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JALT2021 Featured Speakers
All featured speaker sessions will be live online.
Phil Chappell
Macquarie University Department of Linguistics
Sponsored by Macquarie University
COVID: A Disruption to Reflect on Our Wisdom of Practice in ELT
Featured Speaker Workshop
Saturday, Nov 13, 2:45 PM – 3:45 PM
Year 2020 will go down in history as the year that gave language teaching an almighty thwack in the head. In haste, we dramatically altered the ways we went about our routines, moving online to teach remotely. In a fundamental sense, Year 2020 has forced us, explicitly or implicitly, to re-examine our language teacher wisdom of practice. This workshop provides a framework and initial opportunity to articulate these changes in our orientation to language and learning.
Teaching Storytelling in Casual Conversation
Short Workshop
Sunday, Nov 14th, 1:25 PM – 1:50 PM
Most of our students find it necessary to engage in casual conversations, either now or at some time in the future. How do these casual conversations work? What is their purpose? Is there more to casual conversation than simple chit chat? In this presentation I will provide a framework for understanding storytelling in casual conversation from a genre point of view, and I will suggest some ideas for the language classroom.
Phil Chappell is a leader of learning and teaching in the Linguistics Department at Macquarie University, Australia. His research interests are in classroom talk, sociocultural approaches to teacher cognition, dialogic pedagogy, and out-of-class language learning. He publishes in leading TESOL and Applied Linguistics journals.
Greta Gorsuch
Texas Tech University
Sponsored by JALT Literature in Language Teaching SIG
Interest Pursuit: Choosing and Using Narrative Texts
Featured Speaker Workshop
Sunday, Nov 14th, 10:45 AM – 11:45 AM
Learners reading narrative texts has a long tradition in second language classrooms. We have students read, answer some questions, and then talk to them about prioritized language points. Missing from this equation is agency and choice for teachers and learners, particularly when it becomes clear narrative texts have deep and unpredictable riches to offer for concepts and language. This workshop takes up questions of, and alternatives for, text selection and use by teachers and learners.
Literature is a Moveable Feast for Language Teachers and Learners
Short Workshop
Monday, Nov 15th, 12:05 PM – 12:30 PM
Reading books remains the most reliable and enduring means for learners to get second language input and experience. Beyond this technical (albeit important) characterization, reading narrative literature brings to learners a feast of culture, enjoyment, ideas, and insight. These gifts extend to second language teachers, as these rich texts offer many approaches to instruction. In this talk, the presenter will detail practical ways teachers can guide learners through the many compelling narrative texts available today.
A lifelong reader of mystery and adventure novels from an early age, Greta Gorsuch has published research articles on promoting second language reading fluency and comprehension appearing in journals such as Reading in a Foreign Language, System, Language Teaching Research, Asian EFL Journal Quarterly, and Pedagogies. She is keen on designing speaking and reading lessons based wholly on texts, and using learners’ comprehension processes to unlock and explore areas of emerging interest expressed by learners. In her 35 year professional career, she has taught EFL, ESL and applied linguistics courses in Japan, the U.S., and Vietnam.
Thomas Healy
School of Liberal Arts and Sciences, Pratt Institute
Sponsored by Oxford University Press
Reflections on the Pandemic: Coming Back Stronger
Featured Speaker Workshop
Monday, Nov 15th, 10:45 AM – 11:45 AM
The COVID 19 pandemic has affected our lives in ways that few of us could have imagined in early 2020. Most of us have been seriously challenged professionally, as we have had to adapt our teaching practice for remote learning. As we look forward to returning to normal, we can reflect on the ways the pandemic has provided us with initially unwelcome, yet ultimately rewarding professional development opportunities, especially in relation to Information and Communications Technology. This session explores how we can improve our in-person teaching practice with our newly acquired expertise. Using differentiated instruction theory (Tomlinson) as a departure point, we will look at how we can repurpose the methods and materials we developed for distance learning to scaffold learners more successfully, to assess progress more efficiently, to provide more effective remediation, and to encourage learner agency. Throughout, I will draw on examples from my own integrated skills class.
Developing a Teaching Portfolio for Reflective Practice
Short Workshop
Sunday, Nov 14th, 12:45 PM – 1:10 PM
As teachers, we develop a set of instructional skills and tools that we rely on. We help learners develop self-awareness so that they can analyze their own errors; we guide them through multiple drafts of written assignments; we encourage them to reflect on their experience of learning so that they can develop independent learning skills. However, to what extent do we review our own performance as instructors? How often do we evaluate our supplemental materials, the feedback we give, or our own teaching practice? This session examines the teaching portfolio as a tool for Reflective Practice, using an example as a way to explore its efficacy. We will look at what to include, and how to engage with the portfolio. This is a practical workshop, intended to encourage instructors to consider this method of professional development.
