Event Report, Gunma Chapter September 2018

During this two-day workshop, featured lecturer Dr. Atsushi Iida, Associate Professor of English at Gunma University gave two lecturers on using haiku and poetry in the development of L2 literacy. In the first, Iida identified several positive effects of poetry writing on L2 learning from theoretical and empirical viewpoints. In the second, he shared his teaching practice of English-language haiku writing in the Japanese EFL university classroom and then discussed how to assess poems written by Japanese EFL learners. John Larson, teacher at Isesaki High School, presented a warm-up writing exercise developed with his colleague Aimeé-Lee Nash. Raymond Hoogenboom, an associate professor of TESOL at Gunma University, presented some of the dilemmas of how to respond to students’ writing production, especially in light of constraints imposed by time limitation and large numbers of students.