Tuesday, August 21, 2012

The Logical Way to Teach English

I'm not quite sure how I found this article online.  Serendipity?  It was written by a well-traveled Japanese professor in the Faculty of Science and Engineering at Chuo University, and it's an opinion piece about teaching English using "logic."  It is provocative and connects to my past roots in science studies.  I have long been fascinated with how science researchers who are non-native speakers of English communicate in English (as you can see from an earlier blog post in 2009).

I was, thus, excited to read this piece by an academic with a background in electrical engineering (who admittedly doesn't really like English).  The basic concept under consideration is that "communication [between non-native speakers at science conferences, for example] is established so long as there is logicin the use of English.  The results of a "logic test" will be discussed sometime in September, according to the article.  You can be sure that I'll be checking in to see what the findings are.  Aren't you curious, too?

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