Speaker
ABSTRACT
World’s Fairs are international exhibitions that address important themes, highlight new technologies and showcase foreign cultures. They rank beside the Olympics and World Cup as global events that bring together the world’s nations, celebrate human achievements and promote international understanding.
This year, Japan is hosting Expo 2025 in Osaka featuring pavilions from 160 countries, regions and organizations. This international event provides content-based teachers with a unique opportunity to energize their classrooms, foster language learning and stimulate students’ interest in foreign peoples, countries and cultures.
This session will introduce a university EFL teaching unit on “World’s Fairs” developed over the past 20 years. This thematic unit comprises content-based activities, tasks and projects that engage students in discussion, research and presentations. Themes covered range from the origins, history and aims of Expos to case studies of historic World’s Fairs (Paris 1889, Chicago 1893, Montreal 1967, Osaka 1970). Participants will analyze the design of the unit, discuss how the activities could be adapted and take away handouts listing on-line and print resources. They will leave the session inspired to see Expo 2025 as a teachable moment for building language skills, promoting global awareness and learning about our multicultural world.
KEYWORDS
content-based instruction
global education
thematic language teaching
world’s fairs
| TITLE | Exploiting Expo 2025: Creative Ways to Teach about World’s Fairs! |
|---|---|
| RELEVANT SIG | Global Issues in Language Education |
| FORMAT | Practice-oriented Oral Face-to-face presentation (25 minutes, including Q&A) |
