The Language Teacher

This month's theme is the use of video as a means of enhancing English language instruction in Japanese classrooms. Daniel Walsh takes his students on a guided tour of how documentaries, in this case on the condition of women in Pakistan, are deliberately created to convey a specific group of moral attitudes. His exercise in cultural consciousness-raising provides an interesting case study for teachers who might wish to use similar material. Adventurous teachers will enjoy Kenneth Beigel's teacher-friendly description of how videos can be a creative and motivating medium for students to use. He describes how students can write, edit, and finally produce short videos of various kinds. Julian Bamford shows how an English-language movie library can be set up for student use. A useful appendix lists movies he considers suitable for classroom use. Tim Murphey and Linda Woo's article takes us through the steps of using existing video technology to videotape students' conversations, but with a highly original approach. This month, the Educational Innovations column returns with a piece by Peter Connell describing a community discussion forum. William Gatton offers a thoughtful review of current and future ELT trends in Japan. Andre Moulin responds to a piece published last year in TLT by Michael Swan, to which the author replies. Robert L. Brock reports on the 64th TOEIC Seminar held in Tokyo in March. A new column which debuted last month, A Chapter in Your Life, co-edited by Joyce Cunningham and Miyao Mariko profiles JALT Kitakyushu.

In this month's My Share column, Joseph Tomei explains how video played a major role testing the conversation ability of large numbers of students. Ken Schmidt discusses how Japanese commercial messages can be used to enhance conversation in a discussion class. Lola Gayle Moriguchi and Mark Lewis motivate false-beginners with a project using current movies for dialogue practice and presentation.

Finally, Marianne Jarvis and Trevor Ballance review videos for teaching business English, and Tim Newfields and Randall Davis provide an overview of multimedia resources on the Internet, including video conferencing and teacher-generated video projects.

Valerie A. Benson and Randall Davis

Guest Editors