Our goal
We all have the ability to learn languages. The Workshop Initiatives for Language Learning (WILL) is a place where we consider the many ways this ability gets realized through discussing them with friends, contemplating a plan, trying it, feeling ourselves, reviewing the process and results, and trying a revised improved plan again, aiming to create the best opportunities for the acquisition of language. We humans must use a language to acquire it. Therefore, we cannot emphasize too much the importance of using the language in genuine communication. In addition to relevant situations and topics, we need partners, acquaintances, friends and colleagues who listen to what we say and read what we write in the language. We consider this to be the starting line where we eagerly want to know more about those who we communicate with as well as to have them understand us.
Enthusiastically advancing in our work yet steadily confirming what we have done, the path forward, as well as our own interests and connections with colleagues, participants will use the target language at all “Projects for Language Learning (PLL)”; Participants will plan, practice, review, present, and share the space for language learning at “Innovation and Development of Language Learning (IDLL)”; Participants will investigate and elucidate what language is, what language learning is, and what is needed for language acquisition at our “Study of Language Learning (SLL).” The “Training of Language Learning Designer (TLLD)” offers a course to train participants in designing situations for language learning. The “Training of Language Learning Engineer (TLLE)” offers a course where participants will be trained in effectuating and executing situations for language learning. WILL contributes to society at large with these projects and creates situations where language learning happens and builds the foundations for language learning within the current society.
We want participants to learn the following through our design and practice of language learning
１． Language as means
By exchanging information and ideas with foreigners who do not speak Japanese, participants will gain practice using a foreign language as a means of genuine communication.
２．Clarity
In order to communicate, participants need to be clear rather than skilled, a distinction they will experience firsthand in WILL courses.
３．Structure your story
Participants will acquire the ability to structure a story in logical and ordered ways by preparing and practicing how to effectively communicate what they want to tell their partners.
４．Learn skills to express oneself
Participants will learn “how to talk and present ideas in order to get listened to” by devising presentation techniques prompting people to attend to them with interest.
５．How to make questions