In what felt like the first in person presentation in far far too long, Nagano JALT hosted Sean Collin Mehmet for his presentation on his (largely completed) PhD research. Sean’s research asksed the question: “To what extent does the TOEIC measure intercultural competence?”. Sean introduced the measurement he used for intercultural competence – the…

On May 28th, Nagano JALT was fortunate to host Professor Sakai as he gave his presentaiton on “Implementing the New English Curricula for Elementary and Junior High School”. For those of you who missed it, you can find a video recording of the presentation here:

On Saturday March 26th, Nagano JALT was fortunate to host Dr. Naheen Madarbakus-Ring and she gave a presentation on how to teach listening with TED Talks. Naheen’s presentation was split into three parts. She first explained some of the theory behind listening and what students go through on a neurological, pragmatic, linguistic and semantic…

What is Classroom Engagement? As an educator, are YOU engaging your students? These are just a taste of the challenging questions presented to us on September 25th by Namiko Tsuruta, the Program Director of Global Language Institute and Creative Director of The Tokyo Life. We first started by defining the concept of classroom management…

On July 10th,  Nagano JALT had the unique opportunity to host an event with Dr. Jana Moore from Parkside Cambridge International in Virginia, USA. Dr. Moore’s presentation focused on the growing number of special needs students, and determining the specific issue(s) to address their needs. In this presentation, special needs referred to students with…

On February 17th, Nagano JALT hosted Linfeng Wang as she gave a presentation an exciting new government initiate for career development for ALTs. The Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT) realizes the importance of having teachers improve their skill and understanding of education. Previously, this would mean teachers would have to…

On February the 5th, Nagano JALT was very fortunate to host Dr. Yoshiaki Ehara. The topic of his presentation was “Grammar Using Strategies to Promote Oral Fluency”. Ehara began his presentation with a short history of his education background and his work. The focus of his presentation however was a summary of part of…

Textbooks and Vocabulary: Two Three Problems and a Way Forward Dr. Dale Brown On February 1, Shinshu JALT was very pleased to welcome to Nagano Dr. Dale Brown from Kanazawa University to speak on vocabulary learning, a topic of importance for all language teachers. Dale began by briefly introducing the three (up from the…

Shinshu JALT would like to thank our very own Trane and Cheryl, both of the University of Nagano, for their October 5th presentation about the flipped classroom. Cheryl began with a description of some of the challenges she has faced when conducting discussions in communicative classes in Japan: students confuse discussion with debate and/or…

On Sunday Shinshu JALT was very fortunate to have Masako Moriwaki as our presenter in Okaya. Masako had taught overseas for 13 years and spent 10 years in a language school where she had the creative freedom to explore new and interesting ways to teach English. The day started with a brief introduction of…