Cultural Portfolio

​This is a writing-intensive course offered by Middlebury College to assist participants of Middlebury School in Japan in Tokyo. This course includes discussions and weekly field-trips, and provides a framework within which to turn casual observations of students’ daily activities and incidents into opportunities to gain in-depth knowledge of Japanese language, culture, and society.

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Student Portolio

PROGRAM  FEATURES

Education Abroad Program Name	Middlebury C.V. Starr School in Japan
Level	Undergraduate
Number of Credits for Course	3 per trimester
Number of Credits for Education Abroad Program	9 per trimester
Does this course carry major/minor credit? Elective credit?	Credits earned for this course can be used to fulfill major/minor requirement for Japanese.
Typical Enrollment	5-10
Language of Instruction	Japanese
Duration	Quarter
Time Spent On-Site	Quarter
Last Taught	Spring 2013
How many times has this course been taught?	2
Curriculum Strong Points/Innovations	These writing-intensive courses include discussions and weekly field-trips, and provide a framework within which to turn casual observations of daily activities and incidents into opportunities to gain in-depth knowledge of Japanese language, culture, and society.

 

Faculty Bio

Sanae EdaAffiliation: C.V. Starr-Middlebury School in Japan | [email protected]

Sanae Eda, Associate Professor and Director of the School in Japan. Sanae received her first M.A. in Teaching English as a Second Language from the University of Puerto Rico (1994), and a second M.A. and a Ph.D. in Japanese Linguistics and Pedagogy from the Ohio State University (1997, 2004). She held a position as an Educational Exchange Program (EEP) Lecturer and taught Japanese at the University of Puerto Rico for three years, where she was the first teacher ever to teach Japanese. Sanae taught at the Middlebury College Japanese Language School for eight summers between 1994-2004 and served as an assistant director of the Japanese School in 2004. She held a position as an Assistant Professor and taught Japanese and linguistics at University of Kansas from 2004 until the spring of 2010, before returning to Middlebury in 2010 as the director of the School in Japan. Sanae loves jogging and learning foreign languages.

What inspired you to create this course?
The motivation came from two sources. First, I wanted to create a course that would assist study abroad students to become able to interact in and with the culture with native-like competence. The process had to be structured, gradual, and student-centered. Second, I wanted to find a way to keep record of students’ progress during their study abroad. In this course, each student creates and maintains an on-line portfolio to archive their writing samples. In the end, their portfolio serves to demonstrate their progress in linguistic abilities and showcase their academic accomplishments.

What are the goals for this course?
A long term goal of this course is stated in the syllabus as follows: The ability to be somebody — someone who moves easily and effectively — in the culture and society you’re studying, by means of the language you’re studying. Over the long run, this will come about as you use the language in developing friendships and lasting associations with people who live in that culture and language.

What challenges have you encountered in designing a course to be taught abroad?
One of the challenges has been to to keep a balance between the depth of understanding and the experiential aspect of learning. In order to arouse the students intellectual curiosity, I assigned reading materials in English. Students would then discuss the content in the Japanese language, which was then followed by a field trip. I spent a lot of time selecting reading assignments that would address aspects of Japanese language and culture with appropriate depth of scholarship with enough concrete examples. Choosing field trips that would reinforce the content was another challenge, and finding a wide enough variety of topics to be discussed in the course was quite hard.

How has the course developed over time, and why? If this course is new, do you anticipate any adjustments based on the pilot experience?
This is only the 2nd year of teaching this course. In the future, I hope to make it more interdisciplinary by inviting other faculty members at my host university to contribute topics. The amount of writing seems to be appropriate, and I think I have nailed down the technology part of developing on-line portfolios.

Do you believe that it is feasible to incorporate cultural learning into content courses abroad? If so, then how?
Yes, definitely. My course is one good example of such an attempt.

Please describe your education abroad teaching style and philosophy.
I am Director of a branch campus in Japan, therefore I am constantly teaching abroad. My biggest responsibility, I think, is to enable students to become more important. My course activities, therefore, are always designed to draw students’ attention to the resources around them. I coach them so that they learn to utilize such resources, first with my assistance, but gradually with their own initiatives.

Does your approach to teaching change when you are teaching abroad? If so, how?
Yes, definitely. There are abundant opportunities to learn in their daily interactions in and with the culture, using the language while teaching abroad. It becomes of vital importance whether the teacher can maximize such learning outside the classrooms while teaching abroad.

What techniques or innovations do you apply when teaching overseas?
I am not sure if I can call this a “technique,” but I always accompany the first couple of steps with my students when they try something new–but never more than a couple of steps. I find this to be one of the most effective methods in coaching them to learn new skills and gain new cultural perspectives. I use on-line tools extensively (Moodle, WordPress) to keep everyone in the group updated. Teaching overseas means there are many unexpected interruptions of the course. On-line tools makes it possible to provide instructions and feedback in a timely manner.

How do you contextualize and debrief experiential learning?
Field trips are an integral part of my course. I use two class periods both before and after a field trip to contextualize the experiential learning. Before the field trip, students read a paper (in English) and discuss contents, come up with their own research questions for the field trip. After the trip, they present their findings to the group, and write a two-page reflection paper on the topic.

How do you assess student learning in this course? Are there any assessment methods that are particular to study abroad?
This is one aspect of the course that I am currently struggling. Their learning is assessed in the forms of oral presentation and reflection paper. While the content itself should be the focus of the course, I realize, too, that the evaluation is heavily influenced by their linguistic abilities. For instance, a student who expresses very innovative ideas with many grammatical errors in the language may receive a lower grade than someone whose observations are superficial but who is capable of writing Japanese with perfect grammar. This challenge, I imagine, would be shared by others who teach content courses in the target language in study abroad contexts. I would love to share ideas and suggestions with others on this very issue.

If you feel that you have valuable information to contribute to this project that is not addressed in the body of this survey, please elaborate here.
My students create and maintain their own portfolio during their stay in Japan. Keeping an on-line portfolio is not an easy task. One has to visit the site regularly enough to maintain it if one was to create a portfolio that truly represents his or her capacity, efforts, and accomplishments. My course has been successful in assisting our students to do so, and I would love to share my experiences and know-hows in doing so.