JALT Event

Omar Chin (Canada) & Clare Butson Kaneko (Niigata JALT and newly elected president of JALT!)
Omar Chin
TITLE: How did I get here? Assistant Language Teacher in Japan to licensed public school science teacher in Canada
ABSTRACT: If it’s in you to give, then please share. If it’s in you to teach, then teach. If the well of motivation is overflowing within you to achieve ‘a thing’, then every small step will bring you closer to destiny. It is your authentic self, the passion in your teaching, the strength of your example, and the growth you experience year after year which enriches this profession and the students you hope to reach.
This presentation outlines the journey of a Canadian teacher who spent six and a half years in Japan. He returned to Canada in 2014 to pursue additional qualifications; reached a full-time permanent public-school position; and is challenged by the strata of abilities in each new group of bi-lingual and sometimes tri-lingual students. After 5 years of teaching the subject of science, the commonalities between and among all subjects being taught in a school is blindingly clear. Whether it is English, math, history, science, or others, what matters is that students acquire vocabulary, thinking skills, and the meaningful exchanges and experiences which allow for self-driven discoveries – all of which serve as the foundation for further growth. A teacher (and school administration) must also grow along with students; aim to differentiate and accommodate for multi-level classes; and aim to increase access from a “Universal Design for Learning” point of view which may integrate technology in some form (provided that students, their families and schools have the financial means to do so).
This teacher’s philosophy of teaching (with influences from John Dewey, and other education theorists such as H. Gardner, J. Bruner, L. Vygotsky, and B.F. Skinner) and his teaching strategies, methods to motivate students, and demonstrations of technology integration in the classroom, will be offered in this session. The enduring trial for all teachers is to improve literacy and numeracy, for all skills – indeed all knowledge, whether acquired within the traditional school environment or beyond its walls, especially – are intertwined in support of each other.
BIO: Omar Chin is an Ontario Certified Teacher. Since 2017, he has been teaching science at the James Bay Eeyou School in an indigenous community, The Cree First-Nation of Chisasibi, in the province of Quebec, Canada. A major steppingstone in his teaching career began in the fall of 2007 in Suwa, Nagano, Japan where he worked for AEON East Japan. He later transitioned to WinBe (Tact Group) where he spent 4 years as an adult and children’s English conversation teacher. In 2012, he became an ALT at Fujimi Junior High School in Nagano (AtoZ Corporation). His background also includes a Bachelor of Fine Arts from Ryerson University in Toronto – this Arts background and skillset are major influences in his approach and design of activities and experiences for students.

Clare Butson Kaneko
TITLE: CLIL
ABSTRACT: How can we encourage our students to use the English they have and take autonomy for their own learning? With a focus on teaching content, and useful new language, in conjunction with existing language aimed at the level and interests of our students, we can create a learning environment students will not only enjoy, but that will help them take responsibility for their language learning.
Content and Language Integrated Learning may be mistaken as teaching subjects using English as the medium (EMI), but with the underlying CLIL goals of “increasing subject matter knowledge” as well as “language and language skills”, I believe there are many different ways we can use this teaching approach in Japan.
In today’s presentation I will share with you my experiences of using CLIL in the Japanese English Language classroom in both high school and university, and hopefully you will find some new ideas to take into your classroom.
BIO: Clare Kaneko holds a master’s degree in TESL / TEFL from the University of Birmingham. She is currently the president elect for the Japan Association of Language Teaching. Clare has been working in English education in Japan in a variety of contexts since 1999. This includes teaching at both private and public schools, students aged 2 to 75. Her approach to English teaching is to have students express their true selves through the use of English, as well as encouraging students to think critically on all issues that arise in the language classroom.

Zoom (To register, email yojaltpresident@yojalt.org with your name and event date)

Professional Development (PD) is an important facet of an educator’s career. It has been noted that attending conferences, keeping up with current research trends, and participating in PD activities enhances career trajectories as well as increases job satisfaction. Yet for many educators, this gets pushed to the side. Often class preparation and administrative tasks require the bulk of an educator’s time. Finances, family responsibilities, and other commitments often leave educators with the feeling that any kind of professional development is an impossible task. Drawing on my own experiences teaching from preschool to university, I will discuss how participation in professional research has enhanced my life and career. I will also address some of the challenges faced by part-time instructors in particular and practical ways to overcome them. This talk will be of particular interest to educators who work in a variety of settings ( preschool, primary, secondary, business) and are looking for professional development opportunities while balancing work/life commitments.

