Dear chapter members,
Hello everyone and welcome to February. Some of you are still working and some are enjoying your spring break but regardless we’re sure there are some online events you’d like to attend.
Before we get to the events, If you could take a few minutes of your time and give us some feedback by filling out this survey by clicking on the icon below or on the link:
https://forms.gle/ksT8q54WyeqYR81e7 we would very much appreciate it.
This month there are no Kyoto JALT events but next month on March 13th we will have a very interesting member spotlight featuring Edward Escobar and Angus Mcgregor presenting “A Model UN in a New Age of Social Distancing”.
Also, last month our event Issues of Race and Native Speakerism in ELT was a great success with a great turnout. If you weren’t able to attend but would still like to listen to what the speakers had to say just follow this link: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLMFeioihDfkPnl1qNxpDn9GSly7EvQ77F
The Social Justice + Language Teaching Working Group will hold their regular meeting this month. If you are interested in joining, please fill out the registration form. Working Group leader[1] , Betsy Lavolette, will send out Zoom links closer to the day.
Also, in this issue, you can find more details about events throughout Kansai, calls for papers/presentations, and a request to participate in a questionnaire research project
Richard Sparrow
Publicity Chair
On behalf of the Kyoto JALT Team
Kyoto JALT’s 2021 Event Schedule (Upcoming)
- A Model UN in a New Age of Social Distancing: March 13th, 1PM-
Keynote Speakers: Edward Escobar (Kyoto Gaidai Nishi High School), Angus McGregor (Kyoto Gaidai Nishi High School)
Details about Kyoto JALT’s March Events
A Model UN in a New Age of Social Distancing
Date: Saturday, March 13th, 2020
Time: 1PM-
Keynote Speakers: Edward Escobar (Kyoto Gaidai Nishi High School), Angus McGregor (Kyoto Gaidai Nishi High School)
We all know the difficulties of transitioning to an all online approach this past year and the logistics are doubly so when approaching large scale events like conferences. Model UN’s are events where students can step out of the classroom and use their skills in a practical way to network and communicate with their peers in real time. This presentation outlines the positives and negatives of the 2020 online format for the Kansai High School Model United Nations, and how the size of the cohort of participants in an online environment can affect the engagement of its participants.
Zoom Link: http//bit.ly/SpotlightMarch
News
JALT2020 Content on YouTube
https://youtube.com/c/JALTJapanAssociationforLanguageTeaching
Issues of Race and Native Speakerism in ELT Content on Youtube
https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLMFeioihDfkPnl1qNxpDn9GSly7EvQ77F
Call For Papers
ETA-ROC
Conference: 2021/ The 30th International Symposium and Book Exhibit on English Language Teaching &The 23rd International Conference and Workshop on TEFL & Applied Linguistics
Theme: Positioning the Issue of Linguistic Power of English: EMI, English Immersion,
World Englishes, Internationalization in Higher Education, and Information Sharing and English as a Global Language
Dates: November 12-14, 2021
Location: Taipei, Taiwan
Call for papers: ~ March 1, 2021
Conference website: http://www.eta.org.tw/en/index.html
Online Events
Conversation Analysis and Its Practical Application to Language Teaching
Date: Saturday, February 13th, 2021 - 2:00pm to 5:00pm, Sunday, February 14 from 14:00 to 17:00, Saturday, February 20 from 14:00 to 17:00, Sunday, February 21 from 14:00 to 17:00
Event Speaker: Dr. Donald Carroll (Shikoku Gakuin University, Japan)
Fee: Free
In recognition of the government's declaration of a state of emergency in Tokyo and Osaka, the travel advisory between Tokyo and Osaka, and the current COVID-19 development in Japan, this seminar will be conducted online. Pre-sign up (or course registration for those who are taking this seminar for credit) is required for anybody attending the public session on Saturday, February 13 from 14:00 to 17:00. The sign-up process must be completed through "Distinguished Lecturer Series Seminar Sign-Up Form" that is available on TUJ Grad Ed website. The sign-up deadline is Friday, February 12 at 12:00. The public session Zoom link will be provided to those people who completed the sign-up (or course registration) process between 13:00-13:50 on Saturday, February 13.
The field of conversation analysis is now into its sixth decade of empirical research into the structure and social order of interaction. The first generation of researchers would be pleased and astounded at how much is now known across such a wide range of contexts, languages, and interaction types, from mundane daily conversation to talk-at-work to pedagogic interaction, both in classrooms and in-the-wild. Yet most of these empirical observations remain unknown to the overwhelming majority of language teachers worldwide, not to mention textbook authors and publishers.
