Ask a Japanologist
Enlivening Emergency Remote Teaching with Interesting Content and Qualitative Evaluation
Focus on International Families in a Class on Bilingualism
In Japan, in an English as a Foreign Language context of Emergency Remote Teaching, I have disincentivized copying and auto-translation by qualitative grading. There is some ambiguity, and intercultural communication research surprisingly shows Japan scoring highly in avoidance of uncertainty. In my view, however, they dislike it because ambiguity is so pervasive in their language and communication style. By the same token, they can accept the flexibility of ambiguity and even take encouragement from it if it seems to allow them leeway as compared to authoritarianism.
Thus, homework assignments partly in lieu of attendance can be pass-fail with even their attempt counting as something in a distance education situation where student presence or engagement is vital but not guaranteed. Free opinion essay questions can be added to objective ones. Much explaining of subject matter in writing sometimes cannot get through as well as in the classroom, particularly in the students’ second language.
In a class on Bilingualism, I appealed to students’ admiration for the many half-Japanese celebrities and asked students to write how we know that they are bilingual and bicultural. Recently I try to end around rather than to reinforce the over-idealization of bilingualism that makes it other people’s business rather than the goal of their own foreign language education and a matter of degree.
Under the influence of quantitative evaluation, however, students find a way to foil this insight. When the celebs had a multilingual and multicultural background, like Naomi Osaka, students would write that they are not bilingual but rather trilingual or multilingual. In the bilingualism discipline in applied linguistics, educators advocate that international families are doing well if both parents speak their strongest language carrying their true emotions to their children, not to yield to the community language and leave them little more than monolingual. I focus on bilingualism because it is well within reach, and even parents with the same background can use their second language sometimes with children from birth without any loss of native speaker fluency in the community language.
To make it crystal clear, I gave students an analogy like having two dogs and a cat. It is still true that you have two dogs. Yes, a trilingual is also bilingual. Naomi Osaka heard Japanese from her mother and some Haitian Creole from her grandparents, but even her Japanese speaking is limited for lack of opportunities to use it in the U.S. Most students could revise their understanding, but one student changed her answer in the discussion forum from yes to no, perhaps counting the three pets. Further written explanation was therefore needed to focus on the two dogs.
Without classroom amenities, it becomes more important to have interesting content as well as greater flexibility. Thus, I next had the students click though a presentation on International Marriage and Bilingualism online at Slideshare, then answer fun quiz questions. Alluding to the half Japanese, my happy-go-lucky sons in Tokyo included, I let them pass with over half of the multiple-choice questions answered correctly. They are not incentivized to copy others, while top scores could get a bonus. Here is the presentation with fun quiz answers added that the students will see later: https://www.slideshare.net/waoe/international-marriage-and-bilingualism-with-fun-quiz-answers
Author’s life work at Humanities Commons: https://japanned.hcommons.org
