Learning to Teach, Teaching to Learn
Oct. 12-15 2012, Act City, Hamamatsu, Shizuoka
http://jalt.org/conference
Here you can find details of upcoming events held throughout Japan by our chapters and SIGs.
Click on the underlined links to see full event details.
Meetings are open to all, but an admission fee is usually required. JALT membership allows for either reduced or free membership to many of the events. Click on an event title to view full details.
Note that the calendar archives of events from 2001 to November 2008 are still available online.
This workshop is for novice teacher-researchers and those who want to brush up their research skills. First, some basic issues in research will be discussed, including research questions and sampling methods. The presenter will then introduce his own mixed-methods study, and show how data was collected, coded, and analyzed.
The presentation will begin by taking a look at the process of the introduction of foreign language activities at the elementary school level. It is hoped to clarify goals, identify problems and offer discussion for the implications across the education system and for the future.
Many people say: “Either you have a sense of humour or you don’t. So there is no point in explaining it.” “Humour is too difficult for language learners.” Rather than focusing on the use of humour as a teaching tool, this presentation aims to show why and how humour itself should become the object of teaching.
Despite our best efforts, many students of EFL still think of vocabulary study as a tedious battle against an unbeatable enemy. This workshop will introduce a range of strategies and activities to ease the burden of learning target vocabulary, increase the effectiveness of vocabulary exercises, and foster skills that will serve students long after their language course has finished.
This presentation outlines the development and enhancement of a short-term study abroad program. The presenter will discuss the need for such programs to have two essential features: a built in mechanism to receive feedback from participants, and institutional flexibility to initiate changes to the program to enhance the educational experience of the participants.
How can we help our students move from learning to identify individual words to reading sentences and stories? In this workshop, we’ll answer that question by looking at what we can learn from reading instruction history and research, and use the best of both to create an eclectic reading program ideally suited to your students’ unique needs.
The presentation will be based on a syllabus designed to gradually move students towards more autonomous learning rather than maintaining complete dependency on the teacher. We hope to delve into discussion on how the course enhanced intrinsic motivation and fostered the students' know-how for effective autonomous learning. The presentation will be of interest to language teachers and course-designers.
(1)Cultivating Intercultural Communicators
Raising awareness of varying norms of appropriateness across cultures has long been recognized as a major goal for pragmatic instruction. However, there is little agreement over which norms might be the most suitable targets for learners. There is increasing evidence that the L1 systems of multilingual and monolingual speakers differ at every level, from phonology to pragmatics (Cook 2002, 2008). Following Oretega’s (2010) appeal at the AAAL conference in Atlanta, this presentation will argue that just as a monolingual model is no longer justifiable in second language research, monolingual norms are no longer appropriate for language teaching. In essence, L2 learners should not be aiming to acquire monolingual L1 speakers’ pragmatic norms. Rather all participants in cross-cultural interaction, regardless of the language they are using (L1 or L2), need to develop the sensitivity to accommodate their language use to their conversational partners’ ways of communicating, thus becoming intercultural communicators.
(2) "Love That Dog": Introducing Poetry to Second Language Learners
Inspired by Sharon Creech's ‘Love That Dog’, the presenter introduces various ways to utilize multi-media in classroom activities to add color and fun to reading lessons. Multimedia combines text, video, sound, graphics, and animation to provide a powerful tool for students to build analytical reading and writing skills, as well as confidence in their own abilities.
Two of the primary challenges facing would-be students of English are time and money constraints. I will present the results of a 10-week experiment in which we used a private social network in combination with various video and audio hardware and software to facilitate effective learning in a low cost and convenient manner at each learner's own pace.
Multimedia elements (text, sound, video, animation and graphics) can be combined in ways that can potentially hold students’ attention more effectively by stimulating multiple senses simultaneously. Introducing multimedia tools into the learning environment can be a rewarding, but challenging task. This presentation will look at some ways multimedia can be used to enhance the teaching of poetry.
Theme by Danetsoft and Danang Probo Sayekti inspired by Maksimer