The presenter was Yoko Takano, who has been
teaching English
to students from age 3 to 66 in private language schools for 19
years.
She recently obtained her MATESOL degree at Nagoya University of
Foreign
Studies and has a Hawaii Pacific University MA TESOL
certificate.
Her theme: Improving
students’ communicative competence through focus on form
instructions and assessment
She reported the results of nineteen months of action research
with
2nd and 3rd year junior high school students conducted in her
private
language school. Traditional grammar teaching consists of focus
on forms where L2 learners conduct grammar practice
without necessarily
understanding the meaning of the sentences. On the contrary, focus on
form is a different approach to grammar teaching where
students can
focus on the meaning before focusing on form. Although the
students’
proficiency and attitude toward language learning varied widely,
focus
on form instruction gradually helped each of them to engage in all
activities, express opinions, listen to others, reply to
questions, and
give feedback to their classmates. As an assessment, performance
tests
(writing and speaking) gave students positive washback to improve
their
communicative competence. Overall, communicative competence
dramatically
increased through use of student-centered, integrated-skills
lessons.
Interactive peer-editing and timed-conversation activities
enhanced
their motivation. Yoko displayed data collected from surveys,
video-
recordings, writing samples, self-evaluations, and formative
assessments.
Participants joined in activities which Yoko has used with her
students
and followed up speaking with free writing:
Coming up!
Wednesday 23rd November (public holiday):
Sarah Mercer (University of Graz in Austria). As well as
listening to
her presentation: 'We need more TTT – Time talking about
teachers',
we hope to be able to talk to her over dinner in the
evening.
December 18th December:
We plan to hold our chapter 'Bonenkai' following a workshop with
Rie
Adachi, who teaches at Aichi University and is currently
researching
CLIL (Content and Language Integrated Learning).