Marcel Van Amelsvoort
Juntendo University
About
English teacher in a CLIL program. Reading teacher and ER practitioner. Skills courses teacher in an M.Ed TESOL program.Sessions
College and University ER and TOEFL ITP scores more
Tue, Aug 8, 11:30-12:05 Asia/Tokyo
This presentation will report on a study that extends an earlier pilot study on extensive reading and TOEFL ITP progress. The pilot study found only a small correlation between score achievement on the test and the amount of extensive reading and listening on an eight-month intervention. For the current study, reading, listening, and TOEFL ITP data for two cohorts in the same program (280 subjects in total) were considered. During the intervention, students in these cohorts were more strongly encouraged to make use of the audio (reading while listening), and they were occasionally asked to read non-fiction graded readers in preparation for in-class activities. The results of the current study will be discussed, along with how the program has attempted to find a better configuration of program elements to help students see greater scores on the TOEFL ITP, the largest institutional measurement tool of student English proficiency improvement.
College and University Reading strategy instruction that supports ER more
Tue, Aug 8, 15:00-16:20 Asia/Tokyo
Better reading comprehension can lead to more reading, an important goal for any extensive reading program. Reading comprehension can be facilitated in many ways, including the promotion of strategy use by readers (Castles, Rastle, & Nation, 2018; Grabe & Stoller, 2019). This presentation will focus on a way to develop text engagement and better comprehension by teaching strategy use through annotation. Reading strategy teaching is effective (Plonsky, 2019); however, both research and anecdotal evidence show that if students are not trained explicitly in how to use strategies, many do not learn to make use of them. Annotation is one technique for teaching learners to use strategies in a systematic way. This presentation will describe how strategy use is taught through teacher modelling and then student annotation of a sample reader (following Groen, et al., 2021), and what results have been achieved with poor university readers in Japan.
College and University Using extensive reading to support content in a university CLIL curriculum more
Wed, Aug 9, 12:15-12:50 Asia/Tokyo
Leaders in the field of extensive reading such as Nation, Waring, Day, Bamford, Robb, and others have emphasized the principle of having students pursue personal interests by freely choosing from a wide range of fiction and non-fiction books. This presentation explores a different approach by explaining—in detail—how extensive reading can also be used to support content in a CLIL curriculum. Juntendo University’s semi-intensive first-year English program of 200 students in Tokyo recently underwent extensive reform and shifted from using a commercial EFL textbook to focused study of liberal arts areas such as natural history, earth science, sociology, and zoology. It subsequently adapted its extensive reading so that about half of the assigned online books are thematically related to particular content topics. This allows students to see target vocabulary in new contexts, re-encounter concepts central to content, while improving reading skills and reading speed. It also resulted in 140% higher one-year ITP TOEFL gains compared to previous years.
