Proposal
for an On-Line Corporate
English as a Second Language
(ESL) Program
(Draft #9)
Revised March 29, 2007
David Levy, Ph.D.
Principal Investigator
Centre for Continuing Education (CCE)
McGill University
Montreal, Quebec, Canada
Takeshi Utsumi, Ph.D.
Co-Principal Investigator
V.P. for Technology and Coordination of Global
University System (GUS)
43-23 Colden Street
Flushing, NY 11355-3998
Proposal for an On-Line Corporate
English as a Second Language (ESL) Program
(Draft #9, March 23, 2001)
| I. | Outline | |
This is to propose the creation of an English language training program for Japanese corporations to be offered on-line through an e-learning methodology. The program will combine Japanese cutting-edge laptop/notebook technologies and broadband wireless Internet with the advanced web-based education platform and content of North America. The scheme will proceed in three stages:
| II. | Rationale | |
In light of globalization and the Information Technology (IT) Revolution, Japanese organizations now face the urgent need to overcome the difficulties of professionals unable to acquire adequate competence in English, particularly conversational skills. With English as the recognized global lingua franca, it is necessary to give this matter top priority.
| III. | Proposed Research | |
The initial research will require six months and involve some work in corporation offices in Japan and America. Course development and testing will require an additional twelve months.
| IV. | Course Content | |
Content will give special attention to organizational-linguistic skills necessary to facilitate real creative collaborative communication for corporate decision-making. The materials will include activities such as the management of difficult business conversations, the topic of a seminar series developed at Harvard University.
| V. | E-Learning Methodology | |
The pedagogical model will be an approximation of the one used with such success in the Everyday English series that aired in China from 1987-1992, given that the goal is largely the same: to improve practical aural-oral skills. Method will employ visual skills with videoconferencing via Internet to augment aural-oral proficiency, an approach validated by Everyday English success. Activities will include pronunciation drills, comprehension checks, repetition drills, dictation exercises, role plays, etc. -- see also ANNEX I.
| VI. | Formal Features | |
| VII. | Schedule | |
| Starting date: | September, 2001 |
| Completion of stage 1: | March, 2002 |
| Completion of stages 2 & 3: | March 2003 |
| VIII. | Research Team | |
The proposed research team is a distinguished one. The members of the team have enjoyed considerable success in implementing global on-line distance education projects in general and the teaching of English by distance education methods in particular -- see their biographical sketch in ANNEX II.
| IX. | Budget | |
ANNEX I
| I. | Online Pronunciation Classroom (Prepared by Steven Donahue) |
| II. | Speaking of Software... ESL Students Are Responding to a Web-Based Pronunciation Program (University Business, Vol. 4, No. 1, February 2001, Page 57) |
| III. | Public Test Web Site http://www.glearner.com Username: stevengus Password: stevengus (Prepared by Steven Donahue) |
| IV. | gLearning: The New e-Learning Frontier (Prepared by Steven Donahue) http://tinyurl.com/2emuam |
| I. | Online Pronunciation Classroom | |
| II. | Speaking of Software... ESL Students Are Responding to a Web-Based Pronunciation Program |
|
Through a video-based Internet interface, the program blends real-time practice with one-on-one feedback, enabling students to learn at home and educators to instruct through e-mail. "I've taken ESL, linguistics, computers, and online education and thrown them all together," Donahue says. For years, he conducted ESL classes in a Language Lab, using audiotapes to teach 30 students at a time. But students complained that the tapes were boring and difficult to follow. So Donahue wrote his own program using AuthorWare, a Language similar to JAVA, and spent more than 20 months honing the code. A $3,000 grant from Broward administrators allowed him to launch the software last September.
To operate the program, students use a password to download a 1.7-megabyte application from Donahue's personal Web site. Then, with the file running on a browser, they can practice pronunciation or watch as video-generated lips mouth a series of words and phrases that present common problems, from "very" and "berry" to "This is my son." Students practice speaking until they feel comfortable, at which point they can record words or sentences on their computers in the "wav" audio format, and e-mail the files to Donahue. Using analytical software from Kay Elemetrics, Donahue matches the utterances against a series of criteria linked to pitch and diction. He addresses errors, records individual feedback, and e-mails his reply. He says that he evaluates about 100 files from 30 students every night.
