Fukuoka JALT Chapter

Fukuoka JALT usually meets on Saturday evenings in Tenjin. Our meetings are most often followed by a dinner social at a nearby restaurant. Pre-registration is usually not required for our presentations, but we do encourage you to fill in our sign-in/sign-up sheets before seeing our presentations and attending our dinners. Note: our dinners usually require a reservation, so early sign-up is often necessary.

Our core group of officers are:

• President: Jack Brajcich
• Membership Chair: Jane Harland
• Program Chair: J. Lake
• Publicity Chair: Miki Tokunaga
• Treasurer: Miho Tani

Other Fukuoka JALT Chapter Officers are:

• Kazuko Sako, Assistant Membership Chair
• Trevor Holster, Assistant Publicity Chair
• Yukiko Arita, Vice-President
• Quint Oga-Baldwin, eNewsletter Editor & Chapter Reports
• Yoshie Shimai, Social Chair

The next meeting for the Fukuoka Chapter is on Saturday, May 17th, 2008 from 6:30 PM to 8:30 PM.

Two Presentations by Terry Fellner

Terry Fellner, Saga University

Presentation 1: Dealing with student plagiarism, a processed-based portfolio approach to academic writing.

A concern among foreign language instructors is that of student plagiarism. The ease of finding materials online and copying portions of text without citations makes this problem particularly relevant today. The presenter first examines difficulties instructors have in defining plagiarism and consequently dealing with student plagiarism. The presentation then offers an alternative definition that neatly defines plagiarism for the modern net 2.0 world. The presenter will also illustrate how prevalent plagiarism may be in Japan based upon the results of surveys he has administered to his students and then discuss eight common reasons why students plagiarize university writing assignments. The presentation concludes by stating that a process-based portfolio approach to writing which makes use of legitimate writing strategies, such as Rebecca Howard’s (1995) “patch writing”, can greatly reduce the reasons students plagiarize and instead motivate them to develop a sense of identity in their academic writing.

Presentation 2: Preparing students for the new TOEIC Speaking and writing test.

Two years ago Educational Testing Services (ETS) began offering the new TOEIC Speaking and Writing test in Korea. This new test is meant to be a complement to the traditional reading and writing TOEIC test and when taken together will provide test takers, universities and companies a much better indication of test takers overall English ability. This presentation will examine the new speaking and writing test and discuss what communication skills are actually being evaluated. The presenter will then illustrate how this new form of TOEIC poses particularly difficult challenges to Japanese students as it necessitates that they be not only much more active �" as opposed to passive �" in their language learning but also in their language use. The presentation will require audience participation as it concludes by demonstrating some activities that can benefit students who are studying English in a regular university environment.

About the speaker: Terry Fellner is an Associate Professor at Saga University in Japan. He has been a language teacher and teacher trainer for over 15 years in North America, Africa and Asia. His current interests lie in the areas of CALL, Outdoor Language Learning, academic writing, and curriculum and materials design.

The meeting is at Fukuoka Jo Gakuin Tenjin Satellite Campus (9F), Tenjin 2-8-38, Chuo-ku, Fukuoka-shi map.
Cost for non-JALT members: 1,000 yen; for JALT members: Free

» For more event information see the Event Calendar.

This Chapter has a web page at http://jalt.org/groups/Fukuoka