LTS

Risa is a current LTS MA student.

Awaji

Hello Risa! Tell us a little bit about yourself and your background.

Hi! My name is Risa Miura and I’m from Japan. When I was in Japan, I worked as an English teacher at cram schools for about 3 years and also worked as a barista for 2 years in Japan and Australia. I love making pour over coffee every morning to experiment with different recipes even though I am a tea person! I also like cooking and baking. Recently I hosted a birthday party for my partner, and I made coffee tiramisu which was my own version of a recipe from one of the cafes I worked at.

It is sometimes hard to believe that I have actually studied in the U.S. again after COVID happened and the experience I had in Tennessee, but I always hoped to come back and study languages and pedagogy from different perspectives. From my former study abroad experience in Tennessee, I witnessed how native English speakers discriminate against those who do not share their privilege of native-level proficiency. This “English First” mentality ignores the purposes of why people learn English in this globalizing world, so I decided to pursue a master’s project in the U.S. to better understand this issue.

What are you working on for your LTS MA project? What inspired you to work on this topic?

I am working on including pragmatics into English classrooms in Japanese high schools and encouraging both teachers and students to use English as a medium of communication in a EFL environment. Since the Japanese national curriculum was revised and began to be adapted in April 2022, many Japanese English teachers face difficulties in teaching those revisions, as they didn’t learn the language in that manner. The speaking proficiency of Japanese learners of English is often brought up because they tend to have an immense gap between production skills and receptive skills. One reason is because Japanese do not have any immediate need to use foreign languages, so it often diminishes learners’ motivation. Second is because English has been taught as a school subject and not as a communicative tool to negotiate the meaning or exchange information in a language class, which is understandable as the main entrance examination for universities only measures reading and listening skills. As the world continues to globalize; however, I believe it is essential for all language speakers to display an attitude to understand each other, especially for one who communicates in L2. In my context, the policies of World Englishes and English as a Lingua Franca are rarely introduced and understood in the classroom and society. Rather, many people mind their Japanese accent or feel inferiority in producing “imperfect” learners’ English. Therefore, in my MA project, I am creating a portfolio that facilitates the use of English as a medium of communication and that better focuses on making themselves understood with WE and ELF in mind.

Sakura

You have also been teaching Japanese this year at the UO. Can you tell us more about what you are teaching and what this experience has been like for you? Has it been very different from teaching English?

I have been leading a discussion section of first year Japanese students, and this is also my first-year teaching Japanese in a foreign language setting. My job in the classroom is to have students use and experiment with the grammar and vocabulary that they learned previously and to give immediate feedback to encourage them. Outside the class, grading homework and supporting the students during my lab hours are the main tasks. Especially the first term teaching Japanese made me nervous and concerned, but all the students I had and I have now are very nice and hardworking considering its intensiveness. I am often

impressed by them and motivated to be a better language teacher.

Comparing my experience of teaching languages in Japan and the U.S., Japanese classes here have more speaking practice and information exchange among the students while the two languages are taught in foreign language environments. Many English classes in Japan put major focus on developing students’ grammar and vocabulary knowledge and few practice using them for communication. Also, teaching my L1 has entailed many eye-opening moments as I receive teaching materials and questions from the students. It is interesting to see the reasons that learning Japanese is difficult for those who have different linguistic and cultural backgrounds and to observe how language learners of Japanese develop their proficiency.

On a personal note, how has it been to live in Oregon? What do you like about Oregon and what do you miss about Japan?

I like living in Oregon so far! I feel it is rare to see in the U.S. where people can get around everywhere on foot, which was one of the reasons I decided to apply to the UO. It is always nice that I don’t need to ask someone to take me to the closest grocery store, which was actually my previous study abroad experience where otherwise I had to walk on the edge of the car lanes with no sidewalk for 30 minutes!

I miss food in Japan, a Japanese shower room and restroom. For food, not to mention it is hard to find good Japanese food here, it is often expensive. Even when trying to make one by myself, ingredients are either very expensive or unsold in groceries, so it has been a great adventure for me to prepare food every day with challenges. However, I enjoy learning other cuisines, so overall, those challenges help me add new recipes to my cookbook. For shower, especially on cold days here, I miss bathing in the bathtub every day to relax and reflect on many things. Also, it reminds me of how clean and relaxing the shower rooms and restrooms were in Japan.

What is a fun fact about yourself that others may not know yet?

