Year: 2017
Type: article
Abstract: When I eat out, I just want to be filled up; don't want to cook.To me, eating out means paying someone else do the legwork of shopping, chopping, mixing, fixing, and serving so I can satisfy my hunger.The popularity of okonomiyaki restaurants has therefore been somewhat mysterious to me during my years in Japan.Recently, though, when restaurants and classrooms briefly occupied the same space in my brain, I not only started to appreciate okonomiyaki places more, but I also began to wonder if the image of cook-it-yourself dining might be a useful one in the English classroom.Much of what I think is supposed to happen in a restaurant does not happen in an okonomiyaki restaurant, so I watch and follow and finish the meal but nevertheless feel that something is missing.Although when I get home I am usually full, I also often feel it was not the night out that I had hoped for.I suspect that for similar reasons Japanese students may sometimes go through English communication classes with comparable feelings of disappointment and perhaps even frustration.In this paper, I use the analogy of an okonomiyaki restaurant as a method for reflecting on English communication classrooms in Japan and suggest that recognizing and addressing possible student expectation mismatch at the outset of a course may improve student performance and satisfaction.Additionally, such a recognition might lead teachers to reflect on the place of critical pedagogy in English language teaching.
Author: Colleen Dalton
Language: English
Subfield: Language and Linguistics
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
SDG: Quality education
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W2739036383