In a rapidly globalizing world, one of the important roles of foreign language education is to enhance students’ ability to “to communicate effectively in cross-cultural situations and to relate appropriately in a variety of cultural contexts” (Intercultural competence [IC]: Bennett and Bennett, 2004). This holds true for the primary school English classes in Japan,…

Presenter: Mary Nobuoka Many people think that children raised by parents who speak two or more languages will naturally become bilingual or multilingual. However, in a monolingual country, this is not so easy. Raising a bilingual child in Japan (or countries like the USA where the majority language dominates) requires planning and attention. This…

Presentations 2.0: Modern Presentation Skills for the Digital Age by Rab Paterson May 27th, 2018 2 to 4:30PM No matter where people work, in academia, business, or the media, there is a good chance they will be asked to give a presentation of some kind at some point in their career. For academics and…

In our roles as educators, how can we best engage and motivate our students and support them in their linguistic journeys? Donnery’s workshop demonstrated how the use of drama-based activities in the mixed-ability Japanese EFL classroom can meet with learner needs. Gunma JALT participants were encouraged to reflect upon their own teaching situations and…

In this workshop, led by Kevin Ryan, attendees looked at developing student-led small group discussions of student-selected and developed video content. Students choose videos to develop into lessons online for other students, then for repeated small group presentations and immediate peer feedback in the classroom. Short sessions with a different set of rotating group…

Culture influences the way we think and behave; much of what we think of as “common sense” is governed by culture. As a result, to communicate effectively in a foreign language we must understand the target culture. Unfortunately, most universities offer instruction on foreign language and culture in separate classrooms. In this two-hour workshop,…

There is a growing demand for high school students to possess not only adequate skills in the receptive skills of reading and listening, but also the productive skills of speaking and writing. Various assessment instruments that are pertinent to the students’ academic progress, such as the upper levels of EIKEN and university entrance exams,…

Most Japanese secondary schools have had difficulty implementing the communicative methods of English instruction endorsed by MEXT. This presentation offered an overview of the literature which has explored these difficulties, and responded to calls from some of the local JALT community to explore cooperative learning as a potential means to meet the MEXT guidelines.…