We had a well attended meeting on Saturday 4th May, including guests from Miyazaki, Kyoto and Kumamoto. The total number of participants was 10 students, 1 JALT member and 8 paying audience members.
Marcus Theobald kicked off the event with a 35 minute presentation on Japanese university students’ ability to identify the (ɔ:)phoneme. Throughout the talk there were many questions from audience members and a lively discussion was had. Marcus gave the audience members a number of tasks to do by way of showing how difficult this particular phoneme was to identify. His research involved a sample of 103 university students and produced some clear pointers for further research and debate.
After a short break Will Hall entertained us with his interesting graphic slides. He identified the value of art in the EFL setting and also had a number of activities for the audience to participate in. These proved particularly fun and clearly showed how art was a valuable tool for the teacher of English as a second language.