The twin goals of this seminar are to introduce the fundamental orientations and working practices of ethnomethodological conversation analysis and then examine how the resulting observations on interaction are of immediate relevance to the teaching of an additional language, specifically TESOL. The seminar will focus on several broad and particularly well-researched aspects of empirically observable interactional order, aspects that are of immediate relevance to language teachers and language learners and yet often stand in direct contraction to orthodox teaching materials and syllabi.
In addition to an initial presentation, the seminar will include a practical workshop component during which participants can try out practical ideas that can be immediately incorporated into their own teaching and/or language learning. As always the first 3 hours of these lectures are free to the public and if you want to register for the event you can follow this link: Distinguished Lecturer Series Seminar Sign-Up Form - Graduate College of Education (tuj.ac.jp)
Positive Classroom Communication: Learning from older learners Hiroshima JALT
Date: Saturday, February 13, 2021 - 4:00pm to 6:00pmAdd to Calendar
Event Speaker: Kay Irie (Gakushuin University, Tokyo)
Fee for JALT members: Free
Fee for non-JALT members: Free
Kay Irie, who was a dynamic plenary speaker at the JALT International Conference last year, will take a fresh look at classroom communication from the perspective of positive communication. This is a type of communication that enhances the well-being of students and teachers. Prof. Irie will draw on examples from a study on highly motivated advanced older learners to show the relevance of the ideas to language learning and teaching. Note that the online meeting starts at 4 p.m. on a Saturday. For details and the Zoom link, see the Hiroshima JALT Newsletter, or the Hiroshima JALT homepage at Google.
Building an Effective, Free Language Lab Kitakyushu JALT
Date: Saturday, February 13, 2021 - 5:00pm to 6:30pm
Event Speaker: Erin Noxon
Fee for JALT members: Free
Fee for non-JALT members: Free
Contact or Queries: Send Email
Speaking practice, listening to different speakers, answering questions... All things you would love for your students to be able do in the language lab. But, do you have the time, the budget, and can you find the right software? What if you could do it all for free, with equipment that you already have lying around, and, after the initial set up time, the class took care of itself? Over the past years I've created my own curriculum out of spare parts, using G Suite tools for voice recognition, forms-based grading, Elllo.org, and more. I'll teach you how to do it and share all of my materials with you.
Dr. Erin Noxon is a Google Certified Innovator and teaches at Sagano High School in Kyoto, Japan. She has taught EFL English, science, and Tech and Media skills during her 18+ years of teaching in public schools in the US and Japan. She has managed EdTech professional development (PD) in both the US and Japan and currently researches EdTech PD, blended learning, and public school edtech environments.
The meeting will take place over Zoom. Contact us for the Zoom link.
Cultivating a Community of Practice for ALTs, HRTs and JTEs Nagano JALT
Date: Wednesday, February 17, 2021 - 7:00pm to 8:00pmAdd to Calendar
Event Speaker: Linfeng Wang
Fee for JALT members: Free
Fee for non-JALT members: Free
Event Theme: Career development for ALTs and JTEs
Having researched on teacher hiring exams and policies of prefectural boards of educations, Wang will give advice on how to prepare yourself as a yearly contract ALT to a tenured full time English teacher in Japanese schools. The ALT system has been introduced in Japan for more than 30 years, but they are not generally invited to subject meetings nor school-based research meetings. There is little structure to include ALTs in institutional professional development opportunities. As an attempt to cultivate a community of practice for ALTs, HRTs and JETs, a monthly café meeting has been initiated to provide a platform for collaborative inquiry. Linfeng Wang is an assistant professor at the Graduate School of Professional Development of Teachers in the University of Fukui. She has been working with both pre-service and in-service teachers for an M.Ed. program since 2017. She has been supporting K-12 teachers’ professional development at different stages of their careers in Japanese public and private schools through school-wide lesson study research meetings and prefectural teacher training sessions. Her interests include EFL classroom teaching and learning, materials development, and teacher education.
