
the beginning 10 minutes of a class and are easily
distracted afterward. Some students get interested
in the class content after warming up activities.
Some students lose interest somewhere during the
progression of the lesson.
Furthermore, teachers cannot fully understand
students’ needs, although they are empathetic to
students when designing a course, choosing
materials, and organizing activities. Teachers and
students may have a generation gap or knowledge
gap. Students may not clarify what they want to
obtain in an English speaking class. Many students
 Ethical Culture and Class Practice of Teaching Low-level Japanese University Students English Speaking

are aware of what they dislike. However, they are energy and information flow. Energy and
not clear about what they want. Not to mention information flow happens inside a person’s body
that students’ needs often change. A course design and between persons through communication.
that satisfies all students does not exist. Siegel (2016) also mentioned that feelings and
Efficiency is difficult to evaluate in my English thoughts are the actualization of the mind.
speaking class. Through creating some topics, I Similarly, in my English speaking class (see Figure
expected to exchange thoughts with students. 1.), students and I are two independent entities
However, students hardly spoke a complete containing energy and information.
sentence. In order to make our communication
smooth, students expressed what they wanted to
say in Japanese. Then I helped students to
organize English sentences. This method reassured
students. However, the effort of changing Japanese
to English cost a lot of lesson time. I doubt how
much students’ English speaking ability can get
improved in this way.
It is hard to ‘teach’ students what to speak in
English. First, we speak English sharing
information and thoughts without consciousness
(Pinker, 1994). When my students asked me to
repeat what I said, I could not repeat the
sentences I used at the last minute. For students,
it is harder to repeat teachers’ sentences than
make their sentences. Therefore, how do we ‘teach’
students to speak under the condition that we
cannot control the strings of words to flow? We
Figure 1.
can record all the spoken sentences and ask
Illustration of energy and information flow in an
students to do imitation drilling. However, it is
English speaking class.
doubtful that students can generate productive
sentences through such drilling because drilling
may lead students to focus much on form. In Energy and information flow inside my body and
addition, many students do not have knowledge of the body of each student. Then we interact. We
some topics I prepared for them. Therefore, I exchange our feelings, thoughts, and memories by
spent much time in my class helping students do speaking English. An English speaking classroom
research. The progression of a lesson is slow. provides teachers and students a place to
experience how the mind works. In this sense,
2.2 The Teacher-student Relationship teachers can guide students to be aware of how
I expect to engage students to prepare an energy and information flow when they speak
English speaking lesson with me, appreciate the English in class.
beauty of a language together, and exchange each
other’s interests and thoughts. However, this ideal 2.3 Student Chaos
cooperative relationship is hard to build if we still My students have high expectations of speaking
organize a class according to what a traditional English like native speakers. However, Rome was
teacher-centered class requires us to do. not built in one day. Students have to take a hard
Siegel (2016)’s description of the mind is journey to grow up from low-level speakers to
inspirational for me to understand the teacher- high-level speakers. Siegel (2016)’s observations on
student relationship from a new perspective. He how his patients’ mind works may vividly describe
proposed that the mind is a system in which how low-level learners feel on the journey. “Rigidity

