Event

Teaching English as a Humanities Subject

Saturday, September 13th, 2003, 6:00 PM - 8:00 PM

Speaker: Mike Guest, Miyazaki Medical College

It is generally believed that there are two purposes for teaching English in Japan. The first, of course, is to prepare students for tests, most often high school and university entrance exams. Both the poverty and the necessity of this type of approach has been widely discussed and criticized. The second is teaching practical English, with an eye towards preparing learners for interactions with non-Japanese, the much-vaunted 'internationalization' approach. This has been widely viewed as a more progressive or productive form approach to teaching English in Japan. In fact though, it seems that many teachers and learners are becoming disillusioned with this second approach too. Students know that in most cases their opportunities to talk with foreigners will be few and far between so why waste the effort in the classroom? Teachers feel the strain too- what motivation can there be in teaching something supposedly practical that most learners are rarely going to use? To answer this dilemma Mike Guest advocates teaching English as a standard 'Humanities' subject, neither for test-taking nor for vocational preparation but rather as education in and of itself in the classical sense, much as other academic high-school and, often, university subjects are (supposed to be) taught. This means, teaching in order to help the learner grow, to stimulate the learner's mind, to provide the foundations for a well-educated citizenry. Mr. Guest will show how certain features of communication (such as pragmatics, discourse analysis, sociolinguistic analysis) lend themselves to this approach and will demonstrate how they can be applied to individual lessons. He will also introduce some guiding principles in adopting this method. The goal is to show teachers that they can have successful and stimulating classes without focusing on vocational/practical English nor by taking the test-preparation approach.

Organization: Fukuoka Chapter of the Japan Association for Language Teaching (Fukuoka JALT)

Cost: JALT Members: free
Non-members: 1000 yen

Venue: Fukuoka Jo Gakuin Tenjin Satellite Campus (9F), Tenjin 2-8-38, Chuo-ku, Fukuoka-shi map

Location: Fukuoka City, Fukuoka Prefecture, Japan

Contact Fukuoka JALT

Trevor Holster