Hendrick Artiste, BCC's foreign Language Lab coordinator, says that students' pronunciation has improved tenfold. Donahue expects more than 500 BCC students to use the software this year alone.
-- Matt Villano
ANNEX II
Biographical Sketches
of
Research Team
Biographical Sketches
David Levy, Ph.D., Principal Investigator
| I. | Address | |
| II. | Bio | |
David Levy is Program Director, English as a Second Language Programs at McGill University. Born and educated in Montreal, he developed the Universityâs Special Intensive English Program, a program with a twentyöyear history of success, one that continues to attract students from every corner of the globe. As well, he created the enormously successful distance education ESL radio series for broadcast in China, Everyday English. He has presented papers on the series at a number academic conferences. He holds a Ph.D. in Communication Studies from McGill University, an M.A. from the Universite de Montreal and a B.A. from McGill University. As well, he has done work in the areas of programmed instruction and motion picture aesthetics.
Takeshi Utsumi, Ph.D., Co-Principal Investigator
| I. | Address | |
| II. | Bio | |
The GLOSAS/USA is a publicly supported, non-profit, educational service organization and is a consortium of organizations dedicated to the use of evolving telecommunications and information technologies to further advance world peace through global communications. GLOSAS fosters science and technology based economic development to improve the quality of life.
Over the past two decades GLOSAS/USA played a major pioneering role in extending U.S. data communication networks to other countries, particularly to Japan, and deregulating Japanese telecommunication policies for the use of e-mail through ARPANET, Telenet and Internet (thanks to help from the Late Commerce Secretary Malcolm Baldridge). This triggered the de-monopolization and privatization of Japanese telecommunications industries. This movement has later been emulated in many other countries -- now over 180 countries with Internet access and more than 377 million people using e-mail around the world. This effort helped in extending American and other countries' university courses to under-served developing countries and the conduct of innovative distance teaching trials with "Global Lecture Hall (GLH)" (TM) multipoint-to-multipoint multimedia interactive videoconferences using hybrid delivery technologies.
He also made numerous lectures, consultation, and research in process control, management science, systems science and engineering at the University of Michigan, the University of Pennsylvania, M.I.T. and many universities, governmental agencies (e.g., Japanese Ministry of International Trade and Industry, etc.) and large firms in Japan (Mitsui, C. Ito, Nisho Iwai, etc.) and other countries.
Among more than 150 related scientific papers and books are presentations to the Summer Computer Simulation Conferences (which he created and named) and the Society for Computer Simulation International. He is a member of various scientific and professional groups, including the Chemists Club (New York, NY); Columbia University Seminar on Computer, Man and Society (New York, NY); Fulbright Association (Washington, D.C.); International Center for Integrative Studies (ICIS) (New York, NY); and Society of Satellite Professionals International (Washington, D.C.).
Dr. Utsumi received his Ph.D. Ch.E. from Polytechnic University in New York, M.S.Ch.E. from Montana State University, after study at the University of Nebraska on a Fulbright scholarship. His professional experiences in simulation and optimization of petrochemical and refinery processes were at Mitsubishi Research Institute, Tokyo; Stone & Webster Engineering Corp., Boston; Mobil Oil Corporation and Shell Chemical Company, New York; Asahi Chemical Industry, Inc., Tokyo.
Roger Lee Boston
| I. | Address | |
| II. | Bio | |
A transplant from private industry a decade and a half ago where he was involved as an information systems manager, he has built an international reputation in distance learning since helping his organization to go "online" with their credit courses in the late 1980's.
He is a member of the PBS Going the Distance Advisory Group, the State of Texas Distance Learning Master planning group, a teacher with the Virtual College of Texas, and is instrumental in the restructuring efforts now ongoing within the Houston Community College System to deliver distance courses more effectively.
