日本大学歯学部紀要 32，55‑63，2004

Using poster presentations in English language classes
Clive S.Langham

Abstract
This paper looks at how poster presentations can be used in English language classes wherestudents have scientific backgrounds and a need for English in their future careers. The
development of English language programs that include poster presentations is considered
and the results of a poster presentation experiment with second year dental students arereported.
Key words: poster presentations, English language teaching, English for Specific Purposes,
content courses, language of poster presentations

Introduction
There is little doubt that changes in English language teaching (ELT)in Japan in recent years
have been profound and widespread. Wherever we look we can see change in ELT in Japan
from primary to tertiary level. The M inistry of Education is now committed to introducing
English in primary schools,and middle as well as high school curriculums have been revised toinclude greater emphasis on communicative skills.The effect of the Assistant English Teacher(AET) program is being felt at university level, as freshmen enter with higher levels ofcommunicative ability in English. Even entrance examinations at universities are now beginning to show signs of change. The focus is less on discrete items of grammar and grammar‑translation,and test makers are striving to produce questions that reflect the communicative
focus now becoming prevalent in high schools. Some universities have instituted listening
sections in their entrance examinations and gradually more colleges and universities areexpected to adopt this approach.In addition to this,the numbers of students entering Japanese
universities with a good command of English after living abroad for several years is increasing,and this trend is expected to accelerate.

English classes at university level in Japan
Given the above changes in ELT in Japan, how are teachers at university level responding?
In a previous paper, Langham (1994), I have outlined how large numbers of teachers facedifficulties in deciding what kind of course to adopt. Do they adopt the English conversation
type approach,which in Japanese is known as eikaiwa and features so highly in the consciousness of learners of English in Japan? Alternatively,do they adopt a content course or an ESP

日本大学歯学部

英語Nihon University School of Dentistry
1‑8‑13 Kanda‑Surugadai, Chiyouda‑ku, Tokyo 101‑8310, Japan〒 101‑8310 東京都千代田区神田駿河台１‑８‑13(受理：2004年９月 24日）

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日本大学歯学部紀要 32，55‑63，2004

type approach, particularly with students majoring in technical and scientific subjects?Many
decisions of this type taken by hard‑pressed teachers depend very largely on available texts.
Japan is a very large and lucrative market for ELT publishers, and the number of textbooks
aimed specifically at the Japanese market increases year by year. The quality of such textbooks has improved to a large extent and the majority of teachers at university level involved
in undergraduate ELT classes adopt one of these textbooks.There are,however,a number ofdrawbacks to using traditional ELT textbooks,as I pointed out in a previous paper,Langham(1993). The fact is that modern textbooks that claim to be based upon current findings in thefields of Applied Linguistics and language teaching are sadly lacking in appropriate content.
According to Cook (1983)the typical textbook involves ʻ
imaginary characters in situations thatare alien to our studentsʼ
. Prodomou (1988)goes so far as to suggest that,“The speech acts or functions in most textbooks are based on situations in which most of ourstudents will never have to function.”
M any current methodologies have the underlying basic psycholinguistic principle that language learning needs to be affective‑based ; in other words, it should be relevant to studentsʼ
needs, motivation and learning style. The content of the average textbook does not, in theopinion of this author,fulfill these requirements.This explains the problems that teachers havein choosing what to teach and how to teach it. It also creates considerable problems forteachers who wish to adopt content or ESP courses.

Alternatives to textbooks
Let me discuss here two of several alternatives to textbooks that seem to me to be appropriate to some ELT situations in Japanese colleges and universities.First,content courses.These
are courses that involve the use of subject matter that may be derived from a number ofdifferent sources, including themes chosen by student interest or need, or academic course
material that students are studying elsewhere in the curriculum.Such courses match the aimsof communicative language teaching and engage the learner in a way that many textbooks donot.Second,there are English for Specific Purposes (ESP)courses.In previous papers,Langham (2001/2003), I attempted to make the case for such courses at Japanese universities. Ioutlined the rapid implementation of ESP courses in Japanese universities, as charted by Orr(1998)and also Anthony(1998).Examples of such courses in action have been reported by Dias(1998)and Nagano (1998).Two surveys of student preferences were carried out by the present
author with dental students as subjects.It was found that second year students tended to prefer
general English courses, while fourth year students showed a definite preference for ESP
courses with students making comments such as these.ʻ
I enjoyed the dental topics.Sometimes
they linked up with lectures given by other Japanese professorsʼ. Another student added,
ʻInformation about dentistry in the US and UK was also useful for meʼ.

