James York

Father, Teacher, and Musician in Moriya, Japan

James York

Father, Teacher, and Musician in Moriya, Japan

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I am a lecturer at Tokyo Denki University (TDU) where I conduct research on curriculum design, student agency and task-based language teaching. My background is in quantitative, classroom-based second language acquisition research. My current research interest is in the intersection of language learning pedagogy and games, particularly on how tabletop games may be utilized as part of a TBLT approach to SLA.

My PhD thesis is an investigation into the affordances of face-to-face and virtual environments for promoting the communicative competence of low-level English learners.

I am currently supervising one student at TDU on the use of smartphone VR as a tool for teaching low-level English learners.

I also have experience teaching language online through a virtual Japanese school that I developed, created content for and managed from 2012 to 2015. The school was called Kotoba Miners and may be considered an affinity space for Japanese learners to receive both formal and informal Japanese lessons from teachers and peers.

Finally, I founded the Japan Game Lab, a group of researchers based in Japan who conduct research on the use of games in language learning contexts.

  • Work
    • Tokyo Denki University
  • Education
    • University of Leicester