Event

Early finishers: What do students do when they finish tasks early, what does this tell us about tasks, and how should we treat early finishers?

Saturday, September 16th, 2023, 6:00 PM - 8:00 PM

Speaker: Paul Stone (Gakushuin University)

This talk will focus on a recent study I undertook that looked at what happens when pairs and groups of students finish tasks early. In classrooms that use small-group tasks, it is possible that some groups may finish a particular task earlier than other groups. Teachers may be concerned that these groups of early finishers will become disengaged or go off-task, perhaps by speaking in the L1, and will usually try to avoid early finishing or else keep early finishers meaningfully engaged. However, there are comparatively few studies that carefully examine how students bring about an early finish and what they do after they have finished a task early. 

This study uses Conversation Analysis to investigate how EFL students in two Japanese university classes finish tasks early, describing a set of practices that the students use to bring tasks to completion. In doing so, the study reveals something of how the students see their interactional task-based roles, and how they orient to the achievement of task outcomes over the development of conversation.

The study finds that early finishing does not necessarily mean that students have finished interacting. Students may have more to say on task topics than the actual task allows, and early finishers may develop these topics in post-task talk in the target language. In this talk, I will argue that early finishing may at times lead to useful language practice, and that teachers should therefore be cautious when assigning extra work to early finishers. There will be time for audience discussion, particularly concerning teachers' attitudes to and practices for dealing with early finishers.

Bio
Paul Stone has been teaching English in Japan for 20 years. His career has taken in conversation schools, ALT positions, and - for the most part - university positions. He currently works as an Associate Professor in the Foreign Language Teaching and Research Centre at Gakushuin University. His research interests include Conversation Analysis and Multimodal Interaction Analysis, and he received his PhD in Education from Exeter University.

Organization: Fukuoka Chapter of the Japan Association for Language Teaching (Fukuoka JALT)

Cost: JALT Members: free
Non-members: 1000 yen

Venue: Elgala (Daimaru East) Building, Tenjin (6 F, Kurume University Satellite Campus), back entrance, map: https://goo.gl/maps/hj8VXmpfjAykeXBV9 Near Tenjin-Minami Station on the Nanakuma Subway Line

Location: Fukuoka City, Fukuoka Prefecture, Japan

Contact Fukuoka JALT

Trevor Holster