1. The Rationale for Students' Seeking Culturally Different Criteria for Decision-making
There are a number of ends that can be considered for ESL or EFL students to use English as a means or a communicative tool as long as they are interested in those ends. However, amongst Himeji Dokkyo University students it is quite difficult to find something common as well as something interesting. Reading, generally known as a hobby, can be an easy and comfortable activity, but reading what? Does it really motivate the students? The answer would be "Some might, but others would not probably show their interest." Besides, it is quite hard to select all different reading materials according to each student's interest and level unless the teacher discovers a super universally interesting reading material or provides fully organized packages of interesting reading materials. Conversing and corresponding can be again easy and comfortable activities, but conversing what? And corresponding what? Why do they want to do that? What are the students at HDU really looking for although they often say that they really want to be able to use English fully as a communicative tool and encounter different cultures? They are not quite sure yet what they are seeking, but they are presuming what seems to be different might be quite exciting. At least they are getting sure that the new world with vast amount of information is right there through English, especially after the development of the inter-net.
The studies (Karita,1995, 1996) have shown that the students at HDU are interested in the international community and that to be more specific they are interested in different values or criteria for decision-making. Of course, they do like to use English as a communicative tool and enjoy their communicational activities with other people who have different cultural backgrounds. With both the two together, they are assuming to learn that people with different cultural backgrounds have different values, views, and thoughts, which would lead them to discover different life styles and widen their personal scope through English communicational activities. And hopefully the students would gain their communicative skills, the by-product, as they try to find culturally different criteria for decision-making.
2. Focus on Students' Questions or Hypotheses Rather than Providing Them with Unified Themes
Often what students have hypothesized are stereotyped because they are assuming that people with different cultural backgrounds would have different values, views, and thoughts, and the results bewteen Japanese students and some students abroad might turn out to be the same. Feeling somewhat discouraged but learning that we are basically the same human beings, students might discover on their own that some are basically the same but that some can be different, quite different. They might wonder why. Their quest activities start again.
It is important to encourage students to make up their own questions rather than providing them with unified themes because what they have wondered is the starting point of their quest activity and not the teacher's.
This leads to the theory of how important students' internal motivation is as compared with external motivation (Deci, 1975) (Brown, 1994). The whole process of this quest activity is like a game or similar to the game introduced as a game-type CALL program (Karita, 1992). In the game-type CALL program the students did become enthusiastic to find out the following page or changing the scene after their successful playing on the previous part. Likewise, in this quest activity the main motivational factor is the process of turning to the next page to find out how different the outcomes of the students' hypotheses are. In this respect the students have to create their own games and the pages containig the results. Although it takes a while to create their own games, they are sure what their goals are and how they can achieve their goals, comparing and pondering the outcomes of their questions or hypotheses.
3. Reaching Out to People Abroad
There are several things students have to prepare for actually contacting people outside this country, Japan.
(1)Making up Hypotheses
It is important for students to look over some theories before coming up with their hypotheses. However, their original ideas coming from their real life might be more appealing to people abroad rather than the hypotheses taken right out of some textbooks on cross cultural issues. Just for their implications some general thoughts are introduced when cross cultural issues are often discussed such as speech vs. silence, uniquness vs. harmony, individualism vs. groupism, seeking dreams vs. seeking stability or security in life, controlling nature vs. placing oneself in nature, being innitiators vs. being followers, etc. (See the references.)
Whenever a student comes up with a cross cultural question with his or her hypothetical assumption, other students in his or her class respond to the question and discuss it to find out whether the question would be specific with some terms defined, appropriate to the students of HDU and to the people abroad, and interesting enough to ask the people abroad for the comparative analyses. If the result of one student's hypothesis in the class gained other students' attention and curiosity, he or she could go ahead and do the survey through e-mailing in the inter-net or interviewing some people abroad.
Making up a questionnaire may be somewhat difficult at first. The students have to think up specific situations, the possible questions in those situations, and the possible responses for those questions with the assumptions which the students have made through their hypotheses. Sometimes they have to limit the number of the altenatives to differetiate clearly the assumptions of the hypotheses. On the other hand they also have to include the possible responses in the alternatives lest they should eliminate the ones who have different views, which they are really looking for. (Some of the students' hypotheses are shown in Appendix-1.)
