8.The Teaching of Advanced Reading and Writing Skills:A Content-Based Approach in a Teachers License Language Program

Abstract

Language acquisition, first or second, is a mysterious blend of social and individual processes. But second language acquisition is especially dependent on individual, often lonely, effort. At the same time language is intrinsically social and its effective mastery is highly sensitive to the affective dimension and usually greatly helped by emotional support from teachers, advisors and peers. This is especially true of a group-oriented society like Japan and of a teacher’s license program in a typical Japanese University like Tsuru University. Therefore, in the teaching of Advanced Reading and Writing, a content-based approach based on the Cognitive Academic Language Learning Approach (CALLA) would be very appropriate for students who aim to become teachers in elementary, junior high and high schools in Japan. The Advanced Reading and Writing course we propose to implement in this innovative educational program will begin with a great deal of traditional language instruction in reading and writing, but it will end at the mid and upper levels with a very strong emphasis on content, including simulated academic classes with lectures, note-taking, the writing of papers, and examinations of content. At the same time, there will be a very strong attention not merely to the product of these endeavors (grades and test scores) but the process of understanding what students did well and what they need more work on, including self-awareness or metacognitive awareness in evaluating their own learning. We strongly believe that implementing the teaching of reading and writing through the lens of content-based learning and placing gengogaku or language education at the center of the English language teacher license curriculum would make the students become better and effective teachers themselves.