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Teaching a content course for second year students
Over the past several years,the author has been faced with teaching a group of second year
students specializing in dentistry at a university in Japan.The group consisted of about thirty
students in a class,and met once a week for fifty minutes over one semester of approximately
15 classes.The above problem of what kind of approach to adopt was a very real one and onethat faces large numbers of teachers at university level in Japan.The students could be broadly
categorized as having a good command of English grammar, fairly extensive vocabulary andreasonable listening skills. As stated above, I found most of the textbooks available to be too
trivial to meet the level and needs of such students,so I opted for an oral/aural approach basedon semi‑scientific topics derived from CNN or BBC news and current affairs programs, such
as Earth File,Science and Technology,Click Online and so on.Modified articles from the JapanTimes,the Daily Yomiuri,the Economist and Nature were also used as a base for class topics(please see Appendix 1 for full list of class topics). All materials were teacher generated andusually consisted of a two‑page handout with vocabulary exercises, listening comprehension
questions and discussion topics.It should be pointed out for educators considering adopting thiskind of approach that the selection and production of suitable teaching materials remains oneof the most challenging,as well as time consuming,aspects of this type of program.The above
programs were taught over a number of years with what can probably be regarded as reasonable levels of success. Evaluation sheets distributed to students at the end of each semester
indicated relatively high levels of student satisfaction.Evaluation of student performance overthe duration of the course was based on short vocabulary tests and writing assignments
associated with the topics studied. Students were allowed to choose one topic from thosestudied in the semester that interested them, do some further research work outside theclassroom on the topic, and then write one page as part of a final examination. Testing
listening,however,was a problem that could not be overcome in final exam conditions,as these
involved 130 candidates in a large auditorium with poor acoustics.From the teacherʼs point ofview, there were, in addition, other kinds of problems that arose during the course and which
needed to be addressed.As I have indicated,content was chosen,modified and then created into
course material by the teacher alone.Students had no input concerning the content of the class
and,although there was never anyoutright criticism,this was a continual teacher concern.Was
there a way in which students could be involved in input that would allow the syllabus to bewritten and published several weeks before the program began?Another problem was that thediscussion part of the class seldom seemed to go well. At best, students discussed the topic inpairs. There was rarely interaction above the pair level.At worst,some students opted out of
this part of the class, although it should be noted that these students had completed thevocabulary and listening sections without displaying similar behavior. As a way of checking
that discussion had actually taken place,the teacher called on particular students to comment57

日本大学歯学部紀要 32，55‑63，2004

on the topic in question.Usually,studentsʼcomments were only a few sentences long and often
reiterated comments made by the previous speaker. The authorʼs frustration with this aspectof the program prompted a consideration of ways of improving student output in the discussion
part of classes.

The poster experiment
In order to address some of the problems outlined above, particularly that of studentsʼ
reticence in speaking, I decided to have students prepare and present posters. Currently,
research work presented in poster form is increasing,as many teachers attending conferences
will attest to.Additionally,students in Japan are accustomed to producing large,colorful poster
type visuals for school and university festivals. In fact, posters created by students to help
explain a theme,topic or project of their choice are one of the most effective teaching tools forteachers who teach classes focusing on content.Here are just a few of the advantages of thiskind of approach.
Students work together gathering source material in cooperative group situations
Students have to speak in English and are motivated to do so since the topic is of their own
choosing
Students get valuable practice in fielding questions from visitors to their poster
Students get valuable practice in answering questions and giving further information
Students are forced by limitation of space to clearly focus on a small number of main points
The teacher can take a backseat on the day of the presentation allowing communication totake place unhindered,but can assist in the preparation process as much or as little as required
The teacher has time to monitor the performance of the students in the poster session,
allotting a grade if so required and giving feedback and advice.

