This paper aims to explore the potential advantages of research regarding the use of gestures by English language teachers in Japanese junior high schools (JHS) to facilitate English language teaching through English. In 2017, the Japanese Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science, and Technology (MEXT) introduced the latest Course of Study, and one of the new initiatives is that...
This presentation will share the planning, process, and final results of an MA dissertation paper that carried out a small-scale research project to explore the impact of non-digital games for both language development and social-emotional learning in a preschool EFL classroom. The ideas and inspiration behind the project will be discussed, along with a short overview of the roles of play and...
This presentation will review how a graded reader program was established and conducted
at a private Japanese junior high school in the Kansai area. It will show the effect extensive reading (ER) had on learner’s rate of vocabulary acquisition with regards to the first and second thousand high frequency words as reflected in the New General Service Words list. This study was conducted with...
Self-access learning centers (SALCs) are often under-utilized, and enticing students to make use of SALC resources is a perennial challenge for institutions that have such facilities. Previous research on multi-modal book clubs for personal and professional development led to the implementation of a book club held in a SALC writing center to promote the use of the space and other SALC...
The recent advancement of classroom practices after COVID-19 with digital communication, including AI chatbots, has sparked a renewed interest in exploring humanistic elements within classrooms. While the topic of AI generative chat is relatively new (launched in Nov 2022), it needs to establish seminal literature. However, concerns have emerged about these technologies' potential consequences...
Youth refusing to attend school in Japan is a silenced, confusing, and complex phenomenon reaching back almost a century. Explanatory theories and discourses have shifted through the eras and strategies for resolving school attendance problems have responded in turn. And yet, there are more youth refusing school today than ever before. In hopes of reinvigorating interest in and extending the...
Communication and interactional competence are crucial to language acquisition. There are many proficiency tests and exams to evaluate language learners' English proficiency by task formats like reading comprehension, listening, writing, and speaking. In terms of speaking assessment, they often use formats like interviews, role-play, or group discussions to assess learners' interactional...
This presentation will discuss how to teach connected speech with catchy English songs. Connected speech is a common feature of naturally spoken English, yet it is also one of the most challenging parts of learning for non-native speakers to master. Sounds run together in natural speech, and there is no space between each word, unlike written English. Besides, there are some changes in sounds...
This study was conducted at an English-medium university in Japan where students were tasked with having a debate and discussion with other non-native speaking (NNS) peers and one native speaker (NS). Preconceived notions of the expert-novice dyad assume that native speakers should naturally take on the role of the expert due to their linguistic competence. However, recent studies have...
There have been numerous studies, papers, and books that have stated that pair and group activities can evaluate one's learning of a second language (L2). Swain, Kinnear, and Steinman (2015) have stated that "student-student interaction can constitute a vigorous ZPD". In the field of Sociocultural Theory, there are topics like near-peer role models and Zone of Proximal Adjusting (ZPA; Murphey,...
As English teachers in an EFL environment, corrective feedback is a necessity as well as an inevitability. It's natural for students to make errors when attempting to produce a L2 language that they are still learning. One of the roles of the teacher is to provide corrective feedback to ensure those errors are repaired. However, how corrective feedback is delivered is very dynamic with many...
Developing intercultural competence in monolingual contexts such as Japan, albeit extremely important, can be particularly challenging. This presentation discusses a relatively atypical approach to help EFL students in starting to think critically about culture: developing cultural self-awareness. Cultural self-awareness, which is the ability to understand the intricacies of one’s own culture,...
In the realm of language teaching, there's a complex task at hand: guiding individuals through the skills of reading, writing, listening, and speaking in a specific language (Richards & Rodgers, 2014). Japan, renowned for its rich culture and technological advancements, offers a unique linguistic landscape, especially for third-country nationals living there (Kubota, 2020).
Living in Japan...
Abstract: Despite the fact that research indicates that reading and writing are interconnected skills, they are often taught separately. In the Japanese context, students often spend extensive time on intensive reading and grammar instruction without looking at the social and functional properties of texts. Much of the research into the social aspects of writing has been focused on English for...
