March 10, 2018
Tenjin, Elgala (Daimaru East Buidling) 6th Floor. (Kurume University Satellite Campus, Tenjin) (access)
18:00-20:00
Two presentations:
Finding What It Takes: Eliciting Answers In University English Classes
and
Creating Individual Feedback Printouts Using Spreadsheet Software
by Steve Paton and Bill Pellowe, respectively
Steve’s presentation:
Trainees on the Cambridge CELTA course are taught to elicit answers and responses from students throughout lessons. Doing so is part of an effective, communicative, student-centered class style… but what if your students routinely shut down, panic, or succumb to debilitating embarrassment when you call upon them? Simple, routine requests for verbal responses can often be met with interminable silences which derail the communicative pedagogy and frustrate and confuse both teachers and learners (Seiko, 2011).
Intercultural communication literature confirms that there are significant cultural expectations and propensities that need to be respectfully understood and overcome before our classrooms can become authentically communicative spaces (Banks, 2016; Hofstede, Hofstede, and Minkov, 2010). Among the factors at play are culture-based understandings of ‘power-distance’ between teachers and learners, the value placed on the collective versus rather than the individual, and the motivation towards ‘uncertainty avoidance’.
I’ll go over some effective strategies I have developed to help students come to feel comfortable enough interacting in the classroom that they can begin to avail themselves of the benefits of communicative language teaching. These include strategically raising students’ consciousness regarding impediments to classroom communication, carrying out a carefully-programmed ‘practice and disarming’ stage early in a semester, and judiciously applying impactful negative feedback if unwillingness to communicate remains a problem.
Bill’s presentation:
Teachers doing continuing assessment (CA) collect scores, data, and quantified impressions of students each class, and provide feedback to students regularly. However, increasing concerns at the institutional level about student privacy has led to strict policies being enacted at many institutions. Regardless, students in CA-driven courses need to be kept informed. Since posting student identification alongside performance information is now ill-advised, one viable option is to hand out personalized reports to each student about their ongoing assessment. This daunting task is actually easy if your continued assessment is being recorded into a spreadsheet (like Excel). Come learn how to do this.
Tenjin, Elgala (Daimaru East Buidling) 6th Floor. (Kurume University Satellite Campus, Tenjin) (access)
18:00-20:00
Two presentations:
Finding What It Takes: Eliciting Answers In University English Classes
and
Creating Individual Feedback Printouts Using Spreadsheet Software
by Steve Paton and Bill Pellowe, respectively
Steve’s presentation:
Trainees on the Cambridge CELTA course are taught to elicit answers and responses from students throughout lessons. Doing so is part of an effective, communicative, student-centered class style… but what if your students routinely shut down, panic, or succumb to debilitating embarrassment when you call upon them? Simple, routine requests for verbal responses can often be met with interminable silences which derail the communicative pedagogy and frustrate and confuse both teachers and learners (Seiko, 2011).
Intercultural communication literature confirms that there are significant cultural expectations and propensities that need to be respectfully understood and overcome before our classrooms can become authentically communicative spaces (Banks, 2016; Hofstede, Hofstede, and Minkov, 2010). Among the factors at play are culture-based understandings of ‘power-distance’ between teachers and learners, the value placed on the collective versus rather than the individual, and the motivation towards ‘uncertainty avoidance’.
I’ll go over some effective strategies I have developed to help students come to feel comfortable enough interacting in the classroom that they can begin to avail themselves of the benefits of communicative language teaching. These include strategically raising students’ consciousness regarding impediments to classroom communication, carrying out a carefully-programmed ‘practice and disarming’ stage early in a semester, and judiciously applying impactful negative feedback if unwillingness to communicate remains a problem.
Bill’s presentation:
Teachers doing continuing assessment (CA) collect scores, data, and quantified impressions of students each class, and provide feedback to students regularly. However, increasing concerns at the institutional level about student privacy has led to strict policies being enacted at many institutions. Regardless, students in CA-driven courses need to be kept informed. Since posting student identification alongside performance information is now ill-advised, one viable option is to hand out personalized reports to each student about their ongoing assessment. This daunting task is actually easy if your continued assessment is being recorded into a spreadsheet (like Excel). Come learn how to do this.
