Event Report, Ibaraki Chapter March 2017

Part 1: Morning presentation
IBARAKI: March— Teaching Writing: Why and how can we include grammar and culture (context)? by Nivedita Kumari. Arguing that writing is a good way to teach students grammar and academic English conventions, Kumari offered us a glimpse of her writing classroom at a university in Japan. Namely, she explained her three assignments (i.e., free writing, group writing, and individual writing) and their respective merits. She also showed us a way to incorporate peer-editing as a part of the individual writing assignment. In this assignment, students are evaluated not only for their writing proficiency but also for their ability to critique others’ works. By evaluating their classmates’ compositions, students can assess grammaticality and learn first-hand the communal and process-oriented nature of English writing. 
Reported by Naomi Takagi 
Part 2: Afternoon prsentation
Educational development in Nepal (Pramila Neupane)
The talk began with the ideas on why we need education in our society and how it is an important part of socioeconomic development. Global policies for educational development and cooperation were explained to the listeners who were not an expert in this area with a case study of development of education in Nepal in the last decade. Various nuances of measuring this development were brought out during the talk and the discussions between and after the talk benefitted us all in understanding the complex issue of development in one of the third world countries. 
Report by 
Nivedita Kumari
Assistant-professor University of Tsukuba