This activity seems to be quite challenging to some students since they used to find just one right response out of four or five items in the exams which they have had for almost seven or eight years or even longer years. In other words, they tend to think that there is always a single right answer. It means that instead of widening their view they have learned to narrow down their view to find the generally acceptable response. In this case the generally acceptable response means what the teachers say at either their public or private schools or at their cram schools or what the answer pages say in their workbooks.
With such a view in their minds it becomes rather difficult for the students to think up different alternatives and to realize that the situations they have pointed out can be interpreted in different ways; thus the responses might become different as well. The tendency for their seeking a single point of view might have been brought about by many problems they have worked out by hearing "In this context this interpretation is the generally acceptable one; therefore, it can be the most appropriate choice. "It", which has to be singular and has never been plural; otherwise, the exam maker has made a mistake, a serious mistake especially for the entrance exam, becomes the answer. They may or may not know if such a statement could sound unsophisiticated in real life.
The exercises like "Just how many interpretations can you think up from a single sentence like 'I have broken legs' or a sentence like 'Johnny is throwing bananas on the refrigerator?'(Karita, 1986)" can be a good starting point to enable such students not to get puzzled by different views or by the fact that there are a plural number of interpretations, which can be "the answers" to them at first. However, in fact they might later realize that there is no such a right answer in society even with the use of English which the students are inclined to presume to be almost the same as it is in their English textbooks, workbooks, dictionaires, and the right answers in the exams as they might find like in a math problem. They might also realize that those different interpretations could create humors and that the language itself is dead unless human interactions are attached to it. Or even just to fill in the gap between the English language they used to see in their workbooks and the one actually used in communication, the following two activities might become indispensable to the students.
(2)Using E-mail for the Survey
The first step for the students is to gain their own e-mail addresses. Fortunately almost all the students at Himeji Dokkyo University can have their e-mail addresses if they wish to do so. So the students in this seminar class register their e-mail addresses through the Machintosh computers in class. A week after their regstrations they can start using their e-mail addresses to do their survey activities. It is important to tell them that their passwords at the time of their registration are quite important and should not be forgotten.
The second step for the students is to write a somewhat friendly letter including their self introductory speech. Although the e-mail itself is a kind of letter, spoken language is often used to show their friendliness, especially between the students. Since the ways they write their e-mail letters might affect the people abroad to decide whether they should write them back or not, they should include some friendly statement. However, most of the students in the seminar class might have already known how to be friendly with people abroad since they are in the same generation. For example, "If you responded to my question, I would tell you my secret." Never has such a statement been taught to the students. But they just come up with such an idea.
Then if the students were asked what they had written back to the people abroad as their secrets after they had received the responses of the survey, they just said they were real secrets. This example shows how to write friendly e-mail letters should rather be left up to the individual students and their unique characters. After all, that part is really in their privacy anyway and the border line was just shown through the example. The important part is whether the students are communnicating with people abroad and getting the responses back from them to complete their research. (A sample e-mail letter is shown in Appendix-2.)
The third step is to introduce the students some lists of people abroad who are capable of correspnding with them by e-mailing. For this seminar class "the pen pal exchange" (its web page is: http://www.iwaynet.net/~jwolve/pal.htm) through the netscape is used and its two listings are introduced to the students. They are
NATIONAL Pen Pal Listing (United States) Updated Jul. 28, 1997.
(The address is: http://www.iwaynet.net/~jwolve/nat_a.htm)
WORLD Pen Pal Listing (International) Updated Jul. 28, 1997.
(The address is: http://www.iwaynet.net/~jwolve/wor_a.htm)
The students choose about 30 to 50 people hopefully out of the same state or country. Depending on their hypotheses they also choose the age groups. However, most of the students like to correspond with their same age group, so the people between the age of seventeen and the age of twenty four are usually selected. Their selecting processes may not follow the random selection rule to be able to generalize their hypotheses, but they can still somewhat reach to the level of comparing the outcomes of their surveys bewteen the people abroad and the students of Himeji Dokkyo University. Besides, the most important part of this whole activity is to use English as a communicative tool.
In this respect the teacher's primary role is fulfilled. It is that the students are provided with the chances to communicate with the people abroad in their target language. They have their own goals, know-hows of their survey, and enthusiasm. If they can be so enthusiastic, they might also go to a foreign country of their choice and do the survey activities, which is called interviewing.
