Nikki Marzoña, Soka University
Abstract
This paper is a reflection on a language advising session the author carried out with a 4th-year Japanese liberal arts major on academic leave from university. The session was conducted as a follow-up to an initial session where the author and the student collaborated on creating an action plan for language study. The aim of the session was to refine the action plan after the author learned that the student had faced challenges in following the original plan. Key moments in the session included the student’s strong commitment to 4 hours of language study at the beginning of the session and the student sharing how mental health struggles had hampered his commitment to follow the original action plan. The author concludes by describing how the session challenged her assumption about the relationship between learner autonomy and language proficiency, how the core advising principle of focusing on the learner helped her cope with discomfort in the session, and how a missed opportunity to utilize metaphors underscores the potential for their use in future sessions.
Keywords: Japanese university, language advising, university leave, learner autonomy, metaphors
In this paper, I will reflect on a language advising session that I conducted with a student who is currently on leave from university. The goal of the session was to refine the action plan that the student and I co-constructed in a previous session. First, I will establish the background and context. Second, I will describe two key moments from the session: one that brought up an internal conflict and another that reshaped my perspective. Third, I will reflect on the strategy of inducing metaphors and explore my resistance to it. Finally, I will conclude by summarizing personal learnings from the session that I intend to leverage to improve my advising practice.
Background and Context
I am an assistant lecturer at a private international university in Tokyo, where I also contribute to the university’s self-access center as an advisor at the Speaking Test Advisory Program (STAP). In the STAP, students engage in one-on-one practice sessions for the speaking components of the TOEFL iBT and IELTS English proficiency exams with the help of an advisor. These sessions are designed to simulate the actual testing environment by closely following exam procedures through the use of a practice textbook and its accompanying audio recordings. During each 25-minute session, the student performs the speaking exercise, and the advisor then provides constructive feedback regarding areas for improvement. A large number of students who utilize the STAP aim to be eligible to study abroad by achieving test scores predetermined by their desired overseas university.
I began my work in our university’s self-access center as a Writing Center tutor while pursuing my master’s in TESOL. Over my two semesters as a writing tutor, I discovered that I derive great personal fulfillment in engaging in dialogue with learners on a one-on-one basis. Now that my role as an assistant lecturer involves both teaching and advising (in the STAP) I am better informed to compare the two experiences. I find that making a more direct impact on a learner’s learning journey is more pronouncedly felt in individual advising sessions, given the more immediate emotional feedback from learners. For example, in the STAP, students are more likely to express comprehension and enthusiasm when learning about mechanics of the English language, test-taking strategies, and study strategies and to express gratitude for a productive session.
Based on these two advising experiences, I decided to diversify my skills as a language professional by taking the Learning Advisor Education program offered by the Research Institute of Learner Autonomy Education (RILAE). The five-course program is based on Kato and Mynard’s Reflective Dialogue: Advising in Language Learning (2016), which discusses strategies and techniques for language advising and traces the learning trajectory toward autonomy. Early in the course, we learn the three core principles of transformational advising: focus on the learner (“it’s not about you”), keep an open mind (“leave your assumptions at the door”), and take a neutral position (“no judgment”; Kato & Mynard, 2016, p. 18). To complete the first four courses, participants must conduct and then reflect on advising sessions where they apply the skills they have learned.
For Course 3, I conducted an advising session in October 2023 with Kei, a 4th-year Japanese liberal arts major currently on academic leave as he works toward improving his English proficiency for the TOEFL iBT. To graduate from the liberal arts program, students must attain a minimum score of 80 out of 120 on the test. At the time of the advising session, Kei and I had already met for seven TOEFL practice sessions together at the STAP while the language advising session was our second session together. During our initial advising session 3 months earlier in July, we had worked together to develop his English-study action plan for the upcoming summer break in August. Kei wanted to study as early as August for his next TOEFL test in December. I introduced the idea of developing an action plan to Kei based on my understanding of its value for developing autonomy in learners, as emphasized in the lectures and my discussions with my fellow advisors in the RILAE Program. As a self-aware learner, Kei understood his own needs and quickly grasped the value of making an action plan, which led to that productive initial session in July.
