Questions for Mr. Hamada:
- What did you study?
A: Teaching EFL and he did a lot of public speaking. It was awesome.
2. How did your teaching philosophy change?
A: In Japan, the teacher teaches only words or grammar. In the US class, the teachers teach not only English but the content of the book. It is important for us to teach about language and content. We have to change Japanese English education in the future.
In daily life, we talked about personal topics such as politics, government, religion, or immigrants. US people talk about these things even during lunch.
3. How do the teachers at NCC and Iwate University compare?
A: In Japan the teachers are main but in the US the students talk more. He wants to change the education in Japan in terms of supporting students easily. University has small classes so it is easier to communicate. It is easy for students to ask for help.
4. Where did you go during vacation?
In December, he had vacation for a month so he went to NY for sightseeing: Brooklyn Bridge, Empire State Building, Statue of Liberty. He watched an NFL and NBA game.
5. How did you make friends?
He realized that Japanese people are likely to be shy. He realized that it is important to speak English with people to try to communicate. American people like to talk all the time; during lunch or dinner. They are talking because they want to get along with Takeshi. He realized that he had to say something. Even in class they have to say something because if they do not say anything, the teacher does not count their attendance.
6. What is the difference between English education in America and Japan?
Last August, Takeshi took part in the English language institute. Almost all Asian people attended the class last summer. He learned a lot, such as, Japanese education tends to teach about just English. The American class tends to do a presentation or essay about a topic. He is not used to it so they have to practice.
He felt during the academic year he improved a lot because he was able to study content and language at the same time.
ネイティブ・スピーカーの英文法
This book said How they use a or the. “The” depends on context of communication. “a” means certain one of all stuffs. Countable nouns said there was differences during “lots of foods” and ” lots of food”. The former means there are many kinds of food such as apple,orange and so on. The latter means amount of food.
Possible themes for investigation
- University students’ perceptions of English articles
- An examination of how articles are taught in Jr and Sr high schools.
- An examination of article errors in the writing of JHS students.
- A pilot study on article instruction for JHS students
- A pilot study on article instruction for university students
Junior read 英語の授業が変わる５０のポイント
He chose 3 things from the book.
1. Jenga
Students learn many grammar. For example be verb, past tense or regular verb. They are easy to break like jenga. So, students have to practice many time to make it stronger to memorize those grammars. When study new grammar, it is important to practice the other grammars that students already learned.
2. When does students realize the importance of grammar or vocabulary?
Our guess: When speaking English.
Before the examination.
When they write something English.
A. During output.
When students study something, they input first. And when they output something they realize that they did not know what they already studied. So it makes a circle of input and output.
3. interaction
Interaction is really important for English class. Junior thought that interaction is between teacher and students. But the book told him there are many kinds of interactions. For example, Japanese teacher and ALT or students and ALT.
Junior wants us to study how to interact students as a teacher.
EX) T: Tetsuko, how are you?
S: I am good.
T: Really? You look tired.
It is important to have authentic conversations.
Junior wants us to read the book.
Possible themes for investigation
Input, output, interaction, and SLA.