Tokyo CLIL Workshop July 6th 2013, Senshu University

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This is a quick report on the workshop given at Senshu University last weekend. Many thanks to Stephen Ryan of Senshu for inviting us, to Kay Irie of Tokai University for her enthusiasm and support, and for leading a great panel discussion. We would also like to thank Mr. Tsuchiya at the Language Laboratory at Senshu which organised the event. We are also especially grateful to all the attendees who came and took part, it was a great day!

The slides are shown below in order of each presenter.

Makoto Ikeda – ABCs of CLIL

Richard Pinner – CLIL Demo Lesson: Factory Farming

Handout:

Chantal Hemmi – Critical Thinking in CLIL

engnet-education.com becomes UniLiterate.com

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Dear valued followers, readers and clients

Recently, due to rather irritating circumstances and a fall-out with my registrar (123-reg) I have had to move my blog to a new domain. As they kept the name and that has now been bought by another company (sigh) I have had to migrate everything to a completely new domain and come up with a new name and a new image for my language learning consultancy and blog. Thus, Uniliterate was born.

Despite the rather frustrating origins, I had actually meant to move the site or to re-brand it anyway. Previously I had focused specifically on technology and language teaching, which is still a passion of mine. But whereas engnet-education was established as a consultancy and we sold VLE implementation and training, my own professional focus was moving away from this and into new areas of language education – mainly the issue of authenticity and Global Englishes, in particular content-based learning and content and language integrated learning (CLIL).

So, this site will continue the work I established as engnet-education, but with the re-branding comes a change of theme and focus. One of the primary reasons for me wanting to move away from a focus on the use of technology in language teaching was that, as I found during my MA research and as Graham Davies himself predicted, CALL and the use of computers is not so much a separate thing in education any more. It is becoming more and more common, and indeed many people, myself included, view it simply as a tool for learning. This is certainly still interesting and still valid, but my approach is now to view technology in the language classroom as part of another field of enquiry, rather than looking at it in isolation as I was before.

So, once again I would like to thank my clients and readers and to ask you for your patience while I sort out this transition and please stay posted for more exciting developments and hopefully an improved flow of content and discussions.

Expanding our Horizons

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Engnet-education has been providing eLearning specific consultancy and training since its creation in 2008. In that time we have worked with various clients in England, Scotland, Ireland and Japan, as well as presenting research at international conferences in Europe and virtual seminars attended by people from all over the world.

However, since moving to Tokyo our services have become more diversified and we have adapted to new experiences and challenges, adding more strings to our bow in terms of the types of training, research and consultancy we can provide. For this reason, engnet-education will be undergoing a face-lift in order to reflect our now more diverse offerings. This means that we will now offer the following services:

Training

  • Pre-Service and In-Service Teacher Training
  • Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL)
  • Materials Development
  • Adapting Authentic Materials
  • Using Literature in the Language Classroom
  • Motivation in the Language Classroom
  • Building and Evaluating Language Tests
  • Doing Action Research
  • Integrating Technology
  • Conducting International Virtual Exchanges
  • Interactive Whiteboard Training
  • Using Virtual Learning Environments

Research

Our research has previously focused particularly on Computer-Aided Language Learning (CALL) and eLearning. Now, we will be concentrating our efforts more in the field of CLIL, with a specific focus on the use of Literature in language teaching. In particular, engnet-education will focus on materials, specifically authentic materials and their motivational role in the classroom.

 Materials Development

In addition to teacher training and research, engnet-education offers materials development services. We have written language quizzes, text book materials, lesson plans, language tests and assessment criteria, marking rubrics as well as designing and implementing online materials for websites or SCORM compliant items for VLE systems. You can see samples of these plans in the materials section of the site.

VLE implementation

The diversification on engnet-education does not mean we will cease to provide our old services. We still offer full and partial VLE implementation and consultancy – from initial choice and development, project management, training, populating, piloting and presentation.