VIDEO: Extensive Reading Program Design
This is a short lecture given as part of a Sendai JALT meeting (the Extensive Reading Colloquium) in January 2014. It was held at the Tohoku University Library.
Here is the ER Program Design handout that accompanies this talk.
Five local teachers also talked about their ER programs according to a common template. They answered the questions below:
- Where is ER placed in your curriculum?
- What is the disposition of faculty/administration towards ER?
- How many students/classes are doing ER?
- What are the goals of the program? Who sets them? How are they evaluated/revised?
- How do you measure student achievement? Is there any follow up after a student completes the program?
- What system do you have set up to order and manage books? How many books do you have at what levels?
- What is the future of ER at your institution?
Cory Koby
Daniel Eichhorst
Dominic Jones
John Wiltshier
Marc Helgesen
I’m afraid my video camera died during the panel session so I don’t have a video of that. I would also like to apologize to Dom -you’re just too tall, mate 😉
Thanks to everyone that presented and attended, and especially to Sendai JALT for organizing the meeting: I think we all learned a lot.
JALT Sendai Extensive Reading event at Tohoku University Library (January 26 14:00-17:00)
An Exploration of Extensive Reading Programs
These weekend JALT Sendai will hold an extensive reading event at the Tohoku University Library (Kawauchi Campus in Sendai). I’ll be giving a short lecture on extensive reading program design, which will be followed by short talks by local teachers about their extensive reading programs. We will finish off the day with a panel discussion and audience questions.
Schedule:
14-15 ER Program Design (Ben Shearon)
15-16 Introduction to ER Programs (various presenters)
16-17 Panel discussion / Q&A session
17~ Optional tour
More details: JALT Sendai website.
It is shaping up to be a really interesting, practical event. Hope to see you there!
extensive reading Language learning presentations self-study university
by sendaiben
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Video: Extensive Reading Workshop for University Staff (Japanese)
ER for Staff -a training workshop at Tohoku University
This 90-minute workshop on using extensive reading for self-study in English was conducted in Japanese at the Tohoku University Library on December 26th, 2013. I really don’t like listening to myself speak Japanese (it sounds very different to what I hear in my head) but I guess this is something I will get used to eventually (after all, I went through the same process watching my presentations in English and am now fairly comfortable with that).
No more presentations (for now)
Right now I only have one presentation scheduled: Sendai JALT on January 23rd.
That’s actually quite a strange feeling. The last couple of years have been great for me in terms of chances to present. I’ve been all over Japan and met all sorts of great people. You can see some of the presentations on the Sendaiben Youtube channel.
However, I have started to feel a bit burned out. In 2014 I will be attending some conferences as a participant, not a presenter. I’ll also be working on some really exciting new projects (stay tuned for more information soon).
I hope to be doing a lot more writing next year, on this blog and elsewhere.
Another Excellent Talk on Creativity
At the Oxford Day this year, I really enjoyed talking with Goodith White.
During her keynote, she mentioned this speech by Paul Collard, which I then tracked down and found excellent. He has some interesting points on teaching, test scores, and educational systems in Japan and Korea:
Lots of takeaways for language teachers. Some of the standouts for me:
- teachers need to train students to learn outside of the classroom
- our students are going to have to make their own jobs
- students that are pushed to achieve high educational test scores often end up disliking the subject and not pursuing it in the future (English in Japan?)
- autonomously functioning (self-directed) students do much better at university or in the workforce
What did you think of the speech?