Thursday class

Yokkaichi University has instituted classes to improve students' basic skills in Math, Japanese, and English. Students, mostly first-year students, can take the classes for free and university teachers teach them.

They are scheduled once a week, and each is leveled. Most of the students take the classes with the hope that they will take and pass a variety of achievement tests, like the TOEIC test for English.

I'm teaching one class of eight students who are interested in taking the TOEIC Bridge test. That is an achievement test for students who would like to have their English ability evaluated for more remedial skills than the regular TOEIC test can measure accurately.

My philosophy is that we can study for the TOEIC exam and learn some vocabulary along the way, as well as some listening, speaking and reading skills. The TOEIC preparation text that we have is really focused on the exam and doesn't really do much to help learners improve general language ability.

Some of the results I'm interested in seeing is how many students enrolled actually take the exam. Unfortunately, there is no real pre-test, so I don't know the students ability right now, but it would be nice to see how they improve in the future. I am also interested in attitudes. I would like to know how student attitudes have changed over time.