Whether you are screening potential clients for language studies or just trying to figure out how to give tests in speaking to your students for grades, I’m sure you’ve come up with the question of rubric. How do you decide what they know or don’t? What questions should you ask (and let them ask)? Is there some overall strategy that can be adapted to most situations? Here’s an article from The Guardian that describes the UK government’s attempts to screen immigrants from Pakistan for their English speaking ability. It also talks about how International House London assesses students. There are also some good comments from the Norwich Institute for Language Education.

The folks at IATEFL Research SIG have opened the floor on Yahoo forums for another discussion of a topic in EFL. This one is materials development. And, I’m happy to see that they are holding this online discussion for 2 weeks instead of only 1.

Read more about it at this link. You can see the article upon which the discussion is based at this link. You can join the Yahoo group free, and you don’t have to be a member of IATEFL to join in on this discussion. People from around the world take part!

The kind people at Teacher Planet have announced some lessons that you might want to consider for another one of those un-Hallmark holidays: No Tobacco Day, which is slated for May 31st. Might be a chance to see if students can practice negatives or the use of “should”. I’m sure some of the TP lessons include content for those CBI or CLIL types of ESP lessons, too.

Just thought I’d pass this along. There are probably lots of budding writers all over the world. Take a look at this link for news about the 6th Annual Japan Writers Conference. It will be held in Kyoto at Doshisha U on Nov. 10 & 11.

Included in that link is another link to a 2008 blurb on an earlier conference, reported in The Japan Times.

Whether you work in the hard sciences or social sciences, a university teacher often lives by the code of publish or perish. But, not everyone is a good writer. And, just how should one prepare to create an article for publication? The following link explains 5 key points for hard science articles, but they pretty much apply to the social sciences as well.

What’s more, as editor for the CUE journal, I see a lot of submissions that are below par on one simple matter: following instructions from the CUE guidelines. Heads up, people everywhere. Journals often have such guidelines, and they are there for a reason. Since around 1999, JALT has had its own peer support group for writers, too, and this should be sought out if one is unsure of how to prepare an article or if one has been rejected for substandard writing.

Hang around Internet forums long enough, and you will soon see someone posting “why the Japanese are so bad at speaking English“. Well, Gaijinpot has a posting with this very title. Not much new there for me, but perhaps newbie teachers might want a recap.

What is more interesting is the author’s suggestion on how students can practice speaking. He mentions a Skype-like tool called The Mixxer. Actually, it uses Skype, but with selected categories for speakers around the world to give opportunities to people wanting to learn their languages. You can also register to be a host teacher for such conversations.

See if you think it’s for you or your students.

You might also want to review David Barker’s 2004 article, “Encouraging students to take their language learning outside the classroom“.

Education Week reported on May 3 a study from the National Center for Education Statistics  (U.S.), where they claim the following:

Children who started kindergarten already proficient in English—regardless of the language they spoke at home—scored better as 8th graders on reading, math, and science tests than language-minority peers who didn’t gain proficiency until after starting kindergarten.

That point alone is not very surprising for the reading scores, in my opinion, as long as the children continue to be exposed to English (which these were, because they lived in the U.S.). And, on the surface, it’s more ammunition in favor of starting English at a young age in Japan, despite claims by some that it will hamper their overall learning (or at least their Japanese language learning). However, Read the rest of this entry »

I have just run across a very useful manual / handbook for driving in Hokkaido. You can access it by PDF at this link. It’s a rather large file at >4 megabytes. Sadly, it was last updated in 2009, so information after the completion of the tollways is not included. It does however include many things from the “vastness of Hokkaido” travel time info, to what to do if your vehicle hits an animal, to how to use rental car navigation systems, and more.

Couple that PDF with an older blog posting “Living in Hokkaido: What to know before you go“, and you should be as prepared as anyone.

Teacher Planet has tons of lesson plans. Since it is baseball season, why not take advantage of that (and students’ interest in baseball)? Here is a link to the TP lessons related to baseball, including some math-related stuff, history of the game, vocabulary, and even the science involved. Batter up!

Recent talks have centered around Japanese universities that want to switch from a spring (April) start date to one in the fall like western universities. The Yomiuri Shimbun had a short article recently with a few more numbers to share on the topic.