Today, Teddy, Genghis and Wanda shared the sources that they had read. James recommended that they make use of Mendeley to archive what they have read and keep notes.
Teddy
Read an analysis of the Eiken vocabulary section.
Miura, T. & Beglar, D. (2002). The Eiken Vocabulary Section: Analysis and Recommendations for Change. JALT Journal, 24(2), 107-129.
The authors analyzed the Eiken exam focusing on vocabulary section because there are many articles focusing on other sections. The authors have negative thinking for vocabulary section because of these five points. 1 successive levels of the Eiken vocabulary do not increase in difficulty in a smoothly graduated fashion, 2 some tests appear more difficult than others, 3 widely differing frequency levels are sometimes used on the same item, 4 the assumed vocabulary sizes of the examinees frequently bear little relation of the tests include, 5 the sentence stems in the vocabulary section and the reading passages are sometimes similar.
Genghis (Ayano)
岩手県教育振興基本対策審議会(2010),これからの教育振興基本対策について（答申）, 2-3.
The report mention that the world has gradually moved to the global society, however, you have seldom felt such a big impact in Iwate prefecture. Therefore, we have been able to bring up pure students and make strong connection with local people for a long time. Meanwhile, such a rapid change to the global society demand us to correspond the education system with the global society.
佐藤臨太郎・古賀功他,日本人学習者に合った効果的英語教授法入門:EFL環境での英語習得の理論と実践,明治図書,2-5,91-103.
This book mention that instructions like CLT, TBLT and FonF are not effective for Japanese students in terms of acquiring target grammar and accurate knowledge, or maintaining their motivation to study, because Japan has EFL environment, and we have hardly use English in daily life. Therefore, the author suggest make environment, because it is important to promote learners’ motivation in Japan and effective to improve their language skills.
Bases on those researches, I guessed that SSH is good way to develop students’ motivation to study English, especially in Iwate. That is because they can get both technical knowledge and international views and know how each other is related, and they would be the motivation. Therefore, I gathered the research about SSH. They are 調査結果の概要(2010, 2011). In the paper, however, about 40% students told that they could not get international views through SSH activities. Meanwhile, about 26% students who did research with international organizations felt that they could get such a wide view through it. Therefore, I was interested in the content of textbooks and wondered whether teachers can bring up students’ motivation in classes.
Kouki, Ookawa. (2016). The Analysis of Cultural Issues in Japanese High School English Textbooks: From the Perspective of Intercultural Understanding. JALT Journal, 40(1), 3-8.
As a result of his research, English instruction at high school is not as communicative as that of junior high school, because high school teachers cannot disturb teaching English focused on grammar or translation, for students have to prepare for university’s entrance examinations. Then, high school English texts includes 24% of ENL contents, about 20% of Japanese information, and 50% of daily life contents. However, they are rarely include the country where English is used as lingua franca, like India and Singapore. In addition, 観光白書(2014) shows the rank of nationalities who come to Japan for sightseeing. As the result, three tops of them are Korea, Taiwan, and China contrary to the much information about Europe in texts. Therefore, he concluded that we have to pay attention not to teach one-sided European culture, because students have high possibility to meet Asian people more than European people.
Wanda
Nematullah Shomoossi (2004). The Effect of Teacher’s Questioning Behavior on EFL Classroom Interaction: A Classroom Research Study. The Reading Matrix, 4(2): 96-104.
The center of attention of this article was more or less to investigate issues such as the amount and type of teacher talk, speech modifications made by teachers, instructions and explanations, error correction and questions that occurs in the EFL classroom interaction. Furthermore, the author wanted to investigate the effect of teacher’s questions towards their students. The author categorized the questions into two types of questions; display question, and referential question. Thus, two hypotheses were shaped at the outset:
Hypothesis 1: There is no difference between the distribution of teachers’ use of display and referential questions.
Hypothesis 2: Referential questions create more interaction in the classroom than display questions do.
The method that used by the author was a qualitative-quantitative study. This study was conducted as a classroom research in Tehran universities, by observing forty reading comprehension classes. Focusing on two question types, display and referential, it explored recurring patterns of questioning behavior and their interactive effects were observed through non-participant observation.
The study reported here consists of two parts; in the first part which is more or less qualitative in nature, no predetermined line of search is followed; rather, the obtained data is investigated for recurring patterns of EFL teachers’ questioning behavior. This aspect of the study will reveal generalizable patterns of teachers’ use of questions in the observed EFL classrooms. However, the second part, which is of a quantitative nature, is concerned with clarifying two issues. The first issue concerns EFL teacher’s questioning behavior, and the second concerns with the amount of interaction caused by teacher’s questions.
The findings indicated that display questions were used by teachers more frequently than referential questions. Also, it was concluded that NOT all referential questions could create enough interaction.