Abstract:

Foreign language teaching/learning plays a great role in global education, and nobody doubts English language works as Lingua Franca anywhere in the world today. Every student at school especially at college is expected to be trained to become a good communicator whenever and wherever he/she encounters others with different languages. However, Japanese college students do not understand this reality well, and they are still worried about grammar translation work in their English classes. It is very urgent to derive them from their inappropriate task to more useful tasks toward becoming good communicators in English.

To educate the students to become good communicators using the English language is one of the English Department missions of the author’s junior college. She has been enthusiastic to find some good ways to achieve the mission. Communication deals with dairy topics or international issues like the Trans-Pacific Partnership. In the latter case, the students are supposed to produce meaningful and cohesive sentences. The tasks she has utilized in her teaching seem to work well to lead the students to one step higher in English communication.

The presentation goes along with:
(1) analysis of the textbooks,
(2) the students’ English level(s): understanding, retention, application of what they have learned,
(3) teacher’s tasks,
(4) actual class work,
(5) work results.

About the analysis of textbooks: Textbooks written by Japanese and the ones by native speakers of English are compared and examined which textbooks are more helpful to the students.

About teacher’s task: If any teacher is able to use that textbook(s) in a creative way, his /her primary work will be very successful toward communication.
(a) In case of reading: to advise them to place a slash between phrases or idea groups in a sentence so as to understand each group immediately till the end of the sentence. The groups with slashes help students answer to questions easier because the main word(s) in a group appears clearer. The students don’t worry about their grammar translation, but they can concentrate on the meaning of each sentence. This practice makes them become more careful message readers, which is one role of communication.
(b) In case of grammar: to show how they can use the grammatical items to express their mind in several cohesive sentence. This exercise makes them become more active message senders, which is the other role of communication.

About the students’ English level(s): Their TOEIC results are planned to be used. Their “understanding, retention and application of what they have learned” are checked with questionnaire and questions the author made.

About actual class work: Placing slashes in a sentence and the teacher made questions are shown at the conference. Students’ sample compositions with the grammatical items are shown at the conference.

About work result: the college is now going to have the semester ending test soon. The students’ work resulted will be observed in the tests.

In conclusion, the students’ work results are analyzed from the stand point of “communication.” In addition, the meaning of “communication” is reviewed and the author tries to encourage other college teachers to go beyond grammar translation method following their own creative teaching ways.

Keywords:

Bridge, ordinary English classes, international communication.