JALT Event

Theme: "Walking Before Running - Fundamentals in Language Learning"
Plenary Talk: "Getting back to basics in ELT"
For details on other presentations, see the JALT Hokkaido website: http://jalthokkaido.net/

The first section will cover basics: 1) How to set up a class; 2) How to upload resources; 3) How to make a quiz.
The second section will focus on class page with one-to-one bi-lingual support.

We all recognize that words are the bedrock of language learning. As Michael Lewis quoting Earl Stevick in his book The Lexical Approach notes, when students travel abroad they carry a dictionary, not a grammar book. This talk will look at the place of teaching vocabulary in the curriculum and what it means to “know” a word. It will look at how learners acquire words and at the importance of both recycling and depth of processing as part of this process.
Why a vocabulary notebook? How to go about implementing the use of one? This talk looks at vocabulary notebooks in general and their place in the classroom. It then looks at one vocabulary notebook in particular that, in addition to giving students a template for recording new words and expressions, provides activities designed to explore different aspects of the words they have recorded.

National assessment of English in primary education in the Netherlands - This presentation will focus on the results that were collected in a nationwide assessment of proficiency in English (2006) in the final year (group 8 – age 11/12) of primary education. The position of English in the primary curriculum, teacher training, methods used, time spent on English lessons and results of the assessment in reading, listening, speaking and vocabulary will be discussed.
English teaching and exams at secondary schools in the Netherlands - Recently teaching methods for the older students (15 – 18 yrs) at Dutch secondary schools have undergone major changes. The debate on whether these changes are for better or for worse is still raging. The basic ideas behind this reform are that students need to take more responsibility for their own learning and that they should learn more skills instead of just gaining knowledge.

Teachers and students profit from reflection. By exploring our beliefs of language learning we can gain insight on how they affect our choices in the classroom. In this interactive workshop we will share a range of methodologies and discuss the principles behind them. For example, some teachers prefer highly-structured activities because they are concerned about student-produced errors and the fossilization of these errors. On the other hand, many teachers embrace mistakes as the necessary steps of a learning process. Receptivity to different approaches will begin the moment we reflect on our own, and the principles behind them. We hope to share some activities that we have found successful in our classrooms.

The main theme is "My Lesson Plan." Each officer will present what he/she does in their classrooms. They will share one or two of their lesson plans with the members at the meeting. The participants are expected to bring some of their ideas and classroom activities to share with everyone. All can certainly learn something from one another.

It’s been my privilege - as a teacher trainer, examiner and former director of studies – to observe some really memorable classes. Let me share a few of these with you, and let’s see if we can draw up some principles for good grammar teaching.
Scott Thornbury is Associate Professor on the MA TESOL program at the New School in New York, and has an MA (TEFL) from the University of Reading. He has taught and trained in a wide range of contexts, including the School for International Training in Brattleboro, Vermont. He has written extensively on areas of language and methodology, his most recent books being Conversation: From Description to Pedagogy (with Diana Slade, CUP) and The CELTA Course (with Peter Watkins, CUP). He is currently the series editor of the Cambridge Handbooks for Language Teachers (CUP). He divides his time between New York and Barcelona.
This presentation is sponsored by Cambridge University Press. Lecture from 6:15-7:15, followed by wine social until 8:00 pm.

ESP/EAP: English for Global Living, Working, and Studying, the CUE 2009 Conference takes place at Tezukayama University, Gakuenmae Campus, Nara (site of JALT 2004), during the weekend of October 17 & 18.
Featured Speakers are Mike Guest (University of Miyazaki) and Dr. Thomas Orr (University of Aizu).
Special Invited Panel Speakers include Dr. Judy Noguchi, Theron Muller, Eric Skier, and Glen Hill.

The conference features over 40 presentations and workshops concerned with English for Specific Purposes and English for Academic Purposes representing a wide variety of fields, such as nursing, engineering, and business.

For more information and online conference registration, please visit the CUE SIG web site at http://jaltcue-sig.org.
CUE 2009 Conference is sponsored by CUE SIG and Nara JALT Chapter, in support of Framework and Portfolio SIG and Study Abroad SIG.

In this TOEIC themed meeting, two teachers will introduce two different approaches they have used to teach “for the TOEIC test”. Kimiko Murata will talk about how she has successfully helped students to improve their TOEIC scores through helping them become more exam-wise. Kristen Sullivan will demonstrate how she has used TOEIC preparation materials to teach students how to produce business writing genres which commonly appear in the TOEIC reading section. The meeting will conclude with an informal discussion on teaching for the TOEIC and the position of TOEIC in Japanese universities.
Kimiko Murata has worked as a part-time lecturer of English at Kitakyushu City University and Shimonoseki City University for 10 years, and at Seinan Jo Gakuin University for 4 years. She teaches TOEIC classes at both Kitakyushu City University and Seinan Jo Gakuin University.
Kristen Sullivan is a lecturer at Shimonoseki City University where she teaches Academic English, TOEFL preparation, Composition and Oral Communication. She is co-writer of the recently released Oral Communication textbook Impact Conversation, published by Pearson/Longman.

I will propose that English education in Japan, at the elementary school level in particular, be conducted in a larger setting of “Language Awareness”. This notion includes the following: First, language is a unique symbolic system that allows novel utterances, recursion and so on. Second, such properties are shared by languages of the world despite apparent differences. Thus education based on language awareness necessarily involves reflections on the first language and calls for realizing not only language variety but also universal properties that lie behind it.
The view that language has universal properties is supported by researchers in many fields of linguistics: pioneering linguists e.g. de Saussure, Sapir, language typologists e.g., Greenberg, Comrie, theoretical linguists, e.g., Chomsky, and so on. One can safely say that language is a genetically-endowed property specific to humans. Given that, it must be that such universality, or our tacit knowledge of language, is activated in the first language acquisition, the second language acquisition and foreign language acquisition/learning. Therefore, I argue that emphasizing aspects of language that are shared by the first and the target languages will facilitate learners’ access to the target language. It will also enhance motivation for language learning.
After clarifying that English in Japan is a foreign, not the second, language, I will discuss how we should divide aspects of language and match the sections with appropriate teaching methods. Vocabulary, or Saussurean signs, is arbitrary in principle, and therefore has to be explicitly “learned”, although learners will soon discover many subregularities as they go by. Much of grammatical knowledge, on the other hand, is universal, as mentioned above, so comes cost-free in principle. Hence all we have to do is explicate our tacit knowledge of language, such as “headedness” and “ambiguity”. I will show examples of how to do that in learners’ first language (in our case Japanese) and then how to apply such knowledge to the target language (English). For the aspects of grammar that are different between the first and the target languages, such as word order and agreement, I will introduce ways to fill them in, by utilizing “parameters”.
In the remaining part of the talk I hope to touch on the “division of labor” between human resources (language teachers and learners) and machines (CALL). Specifically, I compare CALL to gym exercise and argue that it is best utilized in vocabulary (words and idioms) learning and distinction of phonological patterns that are lacking in learners’ first language.
Saeko Urushibara is the Director of the Center for Fundamental Education at the University of Kitakyushu. She received her Ph.D. in Linguistics and Cognitive Science from the Department of Psychology, Brandeis University Graduate School, in 1994.