講師紹介｜ビジネス英語は UCLA Extension Tokyo Center

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講師紹介

プロフィール: アメリカ出身。応用言語学、英語、英語教授法の修士号取得。コンサルタントとして国際ビジネスの分野でキャリアを積んだ後、約2,500人、20カ国以上の生徒にビジネス英語を指導。2007年10月、UCLA Extension Tokyo Centerの主任講師として来日。
講師よりメッセージ: 講師から受講者に対する一方通行の「講義」ではなく、受講者のそれぞれの経験や興味に直接働きかける授業を行っています。講師も含めた、受講生間の相互作用が、活気あふれる授業の一因となっています。効果的な授業とは、双方向なものであり、学習者が主体的に取り組んだ結果得られる気づきの連続に他ならないからです。仕事や社会生活を通じて、自らの学習ニーズを把握している皆さんは、実践的な授業内容に満足しています。真剣な取り組みと、自己成長への強い意欲には常に感銘を受けています。そんな彼らの自己実現のための一助となることに、とてもやりがいを感じています。

MESSAGE: As the Principal Instructor for UCLA Extension’s Business English Communication (BEC) program, I am often asked what makes our program different from other language schools.; First, BEC offers a series of courses to help students develop their English language and communication skills. The program uses business content to give students opportunities for real communication.; Second, the teaching method used in the classes is performance-based, focusing on communicative learning activities. This means that the students learn by doing, using the language to complete business tasks and solve problems.; For example, in one course students write a business plan and develop it with classmates acting as “consultants,” drawing on all their language and cognitive skills as well as their knowledge of business. Based on the business plan, they also make an appeal for funding to venture capital investors, developing the art of persuasion.; In other group work activities, students actually practice team building, chairing a meeting, negotiating, and other important business skills. These activities make for a more engaging and pedagogically effective course.; Third, as a language course, BEC integrates communication skills such as listening, speaking, writing, and grammar/pronunciation. It also focuses on higher-order thinking skills, including logical and critical analysis, hypothesizing, summarizing, critiquing, pragmatics, and socializing.; Fourth, the program has an emphasis on cross-cultural communication, which often causes problems when businesspeople try to communicate internationally. As a result, the courses introduce and incorporate the cross-cultural ideas of Edward Hall, Geert Hofstede, and Fons Trompenaars, among others.; Fifth, students are placed in the course that best fits their needs, and they also get a lot of individual evaluation and feedback, including videotaping of presentations and other performances.; Finally, the program recognizes that students have different preferred styles of learning, such as text-based, visual, auditory, participative, and exploratory. So, we have designed BEC to address the learning styles of all its students with audiovisual exercises for each lesson, online multimedia materials, and opportunities for daily interaction with classmates and the instructor through our BlackBoard learning system.

PROFILE: My career has been both in business and in teaching, but all my work has centered on forms of communication from writing to teaching foreign language.; In business, I worked for Camp, Dresser, & McKee, Inc., environmental consultants; Temple, Barker, & Sloane, business consultants; The Life & Health Insurance Association of Massachusetts; GTE Corporation (telecommunications and manufacturing), and as a private consultant to clients such as National Grid (electric utility); Grace Construction; a start-up logging company owned by Native Americans; and other companies.; On the teaching side, as principal instructor in the BEC Program for UCLA Extension, I have taught in Tokyo since September 2007. Before that time, I had also taught in Japan 1999-2000, in Italy (at Ericsson’s Rome Headquarters) in 1984-85, and the US (Boston) for more than 10 years, where I had the opportunity to work with more than 2,000 students from 60 countries. It has been great fun, and I have learned a lot from my students.; I hold B.A. and M.A. degrees in English from the University of Connecticut and an M.A. degree in Applied Linguistics/Teaching ESL from the University of Massachusetts Boston. As an undergraduate university student, I studied French, Spanish, and Italian. As a graduate student, I studied translation and Chinese and Cambodian for linguistic analysis.; Today, in Tokyo, I continue to study Japanese, which I started years ago at Harvard Extension University. To support my language study, I took courses there in Japanese history and art. My Japanese level is intermediate, based on my latest test scores.; In addition, I speak Italian, which I also studied at Harvard Extension University, and have reading and translation ability in French and Spanish.; Recently, I completed an online training program on the design of online language courses with UCLA Extension as well courses in International Business and Financial Statement Analysis.