Pair Discussion Sample from Tatsuya and Masaki

Two freshmen students from the Department of Pharmacy at Kitasato discuss the importance of Japanese language study versus learning English. Students in the Speech Communication classes learn academic genre for using English beyond conversations to include discussions, speeches, presentations, debates and other types of performances.

English.

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More Role Play performances

Students from the Nursing and Environmental Studies departments have created their own role play skits in English to perforn on video. Most all of the videos are 'raw' performance in front of a digital camera, but some like thes below have been simply edited using Windows Movie Maker.

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ESL EFL student learn English

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Freshmen students create and perform a role play skit to actually use English and also to show what they have learned this semester. This is one of the problem for EFL learners who live in monolingual countries such as Japan, where there are actually not that many foreigners that they can interact with. Further, for most people in Japan's pubic and private school system, speaking English as a practical communication skill is completely downplayed and often ignored in favor of preparation of reading and translation skills in view of passing the difficult and vitally important university entrance exams. Our class strives to give an opportunity to learn that speaking English can not only be fun but can be an important part of self-development too.

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Final Performance Project for Speech Communication

Students in the Speech Communication classes are in the midst of creating, practicing and performing discussions on either every day topics or sometimes on more difficult social or moral issues. A few of the model performances will be placed here for you to view.

Role Plays in English

One of the fun and somewhat challenging things about learning to actually speak English while living in a monolingual society like Japan is finding ways to actually use spoken English in a meaningful way. Since it is not likely that students will naturally speak to each other in a language that is NOT their own native one, we, as educators, have to sometimes create an artificial environment for giving them the opportunity to speak. As a teacher of English as a Foreign Language (EFL), I gently use my 'force' as a teacher to get to try to use English for actually communicating by their creating and performing role play skits. Not only does it give them a chance to show what they can do as speaker of English, it is also fun to try to be creative with language. When they are successful -- as the one below illustrates - then it is something that we can all be proud of. I convinced them to let me show the video on this blog. They were the first ones to perform at the end of the first semester.

Here three freshmen students perform their second role play based on studying English conversation and daily communication. They created an original dialogue and perform it. Can you understand what happens after they ask the agent the price?

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