PanSIG Conference
May 16-17 2015

This year's PanSIG will be held @Kobe City University of Foreign Studies, Kobe. You can submit presentations for the 2015 PanSIG from now until March 31. Donna Tatsuki, LiLT SIG member, is one of the conference chairs and the theme is Narrative: Raising the happiness quotient.

Call for Papers

*For information, see the website at <https://sites.google.com/site/jaltpansig2015/>.

*To submit your presentation proposal, see <https://www.conftool.net/pansig2015/>.

*To  download the conference poster, see <https://sites.google.com/site/jaltpansig2015/download-poster>.

Liberlit Conferenc
February 16, 2015

This years conference will be held@Meiji Gakuin, in Tokyo. A number of LiLT members will present at this popular conference. Among other members (we do not have the full list yet), Jane Joritz-Nakagawa will present on "Poetry, individual differences, and transformation”. For more information about the conference, please check out the Liberlit website <http://www.liberlit.com/>

On December 13 2014, Hamamatsu Chapter had its annual My Share presentations and year-end get together. Gregg McNabb led off with a Canadian version of "The 12 Days of Christmas" to demonstrate how learners can use Quizlet and Moodle's quiz plug-in to do review or self-study (in this case listening and vocabulary). Quizlet is an excellent application for students to learn and review vocabulary, which is crucial to becoming a fluent reader. Moodle's quiz function is great for doing cloze exercises while reading and listening. It allows for visual cues, too. Used in this way, it may be a logical next step in conjunction with reading + audiobooks (see Anna Husson-Isozaki's article for more on this, in the most recent LiLT journal, issue 3.2). Next, Sue Sullivan shared with us in some detail how she has flipped classrooms by having student-led lessons to empower them -- interesting stuff! Jane Joritz-Nakagawa was ready to deliver an entire lecture on gender-balanced poetry, armed with her copious and detailed handouts. We learned that there are indeed many accessible and appropriate poems we can introduce into our classes, so some of us should try to do that more often.

Our Very Own SIG Journal

SIG Members publishing

In January, excerpts from Jane Joritz-Nakagawa's new work "diurnal" were featured in experiential-experimental-literature. In November 2014 excerpts from Jane's forthcoming poetry book, distant landscapes, were featured in the poetry blogzine "Truck" and in October 2014 in the poetry blogzine "On Barcelona."  Jane will be guest poetry editor of Truck for the month of December, 2015, representing her fourth stint as a guest poetry editor for an online journal.

Kevin Stein cowrote an article with Phil Keegan on extensive reading for the January issue of The Modern English Teacher. Unfortunately, the article is behind a paywall, but if anyone is interested in a draft copy, please feel free to contact Kevin <kevchanwow'at'gmail.com>.

 

Facebook Page and Group Page
Volunteer Request

We have recently had a surge in interest in the Literature in Language Teaching SIG FB page and group page and are looking for someone to help manage these two promotional sites. This is a request for a volunteer to be admin for those two pages and help promote links of interest to the community. Would suit someone who likes sharing links, communicating online and could dedicate a small time each week to this. Anyone interested should contact us via email <liltsig@gmail.com> [Facebook/PR]

MOOC Corner:
Learning about literature online

Some of you may have a little non-teaching time at the moment (yay!), so here are some more free MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses) to have a look at, just to make sure you do not spend too long slouching away from the suitably bookish.
 

How to use these materials? MOOCs are great for just dipping into, and there is no requirement to participate actively, or to complete anything, of course. Use to self-educate, or perhaps to get some ideas for teaching approaches in class, and for delivery of materials using technologies to enhance the student learning experience. And remember, all the ones we find and note here are FREE. Happy MOOCing LiLTers!