Plenary Speakers

Each year we invite accomplished researchers, teachers, and experts to join us and share their knowledge and perspectives. This year we have a wide range of plenary speakers, so all participants should find something interesting and relevant no matter what your teaching context.
Thomas Farrell, Professor, Brock University
Bill Harley – Grammy-award winning musician, story-teller, and author
Claire Kramsch – Professor, UC Berkeley
Kimie Takahashi – Lecturer, Graduate School of English, Assumption University – Visiting Associate Professor, International Christian University. Update: JALT regrets to announce that Kimie Takahashi has had to cancel her appearance at JALT2014.
Additional Invited Plenary Speaker: Gerry Yokota – Professor, Osaka University
Special Pre-conference Issue of The Language Teacher
A non-password-protected excerpt of our publication, The Language Teacher, is available for download. This PDF includes articles from and interviews with our Plenary and Featured Speakers as a preview of their presentations.
Thomas Farrell
Reflecting On Practice
Sponsored by the Teacher Education and Development SIG
In the past 30 years there has been an increasing and sometime bewildering choice of teaching methods and means available to teachers of English to speakers of other languages (TESOL). In this interactive plenary I outline how language teachers can reflect on their use of methods and means in TESOL. Reflecting on our practice suggests that our teaching experience is not enough, for we do not learn much from experience as much as we learn from reflecting on that experience; thus experience combined with reflections can lead to growth and this is how we become more effective language teachers. Such reflecting on practice encourages us to maintain our curiosity in our practice, identify significant interests/issues in our practice that we may want to reflect deeper on, and value and seek dialogue with our colleagues as a source of support in the analysis of these interests/issues.
Thomas S.C. Farrell is Professor of Applied Linguistics at Brock University, Canada. His professional interests include Reflective Practice, and Language Teacher Education and Development. Professor Farrell has published widely in academic journals and has presented at major conferences worldwide on the topic of Reflective Practice. A selection of his recent books include Reflecting on Teaching the Four Skills (2012), Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, and Reflective Writing for Language Teachers (Equinox, 2013). Reflective Practice (TESOL, USA, 2013). Reflective Practice in ESL Teacher Development Groups: From Practices To Principles (Palgrave McMillian, UK, 2014). His webpage is www.reflectiveinquiry.ca.
Bill Harley
Story and Song – Ancient Crafts in a Modern World
Sponsored by Yokohama JALT
The human voice is the instrument of our first language – it underlies all methods and modes of communication, even the latest breakthroughs in digital media. The spoken and sung word is the bedrock upon which all other forms of language are based. To develop a literacy rich in form and content, people need to hear and speak story and song. The ability to tell a story and sing a song is at the heart of what it is to be human. As a storyteller and singer of both traditional and original material, Bill Harley understands this very basic connection at the root of the human experience. In this plenary talk, Bill will share insights he has gained in over thirty years of writing, performing and teaching, emphasizing the importance of story and song in the classroom and life. And of course, there will be some stories and songs.
A two-time Grammy award-winning artist and recipient of a Lifetime Achievement Award from the RI Council for the Humanities, Bill uses song and story to paint a vibrant and hilarious picture of growing up, schooling and family life. His work spans the generation gap, reminds us of our common humanity and challenges us to be our very best selves. A prolific author and recording artist, Bill tours widely as an author, performing artist and keynote speaker. Visit billharley.com for more.
Claire Kramsch
Why conversation needs borders
Sponsored by the College and University Educators SIG
With global English, global information technologies, and a global economy, it is tempting to think that the world is better off without borders, especially if we can all speak a common language. Yet all the research shows that it is in the process of crossing borders and engaging in dialogue across borders that we really understand who we are and who we can become. This paper explores the teaching and learning of foreign languages in an era of globalization and how it has repositioned the language instructor as a multilingual instructor at the border between the demands of a national institution and the demands of a global market. These demands are often multiple, changing and contradictory and it is worth discussing how teachers can deal with these contradictions.
Claire Kramsch is Professor of German and Affiliate Professor of Education at UC Berkeley, where she teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in Applied Linguistics and directs doctoral dissertations in the German Department and in the Graduate School of Education. She has written extensively on language, discourse and culture in foreign language education. Two of her books, Context and Culture in Language Teaching (OUP, 1993) and The Multilingual Subject (OUP, 2009) won the Mildenberger Award from the American Modern Language Association. She is the past president of the American Association for Applied Linguistics and the current president of the International Association of Applied Linguistics.
Kimie Takahashi
JALT regrets to announce that Kimie Takahashi has had to cancel her appearance at JALT2014.
Gendering Intercultural Communication – Asian Women on the Move
Sponsored by the Gender and Language Education SIG
More women are on the move than ever before. Those who move across national and linguistic borders, however, constantly face stereotypes about their gender, race, nationality and language proficiency, which mediate power relations in intercultural communication. The literature on intercultural communication has not fully addressed gendered negotiations on the move and continues to treat ‘women’ as a homogeneous, static category, rooted in the country of birth. In this talk, I argue that such gender essentialism coupled with national essentialism and failure to consider transnational mobility is a major obstacle to capturing lived intercultural communication in the era of globalization. Taking an intersectional approach, I will review research on Asian women on the move to demonstrate how gender, race and language might intersect in mediating their experience of social inclusion and exclusion in transnational contexts.
Kimie Takahashi (PhD, 2006, University of Sydney) is Visiting Associate Professor at the Department of Society, Culture and Media, International Christian University, Tokyo. Over the course of her international career as a sociolinguist, she spent many years working in Australia and Thailand. Kimie has published widely on gender, race and language learning, including her book Language Learning, Gender and Desire: Japanese Women on the Move. She is Co-Editor of Language on the Move, where she blogs about her research.
Gerry Yokota
Beyond the Binary: Anime, Gender and the Multicultural Subject
Japanese anime and manga are fertile sources of material for prompting classroom discussion. But educators are justly concerned about their frequently problematic representations of gender, sexuality and violence. In this plenary talk, I will introduce recent examples from three prominent subgenres (mechas, cyborgs and beautiful fighting girls) and invite you to join me in a border-crossing adventure. Together we will explore how metaphors and symbols in anime are embodied, and often gendered, but not universal, and contemplate the advantage of cultivating a multicultural, multilingual subjectivity as a valuable asset for venturing into borderlands.
Gerry Yokota is Professor of English and Contemporary Interdisciplinary Cultural Studies at Osaka University, where she teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in Gender Studies as well as courses on Contemporary Japan for the G30 program. She is also an affiliate of GLOCOL, the Global Collaboration Center at Osaka University, where she is involved in the Community Services Project, focusing especially on the mixed roots community in Japan. Taking the concept of tradition as a bridge between premodern and modern culture, she has recently begun expanding her early work on the representation of women in the medieval noh drama of Japan (as author of The Formation of the Canon of Noh: The Literary Tradition of Divine Authority, 1997, and as editor of Gender and Japanese History, 2 vols., 2000, both published by Osaka University Press) to explore the meaning of tradition in Japanese popular culture.