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 大阪成蹊大学紀要
and chaos were the common patterns of distress
that seemed to “organize” my patients’ lives and
fill them with suffering (Seigel, 2016, p.n.d.).” In my
class, I engaged students in several speaking tasks.
I observed their performances and reminded
students aware how they felt. Through frequent
teacher-student formal and informal talks, students
and I knew better how our mind works when we
spoke English. We began to accept the chaos and
became more motivated to try different ways to
change the disorder to good order. The following
section three will discuss my class practice in
detail.
Section Three
Class Practice
The class practice is task-based because the
task-based teaching approach engages students in
class and cultivates their motivation and self-
regulation (Ellis, et al., 2020). All the tasks were
group activities with two or three students per
group. Students felt free to find their partners. The
course lasted for 14 weeks. The final speaking test
was in the 15th week. Students were required to do
self-assessment after the final test. Seventy first
and second-year Japanese students participated in
the tasks.
3.1 Pronunciation and Intonation Task
My students worry that their English pronunciation
is full of Japanese accent. They think they have
serious pronunciation problems. In order to release
their stress, the purpose of whether students can
pronounce standard English pronunciation and
intonation was not emphasized. The task aimed to
exchange what students and I felt when appreciating
the beauty of a foreign language’s pronunciation
and intonation. The following steps in Figure 2
were done by integrating listening with pronunciation
practice.
First, students were required to read a short
article silently and think carefully about how the
article was pronounced in mind. Then they listened
to a native speaker’s reading two or three times.
Next, they compared their pronunciation and
intonation of the article in mind with what the
speaker pronounced. After that, they tried to read
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国際観光学部篇 第9号
Figure 2.
Illustration of the pronunciation practice
aloud to their partners. In this process of thinking
and practicing, the students and I discussed the
questions: How did we evaluate our pronunciation
and intonation? Were there any problems? How
could we solve the problems? Students found these
steps helped them to assess their pronunciation
and intonation with less anxiety and more
objectiveness. They also became more proactive in
exchanging each other’s methods of improving
pronunciation.
3.2 Story-telling Task
Many stories have clear structures and
interesting contexts. They are good materials for
teachers and students to exchange feelings and
emotions. Moreover, research have shown that
story-telling is helpful for English teaching and
learning (Kiernan, 2005; Fan, 2022) I applied the
story-telling task in my speaking class. Through
group work, students were required to finish the
following subtasks.
Subtask 1: Reading a Story Aloud
Reading aloud engaged students to self-check
and learn pronunciation and intonation. Students
read a story to their partners and listened to their
partners read the same story back. Then they
listened to a native speaker’s reading and find the
appropriate pronunciation and intonation.
Teachers may think they should give students’ a
wordlist and teach students pronunciation.
However, since students’ levels are different, it is
students’ responsibility to create their wordlists.
By reading a story aloud, students can pronounce
old words (refers to the words many students
know the meanings but they do not know how to
pronounce. That is one of the reasons they cannot
 Ethical Culture and Class Practice of Teaching Low-level Japanese University Students English Speaking
use the words when they speak), and new words
correctly. My class proved that most students
could do this subtask independently without
teachers’ support.
Subtask 2: Understand the Meaning of the Story
Many low-level students cannot comprehend a
story when they are reading a story aloud.
Therefore, this subtask involved students’
concentration on understanding the story they had
read aloud. Through group work, students and I
exchanged how we understood the story. Students
were allowed to explain their understanding in
either Japanese or English in this step. In this
process, many students who were easily distracted
from reading English started to concentrate on the
parts of the story they could understand. Or some
students began to think about why they
misunderstood some parts of the story. I reminded
my students to be aware of the feeling of
concentration and provided possible reasons why
their misunderstanding occur based on my own
experience of learning a foreign language.
Subtask 3: Retelling the Story
Students were required to retell a story to other
students and me when they were sure they
understood the story. This step is necessary
because many students who thought they
understood the whole story could not retell the
story in their own words. When analyzing
students’ self-checklists they filled after the
subtasks, I found it hard for many students to
paraphrase and organize a story. Nor is it easy to
use some words from students’ self-made wordlists
to retell a story.
Therefore, in this retelling process, teacher-
student and student-student communications are
necessary. Each student retold the same story to
me and the other students. They exchanged
different ideas about paraphrasing and organizing
a story. By these means, vocabulary and grammar
knowledge students have learned were enforced
(Krashen, 1982). Students gradually deepened their
comprehension of vocabulary and grammar. For
instance, students realized that the following
sentences were used to express what they wanted
to say properly:
Attributive clause: The girl and the boy who
cannot meet could meet on that day.
—5—
Relative adverb: I joined the Matsuri when I
was in elementary school.
Infinitive: God made a milky way to separate
them. (Emphasis added)
After several repetitions of the subtask, students
felt less nervous. They accepted the fact that their
mind could be chaotic when they retold a story the
