Research Projects
Theory of the teaching materials
3 Step System is a teaching theory which combines knowledge acquired from cognitive science, system science and phonetic speech through the interdisciplinary and comprehensive methods and systemizing all of the acquired knowledge into one theory. The system is developed to allow human learners, especially Japanese, to learn English as a foreign language effectively.
For details, please refer to “Kore kara no Eigo Kyouiku” (Iwaba Publishing, 2005). Unlike face-to-face learning where human teachers are able to provide explanations flexibly, we need to think further than just preparing the materials to show learners when it comes to CALL (Computer Assisted Language Learning) which requires learners to learn on their own.
We must decide on how to separate the materials into parts, the appropriate place and time as well as the order when showing the materials, tasks, and explanations which are based on the teaching method in detail. The product of the entire process is then referred to as “courseware”. For example, in order to create a 25-minutes long English audio teaching material (which will take learners around 4 months to finish learning), the courseware would require a draft with 2000 pages approximately.
In the 3 Step System, the learning objectives and total learning time are divided into 3 equal parts. The three steps of learning which spans from Step 1 to Step 3 are completed intermittently which means that what we expect learners to learn in Part 2 and Part 3 can be found in between the 3 steps of Part 1. This means that learners aren’t going to learn Part 1 continuously but intermittently.
Below is a detailed example of a courseware with Task and Hint taken from a part of the English script for Introduction to College Life, the material designed for beginner level college students.
When I was in Australia, one of the, uh, delightful conversations I had with one of their faculty, I was explaining to him what we had been doing and he looked at me, he, and he said, “Bob, you are a thief. "And I, um, I kind of thought for a few minutes and I said, “What do you mean I'm a thief?" He said, "Well, I knew that engineers, uh, stole from mathematicians, physicists, material scientists and now you're stealing from social psychologists, organizational behavior theorists, and business people." And I said, "Yes, I am a thief." And that's exactly right. That's what interdisciplinary research is, is to learn from these fields, uh, to bring back what you learn to the field that you really practice in the core of and bring that, uh, new insight into operation. (Robert G. Bea, University of California at Berkeley)
Below are the goals set for the three different progresses in the 3 Step System courseware (Step 1-Step 3).
- Step1 : Understanding the overall content roughly.
- Step2 : Understanding the top layer of the content further.
- Step3 : Understanding the purpose and the conclusion of the content which are hidden in the background.
Below is an example of the Task which helps learners to clear the set objectives.
- Step 1
Task1:
Put a check on the 7 expressions or phrases listed below that you’ve managed to pick up from the content.Task2:
If all of the listed expressions above are used together in the content, think of what kind of content or conversation it would be. Try using the pictures as extra hints and make a brave guess.
- Step 2
- Task1:
What was said about the fields of study of the people whom did the engineers steal their ideas from?
- Step 3
- Task1:
How did the teacher paraphrase the expression steal from… in the video? Try to find the English expression from the video.。
To help learners completing the first step, we provide “background information” such as pictures or illustrations as extra information. These pictures act as useful hints in completing the Task in Step 1 as they are related to the content or the situation of the video.
The list of phrases and expressions shown to learners are the keywords of the whole content, which means that by using them as hints, learners will be able to roughly imagine or guess the content. The list of phrases and expressions are basically words that learners have previously learned, but in case of new vocabulary, learners can refer to the Words (dictionary) and Phrases (phrases, idioms, commonly used expressions) for the spelling, Japanese meaning and pronunciation.。
In order to complete the Task in Step 2, the information learned in Step 1 acts as the background information needed for top-down processing. In this part, learners can effectively use the 3 types of different hints provided in each Task, as well as the dictionary function as they proceed.
To complete Step 3, learners would combine the information acquired for top-down processing in Step 1 and the information acquired for bottom-up processing in Step 2 to try and edit the information they’ve acquired to understand the message of the content.
In Step 3, 3 different types of hints are provided and shown to the learners. The types of hints shown are as below.
- Hint1 : An instruction on how to use the top-down information processing.
- Hint2 : An instruction on how to process the information using the bottom-up process.
- Hint3 : An instruction on how to edit all of the information acquired.
For example, in order to help learners complete the Task in Step 2, Hint information like the one below would be provided.
Example of Hint from Step 2
- Hint1 : There are 3 types of field of study mentioned in the content.
- Hint2 : There are 3 types of field of study mentioned in the content.
- Hint3 : Pay a close attention to the expression “stole from…" and try listening to the parts that comes after the expression carefully.
Hint information to help learners complete the Task in Step 3 are as below.
Example of Hint from Step 3
- Hint 1：
Listen to the content one more time. Keep in mind how in Japanese, we also change the way we talk or the expressions we use while talking to friends and talking to people we’ve just met.- Hint 2：
Pay attention from the middle part of the content to the latter half.- Hint 3：
steal from…is an expression used among people who are closely related or friendly to each other. There is another expression which shares the same meaning but are commonly used among people who have just met. Listen to the part where the teacher sums up interdisciplinary research carefully.
Apart from the Task and Hint interspersing in each steps, the useful and close relations of the tasks and additional information, the courseware is also designed to come with English script to help learners to double check what they have learned, as well as grammar and cross-cultural explanations. By using these features effectively, learners can learn by using academically advanced and authentic language materials without feeling that the tasks set are too difficult for them to complete.
We place a great importance to stop learners from thinking that learning from academically advanced and authentic language materials is something difficult when designing this teaching method by using different kinds of measures. We have included the verification results we’ve found in the verification experiment conducted in the development stage.
Verification 1:
Do the tasks get more difficult as the learners proceed along the different Step?
By using a long speech material without hint information, the percentage of correct answers to the task in Step 1, Step 2 and Step 3 are 73%, 35%, and 1% respectively. By looking at the percentage, we could assume that the tasks get more difficult as we proceed along each Step.
Verification 2:
How should we provide the Japanese meaning for new vocabulary with multiple meanings?
When we are only providing one meaning to a word which is considered difficult in the content or a collocation, the percentage of correct answer for understanding the content of speech is 47% for vocabulary and 54% for collocation. In contrast, the percentage of correct answer when the hint is not provided is less than half (20%). By looking at these results, we can assume that providing learners with the meaning of new words in accordance of how they are used in a sentence proves to be more effective than providing them with various meanings of the same word.
Verification 3:
How many hints should we provide the learners with?
The effect a hint information given in helping learners to complete a Task is as below. In order to increase the percentage of correctly answering to a Task by 30%, 1 hint is required. When 3 hints are provided, the correct answer percentage increases by 75-84%, which means that by providing learners with 3 hints, we can assume that the comprehensive level of the contents would be increased dramatically.
The 3 Step System is an English listening teaching method that has been put to practice for more than 30 years and has been built on various researches as mentioned above.。
