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(1) Promoting Students' Foreign Language Communication Ability and General Studies;
(2) University Students' Perceptions on the Teacher's Use of L1 in English Class

Sunday, December 11th, 2011, 1:30 PM - 4:30 PM

Speaker: (1) Yoshiko Miyake; (2) Harumi Ogawa

Presentation 1: Yoshiko Miyake
Promoting Students' Foreign Language Communication Ability and General Studies: The IPU Case Study

In the past two years, foreign language teaching at Iwate Prefectural University has been in the process of reform. This talk will address IPU's new directions in foreign language teaching and learning, efforts to establish and expand a study abroad program, and promotion foreign language self-study. IPU offers English, Spanish, Korean, French, Russian, German and Chinese, and has study abroad options in South Korea and China. A self-study room with language learning materials and resources, and a foreign language learning web site are also among IPU's developments. The reforms to be discussed are motivated by demographic, social and economic change, but are emerging within conservative systems in the university. The challenges of this process will be discussed.

Yoshiko Miyake is an Associate Professor of Spanish at IPU with a master?s degree in Literature from Kyoto Foreign Language University. Recent publications address small language classrooms and communicative language teaching in the CALL environment. Her research interests include the Bilingual education for U.S. Puerto Ricans and she is currently completing a book in Japanese, To Know Puerto Ricans.

Presentation 2: Harumi Ogawa
University Students' Perceptions on the Teacher's Use of L1 in an English Classroom

In this presentation, the speaker will discuss the action research she conducted to explore the effective use of the first language (L1) in an English classroom at a Japanese university. She taught a group of university students in two different modes. During the first half of the course, only English was used as a means of instruction. In the latter half of the course, L1 was used upon the students' request. An end-of-semester questionnaire was employed to elicit students' perspectives on the teacher's use of L1. The results show that using L1 in a university English classroom is beneficial in maximising the students' learning process, providing efficient class administration, and for affective purposes. The data also reveals that finding a balance between using L1 and L2 is a key to creating a successful learning environment.

Harumi Ogawa is a full-time English teacher at the Department of International Cultural Studies at Iwate Prefectural University. Her research interests include content-based instruction, motivation and autonomy in language learning. She was a qualified Japanese teacher in Australia and has a master's degree from University of Chichester, UK.

Organization: Iwate-Aomori Chapter of the Japan Association for Language Teaching (Iwate-Aomori JALT)

Cost: JALT Members: free
Non-members: 1,000 yen; 500 yen for full-time students

Venue: Aiina, Morioka, 6th Floor, Room 602 map

Location: Morioka City, Iwate Prefecture, Japan

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