Critical Incident #3

Akira and Takashi graduated from the same high school and entered the same university. Now they are learning English in the same class with Mr. Johnson. He teaches English communication and asks his students to actively participate in class, because otherwise they can't improve their speaking abilities. Akira likes English and is good at it. He has an extensive amount of vocabulary and grammatical knowledge, but he is a bit shy. It is very difficult for him to actively participate in class. He answers questions only when he is asked to by Mr. Johnson. But he always produces grammatically correct sentences. On the contrary, Takashi is very active and outgoing. He always volunteers to demonstrate pair work, act in role plays and present dialogues to class, though he often produces incorrect sentences and makes errors. At the end of the first semester, Mr. Johnson gave a semester-end evaluation to his students. Akira found out that his grade was much lower than Takashi's. Akira didn't understand it because he always got much higher grades than Takashi in English classes in the high school and he was sure that his productions were at higher level and had few errors. Why was Akira's grade much lower than that of Takashi? Can you explain the reason to Akira?

1. We can't improve our speaking abilities without practicing, speaking. That's why Mr. Johnson asked his students to actively participate in class. Takashi did try to practice speaking in English, but Akira didn't. The difference of the grade comes from the different degree of participation.

2. Akira should forget about his high school grades. High school grades have nothing to do with the university's. Takashi must have improved his proficiency after he graduated from high school.

3. It is likely that Mr. Johnson failed to evaluate Akira correctly. It is difficult to fairly evaluate all of the students, especially in a large class.

4. Mr. Johnson gave higher grade to Takashi, because Takashi succeeded to build good relationship with his teacher. He got along well with Mr. Johnson because he had an outgoing personality.