Alaric Davis, Rintaro Ikegami, Naoko Ishimaru, Nabila Nurdjaman, Sora Oouchi, I-ting Tsai, Xier Xi, Yuto Yokokura, Wenxin Zhang, and Ying ZhouTitle: Graduate Student Reflections on their MA TESOL Program Abstract In the master’s program at Akita International University (AIU), students are taught to explore the juncture between theory and practice. In addition to learning best […]

Maria Carlotta Avanzi (Akita Prefectural University)Akita JALT is pleased to welcome Maria Carlotta Avanzi (Akita Prefectural University) as the guest speaker for the chapter’s October meeting. Art history can be a powerful tool for teaching English; however, this tool is still underestimated and underused. Nowadays, young people travel more often to international destinations; therefore, they […]

Dr. Hale and his graduate studentsDecember 17, 2022 Time: 12:30– 1:35 Session I: 12:35–1:05 Session II: 1:05–1:35 Finish: 1:45 Venue: ZOOM (Emailed to all Akita JALT Members) – Please email akita@jalt.org for more information or to join. This poster session will feature ten original classroom-based discourse analyses conducted by graduate students in the English Language […]

Jason TackerCheating with Smart phones in Japanese EFL Classes Abstract: The use of smartphones for cheating in classrooms has been widely documented. In Japan, where smartphones are omnipresent in schools and students tend to be technologically sophisticated, the issue is particularly pervasive. This paper examines the cultural origins of smartphone cheating in Japanese EFL classrooms. Using […]

Amany AlkhayatSummary: As the number of researchers around immersive learning and tangential fields grows, so does the number of groups, events, and activities you can join. This presentation will introduce collaborative projects and activities between a few groups based in North America.   Speaker: Amany Alkhayat, Columbia University Teachers College Bio: Amany Alkhayat is an […]

Amany AlkhayatSummary: As the number of researchers around immersive learning and tangential fields grows, so does the number of groups, events, and activities you can join. This presentation will introduce collaborative projects and activities between a few groups based in North America.   Speaker: Amany Alkhayat, Columbia University Teachers College Bio: Amany Alkhayat is an […]

Amany AlkhayatSummary: As the number of researchers around immersive learning and tangential fields grows, so does the number of groups, events, and activities you can join. This presentation will introduce collaborative projects and activities between a few groups based in North America.   Speaker: Amany Alkhayat, Columbia University Teachers College Bio: Amany Alkhayat is an […]

Amany AlkhayatSummary: As the number of researchers around immersive learning and tangential fields grows, so does the number of groups, events, and activities you can join. This presentation will introduce collaborative projects and activities between a few groups based in North America.   Speaker: Amany Alkhayat, Columbia University Teachers College Bio: Amany Alkhayat is an […]

Maria Gabriela Schmidt, Noriko NagaiDate Saturday May 20th, 2023 Starting at 2 pm Title: The CEFR: A tool for classroom management and teacher development Online event (Zoom -Akita JALT members with be sent a Zoom link for the presentation) All others who would like to join can send an email to: akita@jalt.org and the zoom link will be given. […]

Ken’ichi YamazakiBio: Ken’ichi Yamazaki is an associate professor at Akita Prefectural University, Japan. He received his MA degree and PhD in English literature from Chiba University. Formerly, he was working at Teikyo University. He started to teach English in Akita in 2020. He established English Club, an extracurricular group, about 10 years ago in a Japanese […]

Dr. Hale and his graduate studentsAbstract: Sociolinguistics is a major area in second language research and is a topic commonly covered in graduate school education programs worldwide. For EFL teachers, it can often seem difficult to bring the theory and research of sociolinguistics into the actual classroom. In this series of concurrent sessions, MA students […]

Yamasaki AyaYAMASAKI AYA – The effectiveness of integrating ICT and practical learning methods in technical college students’ learning motivation Abstract Motivation is crucial for learning a language. However, most non-English majors at university generally lack confidence in learning English because of their English proficiency levels and are uncertain about their learning progress and how to […]

