| Co-Investigator(Kenkyū-buntansha) |
TOGO Katsuaki Waseda University, Faculty of Education and Integrated Arts and Sciences, Professor, 教育・総合科学学術院, 教授 (50103619)
YANO Yasukata Waseda University, Faculty of Education and Integrated Arts and Sciences, Professor, 教育・総合科学学術院, 教授 (00130857)
MATSUSAKA Hiroshi Waseda University, Faculty of Education and Integrated Arts and Sciences, Professor, 教育・総合科学学術院, 教授 (20096449)
MURATA Kumiko Waseda University, Faculty of Education and Integrated Arts and Sciences, Professor, 教育・総合科学学術院, 教授 (10229990)
KOBAYASHI Fukuko Waseda University, Faculty of Education and IntegratedArts and Sciences, Professor, 教育・総合科学学術院, 教授 (00063751)
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| Research Abstract |
We have developed cross-cultural distance learning courses based on the notion of International Liberal Arts. Our research efforts established 90 on-demand courses which deal with our current issues in the world : climate change, politics and metaphors, safety of food, Asian Identity, gender issues, co-existence in Asia, etc. We have established our teaching methods on successfuldiscussion in English and how to write persuasive discourse in English, especially for Japanese learners of English at the university level. These methods were reported in CCDL Research Reports (CD-ROM) in five volumes as well as CCDL Teachers' Manual and Case studies (2006). Annually, we held International Student Seminars among Asian users of English and we held the seminars recently twice a year in which our students demonstrated the merits of our educational approaches. These activities were financially assisted by Digital Campus Consortium which was initiated by Waseda University and which has been support
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ed by major industries in Japan.
The recommended cyber courses includes the following class-room procedures : (1) the students in Asia study on-demand course materials, (2) they write their comments and questions in English on BBS, (3) our mentors who were trained as interns help the learners understand lecture contents distributed via the Internet, (4) they discuss a given topic on International Liberal arts, using ICT (video-conferencing system and oral chatting system) and (5) the students reflect their progress concerning the on-demand contents and their expressive power in English, by reviewing DVDs which were recorded during their cyber sessions.
We have also tried to show research evidence about our teaching methods, by looking into how to test their progress in oral English, how to evaluate their progress in writing, and how to deal with individual differences such as learning styles, learning strategies, learning preferences, class-room anxiety, speech anxiety and motivations. The oral test of English for the sake of Asian users of English includes word-per minutes, the frequency and length of pauses, type-token ratio, vocabulary levels, inter-stress time intervals and acoustic measurements. This is going to be developed as an automatic assessment system. We have also established automatic assessment of Individual Differences as an additional outcome of our research efforts. Less
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