Dear all,

A very happy new year to everyone! I hope you are all safe and keeping warm this winter season.

We will have our last chapter meeting for this academic year on Saturday, January 27, 2024, from 15:00 to 17:00.

The meeting will be held in East Building 1 Room 705 at the University of Electro Communications in Chofu, Tokyo. 交通・学内マップ (uec.ac.jp)

For those who want to join online, we will also have a Zoom link for the meeting. You can apply for the link through this form: https://forms.gle/codAvoQpAUFPnD5j6

Apologies for the short notice, but I hope many people can join us for the meeting!

Program:

1. 15:00 – 15:45 Presentation 1 and Q&A – Collins
2. 15:45 – 16:30 Presentation 2 and Q&A – Cheetham
3. 16:30 – 17:00 Business Meeting

Afterward, for anyone interested, we will go out for an informal dinner (shinnennkai) near the station.

Presentation 1: Beyond Grammar-translation: Nursing Students as Communicative Readers and Writers

Abstract – ESP students at Japan’s colleges and universities are expected to interact with academic content by drawing on both their linguistic knowledge and their communication skills. Many of them, however, are hindered by the wide gap between their traditional grammar-translation backgrounds and their potential as ESP users (Collins & Suzuki, 2018). This presentation will outline a three-phase reading-writing component created to help bridge that gap for students in a required Nursing Academic English course. Over the course of a semester, the students individually read a series of 450-word essays on engaging topics not covered in the textbook. These include types of problems patients and cross-cultural issues nurses may face in their interactions with patients. Phase 1 sees students individually identifying key content and target language with scaffolding provided by graphic organizers (Parrish, 2018). In Phase 2, they confirm what they have learned, first with a group and then with the whole class. Finally, in Phase 3, students draw on their own experiences, opinions, and ideas to respond in writing to the content of the essays. One reading-writing sequence will be shared, along with sample student writing outcomes. Predictably, results were mixed, but the sample outcomes show how the sequence enabled some to think critically about content, willingly communicate their own perspectives, and autonomously recycle vocabulary and expressions from the readings.

Speaker Bio – Peter Collins has been teaching at Tokai University since 1998 and is the coordinator of Tokai’s Nursing Academic English course. His research interests include EAP, situated language, and integrating secondary and tertiary English education in Japan.

Presentation 2: Optimizing Learning Outcomes: Student Research Projects with Graded Readers

Abstract – Content-based learning can be an enriching and enjoyable experience for learners. However, for those learners with limited language skills, the prospect of academic content in a foreign language can be intimidating to say the least. The question, therefore, should not be whether content-based learning is possible, but rather how to best utilize materials to increase analytic thinking, cross-cultural understanding, and motivation. This presentation will draw upon a case study that examined student’s reading and research practices using both simplified and unsimplified content-based texts. The findings suggest that content-based graded readers in comparison to unsimplified texts provided the learner not only with comprehensible vocabulary, sentence structures, and key ideas, but also a framework that they could relate to and adapt to their learning outcomes. In addition, using content-based graded readers significantly lessened the learner’s reliance on translation software and allowed them to increase their overall research practices in the target language.

This presentation will outline the various steps of a collaborative research project that uses content-based graded readers. In step one, students share resources and compare notes with a universal note-taking template. In step two, students summarize their findings using a summary template. Lastly, in small interactive groups, students present their findings. The project outcomes show how the stages assist students to research in the target language without relying heavily on translation software. Tips will be offered for replicating this kind of research project in an ESP classroom.  

Speaker Bio –  Catherine Cheetham is an Associate Professor at Tokai University with over 20 years of EFL teaching experience. Her main interests are extensive reading, content-based instruction, and materials development.