I have a dream… for Japan’s English education

critic

I was very negative about the Japanese government’s proposal to use TOEFL to screen university applicants. It’s easy to criticize, to offer up reasons why things won’t work. It makes you feel important, contributing to the conversation in that way. It even feels productive sometimes, like you are saving people from making mistakes.

I still think indiscriminately imposing the TOEFL test on students in Japan is a flawed idea, and next week on this blog I am going to offer up some alternatives.

I will post my suggestions on how I think English education in Japan can be improved at the primary (elementary school), secondary (junior and senior high school), and tertiary (university) levels.

And then you can all have a go at criticizing me 🙂

 

* give yourself a pat on the back if you know who the guy in the picture is

VIDEO Oxford Teaching Workshop Series 2013: Creating a Reading Program for Young Learners

This year I was very fortunate to be invited to be part of the Oxford Teaching Workshop Series, presenting in four cities in Japan this spring. This video is from the Okayama session:

Please tell me about your reading program in the comments.

Okayama and Osaka Oxford Teaching Workshops

I would just like to thank everyone who turned out for the Okayama and Osaka Oxford Teaching Workshops. I had a great time meeting and talking to you, and the many questions really helped me see where my presentation needs more work 🙂

As promised, here are the slides I used for my presention

1302 OTWS ORT

Please feel free to get in touch if you have any questions.

Oxfort Teaching Workshop Series Fukuoka Feb 3 2013

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I’ll be presenting in Fukuoka again this Sunday, at the Oxford Teaching Workshop Series 2013.

I’m really excited about the topic: designing reading programs for young learners.

I’ll be on at 10:30 in the Tenjin Crystal Building. Please see the flyer for more details.

Annotated list of websites from the “SRS, RSS, LMS: Online Tools to Boost Learner Efficiency” presentations

Hi everyone

A friend from Sendai reminded me that I promised to post the list of websites from my presentation on the blog. Here it is:

Anki is a spaced-repetition program

elllo.org is an amazing listening resource: over 1200 short conversations with transcripts

EnglishCentral.com has short videos with interactive subtitles as well as vocab and pronunciation practice

Facebook needs no introduction

Google search settings have some interesting tools, like reading level

Google translate is partially useful

iTunesUniversity great content for advanced students and teachers can now use it to show their classes

Network (Oxford University Press textbook) new series based around social media

OxfordOwl incredible resources including Oxford Reading Tree ebooks with sound

pikifriends a closed social network for junior high schools

popjisyo.com amazing resource for reading online content

readthekanji.com a simple (paid) system for learning kanji

renshuu.org a very powerful site for learning kanji and vocabulary -freemium but most of it is free

rikaikun for Chrome/rikaichan browser extension Firefox gives popup translations within the browser

skype for video calls

starfall.com phonics and reading practice for children

TED.com great content for teachers and advanced learners

youtube.com you know this

Hope you find something useful in there.

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