Surprizingly, about two third of the students in the writer's seminar class would love to go abroad during their college life. They would either like to participate in a one-month home stay program or a one-month intensive English program or could have the both. They would rather like to go there on their own so that they can avoid the crowd of Japanese students and ending up talking with the Japanese people regardless of their being in the foreign countries and their firm decision to practice communicating in English. So this survey activity provides these students with the great opportunities to use English. (3)Interviewing for the survey
In the writer's student teaching in 1975, a male Mexican student at a U.S. university, taking a summer intensive English program, commented that he thanked his teacher for giving him the assignment to interview some students on campus so that he could have a good excuse to talk to some young ladies on campus and could make friends with some of them he talked with. The assignment was to get some information of some students on campus through interviewing.
Of course, the content of the interview can be anything as long as the students can use English. However, anything can be more difficult than something. Going all the way from Japan to a foreign country and asking some students at a university how they are and what their hobbies are might not ruin their enthusiasm for a while, but certainly discourages both the students to further discuss such a matter with excitement unless they hit it off well with each other.
The theme, "Culturally Different Criteria for Decision-making", in this seminar does not only give the students the chances to communicate with people abroad but also give both the interviewer and the interviewee the chances to ponder what their values are. Besides, the interveiwer has already had the data of the survey taken at Himeji Dokkyo University, so the interviewer has the valuable source of information if he or she wishes to talk about his or her survey further with the interviewee such as why the interviewee responds that way, how it differs from the data the interviewer has, and if they are different why they turn out to be different. Even if the responses are the same, they discover that their views are the same. Anyway, this interviewing activity is the moment of their discovery, which could be the moment of their realizing another view or could be the moment of their widening their scope of life, or could be the world view, or could be the enlightenment of either or both the interviewer and interviewee.
Never have they dreamed that this whole activity could bring such an exciting opportunity in which English is taking such a wonderful role of communication and discovery, which is far from the role of English they had had at the time they used to cram for the college entrance exams--English was mainly for the test taking activity and making the pseudo-hiearachy of standard deviations--. The gap between the two roles might even give the students a shock.
With that shock in some part of their minds and great experiences of having encountered different cultures and with their solid interviewing expericences--speaking English probably the most in their life so far--, the students come back to Japan and give their full reports in the seminar class without realizing that they start experiencing the re-entry shock. Since they are asked to obtain a map of the place they have visited and to take the pictures of the places or situations which they have thought different from the ones In Japan, their presentations become such an excitement. They also talk about the people they have interviewed and about the most exciting results of their interview in comparison with the data taken at Himeji Dokkyo University.
4. Collecting and Analyzing the Students' Data
In order to have a quantitative analysis of the comparative data between the responses taken at Himeji Dokkyo University and the ones taken from the people abroad, each group should have at least twenty responses. In the survey taken with the use of e-mail the number of responses usually reaches to forty or fifty percent of what has actually been sent to. Some of the e-mail addresses are not up-dated, so the letters may not even reach to the persons indicated in the listings. It means each student in this seminar class should send the e-mail to approximately fifty people abroad to obtain the twenty responses. So the students naturally learn to do copying and pasting processes in the editing function of the computer. And just changing the names they are addressing to such as "Dear ______," becomes the only different part of the content. This may not sound that they are practicing communicating much with those people, however, the students are very much encouraged to write back to those who actually give them the responses with their individual comments and thankful words, considering each response of each unique and valuable person abroad.
Likewise, the responses taken by interviewing are also valuable. The students, each taking the role of an interviewer, are advised to keep good track of the interviewees' comments though some may get tired of talking to more than twenty people on the same day on an unfamilar campus in a foreign country. The interviewer may start asking a student by saying "Excuse me, but I am doing a survey on culturally different criteria for decision-making . . . Would you kindly respond to this question?" And some of the interviewees might ask "why are you doing this?" Could the interviewer immediately reply by saying "This is for my seminar class" or "This is for my class report"? At any rate they might successfully be able to collect more than twenty responses unless the security guard on campus stops their interviewing and unless the students fail to come back to Japan for some reason.
