The School House Volume 30 Issue 3
The Sapporo Snow Festival is back, and with it, last weekend we had a face-to-face JALT Hokkaido conference. I wish you all could have been there. Don’t we love it when we come away energised and inspired by a session? Well, that was my experience, and I want to share a little of that energy, as I began to feel a fresh wave coming into EFL in Japan.
What inspired me so much was a presentation given by Kristen Cardona & Claire Lee titled, ‘Free OPEN Resources for Professional Development’ and it was truly a treasure trove of online resources. Do you know that the Office of English Language Programs at the U.S. Department of State provides programs and resources for English language teachers and learners? Their focus is on the teacher, supporting them and offering professional development. I give a brief overview of the session in this edition. I’m confident you will find something to inspire you.
First of all, for this edition, our keynote speaker for JALT International 2022, Kensaku Yoshida, has kindly written up his presentation for us titled, ‘The Importance of Knowing the Needs of the Students’ that gives us food for thought. He discusses factors that impact students’ learning in the classroom.
He explains that students who are taught by teachers using all four skills (five areas) in their teaching are more highly motivated to use and understand English than those who are not. However, these results do not reflect the students’ English test scores. In other words, when a student says he/she likes English, it does not necessarily mean that
he/she has high scores in English tests. The point to note here is the importance of integrating all four skills and five areas in teaching English because that’s what seems to motivate the students most in wanting to learn English.
I’ll stop there, and let you enjoy reading Yoshida sensei’s article (and note, some of the tables contain URL links to the sources in Japanese), and take a look at some of the resources Kristen & Claire so freely shared with me, and in so doing, with you too.
I hope you have a splendid wrap up to the academic year and a wonderful spring!
Kate
Articles:
The Importance of Knowing the Needs of the Students - Kensaku Yoshida, Eiken Foundation of Japan and Sophia University
Free OPEN Resources for Professional Development: Report from JALT Hokkaido - Kate Sato, Hokkaido University of Science