Tag: Andy

  • Thinking about Critical Thinking

    Event Page on Facebook.

    With Iwate-Aomori JALT 

    Co-Sponsored by The Iwate Association of English Educators. 岩手県英語教育研究会.

    At Iwate University, Faculty of Education Room E21 (岩手大学教育学部一号館 E21号室)

    Presenter: Andrew Boon

    With the proliferation of fallacious arguments, “fake news,” and untrustworthy sources in today’s multimedia landscape, critical thinking skills are vital not only in one’s native language but also when engaged in the task of language learning. The presenter will give an overview of a new book in Routledge’s ‘Research and Resources in Language Teaching’ series that provides a springboard for teaching critical thinking skills in the language classroom (Hadley  & Boon, 2023). The presenter will explain what critical thinking is, outline a cyclical process for introducing students to critical thinking, demonstrate several critical thinking classroom activities that teachers can use in their classes, explore ways to incorporate critical thinking into the curriculum, and share ideas for how to create one’s own critical thinking activities.

    Bio

    Andrew Boon is a Professor in the Global Communications Department of Toyo Gakuen University, Japan. He holds a PhD in Applied Linguistics from Aston University, UK, and has published numerous articles on methodology, motivation, and teacher development. He is also author and co-author of several writing, listening and speaking, and news media ELT textbooks and scores of graded readers for English language learners.

    Address: 

    020-0066

    Iwate

    Morioka

    3 Chome-18-33 Ueda

    Japan

  • Andrew Boon – Double presentation – June 21, 2015

    I have to apologize for getting this up so late.  On June 21, we had visit from Andrew Boon, an associate professor in the faculty of humanities at Toyo Gakuen University, Tokyo.  He gave twoIMG_6889 amazing presentations. The first was a talk on how to get students speaking during class time by using a new textbook called Inspire.  Andrew  is a co-author of Inspire and he demonstrated that by showing them a series of National Geographic photos and videos, the students could get  into lively discussions about the subject matter. Some of the topics in the textbook included cities and food from around the world. Cengage Learning sponsored this presentation and also had a selection of their materials on display.

    Andrew’s second presentation focused on Facebook groups and how they can be set up to give students a place to interact socially online with their classmates and instructors in English. He went over how he set up the groups for his classes and how they are maintained. He gave us a live demonstration of of couple of his groups. It was clear that his students were getting valuable feedback, not only from him, but from their peers. This also got them immersed  in a native language environment. He stressed that you need to be able to actually add your students as friends on Facebook to make this work and that it might not be suitable in all situations.

    Andrew’s presentations were very enlightening. We were grateful for him taking the time to come and visit us in Morioka, and we’d like to thank Cengage Learning for sponsoring his visit. Hopefully we can get Andrew up here again for another talk.