Our October 2016 Meeting

was on Sunday 23rd October

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). 

Find out about our September meeting.