Learning Scenario: Constructivism & Japanese

Constructivist Proposal

Constructivism places the learner as the active participant in constructing their knowledge base. As such, the learner needs the scaffold of motivation to keep going, particularly when the language being learned gets difficult and memorization of new terms gets rigorous. Keller's ARCS Model of Motivation provides such a framework and I will weave its 4 motivational strategies here: attention, relevance, confidence, and satisfaction.

Survival Any Language can in and of itself be motivating because of the real world contexts it provides. Relevance is there in the title. 

Since politeness is central to the culture, studying the honorific/humble forms is key to getting around Japan. Use of these polite forms is based on age, familiarity, and social rank (work hierarchy, etc.) As a foreigner visiting Japan, one is less familiar and therefore politeness is the default form of speech everywhere you go. 

The Language Video Format

Language learning is a familiar part of Japanese TV programming. Often in the learning videos, there’s a scenario with translation. It’s often done with cheer and some humor. I hope to apply social constructivism’s “active process of construction” to this universal format in language learning. Though the language scenario is inherently social in nature, merely watching videos can be construed as a passive activity. One needs to participate in this social scenario to acquire the language. 

Anchored Instruction (Social Constructivist Strategy)

In this survival Japanese scenario, language acquisition is inherently socially situated. The scenario would call for finding words to communicate coherently to native speakers. I would design an online interactive language learning scenario that models anchored instruction. The videos would be modeled after real-life problems and thus create a scenario that has more than one possible answer. The learners would be active creative collaborators problem solving how to respond. They would be contributing their unique solutions toward a successful transaction. Once they "level up" to creating their own scenario, they can employ thoughtful engagement in coming up with their own ZPD scenario, which the MKO can approve.

The students would watch a learning scenario with dialogue once. For learning assignment Student A practice being the clerk, watching it several times to memorize the lines and record themselves on video pantomiming the scenario with props. Student B on the receiving end would listen to the lines and formulate their own response. They can look it up and record it. Student A would have the “cheat sheet” of potential responses and see whether any of them match Student B’s response. They would assess whether or not the student is correct. There could be a Student C so that B wouldn’t feel the pressure of being assessed by A during the recording. Upon playback, they can see how close they got to the original scenario. Student C could also assess Student A for pronunciation.

Scaffolding Strategy

Direct memorization would be the scaffolding used for the first scenario where the students are given the dialogue. In the next scenario, student A can choose two changes they'd make to the dialogue, such as the item sold or the type of customer request and construct their own lines accordingly. Student B can then vary their response to the changes.

For the final most autonomous phase of the learning scenario, the students can find one they would like to know how to converse around based on interest. This will hopefully spark intrinsic motivation as well as the extrinsic social reward of satisfying social interaction and peer approval. These scenarios when successfully accomplished and increase the learner's confidence in the language.

Zone of Proximal Development

If they had any question about the responses or meaning, they can ask an MKO (more knowledgeable other), the teacher or T.A. In the Zone of Proximal Development, the area that the learner can do unaided would be memorization of new vocabulary along with learning the basic grammatical forms in honorific Japanese. The Zone of Proximal Development would be applied honorific/humble forms in survival language scenarios where you ask for help or go shopping or dining. As a clerk, Student A would get to know the humble form and Student B would enter a scenario as a customer using the polite form used in the real world. Inevitably, they would be actively participating on very hands-on scenarios with real world examples. There can be a variety of scenarios that both students would learn to anticipate and “dress rehearse” for.

They can record themselves and post asynchronously or agree to synchronize their presentation and edit it as though they're on the same site.

Overall, language is social in nature and provides ample learning opportunities applying social constructivism. The more knowledgable other is key to making corrections and adjustments in scaffolding to meet the learner's level of comprehension and speech.