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Paw Prints

The new PAWS website

We have just launched the new PAWS website. Thanks for checking out PAWS. It also seems like a good time to reintroduce PAWS. So the simple question first:

What is PAWS?

While the logo may be quite literal, the meaning behind each letter is really who we are:
Publishing
And
Wellness
Services

So although we don’t have any specific connection to cute puppies, kittens, and bears, we certainly are fond of them, and that is also an inspiration for the name. You might even see a few photos of a few of them on the site 😉

At PAWS we are very proud of both components of our services: publishing and wellness. As a team, we have a rich and accomplished background in providing both publishing opportunities and wellness support to our community in Japan and beyond for over twenty-five years.

This site is the P in PAWS – Publishing. If you are looking for the W – the wellness services – that section of the site is going through its own development right now and will be available again soon.

EFL Education in Japan Today

Anyone who has been teaching EFL in Japan for more than a decade is very aware of the change in focus that has taken place in that time. Where grammar points, repetition, and basics such as giving directions or ordering food in a restaurant have always been necessary staples of second language teaching and learning and still remain so, they are clearly not sufficient to hold the attention of modern students and often simply boring. Boring not only for the students, but for the teachers as well.

The current line of textbooks from PAWS offers a way to hold students’ attention through extended focus on a particular area. Enter CLIL – Content and Language Integrated Learning. CLIL is now a welcome and firmly rooted component in many ESL/EFL classrooms here in Japan and all over the world.

The term CLIL was coined by David Marsh, University of Jyväskylä, Finland (1994): “CLIL refers to situations where subjects, or parts of subjects, are taught through a foreign language with dual-focused aims, namely the learning of content and the simultaneous learning of a foreign language.”

PAWS recognizes the importance of content learning, and has on board a group of authors who have skillfully and thoughtfully incorporated the spirit and principles of CLIL into their textbooks.

Please take your time to look over the selection of EFL/ESL texts PAWS and its authors have on offer. All of the writers are available for one-on-one consultations on how best to use their text in your particular classroom. Feel free to drop us a line today for your own personal appointment with the team here at PAWS.