Flesh: On Basic English

Managed by the Center for English as a Lingua Franca (CELF), the English as a Lingua Franca (ELF) Program at Tamagawa University is a campus-wide English program designed to enable students to effectively communicate with people all over the world using English as a lingua franca. In 2015, approximately 2,500 students were taught by 40 instructors with different language and cultural backgrounds. CELF is about giving due recognition to the diverse contexts and situations in which English is now used as a lingua franca. The ELF paradigm is versatile and reflexive and captures the reality in which English is used for the creation and negotiation of a plurality of fresh meanings. The collection of articles in this journal represents the research and work from a handful of those ELF teachers. It is the teachers, their personal beliefs and principles, who determine the success of any language program. If teachers are going to hone their teaching skills, deepen their knowledge and develop professionally, they must receive proper support. To that end, the editors of this current issue were involved in creating the Center for English as a Lingua Franca Journal. All teachers in the ELF Program were invited to submit an academic article or research paper for consideration of publication in this Journal. For teachers, publication in this Journal represents a chance to add to their professional resume, but more importantly this is a platform for ELF teachers to share ideas and add value to our new Center for English as a Lingua Franca. In this issue, Thomas Saunders and Kensaku Ishimaki explore student perceptions of extensive watching of films with English subtitles. Corazon Kato reports on her experiences promoting ELF awareness in her university World Englishes class. Blagoja Dimoski introduces an ELF-aware approach to listening comprehension tasks. And lastly, two excellent ELF teachers introduce some practical activities for the ELF classroom. Arup Pandey introduces Podcasts and Michel Seko describes some communicative applications for student business cards. In closing, I would like to thank Tamagawa University for their continued financial support, the authors for their valuable contributions, the reviewers who dedicated their time and knowledge to the blind review process, and the editors for their direction and management.

Changing English: Studies in Culture and Education, 2017

Editorial/Introduction for the special issue of Changing English: Studies in Culture and Education entitled "Straight Outta English"

TEXT, 2017

2017

Managed by the Center for English as a Lingua Franca (CELF), the English as a Lingua Franca (ELF) Program at Tamagawa University is a campus-wide English program designed to enable students to effectively communicate with people all over the world using English as a lingua franca. In 2015, approximately 2,500 students were taught by 40 instructors with different language and cultural backgrounds. CELF is about giving due recognition to the diverse contexts and situations in which English is now used as a lingua franca. The ELF paradigm is versatile and reflexive and captures the reality in which English is used for the creation and negotiation of a plurality of fresh meanings. The collection of articles in this journal represents the research and work from a handful of those ELF teachers. It is the teachers, their personal beliefs and principles, who determine the success of any language program. If teachers are going to hone their teaching skills, deepen their knowledge and develop professionally, they must receive proper support. To that end, the editors of this current issue were involved in creating the Center for English as a Lingua Franca Journal. All teachers in the ELF Program were invited to submit an academic article or research paper for consideration of publication in this Journal. For teachers, publication in this Journal represents a chance to add to their professional resume, but more importantly this is a platform for ELF teachers to share ideas and add value to our new Center for English as a Lingua Franca. In this second issue, Yuri Jody Yujobo, Ethel Ogane, Tricia Okada, Brett Milliner, Takanori Sato, Blagoja Dimoski and report on using project-based learning (PBL) activities to promote awareness in ELF communicative strategies. Michelangelo Magasic shares his expert advice on how teachers can more effectively use webclips in their classroom. Daniel Worden introduces circumlocution activities as a way to promote fluency. Blair Barr investigates the effectiveness of the digital flashcard app, Quizlet® for vocabulary learning. This second issue concludes with a report on faculty development activities and the research achievements for the CELF in 2015. In closing, I would like to thank Tamagawa University for their continued financial support, the authors for making such valuable contributions to the center, and the reviewers who dedicated their time and specialist knowledge to the blind review process.

Jahrbuch der Gesellschaft für Kinder- und Jugendliteraturforschung

Since Donald Trump made the microblogging service Twitter the central communication medium of his policies, there has been constant talk of »fake news« and »alternative facts.« Whether we actually live in a »post-truth age« today is an open question, but there is no doubt that playing with fact and fiction has reached a new level of staging and stylisation in the media. The case is somewhat different for literature, as a fictional text is precisely defined by the feature that it does not claim to be verifiable in extralinguistic reality. Samuel Taylor Coleridge famously declared in 1817 that »a willing suspension of disbelief« was the prerequisite for reading and understanding a literary text. But what can the fictional contract between author and reader be, for example, if the histoire of a narrative contains explicit or implicit falsehoods, or an unreliable narrative instance exists on the level of the discours? How do recipients deal with literary and medial illusions and lies? The question of the relation between fact and fiction is equally relevant for information books, as each view of the world and the things in it is selective and from a specific perspective. Where are the boundaries between truth and invention, between the factual and the fictional? How far can the reduction of complexity in information books for children go before the simplification becomes a distortion, a deception? The seven articles on the focus theme »Fact, Fake and Fiction« in this third Yearbook of the German Children's Literature Research Society address implications of the topic in its various medial forms from both a theoretical and material perspective. The analyses focus on examples from information books for children and young adults, diaries, comics and young adult novels. Beyond the focus theme and in line with the concept of the Yearbook, fundamental theoretical and historical articles deal with questions of children's literature. In this edition, four articles present current research avenues and perspectives.