Event Report, Nagano Chapter February 2021

On February the 5th, Nagano JALT was very fortunate to host Dr. Yoshiaki Ehara. The topic of his presentation was “Grammar Using Strategies to Promote Oral Fluency”. Ehara began his presentation with a short history of his education background and his work. The focus of his presentation however was a summary of part of his doctoral thesis research.
Dr. Ehara performed a case study on 6 Japanese Highschool English teachers. He examined their English proficiency through various metrics and noted the assortment of different levels and backgrounds such as time spent studying abroad. For his data analysis he had a monthly meeting with each participant that involved an oral summary and personal anecdote. Looking at the spoken production of each participant, Ehara investigated a variety of linguistic measures such as time place measures and loose connectors. Using the data from this he constructed a metric of fluency and accuracy. By identifying perceived weaknesses in the participant’s spoken production Ehara introduced strategies to specifically target areas that needed improvement. Over the course of his case study all participants measured considerable development in targeted areas.
The final part of Dr. Ehara’s presentation shared some practical applications of learning strategies with focused goals:
Anxiety Control – Be supportive of each other, use positive body language and speak English to each other.
Temporal Fluency – Dr. Ehara introduced a concept called ‘Think in Threes’.
Level 1 – begin with a focus on vocabulary for discourse planning
Level 2 – next move to grammar specific strategies eg. “activity … to + Verb”, “I like to …”
Level 3 – finally, expand to reasoning eg. ” … because I can …”
Repair Fluency
Picture description and wrap up reviews. Read a text and then retell the information.
Perceived Fluency
Small talk anecdotes and binary choice quizzes. For example:
ぼくも同じような経験有る
A. I have a similar experience.
B. I had a similar experience.
We would like to thank everyone who attended our event and showing interest in Dr. Ehara’s work.