This book focuses on appropriate English for Academic Purposes instructional concepts and methods in the Japanese context. It investigates a variety of pedagogical techniques, addressing the fundamental academic English skills – listening, speaking, reading and writing – as well as assessment and materials development. All the research included was conducted in Japanese university settings, thus shedding new light on the effective implementation of EAP teaching and learning activities with Japanese learners of English. This book is of interest to anyone working in an EAP context at the secondary or tertiary level, especially those which include Japanese learners.
The COVID-19 outbreak has changed the educational landscape as higher education institutions around the world were forced to close their physical campuses to slow or contain the spread of the virus. The rapid, unexpected, and forced transition to emergency remote teaching has been especially challenging for second- and foreign-language learners who rely on English for Academic Purposes (EAP) courses to help them transition from secondary school to higher education and succeed in their academic studies. To ensure these learners are receiving the best education possible, additional study on the difficulties, opportunities, and strategies of teaching English for Academic Purposes courses is required. Cases on Teaching English for Academic Purposes (EAP) During COVID-19: Insights From Around the World explores the effect of emergency remote teaching in offering quality EAP education to second- and foreign-language students and preparing them for their university studies in response to COVID-19 from a variety of contexts around the world. This book also contributes to developing effective practices for supporting and sustaining EAP teaching in an English-medium instruction environment during and after a pandemic. Covering topics such as remote teaching, writing instruction, and breakout rooms, this reference work is ideal for teachers, administrators, policymakers, scholars, practitioners, academicians, researchers, instructors, and students.
Featuring a collection of newly commissioned essays, edited by two leading scholars, this Handbook surveys the key research findings in the field of English for Specific Purposes (ESP). • Provides a state-of-the-art overview of the origins and evolution, current research, and future directions in ESP • Features newly-commissioned contributions from a global team of leading scholars • Explores the history of ESP and current areas of research, including speaking, reading, writing, technology, and business, legal, and medical English • Considers perspectives on ESP research such as genre, intercultural rhetoric, multimodality, English as a lingua franca and ethnography
This book proposes a new paradigm for English language teaching based on concepts from English for Specific Purposes (ESP) research and applications as well as from growing evidence relating pattern recognition to language learning ability. The contributors to the volume argue that learners should not try to become proficient all-around users of ‘idealistic native-like’ English, but instead should be realistic about what they need to acquire and how to go about achieving their specific goals. The book discusses the present situation by describing the status quo of English language education in Japan, taking into consideration recent trends of CLIL (content and language integrated learning), EMI (English medium instruction), and TBLT (task-based language teaching) as well as the work done on the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR). It introduces new movements in ESP in Japan and in other Asian regions, covering topics ranging from genre analysis to corpus linguistics, and presents application examples of ESP practice in a range of educational situations in Japan from the graduate school level to elementary and middle school contexts. It also offers readers application examples of ESP practice in a range of business settings and expands the discussion to the global sphere where EAP and ESP are gaining importance as the number of ELF (English as a Lingua Franca) speakers continue to increase. The book will be of great interest to academics, researchers, and post-graduate students working in the fields of EFL and ESL.
The COVID-19 pandemic has catalyzed a new era in English as a Foreign Language (EFL) learning and teaching by shifting EFL education from the face-to-face learning paradigm to the online and distance learning paradigm. Teachers and students have faced several challenges such as choosing appropriate web tools for presenting content either synchronously or asynchronously, motivating students to participate, and assessing students’ learning. Additionally, this shift to emergency remote online learning represents a challenge for students, particularly with managing their own learning. Taking into account that many students attend low-income schools with limited resources that lack reliable access to the internet and computers, this shift has resulted in growing equity gaps. Likewise, transitioning to emergency remote teaching has revealed a lack of digital competency and readiness amongst teachers. English as a Foreign Language in a New-Found Post-Pandemic World presents an overview of various tools, designs, and strategies utilized to provide digital teaching and assessment of the English language, shares research on using digital technologies for supporting English language learning, and identifies promising areas and directions for future innovations, applications, and research in digital English language learning and teaching. Covering critical topics such as digital teacher education, language learning environments, and online instructional tools, this reference work is crucial for administrators, policymakers, teacher educators, special educators, educational technologists, researchers, scholars, academicians, practitioners, instructors, and students.
No one is born fully-formed: it is through self-experience in the world that we become what we are. – Paulo Freire Diversity in Japanese Education explores ‘self-experience’ of individual learners and educators in Japan. The word ‘diversity’ is not limited to one’s ethnic background. Here, diversity refers to one’s pedagogical experiences and life experiences; to the norms, beliefs and values that impact such relations. These experiences and relations are fluid as they are shaped and reshaped in global and glocal settings. They are also reflected in praxis of English language learning and teaching in Japan. The authors’ educational backgrounds vary but they all share the common ground of being educators in Japan. Through being involved in learning and/or teaching English language in Japan, they have witnessed and experienced ‘diversity’ in their own pedagogical context. The book focuses on shifting critical and reflexive eyes on qualitative studies of pedagogical experiences rather than presenting one ‘fixed’ view of Japanese education.
Written by leading English-language educators in Japan, this Handbook provides an in-depth guide for the new generation of teachers at Japanese universities. In clear, accessible prose, it offers practical and detailed advice on effective classroom pedagogy, student motivation, learning styles, classroom culture, national language policy, career opportunities, departmental politics, administrative mindset, and institutional identity. Its four sections—The setting, The courses, The classroom, and The workplace—examine issues faced by university language teachers as well as challenges confronted by the increasing number of scholars teaching English as a Medium of Instruction (EMI) and Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) courses. Firmly grounded in contemporary teaching method and theory, the Handbook’s 23 chapters also acknowledge the influence of diverse movements such as World Englishes, global issues, gender, and positive psychology. Its three appendices contain information on organizations, books, journals, and websites particularly useful for Japanese university educators; explanation of types and rankings of schools; ways to learn more about individual institutions for job-hunting; and detailed information on the structure (and Japanese titles) of faculty and non-teaching staff at the typical university. This Handbook is an invaluable resource for anyone teaching, or aspiring to teach, at a Japanese university.
The critical grounded theory presented in this book offers valuable insights on the social processes and strategies used by Blended English for Academic Purposes Professionals (BLEAPs) at higher education institutions, as they struggle to negotiate the challenges arising from a new focus on recruiting international students and hunting for other resources for their universities. Drawing from in-depth interviews with numerous research participants at over eleven higher educational institutions in the UK, Japan and the United States, this work focuses on those who have been precariously placed as middle manager at many EAP and TESOL programs. Lacking in both positional power or permanence, these 'BLEAPs' are faced with many challenges as they seek to understand their changing role in higher educational institutions, and engage in strategies that can help them gain greater control over issues in their profession.
Writing is one of the most challenging skills for a language learner to acquire due its sheer complexity, and language teachers are faced with a demanding task in the teaching and testing of writing. This book presents relevant conceptual and theoretical frameworks of second language writing research and sheds light on the implications of the recent research findings in a clear and practice-oriented style. In this way, it is intended as a companion book for language teachers who include writing as a part of their courses, in particular, new teachers as they embark on their teaching careers.