Online Meeting Link: Signup form
2nd Performance in Education: Research & Practice Conference/ Student Showcase, Film Festival, and Performances
Performance in Education SIG
Date: Saturday, February 20, 2021 (All day)Add to Calendar
Event Speaker: Plenary Speakers: Dr. Rod Ellis and Dawn Kobayashi
Fee for JALT members: JALT Members (Presenter) - 2,000 yen, JALT Members (Participant) - 1,000 yen, PIE SIG Member - Free
Fee for non-JALT members: non-JALT members (international and domestic) - 3,000 yen, Full-time students - Free
Event Theme: Performance in Education
This online conference looks at practice of and research into Performance in Education (PIE). The purpose of the conference is to widen the research base for supporting the use of performance in all aspects of education (teaching, consolidating teaching, and testing/evaluation) across the curriculum (medicine, law, history, etc.) and is not limited to English language education.
Highlights of the conference:-
1. Plenary Speakers - Dr. Rod Ellis and Dawn Kobayashi
2. Research and Practice Presentations
3. Students Showcase
4. Student Film Festival
5. Performances
Call for papers deadline - December 7, 2020.
Call for papers link: https://sites.google.com/view/sddpalresearchconference/call-for-papers?a...[2]
Conference website: https://sites.google.com/view/sddpalresearchconference/about?authuser=0
Teaching Younger Learners
Tokyo JALT
Date: Sunday, February 21, 2021 - 2:00pm to 5:00pmAdd to Calendar
Event Speaker: Eric Kane, Ben Shearon, Lesley Ito
Fee for JALT members: Free
Fee for non-JALT members: Free
Contact or Queries: Send Email
Location: Zoom link will be sent to all who RSVP at http://bit.ly/TJALTrsvp
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/events/230039791967592
This event, sponsored by Tokyo JALT and the TYL SIG, is for teachers of kids to young adults, so teachers of preschool, kindergarten, elementary school, junior high school, and senior high school, are all encouraged to come! As always, there will be great, short presentations and lots of time for discussion and networking. Here is the line-up of presenters:
Eric Kane: Boom Chicka Boom Boom - Rhythm and Melody Basics in the Classroom
Ben Shearon: From Torture to Bliss: How a focus on fluency made JHS English better for teachers and students
Lesley Ito: Title Teaching grammar to children: What's the best way?
Eric Kane:
Abstract: COVID-19 has affected families, friends and all professions, including teachers. Especially teachers! Our school found ourselves leaning a lot on online resources, and as we primarily teach children, most of those resources were chants and songs. Why is that? Rhythm and melody are core components in a child’s path towards English language acquisition. Understanding and using these concepts frequently can increase the depth and pace in which our students acquire language. The best part? It’s pretty easy. Bonus! In this online seminar, we will look at how and why the human brain absorbs language easier and better when funky beats are a part of the curriculum. We will look at practical ways of incorporating this into our classrooms and hopefully have a darn good time doing it.
Bio: Eric has spent the past 25 years in Japan as a student, teacher, school owner, YouTuber, and founder of ELF Learning. In his free time he enjoys barbecuing, craft beer, spending time in Nagano, and tickling penguins when the opportunity arises.
Ben Shearon:
Abstract: Teaching junior high school students in an eikaiwa setting is a challenge for many schools. Often students and parents choose to move to a juku to focus on 'academic English' and even students that remain can feel their studies are not helping them much with their school classes. In this presentation I will describe the evolution of a medium-sized eikaiwa's English classes for junior high school students, and how they went from the least enjoyable to most enjoyable to teach. Student engagement, achievement, recruitment, and retention went through the roof after implementing these changes. For teachers at public and private junior high schools it should be possible to implement the same principles in regular school English classes.
Bio: Ben Shearon was born in Germany and grew up in Spain but is saddled with a British passport. He's been teaching for 21 years, 20 of them in Japan and has taught in public elementary, junior, and senior high schools as well as universities. He helps his wife run an English school, blogs infrequently at sendaiben.org and writes about personal finance on his other website.
Lesley Ito:
Abstract: People often mistakenly think that methods used to teach grammar to adults , such as explicit teaching of grammar rules using meta-language or consciousness-raising, will work well with children. The presenter will share what current literature says on this matter, as well as the results of her own action research. Methods that are effective for teaching grammar to children will be demonstrated, such as storytelling and extensive reading, as well as grammar triggers, a method developed by the presenter in her own classroom.
Bio: Lesley Ito is a well-known teacher, teacher trainer, school owner, and award-winning materials writer based in Nagoya. She has taught in Japan for over twenty-five years, won “Best of JALT” in 2011, and has presented professionally throughout Japan, and at the ER World Congress in Dubai, UAE. Winner of the 2015 LLL Award in the Young Learner Category for Backstage Pass, her ELT writing credits include teacher’s guides, workbooks, graded readers, and the e-book Fifty Ways to Teach Young Learners: Tips for ESL/EFL Teachers.
