15. A New Approach to Teaching

Program innovations that encourage teachers to work together and share ideas is sometimes called team teaching. This concept is defined as “a group” of two or more persons assigned to the same students at the same time for instructional purposes in a particular subject or combination of subjects. An experiment in team teaching was carried otit at a college in Japan, and three case studies were analyzed in order to discover how far team teaching improved the academic performance of the students.

The school is a fully-accredited, four-year liberal arts college aimed at developing bilingual students (fluent in English and Japanese) who employ critical thinking while pursuing a liberal arts degree. All courses, except those in Japanese Expression, use English as the language of instruction. In team teaching language specialist (LS) instructors and discipline specialist instructors (DS) work together. They jointly plan syllabuses and lessons, and teach together in the same classroom.

The student's educational background presents some obstacles to achieving success in the curriculum. In high school, Japanese students have limited experience in speaking and listening to English. Their secondary education has been predominantly passive in nature, and they have had little exposure to academic class work in English. In addition, they enter the college with a varied proficiency in English — from low-intermediate to advanced.

In the fifrst case study, syllabus arrangement and teaching style, as well as the students’ backgrounds were intensively scrutinized. The LS had had extensive experienqe in teaching English as a foreign language, and the DS was a history teacher from the US. Together they guided the students through a series of well-structured tasks to finally enable them to produce a properly written five-page report. They found that the best way to do this was to both be present in the classroom at the same time, and integrate language teaching with the history lesson.

In the second case study, lesson planning was emphasized. In this case, the DS was a professor of religion. The steps that they followed were: appropriate pre-reading activities, followed by feasible reading tasks, and then follow-up activities until the stu4ents could read authentic college-level religious texts. An innovative technique used by this pair was to split the class up into discussion groups, and both teachers would circulate among the groups to facilitate comprehension.

In the third case study, the stress was on classroom interaction, while at the same time striving to imbue the students with abstract concepts. These problems were tackled, and partly solved by the LS and DS devising a series of mini-lectures recorded on audio-cassettes for the students to listen to on their own. The students would complete worksheets while listening to the texts. Then, as a team, the LS and DS agreed on strategies they could use to show students how to read authentic college material actively.

In general, those who took part in the case studies agreed that team teaching is a new approach to pedagogy. It substantially alters the points of view and approaches of the teachers. But, more importantly, it was found that team teaching is particularly useful when attempting to impart knowledge to students in their second language. Now, the possibility of applying team teaching to other college teaching situations is being widely discussed. Moreover, experiments are being devised to introduce the concept into middle schools in the US.

QuestIons 1—3

The author of the reading passage mentions several problems with the students’ English-language background. One of these problems is that it is “limited experience.” Identify THREE other problems.
Using NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS for each answer, write the three problems separately in boxes 1-3 on your answer sheet.

1.
2.
3.

Questions 4—8
Below is a list of the areas offocus of the three case studies. Complete the list. Choose ONE or TWO WORDS from the passage for your answers. Write your answers in boxes 4-8 on your answer sheet.

Case Study One:
4.
5.

Example
Students' backgrounds

Case Study Two:
6.

Case Study Three:
7.
8.

Questions 9—11
Complete the summary below. Choose your answers from the list A-F below the summary, and write them in boxes 9—11 on your answer sheet.
N.B. There are more phrases than spaces, so you will not use them all. You may use any of the phrases more than once.

An experiment in (F) (example) was carried out at a college in Japan, in the form of three case studies. It was hoped that the new mode of instruction would overcome the problem presented by the students’ (9)_____ .In the first two case studies,
(10)_____ teachers were more satisfied with the results than their colleagues. But in Case Study 3, almost (11)_____ of both types of teachers expressed satisfaction with the experiment.

A. syllabus arrangement
B. educational background
C. equal percentages
D. facilitate comprehension
E. language specialist
F. team teaching

Questions 12 —13
12. What were the two different specializations of the teachers who took part in the case studies?
13. Which course at the college where the case studies were carried out is NOT taught in English?

Questions 14—15
Choøse the appropriate letter A —D, and write them in boxes 14—15 on your answer sheet.

14. The objective of the case studies was:
A. to improve the English ability of Japanese students.
B. to get teachers of different subjects to follow the same curriculum.
C. to see if team teaching improved students’ performance.
D. to streamline the cooperation between teachers and school administrators.

15. The results of the case studies suggest that:
A. team teaching helps students to grasp knowledge in a second language.
B. team teaching is only effective between teachers with the same cultural background.
C. older teachers should appraise younger teachers’ methods.
D. team teaching requires the re-writing of school curricula.

Answer: 1-predominantly passive, 2-little exposure, 3-varied proficiency, [the above three in any order]
4-syllabus arrangement, 5-teaching style [the above two in either order] 6-lesson planning, 7-classroom interaction, 8-abstract concepts [the above two in either order] 9-B, 10-E, 11-C, 12-language and discipline/discipline and language,
13-Japanese Expression, 14-C, 15-A

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