With a background of studying Applied Linguistics, I am particularly interested in these areas:
1: Material Design for ESP courses in Technical English
I co-authored a coursebook 'Technical English Techniques' (with Shunsuke Matsuura, Yasuo Deguchi and Masahisa Seguchi). It was published by Gakujutsu Tosho Publishing in 2000.Å@
I also published an article:
Technical English - Dealing with diversity (NIT Journal 1999)
Brian Cullen (Nagoya Institute of Technology) and I gave a presentation 'Technical English materials - how different do they need to be?' at the conference of the Chubu Chapter of JACET (Japan Association of College English Teachers) at Nagoya City University on Saturday 2nd June 2001.
We co-authored an article 'Technical English in Japanese Universities: ESP or Diversity' (AUE Journal 2002), using the results of a questionnaire we gave to fourteen teachers.
2: Use of new media in language learning
I am now teaching a course involving computer use as a way of improving English skills, whether through homepage production, computer cameras or international discussion forums. The latest has been the latter, with the 'Knowing Our Students, Knowing Ourselves'. Read more about it.
Three presentations on this topic were:
JALT Toyohashi (16th February 2003) - 'Making Homepages Worthwhile'.
and
JALTCALL - annual conference of JALT's C.A.L.L. special interest group (6th June 2004) - 'True Distance Learning - Widening Experience through Remote Visitors. A presentation with Brian Cullen about our experiences using computer cameras. We updated this presentation for the JALTCALL conference in June 2005, with 'True Distance Learning - Remote Visitors Revisited' and presented 'Bringing Remote Visitors to Your Students' on 18th November at the 2006 PAC CALL Conference in Nanjing, China.
3: Teaching English to elementary school children shogakusei no eigokyoiku
The start of the 2002 academic year saw the wider provision of English teaching through International Studies courses at public elementary schools. It is a major challenge to make this successful.
More information from JALT 2001
On Saturday 7th July 2001 I gave an open lecture on this topic for Aichi University of Education and Kariya City. This was also featured on 'el-Net' a lifelong education network using 'new media' (satellite broadcasting and the Internet). In the latter part of 2001 I was involved in a committee considering the syllabus for English for elementary schools in Komaki city, north of Nagoya. On 6th July 2002, as part of a weekend open lecture course, I gave a presentation on visual input in elementary school English. Another open lecture on this topic followed on 22nd July 2003 and the latest workshop was on 22nd July 2004. See more information about that.