Event Report, Saitama Chapter December 2018

On December 16th, we hosted an event from the Critical Thinking SIG about some of the interesting research findings coming from that group and how to incorporate the material into high school and university classrooms. Each presenter demonstrated their findings with 50-minute sessions which took up most of the event time allotted. Excerpts of the presentations can be found below:
Title: Critical Thinking and L2 Interaction (Mr. Oliver Smith)
This presentation will explicate a method for explicitly teaching critical thinking to a 3rd year Japanese high school class on an English for Academic Purposes course. It includes an overview of the ‘Introduction to Critical Thinking Skills course and how it fits into the programʼs wider curriculum, an example of a unit, and some of the theoretical underpinnings of the method, which suggest focused group discussion tasks aid both content and linguistic understanding through interaction.
Title: Critical Thinking and Japanese University Students (Mr. Christofer Bullsmith)
The first half of this brief talk will review what critical thinking is, why it’s important and particularly challenging in the Japanese context, and why language classes have a role to play in improving it. The second half will report on the author’s efforts to encourage critical thinking in an EFL class.
Title: Critical Thinking in EFL: What, Why, and How (Mr. James Dunn)
This presentation examines the definition, need, and methodology of critical thinking in the EFL context. By examining the definitions of critical thinking, higher-order thinking skills, and the action verbs that we use in activities, educators go from examining the need of a class to designing critical thinking-based course material that develops thinking skills. Attendees will receive sample course materials from the authors and generate ideas on how to implement critical thinking in their courses.
Overall, it was a great success with a sizable number of members in attendance. Afterwards, Saitama officers the went to a bounenkai with the remaining guests to celebrate a job well done. What a great way to end the year!