Based on my estimate, Kei is a high-beginner English user (about A2 on the CEFR scale). For example, he generally understands written and spoken material in the second language better than he can form full, grammatically coherent sentences of his own. Yet, despite having basic proficiency in English, Kei is a frequent user of the STAP and shows great determination to improve his skills to raise his score in the TOEFL and subsequently graduate. This intriguing mix of Kei’s limited English proficiency and unwavering determination inspired me to support him beyond the STAP and invite him to a language advising session. Although Kei is currently on leave from university and is working part-time, he utilizes the self-access center, mainly the STAP, and studies English independently when he is not working.
Prior to our advising session, I was aware that Kei had found it challenging to follow his previous action plan over the summer because of a busy schedule. It seemed to me then that Kei could benefit from modifying his action plan. With this situation coinciding with the requirements for Course 3, which I was taking at the time, I invited him to meet with me again to find out the root cause of his challenges and offer support in refining the action plan. After all, the beginning of a new semester was an ideal time to reassess goals and make adjustments, I thought.
The Session
The session transpired over 90 minutes, enough time for Kei and I to extensively discuss what should go into each phase of his action plan. As I reflect on our discussion, two key moments from the session stand out. The first occurred before Kei and I even began our session, as we scanned the cafeteria for a table:
Learning Advisor (LA): Thanks for coming out (smiles). Are you excited to talk about your action plan?
Student (S): Four hours!
LA: Four-hour action plan? Really?!
I was struck by the gusto with which Kei exclaimed his planned duration for his study plan. Although Kei’s proactive planning impressed me, his ambitious 4-hour goal gave me pause as I imagined whether it was realistic. Ultimately, however, I resisted interrupting or questioning this early in the conversation to allow Kei to express his thoughts freely, trusting that this would help him reveal his reasoning and motivations naturally.
Kei’s eagerness reminded me of one of our earliest sessions at the STAP, when he shared with me his language learning strategies, including video chatting with international users on the application HelloTalk. This, to me, signified a learner actively engaging in their journey towards autonomy. The encounter was an “aha moment” for me as an advisor as I came to realize that a learner’s proficiency in a target language and level of autonomy are not always directly correlated. These two events firmly dispelled any simplistic parallels I previously held between these two concepts based on earlier teaching experiences.
After officially starting the session, I invited Kei to revisit the action plan we had co-constructed 3 months earlier in July:
LA: So this was the old action plan. Do you remember?
S: Yes.
LA: So. Yeah. Study one hour, 10 [p.m.] to 11 [p.m.], four times per week. Then study any combination of this: The [STAP advisor feedback] on [the portal site], vocabulary TOEFL,
S: Mmhmm.
LA: and then reading and listening in TOEFL also. Correct?
S: Yes.
LA: Okay, so tell me what happened. So were you able to do the action plan or not? Just tell me [the] story (laughs) [about] summer.
S: Tell you story.
LA: Yeah.
The second key moment of the session occurred in this stage: Kei shared that a mental health struggle over the summer break had hampered his motivation to study. He related that he had wanted to take time off work to study more, but his work supervisor did not allow his request, a friction that took a toll on his mental health. Although Kei did not offer a detailed account, I noted that he used the word “harassment” to describe his supervisor’s actions. I was caught off-guard, conscious about appearing either unequipped to handle a sensitive situation or overeager to pry for details. It was helpful to remember one of the principles in language advising that I learned at the start of the RILAE courses, “It’s not about you.” Since Kei was recounting this experience as a reflection on his summer break, I considered it more appropriate to ask how the issue was resolved rather than ask for more details. As it turns out, Kei was eventually allowed to take a break by a different supervisor, and a week-long trip back to his hometown restored his well-being.