April 21st, 2018
Developing a Personal Approach to Educational Research
Denise Epp
Time: 18:30 - 20:30
Venue: Kurume University Satellite Campus, Tenjin, Fukuoka City, Elgala 6th Floor
Do you cringe at the thought of having to do educational research for your job? Does it seem to be unattainable or impossible? Are you just plain exhausted or unmotivated? Or do you find it a nice distraction from your regular teaching schedule? I found myself feeling all these things at some point while teaching here in Japan over the past 20 plus years. Without a challenge or clear goal, it was easy to lose interest and motivation in teaching, and then facing burnout in the elementary/junior high level, I had to make some changes. I was eventually transferred into the tertiary level, but the threat of being thrown back into compulsory education led me to jump head first into a PhD program at Kyushu University. This move led to a whole different world of unexpected! I will walk you through the process I used to do develop research within my teaching, and hope you will join me in sharing your experiences and goals as we talk about developing approaches to attainable educational research, regardless of the level you teach. Yes, all levels!
Dr. Denise A. Epp is presently teaching first and fourth-year English classes at Daiichi University of Pharmacy, and recently completed her PhD in Clinical Pharmacy at Kyushu University. She was an elementary school teacher in Canada before coming to Japan and continued to teach as an elementary school teacher in the public and private sector. After teaching elementary and junior high in Japanese compulsory education for 15 years, she moved into the tertiary level first at the economics university and then to the pharmacy university with the same company. Encouraged to research in pharmacy education, she began with observing pharmacist behaviors in Japan and overseas for patient education, particularly with diabetes, and then moved into the educational side of pre-clerkship communication training at the university. Her interest also includes disaster management pharmacy and studying the pharmacist activities before, during, and after a disaster. She continues to teach once a week at the company's kindergarten.
Developing a Personal Approach to Educational Research
Denise Epp
Time: 18:30 - 20:30
Venue: Kurume University Satellite Campus, Tenjin, Fukuoka City, Elgala 6th Floor
Do you cringe at the thought of having to do educational research for your job? Does it seem to be unattainable or impossible? Are you just plain exhausted or unmotivated? Or do you find it a nice distraction from your regular teaching schedule? I found myself feeling all these things at some point while teaching here in Japan over the past 20 plus years. Without a challenge or clear goal, it was easy to lose interest and motivation in teaching, and then facing burnout in the elementary/junior high level, I had to make some changes. I was eventually transferred into the tertiary level, but the threat of being thrown back into compulsory education led me to jump head first into a PhD program at Kyushu University. This move led to a whole different world of unexpected! I will walk you through the process I used to do develop research within my teaching, and hope you will join me in sharing your experiences and goals as we talk about developing approaches to attainable educational research, regardless of the level you teach. Yes, all levels!
Dr. Denise A. Epp is presently teaching first and fourth-year English classes at Daiichi University of Pharmacy, and recently completed her PhD in Clinical Pharmacy at Kyushu University. She was an elementary school teacher in Canada before coming to Japan and continued to teach as an elementary school teacher in the public and private sector. After teaching elementary and junior high in Japanese compulsory education for 15 years, she moved into the tertiary level first at the economics university and then to the pharmacy university with the same company. Encouraged to research in pharmacy education, she began with observing pharmacist behaviors in Japan and overseas for patient education, particularly with diabetes, and then moved into the educational side of pre-clerkship communication training at the university. Her interest also includes disaster management pharmacy and studying the pharmacist activities before, during, and after a disaster. She continues to teach once a week at the company's kindergarten.
May 12th, 2018
The Benefits, Challenges, and Results of a Research-based Vocabulary Program
Speaker: Stuart McLean
Saturday, May 12th, Time: 15:00-17:00
Venue: Namiki Square, Chihaya JR なみきスクエア千早駅JR
This presentation first describes the beneficial features of a hypothetical program of vocabulary study. These features include spaced rehearsal, adaptive learning, increasing retrieval difficulty, the use of an appropriate word counting unit, the presentation of both audio and orthographic forms, the use of context, and the use of the learners’ L1. Findings in the research literature on vocabulary learning are easy to understand, yet difficult to apply to a vocabulary program in practice. As a result, vocabulary programs often fail to help students reach their potential. The second part of the presentation describes the challenges faced, the great assistance received and steps taken when the presenter piloted, created, and administered an institution-wide research-informed vocabulary program.
Bio:
Stuart McLean is an instructor at Osaka Jogakuin University. He holds an M.S.Ed. (TESOL), a Ph.D. in Forensic Medicine, and a P.G.C.E. He is currently an Applied Linguistics doctoral student at Kansai University. He has published in Reading in a Foreign Language, Vocabulary Learning and Instruction, Language Teaching Research, TESOL Quarterly, System, Applied Linguistics, and Language Assessment Quarterly.