How the process works
To ensure that the students know what a poster presentation involves and what is expectedof them, the first topic of the semester was converted to a poster presentation given by theteacher.In this case,the topic was ʻFoods with Medical Benefitsʼ.Students readily came to thefront of the class,forming a group around the poster.The teacher went through the main pointsof the poster slowly with repetition.Students were then required to complete a check sheet sothat the teacher could gauge to what degree they had understood the contents of the poster.
Following that, students were asked to form groups and start working on possible poster
presentation topics. The vast majority of students chose to work in groups of three, although
there were two groups of six students and one student who preferred to work alone. No
guidance was given as to the choice of the topic although as can be seen from the list of poster
topics (please see appendix 2,List of Poster Presentation Topics)most were semi‑scientific innature and three were related directly to dentistry. As students worked on their topics, the58

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teacher provided them with the language they would need for actually presenting their work(see appendix 3, English for Poster Presentations). A small amount of class time was allottedto this each week, although it should be remembered that the rest of the units in the program
were taught according to the syllabus.This meant that poster content and creation of the poster
was largely done outside the class, as supplementary work by the students. The teacherprovided poster size paper for the groups. A poster presentation day was decided on and thisfell towards the end of the course.The teacher had intended several groups to post their workand then have other students move around the room looking at the posters and asking
questions, in the same way as at an academic conference. This format was attempted in thefirst class but soon abandoned, since there was too much noise and confusion with somestudents not taking part.This kind of problem was probably due to the fact that students werenot familiar with the norms of poster presentations as they occur at academic conferences.It
may also have been due to the students expecting a presentation style involving one group at
the front presenting their work with other members of the group being the audience. In viewof the constraints detailed above, this was actually the approach that the teacher adopted. It
worked reasonably well since students seemed to have had experience of doing this presentation style in Japanese in other subjects at university.While the presenters explained their work,
the rest of the group listened attentively and asked questions at the end.There were,however,some problems associated with this kind of approach. Firstly, presenters tended to read from
scripts that theyhad sometimes derived from other sources almost word for word.Hence,there
was no one to one interaction.Additionally,the poster was only presented one time and there
was none of the repetition that one would expect with groups of the audience moving aroundthe room from one poster to the next.Another difficulty was that in the above presentational
style, the teacher had a much more central role than would be ideally expected.
Posters were generally of a high quality and most students worked hard.Only one group offour students failed to produce any work at all.Grading the studentsʼwork was more difficult
than anticipated, as the teacher had to make some quite quick grading decisions in the period
between one group finishing and the next group starting.Notes on the merits and demerits ofeach presentation were made and posters graded on a score from 0 to 10.The average for all
posters was 6.9.M arks from the poster presentation were then added to class work marks andterm‑end examinations.Clearly,further work on refining the process of the presentations willreap rewards in terms of effectiveness and quality.

Conclusion
English language classes at universities in Japan are becoming more communicative in focus,
and the benefits of adopting content courses and ESP type approaches are increasingly
apparent to educators.The poster presentation experiment detailed in this paper can be judged
to have been successful, although studentsʼprevious educational experience of presentations59日本大学歯学部紀要 32，55‑63，2004

