EFL & Language Acquisition

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 h...

     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 cla...

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...

Here is a link to my Padlet containing a growing collection of interesting research articles and videos I  started this during one of my graduate courses at the University of Southern Maine. This is a place fome to gather and share thought-provoking articles and videos relating to language acquisition and English language learning. The newest addition is a feature video from the early 1960s of jazz pianist Bill Evans,  interviewed by his brother. The interview focuses loosely on the creative process involved in playing jazz, but the concepts Evans talks about can be applied to many different idioms, including language learning. https://padlet.com/benjansson77/5mn9rum39h7vqetx