As I mentioned a little bit about my experience as a barista earlier, I did an internship in Australia for only about 6 weeks or so during summer break in my undergraduate university. I enjoyed not only learning about coffee for the first time and Australia’s unique coffee culture, but also it was fascinating to learn and use the Australian and some of the New Zealand English accents from regular customers. After returning to Japan, I decided to learn more about coffee, so I worked part time for about 2 years. During that time, I trained my pallet to appreciate coffee and myself in creating latte art. As a result, I can make all the basic patterns and varieties of a swan, a squirrel, and a seahorse! One of the places I worked at was fortunate enough to be able to work with a World latte art champion and a world brewer’s champion, so I polished my skills with the two legends. As a kid, I earned a token of mastery in Japanese calligraphy, where I developed the dexterity and concentration that may have assisted practicing coffee and latte art. My calligraphy works were exhibited several times and even now I sometimes practice writing to concentrate or just escape from reality, which I feel it’s useful for teaching and learning with my students in Japanese classes.

Swan Latte Art

Mathilde is a current student in the LTS program who is also completing an MA in French in the Romance Languages Department

Hello Mathilde! Tell us a little bit about yourself and your background.

Bonjour! I am Mathilde, and I come from Bordeaux, in the southwest of France (the wine city!). After completing my undergraduate studies in psychology in France, I decided to spend some time away from school and travel to the US to improve my English and make new connections. I worked as an Aupair in New Jersey, as a French teacher and cultural program coordinator in Oregon and Colorado, and I am now back at school, finishing my MA in Romance Languages and LTS. In my free time, I love eating new food, cooking and traveling along the Oregon coast! I also love photography and yoga.

Mathilde and her partner Aidan creating some fresh air on the Oregon coast

You are a concurrent degree student in both French (in the department of Romance Languages) and in LTS (department of Linguistics). How are these two degrees informing each other for your goals?

After starting my MA in Romance Languages, I decided that I wanted to supplement it with some pedagogy courses, since I have a background in teaching French and I was teaching for the French department. That’s when I discovered the LTS program! By joining LTS, I truly shaped my curriculum and my MA the way that I intended. I have also been very fortunate to be able to make my two Masters interconnect, in a way. My focus in RL is on the feminist decolonial literature of the Antilles (the French Caribbeans), and my focus in LTS is to create teaching material and resources for introductory courses at the University level in order to decolonize the French curriculum. I aim to move away from a France-centered curriculum and from simplistic representations of the francophone world (as it is often illustrated in textbooks) by using some of the texts that I have been studying in my RL MA.

What specifically are you working on for your LTS project?

I believe that the diversity of the francophone world is what makes the language so beautiful and fascinating. In a world more connected now than ever, every teacher should diversify their curriculum. For that reason, I am creating a teaching portfolio to help teachers of French move away from a France-centered curriculum. France is often over-represented in French textbooks. Of course, the language comes from France and the culture is very attractive to most learners, but the reality is that French is the only language along with English that is spoken on every continent. The reasons are historical and I believe that understanding the history of colonization is important to learn the language. Rather than just acknowledging the francophone world and « othering » it, like most textbooks do, I aim to create resources that will integrate different francophone dialects and cultures into the French curriculum, starting at a beginner level.

What do you think you might do next after graduating with two MA degrees?

My plan is to stay in Oregon for now, and I would love to teach French using resources and methodologies that I created during the program! I would love to continue working on curriculums and ways to apply my teaching philosophy to the classroom. I would also be very interested in collaborating with other teachers or stakeholders to create curriculum designs. Let me know if you hear of any open position! I am interested in public schools as well as language schools.

Teaching French at Charlemagne Elementary (immersion elementary school) in Eugene in 2018

You have also been a GE teaching French these past 2 years. What is most rewarding for you about teaching language? What is most challenging?

Yes, and I love it! Although it is challenging to teach a class while being in grad school, it has been very rewarding. I really enjoy taking time to create my lessons and incorporating methodologies that I learned in my LT courses. I can definitely see that I am a better teacher now that I started the LTS program! I am now teaching the 200-level sequence, which includes a lot more discussions than the 100-level sequence. One happy moment that I had recently was seeing that two of my students chose to prepare their oral presentation on a female writer from Guadeloupe that I decided to talk about in class one day because I am working on her novels in my MA. It is so great to be able to include my passion for francophone literature in my lesson plans, and it is even greater to realize that students are receptive to it. The main constraint for me however is that I can’t fully commit to the courses I teach since I have to focus on my schoolwork. I wish that I could participate in designing the syllabi, creating the assignments, choosing the content, etc. I also wish that I had more time to dedicate with my students, especially these past two terms with the return in-person, a lot of them need extra support that I can’t always offer due to lack of time.

