What if you started off, earlier in the course, with pre-written reflective prompts written by you, but as the course goes on you start asking them to be responsible to write and then, of course, answer, the prompts? Could the class be divided up into small groups to do this, as in "Four of you are responsible this week to come up with reflective discussion prompts that the rest of the class will answer." You could ask them to work together to come up with the four questions (one each) or make it an individual activity.

Hi Doug -- Beth's suggestions are consistent with my experiences with international students in my previous classes. Having them be able to work together in some capacity and in ways that make their specific individual questions anonymized seemed to help foster engagement. As well, the idea of building in regular reflective practice has worked for me in a variety of classes as well. 

Cheers - Heather  

Hi Doug,

I personally don't feel that a reflective question every 12 weeks is too repetitive; however, I would encourage you to offer a slightly different version of the question each week (I'm sure that's your plan anyway). Students tend to like the repeated structure, but don't want to get bored of the same question. You could also ask about the most challenging, difficult, thought-provoking, surprising, etc. thing encountered. 

I like Beth's suggestion of having small groups of students be responsible to come up with subsequent questions, whereas maybe you model the first few weeks' questions and then they are responsible for the remaining.

If students are struggling with answering "why do you think this is true", do you model responses of your own? Or, I wonder if you can get permission from students who have done a good job responding, to share (anonymously) their answers?

BTW - I lived in the Kansai region for four years and I have an absolute love for Japan.

Doug,

Thank you for asking these questions about encouraging your ESL students to speak their opinions. This is a challenge that I have also found. At first, some of my Fundamental ESL students were reluctant to even speak out in class.  

Further encouraged by what I am learning from this Micro FLO, I am continuing to start our class with a reading  or video, followed up by a discussion about the topic. I ask/model the questions for them to answer.  Then, I write one question on the board for them to think about and write down something they found new and interesting from the reading/video to share in our "Teaching Circle" They can bring their written reflection to read in the Circle.  I write the same question again to use for our Teaching Circle.  

We have already talked about that when we are sharing our reflections/opinions the classroom is a safe, non-judgmental place to practice speaking because as listeners we do not need to agree or approve of what the speaker is saying; however, we will respectfully accept their opinion.  One student takes their turn as the Circle leader and asks each student the reflection question written on the board. I have another student write point form what each student says, so we end up with a collection of the students' reflections. We often continue our topic discussion expanding on the students' reflection. After this activity, students use their phones to take pictures of the whiteboard with all the point form content.  We follow up our "listening/speaking" Teaching Circle by integrating this content into writing a paragraph about the reading/video. 

What I am noticing about the students' participation in this "reflection/collaboration" activity is the students have become more vocal and willing to share their reflections/opinions. 

Out of confusion comes clarity.                                                                                                                                                                                                                        Leonne

Hi Doug,

I recall being quite anxious in group discussions when I first came to Canada. In Eastern Europe the teacher did most of the talking and we were "empty vessels" waiting to be filled. 

One night, working for elections last week, at 7pm it was quiet. Not one phone call or walk in. So I took out my book "The Skillful Teacher" by Brookfield and came upon this "speech" borne out of sheer panic as his class was silent. This is all it took to open "the conversational floodgates". Perhaps a shorter quote or saying that can reduce performance anxiety may be helpful, in additional to all the other suggestions. 

Viviana