Peter Burden
Okayama Shoka University "What's Going On?" What Happens When English Becomes an Elective Subject
While English has long been seen as important to enable people to communicate via the global lingua franca, and the Japanese government has long promoted the notion of "global citizens", at least one university in Okayama has made English an elective subject among a menu of foreign languages. This has led to a dramatic shift in the number of students in my classes which surprised me. Student attitudes towards English are often stored as episodic memories, and a survey administered with 120 students sought a picture of retrospective motivation to study English during high school. While results may appear intuitive to some, there are many interesting insights, useful as a springboard to discussion about the role of English in your institution and society.
Jason Lowes
Fukuyama University “Are they getting this?”: Using questions to effectively assess understanding and to improve student engagement
It is a truism that the most effective way to learn something new is to connect it to something already known. As teachers, how can we know what knowledge each student brings to each lesson? Similarly, after carefully explaining some point or leading a class through a text, how can a teacher determine whether students are ‘getting it’? The answer to these two questions is, obviously, to ask them. This, in turn, creates several more questions: How should the teacher ask?, What should the teacher ask?, and When should the teacher ask? This presentation will explore possible answers to each of these questions and more. There will be opportunities for the participants to experience various questioning formats and offer their own opinions and answers.
