English department hosts Japanese teachers as part of new language instruction program

Wednesday, September 27, 2023

Media Contact: Elizabeth Gosney | CAS Marketing and Communications Manager | 405-744-7497 | egosney@okstate.edu

This summer, the Oklahoma State University Department of English hosted 12 Japanese teachers from the Kyoto and Hyogo prefectures in a three-week program funded by a $69,999 grant from the U.S. Department of State – U.S. Embassy Tokyo. 

The program, CLIC: Content, Language, Instruction Confluence, brought the teachers to Stillwater from July 23 through Aug. 13 to learn from faculty in the Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages program within the Department of English and from teachers in Stillwater Public Schools.  

The program follows a fall 2020 partnership between the Department of English and OSU Global. The original partnership team set out to re-envision and revitalize English language instruction at OSU after numbers at the then-English Language Institute reached an all-time low due to the global pandemic. As a result, the institute was rebranded as the English Language and Intercultural Center. The Occupational and Professional Program was created as a core initiative.   

“The Occupational and Professional Program offers professional development opportunities that prepare global citizens for the future of work,” said Dr. Steph Link, CLIC program director and Department of English associate professor. “When the call from the U.S. Embassy was announced, the team was well-positioned to align our mission with the U.S. Department of State and U.S. Embassy Tokyo’s desire to enhance English language education in Japan by teaching younger generations to compete in and contribute to the global society.” 

Prior to OSU’s collaboration, both the State of Oklahoma and the City of Stillwater had sister-state and sister-city relationships with Kyoto Prefecture and Kameoka City that date back to 1985.  

“When we applied for the grant in 2022, we wanted to make sure that we involved our sister city in Japan in the project,” said Dr. Amy Takebe, CLIC program coordinator. “I worked closely with Kameoka City Office to include a letter of support from the mayor of Kameoka City in our grant application. Once our grant got accepted in the summer of 2022, I visited Kameoka City to thank Mayor Katsuragawa and Kameoka City Office for their support.  

“This was such an exciting and humbling experience knowing that the OSU CLIC team will be adding a new page in the history of Stillwater-Kameoka sister city relations, which began more than 30 years ago.” 

With the summer portion of the program completed, the CLIC team hopes that the teachers will be empowered to integrate content and language in the classroom, have heightened abilities in the English language, be trained in newfound pedagogical practices and be prepared to train their peers and mentees in Japan. 

“Teachers will receive the ELIC Certificate of English Language Teaching Excellence, which will encourage teachers and deepen U.S.-Japan relations,” the team’s grant proposal states. “The program will also expand and enhance the Japanese workforce by developing a generation of teachers with newfound knowledge and skills to teach the next generation of global citizens.” 

As a cultural exchange, another major goal of the program was to introduce the Japanese teachers to American culture and worldviews. In addition to the collaboration between the sister cities, Stillwater Public Schools played a role in ensuring the program’s success.  

“Dr. Link asked if SPS would be willing to host Japanese English teachers in our school sites so that they could see inside an American school and classroom,” said Stephanie Coca, Stillwater Public Schools district coordinator for multilingual learners. “Being able to experience different perspectives from different lived experiences is important as a member of a global society. It is also important to understand that although we have cultural differences or linguistic differences, we have much more in common than not.” 

In November, the CLIC team will travel to Kyoto and Kameoka City to visit with the 12 teachers for the final phase of the project.  

“Before our arrival, the teachers are expected to teach a peer or near-peer about what they learned from the CLIC program,” said Dr. Michael Amory, CLIC content instructor and Department of English assistant professor. “This is so that we can begin to transform their English teaching from rote memorization, explanation on grammar in Japanese and word-for-word translation to communicative-based practices that teach language through content.” 

 As the CLIC program moves forward, Link emphasized the importance of global thinking for a sustainable future. 

“To continue OSU’s mission of land-grant preeminence, it is important that we strive to always think globally in our local community,” Link said. “OSU’s expertise as a global leader will help address the grand challenges of our home state by viewing our world from a global perspective.” 

Story By: Erin Weaver, CAS Communications Coordinator | erin.weaver@okstate.edu