-A Case Study of a Mini-immersion English Program-
Presented by: Takako Watanabe, Watanbe English School
Co-Presenter: Prof. Kazuo Watanabe, Professor of English and English language education at Nara University of Education.
This presentation will outline how a mini-immersion program has been conducted for the past 9 years with a special emphasis on the first 6 years, comparing these students’ achievements with those of other students in once-a-week and twice-a-week programs.
Date: Sunday, Sept 16th 2012
Time: 16:00-17:30
Venue:Yumekaze Nara (Access)
Cost: Free for JALT members, ¥500 for visitors
Presentation Description:
Our mini-immersion program is defined as a type of partial content based program in which several elementary school children learn English in English under the guidance of an experienced, balanced bilingual teacher. It has five interesting characteristics: it is language-conscious content teaching rather than contextualized language teaching; it is more or less based on Palmer’s principles of language teaching—from primary skills to secondary skills; it is taught by an experienced, balanced bilingual; it is interactive; the class size is quite appropriate in that it is fewer than ten students.
Some of the outstanding achievements of this program are as follows. Four out of six students passed Grade 2 of the Step Test, in sixth grade, and two in seventh grade. One of them passed Grade Pre-1 in 9th Grade in July of this year. She went to the Prince Takamadonomiya Trophy oratorical contest in Tokyo last year as the 1st prize winner in the local contest. Two other students are going to attend the local contest in October this year. Also, three students were chosen out of over one hundred candidates for the Fukui City Junior Ambassador programs – one last year and two this year – and they all enjoyed communication with people without much difficulty in two sister cities in the US. All of these were made possible by this program; they acquired knowledge of English sufficient to enjoy communication in English with positive attitudes.
Presenters’ Bio:
Takako Watanabe was Fukui Chapter President of JALT for 23 years until last March. She was an adviser on Teaching English to young children for now-defunct Penguin Books Japan for 10 years. She has been running Watanabe English School for more than 20 years, where she teaches students varying in age from 4 to 18. She has extensive teaching experiences at public institutions, such as Fukui University, Open University, a preparatory school, as well as junior and senior high schools. Her educational interests include helping students develop communicative competence in English. Raising her two children bilingually with Kazuo Watanabe has provided her with significant insights into her teaching practices.
Kazuo Watanabe is currently Professor of English and English language education at Nara University of Education. He has been teaching at the college level for more than thirty years. His research interests include teaching writing, Second Language Acquisition, bilingual education, international understanding education and foreign language teacher qualifications.
NB: This event will be preceded by the JALT Nara Chapter Annual General Meeting (AGM) at the same venue from 14:00-15:00. If you would like to be a part of the Nara JALT team of officers or nominate a willing chapter member, please send an email stating the name of the person who would like to run and the officer position they would like to run for, to the following email address: narajalt@gmail.com. Further details available on our blog.
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