What is a fun fact about yourself that others may not know?

As a child, I lived in New Caledonia for six years! Could it influence my dedication to teach the francophone world?… maybe 🙂

Poindimié, the village where Mathilde grew up in in New Caledonia

Aurélie Bertin is a current student in LTS who has followed her MA in French at UO with an MA in Language Teaching.

Last July in Montélimar. My first stop 5 minutes away from the train station.

Hello Aurélie! Tell us a little bit about yourself and your background.

Hello everyone! I’m Aurélie and I am from France, from a little town called Montélimar – well known for its nougat – and I came to Eugene 4 years ago. I arrived as an exchange student at UO during my senior year and decided to stay to do a French master’s and now to do the LTS program!

I have lived in Eugene for a little bit now, but this year is going to be my first summer here. I am excited to see how Eugene and Oregon transform, but I also know I’m going to miss home. The summer in south of France is my favorite, I love dry heat, the sound of cicadas and the smell of the air (smells a lot like lavender in July).

What inspired you to focus on French language to begin with and language education more generally?

Last day of class with my students from Fall 2021

I first knew in high school that I wanted to become a teacher, before knowing that I wanted to focus on French language. I followed the scientific section in high school in France, and during my senior year my projects shifted from going to a prep school to become a vet, to become a science teacher to eventually become an English teacher. I had always been in love with languages, I was passionate about English and thanks to my English teacher Mme. Horard, I made the choice to follow this path!

I began my college studies as an English major and during my second year of college I did an internship called Étudiant Apprenti Professeur (Student Apprentice Teacher) where I followed a high school English teacher for a year. I would observe her and other teachers and that is when I discovered FLE classes (French Foreign Language). The experience of sharing my own language and culture was completely different from teaching English. In France it is common for teachers of FLE to teach another main topic and combine it with FLE, that’s when I started to consider being an English and FLE teacher.

This experience stayed with me, and I left the next year to the University of Oregon for my exchange program during my senior year. Then Winter term I think, I had a class with Professor Moore, and she told me about the French master’s and the possibility to become a GE and teach the First-Year French classes. It’s this first master’s and my first experiences as a French teacher that inspired me to continue my studies in language education. So many things inspired me and many more are inspiring right now like the LTS program, my students, and my growth as a teacher.

You and the other French GEs have started a wonderful French cinema night at the Yamada Language Center. What inspired you to get this started and what are your goals with it?

Yes! My colleague Rhone Geha and I started the French cinema club this term, we had three screenings so far and I am very excited for the two next ones. Rhone and I are passionate about films, I don’t remember exactly when and how we decided to do it, but it came up naturally when we heard it had been done a few years before.

One of our first motivations was to add to the Francophone circles and create another French space on campus. We wanted to gather the French-speakers community on campus and have another opportunity to be reunited. That would be our main goal, as well as engage with Francophone culture through films and have a space for discussions after each screening, where people coming from different cultures, backgrounds, can exchange on their screening experience.

Picture of le club cinéma for the screening of Babysitting

How have you been managing the shifts between remote and in-person teaching over the past 2 years as a GE? What has seemed most important to focus on during this time to support students?

It’s a time I want to forget as a teacher and as a student, but also a time where I learned the most with different challenges to overcome. Two main things had to be addressed: first to make the class accessible to every student and make sure each of them had the space and a reliable internet connection to attend class. Then, it was essential to think of other ways to create a community online, to connect with one another, to humanize the class and create this classroom feeling online.

Coming back to in-person was a breath of fresh air, it also marked the beginning of the LTS program, so I was extra motivated to be reunited with my students and be able to engage with them and do all different kinds of activities we couldn’t do online. But more importantly, it was heartwarming to finally see my students connect with each other, to have the chance to meet in person, to bond and connect outside the class.

However, this time online also gave me another perspective of how to use technology and media in my language classes and how it can be beneficial for students’ learning. I’m glad this is over (hopefully) but I also appreciate what it taught me on how to adapt and explore as a teacher.

What is a fun fact about yourself that others may not know yet?

Everyone who knows me a little bit knows that music is my first passion. Three things animate me the most in life and it’s music, animals and teaching (and also cooking and baking). Actually the list is long now that I think about it, but any day I could spend hours playing, singing, writing music, hours with animals and hours thinking about new activities, preparing for my classes.