Event
Home(1) Setting up an extensive reading course; (2) The Illusion of Synonyms
Saturday, December 10th, 2011, 2:00 PM - 4:00 PM
Speaker: Andy Boon (Toyo Gakuen)
Setting up an extensive reading course: the beginning, the middle and the end
This presentation / workshop will provide an outline of an extensive reading elective reading course for second year students at Toyo Gakuen University. It will describe the decisions that were made when designing the course, the in-class activities that helped foster learner confidence and motivation, and the evaluation of the course from the perspectives of both the students and teacher alike. During the presentation / workshop, teachers will be encouraged to take part in the in-class activities and comment on the ideas presented.
The Illusion of Synonyms: Investigating the similarities and differences between bias and prejudice
This presentation questions the synonymic relationship between bias and prejudice as it appears in a coursebook task. First, the two terms are compared using their entries in the New Oxford English Dictionary. The analysis reveals that the dictionary cannot fully account for the two terms and only offers limited assistance in guiding a user to an understanding of their differentiation. The second part of the investigation examines bias and prejudice as they occur in a 50 million word corpus of modern English (Collins Cobuild Wordbanks Online) to discover points of overlap and departure between the two terms. The analysis shows that bias and prejudice share an illusory synonymic relationship which begins to fade once the terms become situated in separate contextual and co-textual environments. The final part of the presentation discusses a number of implications for vocabulary teaching arising from the investigation. The audience will also be asked to participate in a short corpus analysis task.
Organization: Nagasaki Chapter of the Japan Association for Language Teaching (Nagasaki JALT)
Cost: JALT Members: free
Non-members: 1000 yen (500 yen for students or anyone bringing a first-timer)
Venue: Dejima Koryu Kaikan, Nagasaki city
Location: Nagasaki City, Nagasaki Prefecture, Japan
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