Supposing the students could succeed to obtain the data either or both by e-maling and by interviewing, the chi-square table is used to compare the results. On one side two categories can be written: they are choice A and choice B. And on the other side another two categories can be written: they are the data taken at Himeji Dokkyo University and the data taken from the people abroad. Usually these numbers can be alphabetized as p, q, r, and s, and the equation of the chi-square table is as follows:
the data, p for choice A and q for choice B,
taken at Himeji Dokkyo University
the data, r for choice A and q for choice B,
taken from the people abroad
The chi-square= (p-P)(p-P)/P+ (q-Q)(q-Q)/Q + (r-R)(r-R)/R + (s-S)(s-S)/S
P = (p+q)(p+r) / p+q+r+s
Q = (p+q)(q+s) / p+q+r+s
R = (r+s)(p+r) / p+q+r+s
S = (r+s)(q+s)/ p+q+r+s
The level of significancy can be found if the figure of the chi-square is larger than 3.841 at .05, and it becomes more and more significant if the figure is larger than 6.635 at .01, larger than 7.879 at .005, and larger than 10.828 at .001 (Rohlf and Sokal, 1981, 98).
5. Concluding this paper with the words. . .
With their chi-square tables, the figures, and sometimes with the maps and pictures, the students are trying to do the best they could do to inform to the class what they have discovered. The language they speak is English, but it becomes better for them to use English since some of the data they have gathered are right out of those made by English speakers; so it is easier for the students to deliver them by just reading outloud. VID or OHP(Over-Head Projector) is used to show the chi-square table, the figure, and sometimes the maps and pictures. They also talk about why the results turn out to be the same or different while introducing some of the comments.
With these plans and settings, the readers of this paper might wonder why the writer does not intend to reveal the actual outcomes of the students' presentations. This is what all about here trying to reach and prove. No one would fail to feel anxious to see the outcomes, neither would the students in the seminar class. That is why with great enthusiasm the students, even if having a hard time proceeding their survey, are eager to find out what is on the next page or what the outcomes are going to be. And no matter how anxious to see the next page, the readers must allow the writer to conclude this paper with his words, "Curiosity is not only for the main motivating factor for the language learning but also for proceeding further."
-----Please see "Comparing Culturally Different Values for Decision-making through the Inter-net Enables Students to Gain Enthusiasm in Aggressive English Communication for Discovery, Enlightenment, and Global Values"------
Appendix-1
Some students' hypotheses
Hypothesis 1:
If you were laid off at a company for some reason and received one million yen (about ten thousand dollars) from the company, what would you do?
Choice A: You would open a little shopwith that money since you have always wanted to run a shop, which was your dream.
Choice B: You would get a position in another company, knowing the wage would be a little lower than the one in the previous company.
Hypothesis 2:
If you were invited to a dinner by your boss to talk about some business at the company you work for and you had also planned to have your wife or husband's birthday party in the same evening, what would you do?
Choice A: You would go to the dinner to talk about some business with your boss, telling your wife or husband to postpond the party.
Choice B: You would refuse your boss's invitation and enjoy the party with your wife or husband as you had planned.
Hypothesis 3:
If you and your boyfriend/girlfriend decided to go to a movie and asked him/her which film he/she wanted to see and then his/her response was different from what you wanted to see, what would you do?
Choice A: You would not tell him/her what you wanted to see and try to enjoy watching the movie he/she requested.
Choice B: You would tell him/her what you really wanted to see and try to convince him/her to watch the one you chose instead of watching his/her choice of film.
If you and your boyfriend/girlfriend decided to eat at a restaurant and asked him/her whether he/she would like to eat at an Italian restaurant or at a Japanese restaurant and his/her response was different from what you wanted, what would you do?
Choice A: You would not tell him/her which restaurant you would prefer and try to enjoy having dinner at his/her choice of restaurant.
Choice B: You would tell him/her which restaurant you would really prefer and try to convince him/ner to have dinner at your choice of restaurant.
Hypthesis 4:
If your friend suggested that they cut a class and go to a concert next week and that three out of four friends agreed to go to the concert, what would you do?
Choice A: You would attend a class and not go to the concert.
Choice B: You would cut a class and go to a concert.
Hypthesis 5:
What would you do if your friend asked you to show your answer to him/her at the mid-term exam? Your friend have often helped you in many ways.
Choice A: You would show your anwer to him/her.
Choice B: You would not show your answer to him/her.
Then, your friend somehow managed to see your answer, however, the teacher questioned you later whether your friend cheated or not. What would you do?
