Venue: Aobaku Chuo Shimin Center Meeting Room #2 (青葉区中央市民センター 第2会議室）
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Speaker(s):  Curtis Kelly

Speaker bio: Speaker, writer, and professor emeritus of Kansai University, Curtis Kelly (EdD), is a brain nerd.  He is one of the founders of the JALT BRAIN SIG and producer of the MindBrainEd Think Tanks. He has written over 35 books including the Cambridge Writing from Within series, and has given over 500 presentations. His life mission is “to relieve the suffering of the classroom.” He is travelling from San Diego just to see the folks at JALT Sendai (and also visit family and eat sushi).

Abstract: 

Neuroscience Sheds a New Light on Why ER and TBLT are All-important

And not just that. Neuroscience also informs us why we should make a major change in the way we think about language teaching. For a century, the learning of grammar and vocabulary has been at the base of our profession. A look at any standardized test for measuring English proficiency (TOEIC, IELTS, STEP, etc.) shows that almost everything being tested is just that: passive knowledge of vocabulary and grammar. Fortunately, we as teachers have long realized there is a lot more to knowing a language than just that. And now, research in neuroscience on “cognitive control,” the way the brain has us do things, shows that other skills, which we will examine, are even more important. This research also shows why TBLT (task-based language teaching) and ER (extensive reading) are not just optional approaches, they should be mandatory.

A Little Fun with The Snoop Detective School: Interactive Tasks for English Learners

Since this will be an evening event, in addition to looking at neuroscience, let’s have a little fun. I’m going to give you some crimes to solve from our recently published book (written with Yuichi Suzuki), to see if you can do as well as our students did (but with only half the time… after all you are teachers). One will be fairly easy, but the other, rather hard, representing the climax of our book. Good luck, detectives. And in the process, I hope you realize that “fun” and “play” are the way brains are built to learn (whether human, kitten, or octopus)!