| 講師 | ヘイグ・エドワード 教授 |
|---|---|
| 開講部局 | 文学部／国際言語文化研究科 2011年度 春学期 |
| 対象者 | 国際言語文化研究科 国際多元文化専攻 メディアプロフェッショナルコース (2単位・週1回全15回) |
授業を進めてゆくにあたり、主に 4 つの目的がある。1 つ目は、学生の総合的な英語能力を高める。2 つ目は、英字新聞・雑誌の読解およびテレビやラジオの英語放送を理解するのに必要な英語力を身につける。3 つ目はパワーポイントを使用して英語で発表を行うのに十分なスキルを身につける。そして 4 つ目は、英語で自信を持って議論ができるようになる。
I have found that Media Professional Department students are very interested in the latest news from around the world but they are not sure how to access and make use of it. Therefore, the "Words in the News" section of the BBC Learning English website, which is constantly being updated with new stories, is a very valuable resource for them. Not only is it useful for studying about foreign news, but it is also very interesting when there is a story about Japan because in such cases students can see how the media in another country, in this case Britain, reports on their own country. This often surprises them because they are generally only familiar with Japanese media and the 'angle' taken and the way of reporting are often quite different.
I must admit that I am not very familiar with modern educational technology but I do at least make use of email to notify students a few days in advance of each class about which particular story from "Words in the News" I am planning to discuss in the lesson. Since the materials are available online, students can study them wherever and whenever they like before coming to the lesson. This ensures that we make good use of in-class time for discussion and presentations about the chosen topics.
For each story, I also try to provide students in advance with some relevant background materials relating to the story in order that they can get a better understanding of how the story fits in to the broader social, cultural, political, economic and historical contexts. I find that popular sites such as YouTube and Wikipedia often provide useful and motivating materials for this purpose. In the case of the latter, although it seems that it is not yet widely known, in addition to the main English version of the site there is also a Simple English version (http://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page) which, like the "Words in the News" stories, are specifically intended for non-native speakers. I would recommend all learners of English to try searching for information on this site.
Finally, I would like to mention something about the Extensive Reading component of the course. In addition to the somewhat intensive approach to the study of media English that we take in our lessons, as an on-going background task students are also required to do quite a lot of reading from special books called "graded readers". Fortunately for us, these are plentifully available in the library of Nagoya University. If you are not familiar with these wonderful little books, I strongly recommend you to seek them out because they offer an incredibly enjoyable and effective way of improving your English ability. The key point about graded readers is that they are produced in series with varying degrees of difficulty, in terms of grammar and vocabulary, and students can choose to start reading books which match or perhaps just slightly exceed their current reading comprehension ability level. The lowest level books are written in extremely simple English, and indeed are often in the form of comics with lots of pictures and few words per page. But as you progress up through the levels the difficulty increases so that, at the highest levels, there is little difference between them and books written for native speakers. An enormous range of such books, produced by several publishing companies, are available, so you are sure to be able to find something at your level that will interest you. Some of the books have been newly written for the series, but many others offer simplified re-writings of famous works of English literature, even Shakespeare! There are also many non-fiction books including a lot of biographies of famous people. For you own personal study you can just read and enjoy these books, but for the students taking this course I ask them to write a very short, simple report, in English, about each one just to give them a chance to express their impression of the book in English and to receive some written feedback from me about it. One measure of the popularity of these books is that I have often seen students absorbedly reading them on the underground coming to or from Nagoya University, and indeed several students have told me that they have sometimes missed their stop on the underground because they were so absorbed in reading the story!
Here is a useful link (http://extensivereading.net/resources) for further information on Extensive Reading. There are plenty of other sites in the internet too.
授業は上記 4 つの目的に沿って進められます。各授業において学生は総合英語を学ぶと同時に様々な角度から英語を使った実践を行う機会を持ちます。授業の前半は学生が英字新聞・雑誌の記事を読むあるいはテレビやラジオの英語放送を聴くなどのアクティビティが大半となります。これをふまえて、トピックにまつわる議論や読解・聞き取りをする上で留意すべき箇所についてグループで話し合います。
授業の後半部分は、学生が各自選んだメディア関係のトピックについてパワーポイントを用い英語でプレゼンを行ってもらいます。クラス内での学習に加え、学生は下記 2 つを英語の学習に取り入れ積極的に活用できます。 1 つ目は多読文献資料。その数は実に豊富に取り揃えてあり、名古屋大学中央図書館にて開架されています。 2 つ目は、BBC のワールドサービスが提供するオンラインでの英語学習(http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/learningenglish/)です。
授業において使用される資料の難易度および上記 4 つの「授業のねらい」の重要度の高低など、進め方や内容の詳細は、先生と学生が各自の英語レベルに合わせ初回の授業で調整する。また学生ひとりひとりにおいて英語能力は異なるため授業は、全体、少人数グループ、個人など、様々な形態をとりながらすすめてゆく。
授業中に紹介する。
授業中に紹介する。
Here is a list of some of the “Words in the News” stories that we studied last year:
Although students from other departments often take this course, it is offered principally to graduate students in the Media Professional Course of the Graduate School of Languages and Cultures. The focus, therefore, is very much geared towards the needs of those students. Specifically, the course aims to provide students with opportunities to practice the skills they need to understand information produced by English language media of various kinds. Since this is an elective, graduate level class, it is assumed that students taking the course will already have an adequate grasp of everyday English so that they can participate in class activities such as discussions and presentations in English.
Since the emphasis of the course is on practicing English language skills, the format of the lessons does not include lectures and so there are no lecture notes as such. Such being the case, in order to give you an idea of the sorts of materials that are studied during the lessons I would like to introduce the main source of teaching materials that we use. These materials are taken from a website produced by the BBC (the British Broadcasting Corporation), which is the national public service broadcaster for the United Kingdom. The website is called BBCLearningEnglish (http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/learningenglish/). This contains a wonderful range of resources for English language learners and the best thing about them is that they are all free. Of course, other countries produce similar sites, but since I am English I find the BBC site the most valuable one to teach with. I also find that unlike some other sites the BBC generally reports the news in an objective, clear logical way that avoids unnecessary sensationalism or jargon.
Within this website, the section that is used most in this class is called "Words in the News" (http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/learningenglish/language/wordsinthenews/index.shtml). This section provides short, topical news stories in slightly simplified English. In addition to being simplified, the stories also come with a set of definitions for the more difficult vocabulary items and you can listen to a recording of the journalist reading the story. There is also usually a link to a longer story on the same topic from the main BBC News website. Whereas this story might be rather difficult for students to read and understand on its own, after they have studied the Learning English version students find it much easier, which helps them feel more confident about reading and listening to English-language news.
出席率、授業でのアクティビティ・議論の積極的参加そしてパワーポイントでの発表
March 25, 2020