Title: Global Citizenship and Linguistic Awareness: Teaching about World Languages and Writing Systems
Date: Sunday, March 12th, 1pm-4pm @ Rental Space Holly
Summary: In order to function effectively in our increasingly global age, our students need to have a basic knowledge and understanding of the various languages of the world. The EFL classroom can be an exciting place to provide this linguistic awareness.
This workshop will introduce a thematic teaching unit on “world languages and writing systems” developed for college-level Japanese EFL learners over the past 20 years. The unit comprises content-based activities, tasks and projects that engage students in critical thinking, discussion, research and presentations.
In the workshop, the presenter will demonstrate task-based EFL activities through which students explore language families, study about world languages, learn to recognize major writing systems and practice conversational expressions in foreign languages. He will argue that teaching about world languages stimulates student interest in language as a whole, improves language learning motivation, promotes international awareness and empowers students to engage more effectively with foreign peoples and cultures.
Participants who attend this workshop will get a chance to become “instant linguists” and take home a rich variety of ready-to-use handouts. They will learn how thematic teaching about the world’s languages and writing systems can promote English skills, linguistic knowledge, global awareness, cross-cultural understanding and curiosity about the wider world.
