Location Keio University, Hiyoshi, Raiosha Building 2F
The event brought together a range of engaging and practical presentations focused on language teaching, classroom innovation, and the effective use of technology. Attendees benefited from a variety of hands-on sessions, research-informed insights, and classroom-ready strategies, making it a highly successful and rewarding professional development opportunity. This was a perfect opportunity to start the 2026 academic year!
Malcolm Prentice โ Paragraph Lengths for Academic Writing
Malcolm Prentice is a lecturer at Rikkyo Universityโs Center for Foreign Language Education with extensive international teaching experience and research interests in teacher education and student corpora.
This presentation offered practical guidance teachers could share with students about appropriate paragraph lengths in academic writing. Drawing on the British Academic Written English (BAWE) corpus, it highlighted how paragraph length varied across disciplines and genres and provided useful insights for students preparing for academic study abroad.
Connie Yoshioka โ Four-Skills First Introductions: Building Communicative Confidence from Day One
Connie Yoshioka is a lecturer at Tokyo Womanโs Christian University who specializes in communicative, student-centered language teaching.
This presentation introduced a structured first-day activity that immediately engaged students in reading, writing, speaking, and listening. Participants learned a flexible classroom activity that built interaction, lowered anxiety, and helped establish a communicative classroom culture from the start of the semester.
Rebecca Funabashi โ Using Mentimeter Interactive Presentations to Kick Off the New Semester
Rebecca Funabashi teaches English at Yokohama City University and focuses on integrating technology into the language classroom.
This presentation demonstrated how the interactive tool Mentimeter could be used to increase student engagement through polls, quizzes, and word clouds. Participants explored practical ways to use the platform for needs analysis and interaction during the first class of a new semester.
Manfred Cannegieter โ Cultivating Trust in the ESL Classroom: Emotional Investment and Start-of-Term Success
Manfred Cannegieter has been teaching English in Japan since 1993 across primary, secondary, and university contexts and frequently shares practical classroom strategies with teachers.
This presentation explored simple strategies for building trust and emotional connection during the first lessons of a course. Participants experienced a practical trust-building activity and considered ways to create supportive classroom environments that encouraged participation and communicative confidence.
Tanya Erdelyi โ Using AI to Create Graded Readings
Tanya Erdelyi is an Associate Professor at Chuo University whose research interests include vocabulary learning, motivation, and academic writing.
This presentation demonstrated how AI tools could help teachers efficiently create graded reading materials that matched studentsโ language levels. It showed how authentic texts could be adapted while maintaining key ideas, making reading materials more accessible and effective for language learners.
Michael Phillips โ A Simplified and Effective Rubric and Class Feedback System
Michael Phillips is a long-time JALT member and educator with interests in business English pedagogy, task-based learning, and reflective teaching practice.
This presentation introduced a simplified rubric and feedback system designed to save teachers time while increasing how effectively students engaged with feedback. Practical examples and the rationale behind the approach were shared to demonstrate how evaluation could become a more efficient and meaningful process.
Suprateek Chatterjee โ Beyond the Prompt: Using Generative AI to Support Vocabulary Learning in the ESL Classroom
Suprateek Chatterjee teaches academic English and digital literacy in Japan and previously worked as a culture journalist and editor in Mumbai.
This presentation demonstrated practical classroom activities that integrated generative AI tools such as ChatGPT into vocabulary learning tasks. It also discussed student responses, challenges encountered, and strategies for guiding learners to use AI tools critically and effectively.
