A blog for EFL teachers, with a focus on ELT in Japan and Asia. Publishing the online practitioner journal, ELT in Japan.
http://eltinjapan.blogspot.jp/
Japanese publishers of EFL textbooks and materials Charles Jannuzi, University of Fukui, Japan Most 'western' publishers do not actually develop and produce textbooks and materials for the EFL market in Japan. Rather, they produce a lot of generic courses and supplementary material that they label 'communicative' and for 'false beginners' and hope EFL teachers here will adopt and adapt them to their classrooms. There are some problems with this approach to mass market publishing. First, many of the western publishers are not very reliable in providing support to the teachers who use their textbooks. For example, many of these publishers are reluctant to provide free teachers' manuals/answer keys and CDs/DVDs (such as for listening courses). Second, if their books are not in stock with the distributors that university bookstores use, it can be a very long time to get the textbooks--and the prices can be quite inflated. Third, using such materials is a bit...
Teaching English /r/ and /l/ to EFL learners: a lexical approach (parts 1-3 final) Charles Jannuzi University of Fukui, Japan Introduction English /r/, /l/ and contrasts across these two categories of sounds are often cited as pronunciation and listening perception problems for a variety of EFL learners, most from E. Asia. The language backgrounds most often associated with these problems are Japanese, Korean, Chinese and some languages of SE Asia (e.g., Thai but also Cantonese Chinese). Other language speakers have also expressed an interest in improving their pronunciation of English /r/ and /l/, including Russian and German EFL learners. Perhaps the most well-known group to have a problem with the two categories of sounds is Japanese EFL learners. This could be because their native language background creates the most difficult problems to overcome, both in terms of listening perception and spoken production. It could also be because Japan attained affluence b...
Preview of future issues of ELT-J Online Magazine : 1. Vocabulary activities for the conversation class. 2. Vocabulary activities for the writing class. 3. Teaching English /l/ vs. /r/ (applied phonology). 4. Introducing a different sort of audio-visual electronic dictionary for FL learning. 5. Variations of the multiple-choice vocabulary question for FL practice and assessment. 6. A look at schema theory and its applications for ELT. 7. A look at 'phonemic awareness'--what it is and how it applies to ELT. 8. Analysis of the issue 'phonics vs. whole language' from an ELT perspective. All these and more are under development for publication at ELT-J .
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