This session involved a number of presenters giving short (15-20 minute) introductions to activities or ideas they thought might be helpful for others. Conversation Modelling – Charlie Bell Charlie gave a presentation discussing his preliminary research findings into the effects of conversation modelling on student motivation. Modelling involved him preparing a video of students…

Dr. Gillis-Futaka’s presentation began by outlining a number of points to lay the groundwork for a broader workshop on methods to engage students while doing extensive/intensive reading classes. She outlined 6 areas that teachers need to be aware of in order to motivate students: emotion; personalization; choice; variety and novelty; challenge and; using multiple…

Dr. Hadley of Niigata University discussed the value and challenges of Grounded Theory as it applies to research in applied linguistics. He began by defining in broad terms what is meant by grounded theory as, he argues, the term is often misapplied and misunderstood in a number of disciplines. He continued by giving a…

Ai’s presentation focused on the idea that it is far more important for classes to be organized based on English level rather than on age. She argued that at many English schools, particularly at the eikawa level, classes are divided by age and this results in widely varying abilities within each classroom. At her…

The chapter held its annual Pecha Kucha night where four presenters each gave a short presentation on various topics related to language teaching followed by a short discussion session. Insider: 20 Questions Made Fun by Juha Vaittinen. For his presentation. Juha introduced the table-top game Insider and how it could be adapted to the language classroom. The game…

Joseph’s presentation examined motivation as not only a psychological phenomenon but also a neurological and biological process. Motivation, he argued, cannot be understood as merely an emotion that an individual either possesses or does not possess but rather a complex result of competing dual-emotional systems in the brain. These systems can be described as…

For his presentation, Ben discussed severall topics related to both short and long-term financial stability and success for language teachers residing in Japan. In the first half he touched issues such as personal spending habits and savings, pension plan programs, retirement plans, tax differed investment portfolios, and inheritence tax law details. His main message…

In his presentation, Curtis discussed why stories and narrative structure are so readily received by the human brain and how language teachers can implement narrative structures in their classes to assist language learning. Curtis explained that the mind actively makes predictions when processing the flow of a story, releasing several chemicals such as dopamine,…