first several times. They also learned from the
teacher (me) and peers how to paraphrase and
organize sentences. I reminded my students to be
aware of the process of their mind changing from
chaos and inflexibility to clearness, good order, and
flexibility. When some students unconsciously
applied the vocabulary and grammar knowledge
which they learned in high school and was not
used by their peers, I also reminded them to be
aware of the unconsciousness. In order to keep
their interests, different groups were also
distributed to different stories. Students were
required to explain their stories between groups.
They also created questions to test whether their
story was understood by their peers or not. This
activity helps students focus on meaning of a story
and forget about form. Moreover, some students
learned how to ask questions through active
participation.
3.3 Final Speaking Test and Self-assessment
In my English speaking class, assessment is
regarded as a transitional phase, guiding students
to summarize what they felt about their speaking
performances in the last semester and get ready
for the next-step challenge. A simulation of the
final test was done on the 13 th and 14 th weeks
during class. It is more meaningful than the final
test because I designed it to enhance students’ self-
awareness of what they have obtained from the
course. In the simulation, students were required
to read several words (within 1 minute) and a short
passage (within 1 minute) that they learned in class.
Then every two students were grouped. Each group
did a two-minute group discussion with their
partner. Their performance videos were recorded
and posted online. The videos were open to other
students to comment freely. They also finished the
self-assessment in front of me after posting videos.
At the same time, I did the teacher assessment
and exchanged evaluation differences with students.
In this way, students can obtain more objective
 大阪成蹊大学紀要
ways of evaluating their performances.
The simulation was done in a loose time set to
facilitate teacher-student’s communication. Students
were expected to be fully aware of what they have
achieved, what they should make more effort to do
next, and what a self-assessment means to them. It
is helpful for them to understand and reflect on
their mental state of energy and information flow
when they speak English.
The final test was carried out with a strict time
limit. Again, most students felt the chaos and
inflexibility. The test aims to make students aware
that they need to challenge more speaking tasks
on different occasions. They need to experience
and understand the chaos in their mind happen
very often and arbitrarily. When the chaos occur,
students should try different ways to explain the
meaning of their English speaking to others. They
should focus on the process rather than being
obsessive with the negative feelings.
Section Four
Discussion
As noted in section two and section three, my
English speaking class paid much attention to
students’ mind enlightenment rather than teaching
them how to speak English. The current English
speaking class is a complicated and dynamic
system where students’ motivations, needs, and
performances are changing, it is impossible for
teachers to make a universally effective course
design. More importantly, the class practice
introduced in section three proved that students
could become more motivated and self-regulated if
they were provided some knowledge of
understanding how energy and information flow in
person and between persons.
I also noticed that the current time setting of an
English speaking lesson is 90 minutes. That is too
long for my low-level students. Although I
prepared several step-by-step speaking tasks
integrated listening and reading for one lesson, I
still met many difficulties engaging students. Many
students were not used to listening to English,
reading long English passages, and speaking more
than five simple English sentences. Some students
lacked sufficient linguistic ability to discuss topics.
—6—
国際観光学部篇 第9号
Some students could not understand what group
work brings to them and often chatted in Japanese.
Some students wanted to try a task but they
hesitated a lot. Some students were easily
distracted. If we forced them to finish the prepared
tasks of each lesson, students got bored or refused
to do any task.
Teachers should know that all the negative
feelings of their students lead to students’ rigidity
and chaos of the mind. This de-ease of the mind
(Seigel, 2016) happens to many students as well as
teachers themselves. Through self-awareness and
self-reflection, teachers could become more tolerant
of a less cooperative class. Then teachers should
apply some tasks to guide students to know how
the mind works and cooperate with students to
experience the gradual change from chaos to good
order. With frequent practice and teacher-student
communication, students will be aware of what is
happening and gradually begin to control
themselves positively. Furthermore, teachers
should not ‘teach’ students to speak (for instance,
ask students to imitate the conversation drilling)
or interrupt students. Teachers should provide
enough time for students to practice and challenge
themselves so that students can obtain more
strong impression of their energy and information
flow in their bodies and between persons.
Section Five
Conclusion
Through my class observations and reflection on
low-level Japanese students’ English speaking
classes at university, I discussed the ethical culture
and my task-based class practice based on the
mind theory proposed by Seigel (2016) in this
article.
The first section describes the characteristics of
the low-level students. They have linguistic
problems as well as motivational and psychological
problems. All these problems hamper the students
from speaking English in class. The second section
discusses the ethics of my English speaking class
from three points: (a) course design; (b) teacher-
student relationship; (c) students chaos. Because an
English speaking class is a complicated and
dynamic system, a universal teacher-driven course
 Ethical Culture and Class Practice of Teaching Low-level Japanese University Students English Speaking