The Benefits, Challenges, and Results of a Research-based Vocabulary Program
Speaker: Stuart McLean
Saturday, May 12th, Time: 15:00-17:00
Venue: Namiki Square, Chihaya JR なみきスクエア千早駅JR
This presentation first describes the beneficial features of a hypothetical program of vocabulary study. These features include spaced rehearsal, adaptive learning, increasing retrieval difficulty, the use of an appropriate word counting unit, the presentation of both audio and orthographic forms, the use of context, and the use of the learners’ L1. Findings in the research literature on vocabulary learning are easy to understand, yet difficult to apply to a vocabulary program in practice. As a result, vocabulary programs often fail to help students reach their potential. The second part of the presentation describes the challenges faced, the great assistance received and steps taken when the presenter piloted, created, and administered an institution-wide research-informed vocabulary program.
Bio:
Stuart McLean is an instructor at Osaka Jogakuin University. He holds an M.S.Ed. (TESOL), a Ph.D. in Forensic Medicine, and a P.G.C.E. He is currently an Applied Linguistics doctoral student at Kansai University. He has published in Reading in a Foreign Language, Vocabulary Learning and Instruction, Language Teaching Research, TESOL Quarterly, System, Applied Linguistics, and Language Assessment Quarterly.
June 23, 2018 (Saturday)
Pragmatics for in and out of the classroom
Speaker: Jim Ronald
Seinan University Community Center (see our Locations page for access maps)
19:00-21:00
Pragmatics is an essential, but often neglected, part of language teaching. For many teachers, compared to vocabulary or grammar, pragmatics may seem irrelevant, overly academic, or just fuzzy: hard to understand and hard to teach. The goal of this presentation, in two parts, is to challenge these perceptions and to demonstrate ways in which pragmatics does have a place in the language classroom.
Part One will start with an introduction to pragmatics: the study - and practice - of language used in interaction, in relationships, in various contexts and cultures, for a range of purposes. We will then consider some aspects or areas of pragmatics that language teachers and learners need, both in the classroom, and in the world outside. Part Two will take the form of a workshop: we will consider and try out various pragmatics activities for the classroom.
Bio: Jim Ronald has been teaching English in the Department of English of Hiroshima Shudo University for over twenty years. His main academic interest for the first ten years was vocabulary acquisition, and he gained a Ph.D. in this field at Swansea University. Since then, he has become increasingly interested in pragmatics, and specifically in developing and using classroom pragmatics activities. In 2012, he co-edited a collection of these activities for the JALT Pragmatics SIG, and is working towards co-editing a new collection of activities, this time with a greater focus on learning and evaluation.
Pragmatics for in and out of the classroom
Speaker: Jim Ronald
Seinan University Community Center (see our Locations page for access maps)
19:00-21:00
Pragmatics is an essential, but often neglected, part of language teaching. For many teachers, compared to vocabulary or grammar, pragmatics may seem irrelevant, overly academic, or just fuzzy: hard to understand and hard to teach. The goal of this presentation, in two parts, is to challenge these perceptions and to demonstrate ways in which pragmatics does have a place in the language classroom.
Part One will start with an introduction to pragmatics: the study - and practice - of language used in interaction, in relationships, in various contexts and cultures, for a range of purposes. We will then consider some aspects or areas of pragmatics that language teachers and learners need, both in the classroom, and in the world outside. Part Two will take the form of a workshop: we will consider and try out various pragmatics activities for the classroom.
Bio: Jim Ronald has been teaching English in the Department of English of Hiroshima Shudo University for over twenty years. His main academic interest for the first ten years was vocabulary acquisition, and he gained a Ph.D. in this field at Swansea University. Since then, he has become increasingly interested in pragmatics, and specifically in developing and using classroom pragmatics activities. In 2012, he co-edited a collection of these activities for the JALT Pragmatics SIG, and is working towards co-editing a new collection of activities, this time with a greater focus on learning and evaluation.
July 21, 2018 (Saturday)
Video Exchange Project Between a Japanese-Canadian living in an Agriculture-centered Former Japanese Internment Camp and Freshmen Japanese University Students
Speaker: Andrew Meyerhoff
Tenjin, Elgala Bldg: Kurume University Satellite Campus, level 6. (see our Locations page for access maps)
18:00-20:00
The project involves video exchange between fourteen first year Japanese University students and a Japanese-Canadian living within the former internment camp, now-turned incorporated town. This town is known mostly as a hotbed for agriculture. The Canadian-based correspondent is an avid horticulturalist, growing self-sustaining fruit and vegetable crops, as well as herbs. Close to half the students in the Japanese student group are Agriculture majors and introduce Japanese crops to the Canadian correspondent and two of her sons through video. In addition, the students learn about internment camp life and a local roadside signage project. The goals of the project are four-fold: raising awareness and motivation for students; fostering linkage between cultures (Canadian, Japanese, Nikkei); cross-cultural content-based learning; empowerment and preservation for Nikkei community through cultural bridges. The platform and other features will be discussed. Come attend this event and learn results to date.
