The Daily Yomiuri has an article called “Reading of English papers help exam preparation“. In it, 56-year-old teacher Yasumi Shiga explains a little how she uses newspapers and magazines to help her students in junior and senior high school learn to read English (and a little conversation, too). I wish there was more description to her method, but for the moment there’s enough to get started on.

People often ask on discussion forums what sort of teaching jobs one can get in Japan. Some have the image that university work is a pinnacle of a teaching career, while others prefer a string of part-time jobs, some say working in business English situations. The Language Teacher published something in March 2009 that extends this one point further: going into business for oneself. In that article (Five things to consider before starting a language school), Ben Shearon gives some advice. While this is not specific to Hokkaido residents, who knows in today’s market whether one may wish to go this route? Give it a look.

The Daily Yomiuri has an interesting Language Connection column (on Sept. 23) by Helene Uchida. Skip the first part about video-taping oneself in a classroom. The second question (on p.2 of the PDF file) asks about teaching adults. Ms. Uchida’s answer begins mysteriously with a trip she took to Denmark. Don’t stop there. Here comparison of English fluency in Denmark and Japan is pretty interesting.

I particularly like the statement she writes from a Danish friend there:

This summer, my husband and I visited my best friend in Copenhagen. While there, I was especially impressed with the English fluency of Danes. To our delight, everyone we met could speak English: Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: conversation, education

TESOL has recently advertised for a proposal on a book on assessment (Assessment in English Language Programs). Deadline is December 1st. You’ll need to submit drafts of a couple of book chapters.

I ran across a short article on what some educators think about using YouTube videos for their classes. Take a look at what one workshop (”boot camp” it says in the article) summarized as 5 useful points of YouTube. One of the items talks about improvements in YouTube’s editing process. I didn’t view it, but I hope things have spruced up since the last time I tried editing a YouTube vid!

(Actually, I thought the list really had only 4 items, since 2 of them were so similar, but what the heck.)

SpeakGlobally has come out with a way for English learners to practice their speaking and listening. For a fee, they can choose from a number of cartoon character faces (humans only) and hold conversations.

I looked at the 7-minute online demonstration, and it’s not that bad. You can see an animated face speaking to you, and under that are 2 text windows — one that shows in English what the character said, and one that shows what you say. I noticed that pronunciation is important to a degree  (the Japanese speaker said “pray” instead of “play”, and it printed out the former, but thanks to the context the animated speaker gave the appropriate response). What is very good about all this is that the student can ask for a written translation of what was just said, and this shows up on the side in a third text window. Overall, I’d say the translation is very fast. It’s also very fast voice recognition for the student. (I noticed that in the demo the student said “chat friends”, but it printed out only “friends” even though he tried to correct that twice, so it’s not completely perfect.)

Sometimes the dialogue gets a bit stilted, and I’d like to see more of a free demo. Using this program costs almost 2,000 yen per month (1,500 yen/month if you buy a year’s plan). The speaker seemed to know a bit of Japanese culture, which is nice for our students, but I wonder how much of the conversation becomes just Q&A, with the questions coming mostly from the screen.

Take a look, but keep in mind the cost.

Steve Denning has written several books on business, and he has a column with Forbes. See what he offers in the way of an opinion on how the U.S. education system should change. Interview is here: “Management guru offers radical ideas for school reform“.

A new version of the book New Ways in Teaching Reading is due. The call for papers can be found at this link. TESOL is asking for additions to 2 new sections:

• teaching young learners
• using the Internet to teach reading

Throw your hat into the ring! Deadline for submissions is November 1.

The Daily Yomiuri has a short column out that talks about spoken replies in the iBT (Internet-based TOEFL). What is nice is that it offers a link to the ETS rubric for independent tasks and integrated tasks, and it shows an example of a good and a bad reply. What is not so nice is that the rubrics themselves are pretty long (a fault that cannot be helped, and they are for referees anyway, not students) and that the article doesn’t go into the specific flaws of the poor example response.

The lengthy rubrics are good for referees to follow. Whether anyone else wants to adapt them to their own speaking tests is up for you to decide. If you are giving advice on the iBT, I would suggest simplifying these rubrics so that the students know what they need to do to score well. They deserve to know what they are getting into.

Whether you are a TESOL member or not, you can participate in an online discussion about putting research into practice. Here is the link you can use for a bit more information and for instructions on how to sign up.

Dates are 14 September to 21 October. Participation in this interactive event is free.