Choice A: You would tell the teacher about your friend's cheating in the exam.
Choice B: You would not tell the teacher about your friend's cheating in the exam.
Hypothesis 6:
You entered the classroom quietly because you were late. Then the majority of the students in the class were raising their hands. Now, what would you do?
Choice A. You would raise your hand, following the majority.
Choice B. You would go to the teacher and ask the content of the question. Then you might be scolded.
Choice C. You would keep sitting down without raising your hand.
Hypothesis 7:
Suppose your closest friend's mother died and your friend asked you to come to his/her mother's funeral. But You had an important meeting on that day. (Your salary is good and you like your job very much.) If you missed the meeting, you might be fired. If you missed the funeral, he/she might not talk to you forever. What would you do?
Choice A: You would go to the funeral.
Choice B: You would go to the meeting.
Hypothesis 8:
Suppose you had a son with a career but he had a habit of oversleeping. One day he had an appointment with his boss at 9:00 a.m., but he was still sleeping even at 8:00 a.m. It would take him about an hour to get to the office. What would you do?
Choice A: You would wake him up and lead him to go to the office immediately.
Choice B: You would do nothing because he was grown up and would have to take care of himself.
Hypothesis 9:
Suppose you had a career and got married and bought a new house. Then your boss ordered you to move to a new office which was too far to commute from the place you were living. Your wife or husband was working, enjoying living in the house. If you accepted the order, you would probably move to the new city and live there by yourself, what would you do?
Choice A: You would move to the new city and live there by yourself.
Choice B: You would refuse the order even if you might be told to be laid off from the company and live in the new house with your wife or husband.
What would you do if you had two children?
Choice A: You would move to the new city and live there by yourself.
Choice B: You would refuse the order even if you might be told to be laid off from the company and live in the new house with your family.
Hypothesis 10:
Suppose you fell in love with the same person your best friend was in love as well. When you recognized it, what would you do?
Choice A: You would give up the person you fell in love with.
Choice B: You would never give up the person and continue to be in love with the person.
Choice C: You would support your best friend to be able to love the person.
(For futher details please see the web-page:
http://www2.gol.com/users/arise0mk/)
Appendix-2
A sample of a student's e-mail
Dear ,
Hi! I'm Miki from Japan. I saw your name and some interesting comment about yourself with your e-mail address in the listing of the World Penpal and decided to write to you. I'm twenty years old and a coed at Himeji Dokkyo University. My major is English. My hobbies are listening to pop music, singing karaoke songs, and taking trips. Right now I am taking a seminar class called "Culturally Different Criteria for Decision-making", in which I'm trying to do a research on the culturally different views of one's being independent. My brother is a university graduate and works at a compnay, but he has a habit of oversleeping every morning. So my mother wakes him up. I wonder whether my brother is called a grown-up and being independent. Maybe not. What about in your culture?
Suppose you had a son with a career but he had a habit of oversleeping. One day he had an appointment with his boss at 9:00 a.m., but he was still sleeping even at 8:00 a.m. It would take him about an hour to get to the office. What would you do?
Choice A: You would wake him up and lead him to go to the office immediately.
Choice B: You would do nothing because he was grown up and would have to take care of himself.
It sounds fun, doesn't it? I have to write a report on this, so I would appreciate it if you could respond to this question.
Thank you.
Speak to you again.
Miki
P.S. If you could respond to this question, I would tell you my secret.
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Trying to Find Culturally Different Criteria for Decision-making Encourages Students to Use English as a Means to Achieve an End and Develops Their Communicative Skills as a By-product
The students in the writer's seminar class have done some survey activities such as sending e-mails to people abroad, selecting some penpals out of the two listings of the web page, which are NATIONAL Pen Pal Listing (United States) and WORLD Pen Pal Listing (International), and going to foreign countries and interviewing some people there. They collect the data of the people abroad to compare the data of the students taken at Himeji Dokkyo University. Part 1 mainly discusses how the students come up with their hypotheses, how they do their survey activities, and how they are motivated to do so. The students are using English as a means of communication to achieve an end, some culturally different criteria for decision-making, which is so exciting to find out through this methodology that they seem to be doing a kind of game with much enthusiasm. And as a by-product they seem to be acquiring the communicational skills through their experiences.
and
Choice A Choice B
The Chi-square Table
The Equation of the Chi-square
Masakazu KARITA