He has worked with more than four dozen organizations coast to coast to help them in their efforts to implement electronic and multimedia instructional delivery systems and is a frequent presenter at gatherings of the ITC and other groups interested in Distance Learning. He is pioneering in the use of low-bandwidth collaborative tools for instruction delivery across the internet and often teaches his classes from remote areas to test the technology.
Frequently on-camera and behind the scenes for the Texas STARLINK group, hosting and moderating satellite teleconferences and internet webcasts, he is also active in the CAADE Consortium (Consortium for the Advancement of Affordable Distance Education -- the predecessor to and now the Global University System) and assists that group in its efforts to deliver instruction worldwide via internet and via lower-bandwidth POTS connections.
Since 1997 he has been an active participant in the "Global LEARN Day" movement, working behind the scenes and on camera in numerous global events to help usher in the age of truly world wide delivery of instruction.
He was the 1995 recipient of the ACCT Western Region Faculty Award, and his former students have built up a scholarship fund in his name of more than sixty thousand dollars, going to deserving students electing a career in computers and information technology.
Roger Boston will conduct a tutorial on the use of laptop with broadband wireless Internet during the initial face-to-face seminar, along with his vast experiences on the videoconferencings with narrow- and broadband-internet spanning the world for his extensive e-learning program at his college.
Steven Donahue
| I. | Address | |
| II. | Bio | |
Professor Donahue has been married for 25 years to, JoHanna ; has a 19 year-old son, Ian, was in the Navy at Tulane University ; and has a Russian Blue cat named "Smokae". His hobby and passion is reading the New Testament in the original Greek and putting passages into calligraphic form.
Paul Kawachi
| I. | Address | |
| II. | Bio | |
In his youth, he was President of Cambridge University's Graduate Society / Union and served on the Cambridge University Vice-Chancellor's Governing Council of Senate. He has three master degrees (M Phil, MA TEFL and MA ODE) and various other postgraduate qualifications in teaching and education. This summary is being updated - with appointments pending as a Fellow of the British Institute of English Language Teachers, and as a full Professor and (probably) Course Director in Business English at a two-year Junior College, in Japan. In his free time, when he is not on the Kabuki stage, he is off scuba diving somewhere.
Steve McCarty
| I. | Address | |
| II. | Bio | |
Since 1983 he has been nationally active in the Japan Association for Language Teaching (JALT), including the highest appointed office representing all research groups. Currently he edits the JALT Bilingualism SIG Website in English and Japanese, which includes the Japan Journal of Multilingualism and Multiculturalism: <http://www.kagawa- jc.ac.jp/~steve_mc/jaltbsig/>. In 1996 he organized a colloquium on cross-cultural communication at the University of Hong Kong Knowledge and Discourse Conference. In 1997 and 2001 his multilingual online library of publications <http://www.kagawa- jc.ac.jp/~steve_mc/epublist.html> was rated "very useful for research" (4 stars) by the Asian Studies WWW Virtual Library. In 1998 his Keynote Address opened the Teaching in the Community Colleges Online Conference based at the University of Hawaii. He also presented in Japanese on distance education at Kyushu Institute of Technology, broadcast by two-way satellite to 15 universities. He was elected President of the World Association for Online Education (WAOE), an NPO registered in California, from 1998-2001: <http://waoe.org/>. Since 1998 he has also increasingly assisted the Global University System (GUS) in the Asia-Pacific region and overall. See, e.g.:
<http://www.kagawa-jc.ac.jp/~steve_mc/asia-pacific/>.
Contributions to the GUS ESL Project
Steve has been representing GUS in Japan and the Asia-Pacific region, including traveling to Tokyo to assist Dr. Takeshi Utsumi. Steve is making an appointment next with the Child Research Net of Benesse Corporation, and can introduce the ESL project to such people in Japanese. He can find information of assistance to the project and do legwork on occasion in Tokyo. In 2001, as WAOE President, Steve has been invited to Kuala Lumpur in early September by the University of Malaysia to conduct teacher training in a computer lab with broadband Internet. At their Symposium on Online Education, Steve is willing to also introduce GUS and its Global Broadband Initiative (GBI). Thus Steve can seek groups for ESL pilot projects and promote further GUS initiatives elsewhere in Asia as well as in Japan.