Matsuyama Chapter

L1 in the L2 Classroom: Students and Teachers Speak Out!

What L1 support do Japanese students prefer in the EFL classroom, and is this affected by participants’ L2 proficiency? Today’s discussion involves two studies. The first study: students’ and teachers’ responses revealed an inverse relationship between their L2 proficiency and Japanese use. Second study: students had a strong desire for L1 support for emotional reasons.

The 4th Annual Shikoku JALT Conference (co-sponsored with East Shikoku Chapter)

After the featured speaker talks, the latter part of the programme will include sessions for 30-minute presentations/short papers (20 minutes + 10 min Q&A).

For updated details visit the East Shikoku JALT website:
http://eng.core.kochi-tech.ac.jp/eastshikoku/
or
http://esjalt.org/wordpress/?p=138

Project work: What is it and why, when and how can you implement it?

Project-Based Language Learning is slowly gaining popularity in Japan’s EFL classrooms but what exactly is it and why are increasingly more teachers trying it? When should we (not) use it and how can we effectively implement EFL projects? This workshop addresses these issues through a sequence of related activities and discussions.

Graded Readers in the Classroom -- How and Why

While the autonomous nature of Extensive Reading is attractive to students, it also creates some reluctance for teachers, who wonder how to exploit graded readers in the classroom itself. This presentation will briefly cover ER research results, and detail various activities and approaches for using GRs in the classroom.

The "Purple Cow" of Teaching English: What to Do When You Don't Have a Captive Audience

In my "commercial" English school, I have found my main challenge is offering something unique (Goden’s "Purple Cow") that will create loyal, satisfied students while making us stand out in the crowd. "Client-students" are adults, free to move on at any time. This requires designing a curriculum and business practices that create a total student experience from first contact on.

Calibrating Oral Assessment of Small Group Interaction

This workshop will cover issues in assessing oral output in small group interaction. Participants will use four rating scale bands (keeping the conversation going, quality of content, grammar/vocabulary intelligibility, and pronunciation intelligibility) to assess three sets of Japanese learners.

Captivate your students with CAPTUR

CAPTUR is a hand held low-tech device which allows the questioner to get answers from ALL students at the same time. The presenter will run a workshop showing how CAPTUR can run simple teacher led activities as well as having students question each other in small groups. This method can generally enhance your current textbook, worksheet or wall chart use.

A Brief Introduction of Discourse Intonation in English and Its Contribution to the TEF

“Intonation performs a variety of functions in the light of evidence from naturally occurring spoken discourse. Accordingly my talk is going to elaborate on the brief sketch of tone unit basing upon Brazil (1985), and to see how the functions of pitch, key & termination, and pitch sequence make commitment to the EFL teaching.”

Learning communication strategies from films

"Japanese university students are used to learning English at the word and sentence level. However, it is possible to motivate them to acquire communication strategies and meaning through films. In our presentation we will demonstrate various activities such as vocabulary and listening using a movie script.

SLA and Budo (Martial Arts): Extended, embodied cognition and practical implications for ELT

“I'll use Budo as an analogy for SLA and highlight some interesting aspects of skill acquisition and consciousness/non-consciousness in Budo. For explanation, I'll use a neuroscientific framework of cognition that is both extended and embodied. I'll also talk about some practical issues, including cultural differences between TEFL by Japanese teachers and TESL by native teachers.”