Michael Carroll

Momoyama Gakuin University · International Studies and Liberal Arts

This paper, attempts to use Actor Network Theory to describe a university curriculum as a process in which human ‘actors’ (teachers, learners, administrators and others) interact with each other and with aspects of their environment considered to have agentive roles similar to those of the human participants (books, computers, desks, classrooms, ph...

A CEFR-based can-do syllabus focusses on things students can do (skills). On the surface this approach appears to leave grammar and lexis on the sidelines. For many classroom teachers this is one of the major difficulties in adapting their classroom teaching to the CEFR approach. However, grammar and lexis are of course just as important to languag...

The authors, an English speaker of Japanese as a second language (Michael) and a Japanese speaker of English as a second language (Seiko), as beginning level learners of Chinese examine how regular discussions on learning Chinese, and on what what was being learning about teaching, both face to face and by email, from different but intersecting per...

Curriculum innovations succeed or fail according to the extent to which teachers, and to some extent students, feel that they are meaningfully involved in the process of change. For change to be effective, it cannot be simply imposed from above; rather it depends absolutely on the people who implement it. The innovations described in this book have...

A number of themes resonate in this section of the book for us. Amongst these, the notions of storytelling and voice are pre-eminent. All the authors tell stories — in one way or another — of individuals who are struggling to manage their learning. Many of the chapters present the voices of learners and teachers alongside each other. Some tell stor...

In this chapter we attempt to provide a rich picture ofEnglish curriculum development at a private university in western Japan. Wink developing in-house materials to be used by a large number of students and teachers, we have often found it a challenge to reconcile a commitment to teacher and learner autonomy, with the constraints imposed by the re...

The writers in this volume examines using journal writing as a tool in TESOL contexts. The case studies argue that through journal writing, language students and teacher learners increase their awareness of how they learn, thereby deepening their control over their own development. Dialogue journals help language learners and teacher learners devel...

This paper looks at project using real-life language data collected by learners themselves. Tape recorders were used by students to record conversations, and these texts were worked with in a variety of ways in and out of the classroom. The procedure used was based on one originally suggested by Clennell (1997: 118, 1999: 85-87). The fact that the...

This paper describes a classroom research project in which a language-awareness raising approach, comprising diary writing, focussed discussion groups and discourse analysis is being used to identify some hidden assumptions about language use and to propose strategies for bringing them into the curriculum.

The English language testing scene in Japan is one of the largest in the world. Whether the combination of high level of disposable wealth, a culture that values tests exceptionally highly, and a widespread desire to 'master' English is the reason or not, every year huge numbers of Japanese people take standardized English tests. The most common ar...