EFL & Language Acquisition

Interviewing has a lot of benefits as a classroom task, not only within language learning classrooms, but for all learners in all classrooms. Afterall, how often do we actually sit and listen closely to our students ideas, and experiences? How often do we center a task around giving students a platform that is all about letting them answer with their ideas, and having the whole class listen?  More soon...

This is a blog entry that I will compose over a few days, perhaps a few weeks since I am pretty busy trying to create my own speaking opportunities in Japanese. To start off, I want to share some successes that have turned into firm beliefs about acquiring fluency and confidence in an L2. Like most people studying a language, I feel excited to try out my new language skills, vocabulary, and phrases, but a little unsure too because of my lack of real-life practice (I'm busy, and also shy sometimes). In short, all of us who study a second language whether by desire or necessity need more speaking time. So, if we cannot get an abundance of real-world speaking time, writing messages is a pretty good substitute and one that is time efficient and practical. Where can we write messages these days? We can write a message to our roommates/flatmates or family members (in our target language) to pick up the clothes in the living room, to not forget to pay that electric bill! Stick them o...

          What are they talking about? Our lives are filled with endless interactions. Practicing speaking in a foreign language can be difficult if you have no one to practice with!  You may ask yourself: what kind of speaking skills should I learn? What vocabulary should I memorize? What’s my focus?  I am a Japanese learner, and recently, I discovered how helpful it is to write my own dialogues in Japanese. Writing your own original conversations is a great way to practice speaking if you do not have regular access to a conversation partner. So, this post is about writing dialogues (dialogues are synonymous with conversations and dialogues usually imply that are written down, in my case, sometimes on scraps of paper at Starbucks) I always knew about dialogues and their usefulness in language learning, in fact, they make up a large portion of content in many second language textbooks. Sometimes the dialogues in textbooks are helpful! Other times ...

                                        Updated version of this post coming soon :)  Listening: Increase your English listening time!  Here are some links to different listening contexts and I hope to update them from time to time, so, be sure to check back here in the future. Let me know if you found any of these videos and links helpful. I think it's a good idea to try new listening experiences. Have you  listened  to TEdTalks? They are great for watching and  listening  to interesting presentations in English. There is a huge amount of variety in  presenters  and topics! One more idea, if you listen to one kind of music, try listening to some genre of music you don't normally listen to. Maybe you're a Heavy Metal fan, try Opera! Or maybe you are a J-Pop fan, try Free Jazz! ....You never know, you might get something out of it.  The foll...

  Welcome to my EFL and Language acquisition blog!   I am creating a space   to share my teaching and learning experiences within the field of English as Foreign Language (EFL), and more broadly, second language acquisition. More than just my experience, I  hope to share ideas, comments, critiques and analysis (and links) to interesting research and articles on English language acquisition and related topics.  About me: Ben Jansson I am currently a part-time lecturer teaching general English classes to first-year students and EAP classes to second-year students at Utsunomiya University. I also teach part-time at Teikyo University, in Utsunomiya. I have taught at Hotoku Nursing School in Utsunomiya and at the Hokkaido School of Education in Iwamizawa.  I have a Certificate in TESOL (2019), two music degrees, a  Bachelor of Music (Wayne State University, 2008, and a Master of Music from Michigan State University, 2010. I am curr...