October 2023 archive
Oct 19
EL Game Series (01): “Scrabble” and “Upwords”
[Welcome to the EL game series. These posts are all short introductions to games you can play in the EL. Because learning to play games in English can take a long time, some posts will explain how to play simple versions of games. Other posts tell you why you should use games to practice English. You can also use the tags to find other posts you might be interested in.] (ELゲーム連載へようこそ。このコラムはELで遊べるボードゲームやカードゲームを紹介します。本来のやり方通りにやってしまうと、遊ぶまでの時間が大変かかるかもしれないので、ある投稿では簡単な遊びの工夫が紹介されます。ほかの投稿ではなぜゲームで英語を勉強するのがよいかが説明されます。投稿のタグを使ってほかに興味ありそうなポストを見つけられます。) _______ Scrabble is a classic American boardgame. It is so famous that it is in the dictionary! Upwords is not as famous, but it is a very similar game that you can play in the same way. The problem …
Oct 05
EL本棚Column: Thoughts on choosing an Extensive Reading Book
(日本語はこちらです) When I was a student, I studied Japanese in a variety of ways. For as long as I have studied Japanese, however, I have consistently done what we call Extensive Reading (多読). Therefore, in this blog post I want to offer some thoughts about choosing books for reading in a second language, based on both my personal perspective and some research in the field of language pedagogy. The most important thing is finding books that you will continue reading. Research on Extensive Reading consistently emphasizes both the role of enjoyment in reading and ease of comprehension. When teachers recommend books for extensive reading, however, we often point to “Graded …