Teaching English in East Asia

This book investigates the current EFL market in East Asia, focusing on K-12, university, and cram school English education in Japan, China, and Korea. It explores prevailing educational practices by both Asian learners and teachers of English, contrasting them with Western practices, and illuminating why Western pedagogical methods have often encountered tremendous resistance from teachers, administrators, parents, and students in the East Asian classroom context. After establishing this cultural contrast of pedagogical norms, the book presents a series of practical means for adapting Western teaching practices and philosophies to better suit the learning styles of East Asian students and the cultural context and practical realities of the East Asian classroom, offering both Western teachers working in East Asia and native East Asian teachers realistic plans for turning theory into successful practice. These plans are divided by subsections, focusing on the linguistic subskills beingtaught: listening/speaking, reading, and writing. Each section includes two contrasting lesson plans to demonstrate how the educational theories and practices promoted by the author can often be implemented by making relatively simple changes to existing practices that incorporate a fuller understanding of how to actively assist students in developing new learning styles and behaviors.

Auteur

Clay H. Williams is an associate professor in the graduate-level English Language Teaching Practices department of Akita International University (in northern Japan), where he teaches courses on linguistics, applied linguistics, psycholinguistics, and research methods. His primary research interests include cross-script effects on L2 literacy development with special emphasis on Chinese-English and Japanese-English literacy learning skills, lexical access in non-alphabetic script reading, and adapting L2 teaching methodologies to East Asian classroom contexts. He received a Ph.D. in Second Language Acquisition and Teaching (SLAT) from the University of Arizona. Over the course of his career, he has taught a wide range of students, from two-year-olds to seventy-year-olds, and practically everything in between, in five countries and three continents.

Contenu

Chapter 1 The Foreign English Teacher in East Asia.- Chapter 2 East Asian Educational Settings.- Chapter 3 East Asian Learners.- Chapter 4 Teachers in East Asia.- Chapter 5 Teaching Speaking/Listening in the East Asian Classroom.- Chapter 6 Reading English in the East Asian Classroom.- Chapter 7 Writing English in the East Asian Classroom.- Chapter 8 English Outside of the Classroom.