Eleventh International Conference on The Image

Abstract

Teaching photography presents a variety of challenges. Teaching the specific vernacular of photography adds to those challenges, especially when it’s to non-native speakers of English in a Liberal Arts College in far south-west rural Japan. Sophomore students at Miyazaki International College, in Kyushu, Japan, have the opportunity to take an elective class in photography for a full, sixteen week semester. However, most of them have no experience in formal photography education, including the concomitant language. Therefore, this research set out to answer four main questions: How much language specifically related to photography to Japanese EFL students typically know?; Can Japanese EFL students learn specific photography vocabulary within a one semester course?; Does it require a certain level of English language proficiency before students can learn specific photography vocabulary?; How can you isolate specific target vocabulary in course materials? The paper addresses these four questions and shows how students were able to go from almost zero knowledge at the start of the course to a relatively complete level of understanding by the course’s completion. Methods of quantitative research are presented including before and after test examples. Representations of students’ photographic work are also presented.