Japanese teachers of Hawaii, greetings from Iwaki, Japan.
Although I have taught Japanese in the past, I now teach English in a Japanese university and am looking for Japanese teachers abroad, preferably at the university level and in a not-too-distant time zone, with whom to collaborate on a language exchange project. There are many language exchange websites, but they are mostly individual people hooking up with other individuals. Students go into these arrangements with the best of intentions, but without the framework of a class, most of them don’t last long enough to do that much good for language learning. I’m interested in seeing how much foreign language teachers incorporating this kind of exchange into their respective classes as a regular ongoing activity would make a difference. How regular and how ongoing is up for negotiation, but I’m hoping such a project can last at least a year. This is for a small seminar class I will be teaching starting in April, the focus of which is exactly this question, how much can one learn in a language exchange project. I would like for my students to connect to your students by video, like through Skype or LINE, and prepare some Japanese and English speaking activities based on our respective curricula. If you would like to prepare any activities, that would be great, but if not, that’s fine too as long as my students could have consistent contact with your students.
Perhaps the hardest hurdle is the mismatch between the school year in Japan and the rest of the world. If your students are willing to continue communicating during their vacation times, my would too. Otherwise, we’d just have to make the best use of our overlapping school days. If this idea has any appeal to you, please reply here or send me a private message and we can exchange contact information.
Thank you for your consideration.
Tim Cook
Iryo Sosei University
医療創生大学
Although I have taught Japanese in the past, I now teach English in a Japanese university and am looking for Japanese teachers abroad, preferably at the university level and in a not-too-distant time zone, with whom to collaborate on a language exchange project. There are many language exchange websites, but they are mostly individual people hooking up with other individuals. Students go into these arrangements with the best of intentions, but without the framework of a class, most of them don’t last long enough to do that much good for language learning. I’m interested in seeing how much foreign language teachers incorporating this kind of exchange into their respective classes as a regular ongoing activity would make a difference. How regular and how ongoing is up for negotiation, but I’m hoping such a project can last at least a year. This is for a small seminar class I will be teaching starting in April, the focus of which is exactly this question, how much can one learn in a language exchange project. I would like for my students to connect to your students by video, like through Skype or LINE, and prepare some Japanese and English speaking activities based on our respective curricula. If you would like to prepare any activities, that would be great, but if not, that’s fine too as long as my students could have consistent contact with your students.
Perhaps the hardest hurdle is the mismatch between the school year in Japan and the rest of the world. If your students are willing to continue communicating during their vacation times, my would too. Otherwise, we’d just have to make the best use of our overlapping school days. If this idea has any appeal to you, please reply here or send me a private message and we can exchange contact information.
Thank you for your consideration.
Tim Cook
Iryo Sosei University
医療創生大学