GRAD STUDENT POSTER SESSION: CLASSROOM-BASED DISCOURSE ANALYSIS Bio: This poster session will feature ten original classroom-based discourse analyses conducted by graduate students in the English Language Teaching Practices (ELT) program at Akita International University (AIU). In their final project for Introduction to Foreign Language Acquisition class, students were required to collect authentic classroom discourse data, transcribe […]

Ben GraftsromSpeaker: Ben Grafstrom   This presentation has two parts. In the first I share current trends that I have observed over the past year and a half in qualitative research, interdisciplinary research, research ethics, and the humanities in general from a Norwegian/ European perspective. I then shift to introducing my own current research project […]

Eucharia DonneryElements of Drama in the EFL Classroom: Featuring ChatGPT as the Bogeyman This online presentation-workshop aims to explore the potential of using elements of structured Process Drama (PD) as a teaching approach in the Japanese university EFL classroom. The session begins with a surprising fact about drama and education, which highlights the importance of […]

José Domingo Cruz ABSTRACT All teachers want their students to achieve higher levels of fluency, but how to teach it, and which classroom methods actually work? The presenter has been teaching fluency-based speaking classes for over 20 years and will share his methods and theories to get students to speak faster and to say more. […]

Dr. Hale of Akita International University and his students will be giving presentations on June 22nd. The plan is to have three concurrent presentations going in three separate rooms. Presentations will be 20 minutes each and participants are free to go between the rooms at any time. Presentations: Queena Xu– Would You Swipe Right? Teaching Creative Writing […]

Martin SedaghatAKITA JALT MEETING FOR JULY 20TH: STRATEGIC INTERACTIONS IN THE LANGUAGE CLASSROOM Presented by Martin Sedaghat Role-play activities are commonly used in communicative EFL/ESL classrooms to practice speaking skills in a variety of situations. However, most role-plays are heavily scripted and do not give students a chance to use language in creative and authentic […]

Jason TackerSeptember Akita Jalt Meeting: Can Virtual Reality be Used in the L2 for Positive Transfer of Skills from an Intensive English Environment to Reality? Abstract This study meant to add to the literature on virtual reality use in EFL education, examined the feasibility of using virtual reality in an L2 as a tool to positively transfer skills from virtual reality to a real-world situation. We modeled our […]

Natalia EvnitskayaAbstract I will present a study on potential inequalities in Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) programs in Madrid (Spain), where students from grades 7 to 12 are divided into two strands to learn school subjects through L2 English, yet with differing ‘degrees’ of exposure (higher or lower) to the L2. Drawing on the […]

December 15, 2024 (SUN) Time: 14:00–15:00 Venue: Akita International University (RM: D103) Title: GRAD STUDENT POSTER SESSION: CLASSROOM-BASED DISCOURSE ANALYSIS Bio: This poster session will feature ten original classroom-based discourse analyses conducted by graduate students in the English Language Teaching Practices (ELT) program at Akita International University (AIU). In their final project for Introduction to […]

Kate ArmstrongMarch 22nd Akita Jalt Speaker- Kate Armstrong: The Impact of Gestures on Enhancing Student Learning Gestures play a vital yet often overlooked role in language teaching. This session will explore how teachers use hand and arm movements during their lessons and the impact these gestures can have on enhancing student learning. Building on McNeill’s […]

Jason TackerJason Tacker – Presenter (This is a better, more refined version of the previous presentation from JALT 2024) Abstract For many but not all instructors, we do not often have the time or the freedom in curriculum to really get at the feelings of the students and how that might impact their learning in […]

Sarina SugawaraAn attempt to visualize and quantify the qualitative data. This will serve as a preliminary project for the authors’ forthcoming JALT research project scheduled for fall 2025. The primary objective of this project is to conduct an experimental analysis of sentiments by examining the textual input generated by non-linguistic major students in Japan. The author attempts […]

Marc Jones Akita JALT Meeting (In Person): Teaching listening from top-down to bottom-up Presented By Marc Jones Abstract Listening has been termed a “Cinderella skill” (Vandergrift, 1997) that is frequently tested but rarely taught, and which is infrequently researched in comparison to reading, speaking and writing. However, I posit that this is changing with a […]