2010年2月28日日曜日

あんかけやきそば


今日は札幌周辺まで行ってきましたが、帰りに苫小牧でおいしいと評判のあんかけ焼きそば屋さんに行ってきました。やきそばのほかにはメニューが数品しかなくて、まさにそれで「売ってる」という感じ。評判どおりのおいしさで、非常に高い満足感を得ることができました。ここはおすすめです!

2010年2月22日月曜日

First try as an Eiken examiner


Last Sunday was the day when I worked as an Eiken examiner. Though I was registered on the list of examiners for two years, I have not yet got the chance by then. I was a little nervous before the exam, and I got really tired after that. But the experience fulfilled my expectations enough.

2010年2月14日日曜日

Soup Curry


I went to Soup Curry shop called "PICANTE" (I don't know what it measn...). Lately, I don't feel like eating ramen, one of my favorite food in the world. I don't know why, but anyway, I felt like eating soup curry probably because it has been so cold outside recently. PICANTE is near the university I went to around ten years ago. The atmosphere in the shop somehow reminds me of shiny days those days. The soup was a bit different from what I tried before, but I was able to enjoy it enough.

2010年2月11日木曜日

To make my school's English classes better


One year has passed since I became a head of the teachers in charge of English section in my school. Through this school year, most of our efforts has been spent on making a integrated or packaged way of teaching. Until recently, each teacher has taught something in the way what she or he would like to teach. There has been no rigid "style" which they call "This is our school's teaching method". Through making Can-Do-List in terms of four skills, coming up with syllabi, and sharing them among teachers, our teaching style has been determined little by little.
Yeterday evening, I talked with a co-worker a lot around four hours. His teaching style and belief underlying his way of teaching seemed at first just as opposite of mine. Because I have had little opportunity to tell him what I learned from grad school, I explained my teaching belief under my way of teaching yesterday. My belief means like learners are likely to understand English through sizable input, they acquire English through 'meaning', not just form, and interaction and output are crucial for English learning process. Interestingly it turns out that he also strongly believe so, but the problem is he does not change his teaching style because he as a learner receive no instruction as I said above. The more he go through experiences where he could activate his deep knowledge about English (He is really much more knowledgable than me!), he would change his style into more what is called, 'SLA-friendly' one. Anyway it was really meaningful evening to share and discuss such matters.

Two books above are the latest books from which I was inspired in the field of English education.
First one is from a book featured in the blog below and also recommended in a teacher training this winter. It boosted my motivation again to make my class sophisticated one along with SLA insight. The second is also a book from really famous ex junior high school teacher. Though he does not seems to have so much SLA or TESOL background, his practices through 26 teaching experiences have been surely crystallized within this book, which of course encouraged me to change my style more better one.
The last one below is a blog from a author who came back from Britain where he studied SLA. His blog was full of insightful mixture of his SLA background and his daily practices in his classes.

http://d.hatena.ne.jp/takachan75/

The next school year will be a challenging one for us to make more packaged teaching style. Whether who will be a head teacher, I will spend considerable time and effort on this "mission".