EFL & Language Acquisition

  This past week was really busy teaching and preparing for my start at Utsunomiya University on Monday, October 3rd. I would like to visit each classroom and provide a little glimpse into what I have been preparing and also what has been going on pedagogically in my current classes. Ben' class: 9/27, 3pm-430pm, every Tuesday We are reading short dialogues/ scripts. We focus on reading aloud with prosody and students generally need some modeling and assistance with question sentences, pausing and intonation at punctuation marks (in general). This weeks short ( 3 page) script had quite a few tag questions. These are a bit strange because they are sometimes, (or always?) a positive phrase, combined with a negative question: " You like sports, don't you? ( do not you?!). After reading our script, students asked a few questions about words, pronunciation, and grammar. We then explored tag questions.  I explained one use of these questions. When we meet people a second time, w

This past week, I had a class on Tuesday afternoon and then spent the remainder of the week preparing for Utsunomiya University, which begins in early October. I also created two vocabulary quizzes for my first and second-year classes at Teikyo University ( there is a lack of textbook resources, so I am making the quizzes myself, which is fine). It turns out that this semester both classes I have at Teikyo are very small. This is a nice opportunity and also a challenge. One, a small group allows us to really have lots of lengthy and deep activities with much communication practice. On the other hand, it means I have to plan a lot of activities for our 90-minute classes. I think there is always a happy medium though, and I feel that the students can take advantage of the class time to explore writing, reading, thinking, and doing ( in many different skill areas). In other words, I don't want to plan non-stop activities, but touch on different areas and go deep into many of these are

       This past week I spent time preparing lessons and teaching. On Tuesday, September 13, I prepared a lesson and taught my private adult class. On Wednesday, September 14, I taught my first lesson in a new class. On Friday, September 16th, I taught my first two classes at Teikyo University for the fall semester. I also ended this week teaching private lessons at a day-long high school AP program at Utsunomiya University. Every few months I am involved in this pre-college program for high school students. This is called I-PU and I have included a link (Japanese only,  I cannot find an English version, unfortunately). For this week's blog, I will mainly list events and summarize happenings.  Ben's Class / Tuesday, 9/13 Our Classroom. Next week, I hope to bring in some examples of work from this adult class. We went through a PowerPoint pdf of adjectives ending in -ing / -ed   and discussed examples and we engaged in a pass-around activity by having having each person talk abo

     Working on grammar points, especially how to explain them and model them for students is not always easy! This week, I had the feeling that some English grammar points have no center of gravity! Meaning: Are these rules really real? I got a bit lost in overthinking, but also learned some new perspectives. I have spent many years playing music and working on being creative and breaking down rules just enough to allow myself to be as free as I possibly can musically, but still hold on to tradition. When I approach grammar I am often baffled by word function. I can see everything as a noun! I feel that to really understand many grammar points I have to check my creativity at the door and accept boundaries created by others ( the grammar makers).        I created a PowerPoint to go over an item that was causing some confusion last week in my private class. I am glad I dived into this because it is a grammar item that many of my students in various classes have trouble with (adjectives

Today's post begins a seven-week cycle of blog posts that are devoted to my teaching and practicum at the University of Southern Maine.  I teach in a variety of settings in Utsunomiya, Japan, and this week, I am excited to begin this blog series by sharing a bit about my brand-new EFL class I just started. I will also share a new syllabus and a new class activity for oral speaking practice I will use this semester at Teikyo University. In a way, the theme for this week could be: Creating. I want to harness the power of the creative process and in both my new class and Teikyo classes I hope to do this. Posting about this actually helps develop the ideas and outside comments are welcome! Recently, I have been thinking about the usefulness and practicality of learning a language through creating things (presentations, short videos, audio podcasts, a pamphlet, a brochure, or an advertisement for example) the list is pretty much endless. My experience as a professional musician has defi