As Kei shared a highly fraught experience, I ensured that he felt listened to and validated. I accomplished this by applying strategies of active listening such as repeating, restating, and summarizing and nonverbal listening techniques such as nodding, eye contact, and back-channeling. Kei had reached a level of comfort with me that he was able to openly share the emotional struggle that affected his studies, and I appreciated his confidence as a testament to the rapport we had developed over the last few months.
Looking back on this dialogue, however, I think I had missed an opportunity to encourage deeper reflection in Kei. More specifically, I wish I had tried to elicit from Kei a metaphor to describe his struggle and in the process let him exercise creativity and expand his insights. Metaphors create awareness by encouraging us to think of emotions, situations, and challenges in terms of images and offer learners a chance to step back and gain a broader perspective on their situation (Kato & Mynard, 2016). Engaging with metaphors turns them into a powerful influence on how people perceive and interpret their experiences—a “guiding logic that steer[s] thinking and reasoning” (Ramsey, 2022, p. 60). Applied to advising, metaphors can, for example, help learners regain motivation when they find themselves mired in the drudgery of the learning process. In my advising sessions to date, I have refrained from using and eliciting metaphors from learners due to my lack of confidence, as a novice advisor, about what I perceive to be a higher-order strategy. I have long been hampered by an assumption that learners may not be equipped with the vocabulary in the target language to express metaphors. However, the more I consider it, the more I realize that a learner’s range of vocabulary may not be crucial in this exercise after all, because the process of reflection itself outweighs my concerns for accuracy. In addition, the collaborative meaning-making inherent in advising means I could try to elicit the metaphor from the learner by letting him express it in his native language, and if necessary, we could leverage translation to facilitate mutual understanding. I expect that employing metaphors in my advising practice might feel unnatural in the beginning, but perhaps the only way to overcome this feeling and reap its benefits for the learner is to embrace the initial discomfort and try out the strategy with different learners until I gradually integrate it into my repertoire of advising skills.
Conclusion
By the end of our advising session, Kei and I had collaboratively crafted a revised action plan that he committed to follow for 10 weeks, until his scheduled TOEFL test. His dedication to a rigorous study plan despite his current absence from university demonstrated a high level of autonomy and commitment to achieving his language learning goals. Kei declaring a commitment to 4 hours of study right at the beginning of our session sparked a significant shift in my understanding of learner autonomy. For example, I observed that my class of nursing majors often demonstrated lower levels of autonomy in language learning compared to students in other majors. Students in this class generally had a lower language proficiency, and I assumed this might be the result of a perception that language skills are not directly relevant to their future careers as nurses. My observation of this class led me to suppose that learner autonomy could be directly tied to proficiency. However, my dialogue with Kei revealed to me the complexity of individual learners. Our interaction was an eye-opening reminder that I should strive to be more sensitive to the uniqueness of each learner—their personal goals, their backgrounds, and their learning preferences, for example.
Moreover, in the second key moment of the session when Kei described a stressful experience, I initially felt uncomfortable, but recalling one of the core principles of language advising— “It’s not about you”— helped me to cope. This allowed me to shift my attention fully back to Kei and ensure my response focused on validating Kei’s experience through the advising strategies.
Finally, writing this reflection brought to the fore my lack of confidence with inducing metaphors from learners to describe their challenges. I felt regretful about not eliciting a metaphor from Kei during our discussion. However, further reflection helped me understand that such missed opportunities can be reframed as starting points for future reflection and planning that can be addressed in subsequent advising sessions.
Notes on the contributor
Nikki Marzoña is an assistant lecturer at Soka University, where she also advises students at the Speaking Test Advisory Program in the self-access center. She has been teaching at the university level in Japan for three years. She received a master’s degree in TESOL from Soka University. She is interested in learner autonomy, intercultural communication, discourse pragmatics, and computer-assisted language learning (CALL).
References
Kato, S., & Mynard, J. (2016). Reflective dialogue: Advising in language learning. Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315739649
Ramsey, E. M. (2022). Advising and the consumption metaphor in higher education. NACADA Review: Academic Advising Praxis & Perspectives, 3(1), 59–70. https://doi.org/10.12930/NACR-21-01