should not be overlooked. Teachers considering adopting poster presentations as an approachin their classes need to carefully consider the logistics of doing so. In the experience of thiswriter,poster presentations are a very potent tool to be used in classes where the emphasis ison communication and presenting scientific information. In this case, the poster was just asingle part of a program based on semi‑scientific topics presented in an oral/aural way.Basing
an entire program on poster presentations might prove to be too demanding for students in theearly years of any program, however as a goal in later years and certainly at graduate level,such a program has almost limitless potential.
References
１. Cook,V.J. (1983). What should language teaching be about?ELT Journal Vol.37/3 July 1983.
２. Dias,J.(1999).Developing an ESP course around naturally‑occurring videotaped medical consultations. The Internet TESL Journal. Vol. V. No.3 March 1999.
３. Langham,C.S.(1993).English language classes for junior college students.Bulletin of Tokyo Kasei
Gakuin Tsukuba Junior College Vol.3/2 March 1993
４. Langham.C.S. (1994). EFL M ethods and Materials: Developments in English language teachingmethodology. Bulletin of Tokyo Kasei Gakuin Tsukuba Junior College Vol.4/2 March 1994
５. Langham,C.S.(2001).English Language programs at Japanese universities and the case for Englishfor Specific Purposes.Transactions of Nihon University School of Dentistry,General Studies,No29 (2001)
６. Langham,C.S. (2003). Developing English language programs for students with specific needs.
Transactions of Nihon University School of Dentistry, General Studies, No 31 (2003)
７. Nagano,R.(1998).Approaching EST through abstracts.The Language Teacher Online 22.11.1998
８. Orr,T. (1998). ESP for Japanese universities: A guide for intelligent reform. The Language
Teacher, 22(11): 19 ‑21, 31.
９. Prodomou,L. (1988). English as cultural action. ELT Journal Vol.42/2 April 1988.

Appendix 1
List of class topics
１. Foods with medical benefits
２. Easy to use email systems
３. Survey shows pets provide peace of mind
４. Dentist cures severe case of tusk ache
５. M ajority of Japanese claim to be stressed
６. Pollution limits broken many times
７. New car powered by sunlight
８. Cell treatment stops teeth from falling out
９. Researchers create new drugs from tobacco
10. Families switch off TV to surf Internet60

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11. Have you ever called an ambulance?
12. Pupils teach parents computer skills
13. What is economy class syndrome?
14. Can brushing cause problems?
Appendix 2
List of Poster Presentation Topics
SmokingEURO 2004
Athleteʼs footAIDS
Soya bean milk
Alcohol
Plastic surgery
Hay fever
Wireless communication
Traffic accidents
The causes of the declining birthrate in Japan
History of Tokyo Disneyland
Hybrid carsLetʼs go on a nigari diet
Sunburn
Color therapy
Aromatherapy
What celebrity signatures say
The Iraq problem
Hair loss
Xylitol
Artificial sweeteners
Ipod
AIBO
Dental paste
Rice
Convenience stores
The history of bowling
PandasKoalasChinese noodles
61日本大学歯学部紀要 32，55‑63，2004

Comedy programs on Japanese TV
About Hiroki Goto
Appendix 3
English for Poster Presentations
１. M aking contact/greeting someone
Hi, how are you doing?
Good morning, are you interested in (topic)?
I have some handouts here.
２. Giving an idea of the topic
This is about (topic)
We did a study on (topic)
３. Finding out about your visitors
Are you familiar with?

４. Giving an outline of the researchThis is about.…
We investigated/compared…
５. Inviting questions
If you have any questions, please interrupt/stop me.
６. Stating objectives
We wanted to investigate/compare…
The aim was to find out about…
７. Giving an overview
Just to give you the main points.
Basically,.…
In general terms,.…
８. Referring to graphics
Okay, so this figure shows…
As you can see from the chart,…
９. Summarizing the results/giving mini summaries as you go
The main points of this study are these. Firstly, secondly,…
What we found was that…
10. SkippingI wonʼt go into details on that point.
Iʼ
ll skip that.
11. M oving forwardIʼ
ll tell you about that later.
Iʼ
ll mention that later.
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12. M oving on.
The next thing I want to tell you about is…
12. M oving backAs I already told you/mentioned.
13. Closing
That covers everything, I think.
I hope you found that interesting.
14. Questions
Do you have any questions/comments?
I hope thatʼs clear.
15. Dealing with problems.
Iʼm sorry, I canʼt answer that.
16. Correcting someone/guiding your visitors
Actually, we found that…
In fact, our results show that…
17. Welcoming newcomers to the poster
Hi. Welcome. Weʼre talking about.…
18. Thanking someone
Thanks for your interest.
Thank you.
19. Giving/getting contact detailsBythe way,if you want to get in contact,this is myemail address.Iʼ
d be pleased to hear fromyou.

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