In this article, the author combined the course topic as “advanced listening” and “contemporary lifestyles and issues in the United Kingdom and the United States”. I think it is a right choice because they are linked to Japanese students' reality and needs.
The author preferred a more interactive teaching style than in a language lab (LL). The author thought the key to the success of the course seemed to be finding the right materials, such as good textbooks, songs, movies, animated cartoons, news programs, TV programs, and so on. For the supplementary materials the author got the idea from one of the student essay and also from her colleagues that students would select listening materials and teach them to the other students. As the author admired herself, I think this is a brilliant idea. I remember that when I was a college student in Japan I was very interested in learning English conversation through romantic American movies. And it worked very well to practice English hearing.
I could find the importance of students’ autonomy of learning not only in this article but also all of the other articles in this ED661 textbook. I realized the importance of the learners’ autonomy in course designing.
The author’s next task was to write start of the year letter to students, describing the course and the author’s expectations. In this letter the author mentioned that the author will act as a resource person and guide in the class and gave four requirements for satisfactorily completing the course.
1. Attendance and punctuality.
2. Completing the homework assignments.
3. Keeping a daily listening diary.
4. Complete a group project.
For the group project, each group would select a listening material related to one topic area of course and design a listening task for that material and teach them to the other students. Thus the author designed the group project to obtain input from the students, offering them choices, and having them take the teacher’s role.
I agree the idea of the group work, however, as the instructor the author should lead the students who take the teacher’s role. Otherwise the students will confuse whether they are learning right or not learning appropriately.
Throughout the practice, the author experienced and found that some change is required for her course. The author expected many things in her course design, however, through the practice the author found how a choice made on principle can fail to work.
When I read about the author’s final course evaluation, I remembered the last article “6 Designing a writing component for teen courses at a Brazilian language institute by Maria Estela Pinheiro Franco”. The author mentioned that how much the students learned from each other, not only from the group projects but just from the stimulation of being with a motivated and active group of learners. Because the same thing was mentioned in the last article 6 that the author cited in this textbook as “Many linguists and psychologists agree that interaction is crucial as a means of exchanging knowledge that would engender both development and learning”. I agree that the students act as “worthy rivals” for one another and will interact to share students’ ideas and build their knowledge.
In this article, the author expected that the students will meet the goal, however, because of a variety of interests, background knowledge, experience, language skills, and so on, the author must alter some aspects of her course. I think this is quite common and those try and error experiences will help the author to improve course design.