Abstract: The act of producing language in the form of speaking or writing in order to think through a problem (i.e., languaging) may help people clarify their thinking and transform their thoughts into objects for further reflection. In this talk, I will give an overview of previous research findings about the effect of languaging on second language learning. I will also consider implications for theory and research and then discuss second language pedagogy.

Speaker bio: Wataru Suzuki is a professor at Miyagi University of Education in Sendai. His research interests include cognitive and sociocultural second language acquisition (e.g., input, interaction, output, feedback). He has edited several books (e.g., Languaging in language learning and teaching) and published widely in national and international journals (e.g., Language Learning, System, Modern Language Journal).

Kobe JALT is very sorry to announce that this event has been CANCELLED and will be rescheduled.

Kobe JALT and the JET Alumni Association of Western Japan jointly invite you to our first face-to-face event since December 2019! What to do once your first ALT gig ends: A professional development workshop/presentation. It's FREE to all but you need to pre-register here.

Pearlyn's presentation will cover the following aspects of seeking employment in Japan:
● current trends of foreigner employment in Japan
● unique characteristics of working in Japan
● the job hunting process and schedule
● types of work visas for Japan
● what to look for in a company when job hunting

Pearlyn Yap Li Hui is the Anglosphere Affairs Supervisor and Career Guidance Lecturer of Mori Kosan Co., Ltd. She graduated from the National University of Singapore with a Bachelor’s Degree in Psychology. She has been lecturing on job hunting for the English-speaking international community in Japan, such as at the University of Hyogo, Nara Institute of Science and Technology and at job hunting seminars for JET alumnis. Besides lecturing, she also provides online and offline support to the English-speaking international community in Japan, be it job hunting (WA. SA. Bi. JOBs), studying Japanese (BJT, Super Japanese elearning) or living in Japan through the portal WA. SA. Bi. (https://www.iiwasabi.com/), and through career guidance consultations at academic institutions, as well as career events attended by government organizations of various countries.

Chelanna will make pre-recorded presentation and LIVE Q&A session:
Many ALTs consider teaching at university to be the next step in their career, but do not know how to get there. In this presentation, a former ALT shares how she made the jump from ALT to university instructor. She discusses how her involvement in JALT gave her the experience and skills, not to mention connections, necessary to land her dream job. She shares some common requirements for university positions, and how JALT can help applicants meet those requirements so they, too, can land the job of their dreams.

Chelanna White is a former ALT and prefectural advisor through the JET Programme in Kyoto. She served as Kyoto JALT’s co-chair of programming for three years and is currently the program chair liaison for all of JALT. She now lives in Tokyo and teaches at a private university in Chiba. When she isn’t teaching or liaising, she likes to explore Tokyo or spend time with her cats, Coco and Wyatt.

Seats are limited for the event, which will be live and in-person. Only 40 seats available, so please register soon using the QR code on the flyer or the following link: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSfWo83ueel2bE7WHeGGlV-1aa2v-wH-...

The event will be held at the Nagoya International Center (near Kokusai Station) on the 4th floor.

Also, there will be a dinner party after at Midtown BBQ which will be limited to 20 people. If you would like to attend, please register using the same QR code or link used for the event. Seats are already filling up, so if you would like to attend the after party, please sign up soon.

The next Multilingual Cafe (OLE SIG) is scheduled for Wednesday September, 21st, 2022 from 7:30 pm to 9:00 pm and will take place online. -
The topic is "Mediation to help hearing impaired students learn German: explanatory videos, games and movies" presented by Naoko Ochiai (Tsukuba University of Technology, Ibaraki University, Meikei High School).

The OLE SIG wants to provide a space to meet and share using languages other than English, creating a community of practice. This is the Multilingual Café: meet and chat in your favorite language. The languages available depend on those attending on the day (for example French, German, Spanish, Thai, Hungarian, Chinese, Tagalog, Japanese and many more). After a short presentation we will meet in breakout rooms where different languages are used for further discussions. (Lingua Franca: English and Japanese)

We meet online using zoom, please sign-up for receiving the zoom-credentials.