design does not exist. In order to decrease

students’ anxiety and cultivate their autonomy,
teachers should prepare for the inefficiency of the
course design and avoid stressing the learning
purposes of linguistic aspect to students. More
importantly, teachers should create a more
cooperative class atmosphere and engage students
in various speaking tasks. During supporting
students to finish the tasks, teachers should
communicate with students frequently and guide
students to concentrate on what students are
performing, forgetting about form. The idea of
whether students have improved their speaking
ability should not be taken too much attention in
class. Based on the mind theory proposed by Seigel
(2016), one important course purpose is to make
students aware of how energy and information
flow from chaos to order when they speak English.
Students would carry the feeling to continue their
self-learning of a foreign language in the future
someday.

References
Ellis, R. & Skehan, P. & Li, S. & Shintani, N. & Lambert, C. (2020).
Task-Based Language Teaching. Cambridge University Press.
Fan, R. (2022). Designing an Academic Presentation Course:
Analyzing the Learning Components of TED-Talks. [Doctoral
Dissertation, Kobe City University of Foreign Studies].
Iimuro, A. & Berger, M. (2010). Introducing Autonomy in a
University English Course. Polyglossia, 129-130.
Kiernan, P. (2005). Storytelling with Low-level Learners:
Developing Narrative Tasks. In C. Edwards & J. Willis (Eds).
Teachers Exploring Tasks in English Language Teaching. 58-
68. Palgrave macmillan. DOI: 10.1057/9780230522961_6
Krashen, S. (1982). Principles and Practice in Second Language
Acquisition. Oxford: Pergamon. http://www.sdkrashen.com/
content/books/principles_and_practice.pdf
Pinker, S. (1994). The Language Instinct. Penguin Books. http://
f.javier.io/rep/books/The-Language-Instinct-How-the-Mind-
Creates-Language,-Steven-Pinker.pdf
Seigel, D.J. (2016). Mind: A Journey to the Heart of Being Human.
W. W. Norton & Company; Illustrated edition (October 18,
2016).

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 大阪成蹊大学紀要 国際観光学部篇 第9号

日本の大学生の英語スピーキング能力を向上させる論理的な文化と授業実践

范 然＊

【要旨】
日本の英語が不得意な大学生に英会話を教えることは、とても困難を伴います。授業では、学生それぞれ
の経験や、学習の背景、学習の目的が異なる学生を相手にすることになります。また、学生は必ずしも英語
能力の向上だけが目的ではありません。学生は非常に敏感で挫折しやすいものです。そのため、授業自体が
時には効果がない場合もあり、授業の目的はほとんど達成されることはありません。しかし、多くの教員は
このような学生に対して、役立つ英語を話す手助けをする努力をされています。
シーゲル氏が述べるマインドの定義は、困っている教員にはとても役立ちます。教員は、学生が自らのマ
インドを働かせ、授業内での自分たちのパフォーマンスを客観的・批判的に評価できるよう気づかせようと
しています。本論では、シーゲル氏のマインドの観点から、英語の授業の倫理について述べています。また、
タスク・ベース型での授業実践を理論的な基礎となるものとして取り上げています。
一学期終了時には、学生たちに変化が見え始め、英語を話す時に自分たちにどのようなことが起こってい
るのか気づくことができ、その結果、学生たちは以前よりも主体的・自律的に行動できるようなります。

【キーワード】
低レベルの学生、倫理的な文化、心

＊
大阪成蹊大学 国際観光学部

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