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| Stuart GALE (associate professor)
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BA in History (The University of Leeds, 1991);
MA in English Language Teaching (The University of London, 2002). Stuart Gale was born and raised in Hertfordshire, England. After graduating from The University of Leeds with a BA in history, he briefly worked in London before pursuing a teaching career in Japan. He returned to London to study for a Master's degree in English language teaching, passing with a distinction grade in 2002. Since then, he has taught at Fukuoka Women's University, Fukuoka University and Kyushu University. He joined the staff at Fukuoka Prefectural University in the spring of 2007. |
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| Oral Communication I: This class is for first-year students and is intended to develop communicative competence with regards to oral fluency (speaking and listening). A typical class is based on a theme related to the students' major subject, such as Japan's aging society or the problem of bullying in schools. The students then participate in discussions, debates, listening exercises and a variety of task-based communicative activities related to the theme. The weekly homework assignment typically involves scripting a related short presentation or role-play to be performed the following week.
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| Academic Writing III: This class is for second-year students and is designed to improve general writing ability with a particular emphasis on academic writing and data analysis. As with Oral Communication I, the students are introduced to a weekly theme related to their major subject. In this class, however, their critical-thinking skills are directed to the composition of short written reports. The students also follow the syllabus online via the variety of activities at Fukuoka Prefectural University's Virtual Language Laboratory.
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The validity of direct translation into the mother tongue as a technique for the teaching of vocabulary in EFL contexts: With the emergence of Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) in the 1970s, the use of direct oral translation by teachers as a technique for teaching vocabulary became discredited. Nevertheless, recent studies have since sought to restore direct oral translation as a legitimate teaching technique. My ongoing research has two purposes: to find out how common the use of direct oral translation is in Japanese university English language classrooms and, secondly, how effective direct oral translation is as a vocabulary teaching technique relative to a range of other techniques.
The effect of the Japanese media and education system upon the critical thinking and discussion skills of university students: Compared to students from other democratic societies, Japanese university students are generally less disposed to challenge the assertions of their professors and textbooks. This reticence has typically been attributed to ingrained neo-confucianism manifesting itself as habitual and extreme deference to authority. Nevertheless, this reseach will attempt to establish the validity of the contention that the Japanese media (by virtue of a lack of objectivity, freedom of expression and real debate) and education system (due to the constraints of an archaic system and academic credentialism) are at least as culpable.
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| Stuart Gale has traveled to more than twenty countries and has a keen interest in current affairs, politics, history and (especially) nineteenth century Russian literature. He also enjoys windsurfing in Hakata Bay, playing soccer in Japan's only team exclusively for university professors, and listening to and collecting music.
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