The next Multilingual Cafe (OLE SIG) is scheduled for Wednesday July 27th, 2022 from 7:30 pm to 9:00 pm and will take place online. - The topic is "Persian Language and the the Relationship of English and Persian Languages" presented by Abdollah Dodangeh (Rissho University).

The Persian language is among the oldest Indo-European language families. It has a long history stretching back to 500 BC.  The Persian Language can be classified into Classical Persian, Middle Persian, and Modern Persian.  The entire long history Persian vocabularies have made their way into the English language in various and circuitous ways.

The OLE SIG wants to provide a space to meet and share using languages other than English, creating a community of practice. This is the Multilingual Café: meet and chat in your favorite language. The languages available depend on those attending on the day (for example French, German, Spanish, Thai, Hungarian, Chinese, Tagalog, Japanese and many more). After a short presentation we will meet in breakout rooms where different languages are used for further discussions. (Lingua Franca: English and Japanese)
We meet online using zoom, please sign-up for receiving the zoom-credentials.

Join us as the Kyoto Chapter of JALT will present a free webinar on Critical Realism in Applied Linguistics on Sunday, November 6th, 2022 from 14:00 JST. You can register for this event by visiting our website at kyotojalt.org

What is Critical Realism (CR)?
Research is always based on assumptions about what constitutes valid scientific knowledge and by what means or methods we can create it. Even lay people’s understanding of research is based on implicit assumptions that fall into one of the schools of thought that have been identified by the philosophy of science, e.g., empiricism, positivism, interpretivism, social constructionism or realism. In this panel we aim to show comprehensively how we can improve research in Applied Linguistics (AL) by firstly making these assumptions explicit so that we can secondly overcome their limitations. We adopt a particular philosophical framework, Critical Realism (CR) that has engaged in depth with the benefits and limitations of other schools of thought and developed clearer conceptual and methodological insights into the emergence of social phenomena, including those studied by applied linguists. To date, though, CR has been rarely used in AL and we will therefore give concrete examples where CR allowed us to transcend the conceptual and methodological constraints imposed by both empiricism and positivism (mostly associated with quantitative research) and interpretivism and social constructivism (mostly associated with qualitative research), the two dominant tendencies in the field.

Schedule
14:00 – Jeremie Bouchard
15:00 – Q & A/Discussion
15:20 – Dominic Edsall
16:20 – Q & A/Discussion
16:40 – Karin Zotzmann
17:40 – Q & A/Discussion

More information: [https://kyotojalt.org/?p=6448](https://kyotojalt.org/?p=6448)

The Listening SIG is delighted to announce their first ever event in affiliation with the JALT Kyoto Chapter. The Listening Conference 2022 will be a one-day event taking place in Kyoto on Sunday 25th September.
The whole day event will showcase some of the latest listening research, teaching, and learning presentations from the field. The conference is scheduled to run from 10am to 4pm with over ten presentations scheduled in two rooms for the entire day. This is our first SIG event and we will be a face-to-face event. Eateries and lunch options are nearby and of course, you can take in the sights and sounds of Kyoto over this long weekend. There will be a social on Saturday 24th and also one to wrap up the conference on Sunday 25th. We have created a registration form for those who are interested in attending. Please complete the form before the conference so we can plan a safe conference, following COVID-19 regulations. We look forward to seeing you in Kyoto on Sunday 25th September!

Venue: Campus Plaza KYOTO (https://www.consortium.or.jp/about-cp-kyoto/access )

More information can be found at Kyoto Chapter website (https://kyotojalt.org/?p=4296).

This research questions if Japanese L2 learners are influenced by their familiarity with each other or by anonymity when they are engaged in peer feedback on writing. The focus of the investigation was upon the praise and criticisms exchanged during the peer sessions and the students’ reported degree of discomfort, if any. The study examined three conditions: a) mutual closeness, b) mutual distance, and c) mutual anonymity. The results were that there were lower degrees of discomfort among learners who shared a close relationship, and that anonymity did not reduce the discomfort. The learners exchanged similar feedback regardless of their closeness or anonymity.