초록
Nowadays, fewer Japanese university students are taking PhD degrees in the U.S.A than Koreans or Taiwanese. The language barrier is considered as one of major reasons for this. This lack of international education is one of the reasons cited, as Japan has been falling behind in industrial globalization. Reading aloud is a good practice for learning a foreign language, since many areas of our brains are simultaneously activated. Furthermore, students have a chance to overcome the psychological barrier in reading aloud in front of others, in a meeting. The authors start the voluntary meeting (which is unrelated to official classes of the curriculum) by reading English articles aloud. Topics in the meeting are selected from articles on web sites, therefore, (1) textbooks were not needed, (2) voice data could be listened to, and (3) the meaning and the pronunciation of an unknown word could be checked by web tools. Once the methodology has been mastered, volunteer students can manage the meeting. The authors introduce our experiments conducted at the Department of Mechanical Engineering, Ehime University.