Bio: Andrew Meyerhoff is a native of Vancouver, British Columbia. He has a lived in Japan for 29 years. He has completed TESOL training from Langara College and UBC, along with practicum from the Vancouver School Board, in addition to holding an MEd from Acadia University in Curriculum Studies. He has been an Associate Professor at Saga University for 12 years.
Video Exchange Project Between a Japanese-Canadian living in an Agriculture-centered Former Japanese Internment Camp and Freshmen Japanese University Students
Speaker: Andrew Meyerhoff
Tenjin, Elgala Bldg: Kurume University Satellite Campus, level 6. (see our Locations page for access maps)
18:00-20:00
The project involves video exchange between fourteen first year Japanese University students and a Japanese-Canadian living within the former internment camp, now-turned incorporated town. This town is known mostly as a hotbed for agriculture. The Canadian-based correspondent is an avid horticulturalist, growing self-sustaining fruit and vegetable crops, as well as herbs. Close to half the students in the Japanese student group are Agriculture majors and introduce Japanese crops to the Canadian correspondent and two of her sons through video. In addition, the students learn about internment camp life and a local roadside signage project. The goals of the project are four-fold: raising awareness and motivation for students; fostering linkage between cultures (Canadian, Japanese, Nikkei); cross-cultural content-based learning; empowerment and preservation for Nikkei community through cultural bridges. The platform and other features will be discussed. Come attend this event and learn results to date.
Bio: Andrew Meyerhoff is a native of Vancouver, British Columbia. He has a lived in Japan for 29 years. He has completed TESOL training from Langara College and UBC, along with practicum from the Vancouver School Board, in addition to holding an MEd from Acadia University in Curriculum Studies. He has been an Associate Professor at Saga University for 12 years.
October 27, 2018 (Saturday)
Using Listening Journals to Foster Learner Autonomy
(Also: Fukuoka JALT Annual General Meeting)
Sergio Mazzarelli
Seinan Community Center, Nishijin (see our Locations page for access maps)
Time: 18:00 - 20:30
Extensive listening has been attracting attention as a means to improve language learners’ listening skills and promote their autonomy. The presenter will explain how he added an extensive listening component to two consecutive listening courses he taught at a Japanese university. He asked his students to listen to online recordings outside class and keep a journal in which they reflected on the listening process, detailing the difficulties they encountered and the strategies they used to overcome such difficulties. The students could also add comments about the content of the recordings, although this was not required. The results were encouraging as regards both the number of entries submitted and the quality of the reflections such entries contained. In addition, anonymous end-of-term surveys showed that the students rated the courses highly and believed that the journal activity had helped them improve their listening skills.
Short Bio:
Sergio Mazzarelli is a full-time English lecturer at Kwassui Women's University, Nagasaki. He earned a PhD in English from the Shakespeare Institute, University of Birmingham, UK, in 1996 and has been teaching in Japan since 1997. He has developed interests in learner autonomy and CALL and administers his university’s Moodle website.
Using Listening Journals to Foster Learner Autonomy
(Also: Fukuoka JALT Annual General Meeting)
Sergio Mazzarelli
Seinan Community Center, Nishijin (see our Locations page for access maps)
Time: 18:00 - 20:30
Extensive listening has been attracting attention as a means to improve language learners’ listening skills and promote their autonomy. The presenter will explain how he added an extensive listening component to two consecutive listening courses he taught at a Japanese university. He asked his students to listen to online recordings outside class and keep a journal in which they reflected on the listening process, detailing the difficulties they encountered and the strategies they used to overcome such difficulties. The students could also add comments about the content of the recordings, although this was not required. The results were encouraging as regards both the number of entries submitted and the quality of the reflections such entries contained. In addition, anonymous end-of-term surveys showed that the students rated the courses highly and believed that the journal activity had helped them improve their listening skills.
Short Bio:
Sergio Mazzarelli is a full-time English lecturer at Kwassui Women's University, Nagasaki. He earned a PhD in English from the Shakespeare Institute, University of Birmingham, UK, in 1996 and has been teaching in Japan since 1997. He has developed interests in learner autonomy and CALL and administers his university’s Moodle website.
December 1, 2018. 7-9pm