Thomas Healy is Assistant Professor at the School of Liberal Arts and Sciences, Pratt Institute, New York City, and previously Professor of English at Kyung Hee Cyber University, Seoul. His research interests include using technology in ELT and he presents regularly on adapting traditional materials and techniques to meet needs of the Selfie Generation. Thomas holds a master’s degree from the National University of Ireland and is co-author of Smart Choice, 4th Edition.
Lindy Ledohowski
EssayJack Inc.
Sponsored by mangoSTEEMS
Strategies and New Perspectives for Teaching Academic Writing Online
Featured Speaker Workshop
Saturday, Nov 13th, 11:25 AM – 12:25 PM
Teaching Academic Writing online is incredibly hard to do well. The temptation is to focus on 1:1 strategies such as video conferencing with students to provide feedback or using Google Docs or other document sharing tools to provide writing feedback. Scaling writing instruction can be very difficult. This workshop coalesces around three key pedagogical tactics for teaching academic writing: scaffolding, chunking, and interrogative methodology. The workshop lays out strategies for combining these three approaches in a digital world and provides an overview of digital technologies that can aid in the teaching of English-language academic writing at the college/university level. This workshop reflects on past practice and offers new perspectives for an online or hybrid educational future.
Best Practices of Teaching Academic Writing Online for the “New Normal”
Short Workshop
Monday, Nov 15th, 1:25 PM – 1:50 PM
This presentation focuses on reflecting on best practices for teaching academic writing based on formative and summative feedback as part of an integrated writing process as well as reflecting on standard writing pedagogy before suggesting how these strategies of the past can be reframed in a digital context, combining both asynchronous and synchronous learning opportunities, providing new perspectives for the “new normal” in a post-Covid world where online learning, or at least hybrid learning contexts, are here to stay.
Lindy Ledohowski was a former English teacher and then English professor in Canada before becoming an EdTech CEO for academic writing software platform, EssayJack. She has won numerous awards for her teaching, research, and publications, and is now an award-winning entrepreneur. She has published both peer-reviewed scholarship and popular pieces on writing and offers keynote addresses on webinars on EdTech, leadership, and academic writing.
Greg Rouault
Hiroshima Shudo University
Sponsored by JALT Extensive Reading SIG
Diagnosing Reading in a Foreign Language: How Do We Get There?
Featured Speaker Workshop
Sunday, Nov 14th, 3:25 PM – 4:25 PM
This workshop introduces a framework for diagnosing foreign language reading skills (Alderson et al., 2015). The session will cover the foregrounding principles and four stages in diagnostic testing: observation, initial assessment, hypothesis testing, decision making and feedback. By looking at individual student differences and bottom-up reading processes, teachers can identify learner strengths and weaknesses to support them in reading challenges and development opportunities. Tasks from various diagnostic tools will be trialed through experiential learning activities.
The Fundamentals of Reading: New Perspectives for the Future of ER
Short Workshop
Saturday, Nov 13th, 2:05 PM – 2:30 PM
Extensive reading (ER) research provides evidence for gains in fluency, vocabulary, and motivation. Practitioner reflections show that ER is underpinned largely by Krashen’s Comprehensible Input Hypothesis and a whole-word approach. However, what about learners for whom ER is not working? To introduce a new perspective, this presentation highlights three fundamentals—the science of how we read, individual differences, and bottom-up reading processes—and invites a query into the future of ER and reading research.
Greg Rouault studied Applied Linguistics at Macquarie University. With Stuart McLean, he co-authored a 2017 paper in System on reading fluency development featured by Nation and Waring (2020) as one of “the most important studies on extensive reading in a foreign language.” Other publications have appeared in The Reading Matrix, The Language Teacher, and ERJ (Extensive Reading in Japan). His research interests include ER; mind, brain, & education science; and task-based simulations for business English.
JALT2025 International Conference
2025年10月31日(金)〜2025年11月02日(日) 東京都渋谷 国立オリンピック記念青少年総合センター Friday, October 31 – Sunday, November 02, 2025 • National Olympics Youth Memorial Center, Tokyo, Japan
PanSIG Conference
PanSIG 2025 will be held May 16-18 in Chiba. PanSIG is an annual conference organized by JALT’s Special Interest Groups (SIGs).