Pragmatics: One theory and one practice Pragmatic SIG
Date: Monday, February 22, 2021 - 4:00pm to 6:00pm
Event Speaker: Sanae Oda-Sheehan and Rob Olson
Fee for JALT members: Free
Fee for non-JALT members: 0
Event Theme: Learning about pragmatics on zoom
One presenter will share her autoethnography which investigates the gap between pragmatics theory and its practice. The other presenter will introduce games and activities that will engage students online. Do you want to know how to play the game, Clue, online? To get the zoom link, write to fujimotodonna@gmail.com
Online Meeting Link: Learning about pragmatics
Online Meeting Link: signup form
Multilingual Cafe (OLE SIG)
Date: Thursday, February 25, 2021 - 7:30pm to 9:00pmAdd to Calendar
Event Speaker: Monika Szirmai, Gabriela Schmidt
Fee for JALT members: Free
Fee for non-JALT members: Free
Contact or Queries:
Multilingual Cafe: Hungarian Language and Culture (OLE SIG)
The Multilingual Cafe of OLE SIG offers this time a special focus. The meeting will provide an opportunity to encounter Hungarian Language and Culture in the first half. In the second half we are going to use ZOOM with breakout rooms for the different languages. Languages may differ each time depending on the participants. In January, we offered French, German, Spanish, Tagalog, Portuguese, Persian, Russian, and Hungarian. The rationale behind it is that JALT OLE SIG wants to provide a space to meet and share using languages other than English, creating a community of practice. This is the Multilingual Café: meet and chat in your favorite language. The languages available depend on the participants at the event depending on what languages the participants might speak. What is your favorite language? This event will be held regularly, sometimes focusing on one language sometimes with various languages. Interested? You are welcome to join! Lingua Franca are English and Japanese. – For more details see (https://sites.google.com/view/jalt-olesig/). Please use the signup form "Multilingual Cafe" below behind the Online Meeting Link. You will get the link the day before the meeting. (This event is posted through CEFR & LP SIG (supporting plurilingual repertoires), but it is for OLE SIG !!!)
Online Meeting Link: Multilingual Cafe (OLE SIG)
Live interview with Andy Boon: his work on graded readers
Fukui JALT
Date: Saturday, February 27, 2021 - 10:00am to 12:10pm
Event Speaker: Andy Boon, Robert Dykes
Fee for JALT members: Free
Fee for non-JALT members: Free
(Co-hosted by Material Writers SIG) (Interview conducted by Fukui Chapter President, Robert Dykes)
Andy Boon has written more than a dozen graded readers ranging from ghost stories to self-help. Robert Dykes is approaching this interview as someone who is interested in getting into the graded reader industry. Andy has worked with multiple publishers and not every proposal ended up a finished product, but Andy has had far more successes than failures. Robert will pick his brain about every step of the process and what we can expect when trying to get our first graded reader published.
Andrew Boon is a professor in the faculty of humanities at Toyo Gakuen University. He has been teaching in Japan for over 15 years and holds a PhD from Aston University. His research focuses on learner support and discovery in non-judgmental environments. He has been an active member of the Japan Association for Language Teaching since 2004, has presented at numerous conferences, and has published articles on teacher development, motivation, and methodology.
He is the co-author of textbooks Discover the News (Language Solutions, 2013), and Inspire (Cengage – National Geographic), and the author of several graded readers including Zombies in Tokyo and Brainstorm for the Atama-ii Series; and This is Facebook, Homestay in the UK, and Culture Shock in Japan (Macmillan).
Robert Dykes has been living in Japan for nearly 15 years. He will soon be leaving his long home of Fukui and moving to Kumamoto to teach at Sojo University. He loves all the work he does with JALT and currently volunteers for at least 6 different positions with them, he lost count. He hopes his work with the Material Writer's SIG and proofreading transcribed interviews for The Language Teacher has prepared him the live interview format, something he hopes will become a regular event in JALT's future.
Two presentations on Extensive Reading
Fukuoka JALT
Date:Saturday, February 27, 2021 - 6:00pm to 8:00pm
Event Speaker: Mark Brierley, Paul Goldberg
Fee for JALT members: free
Fee for non-JALT members: 1,000 yen
6:00 pm start, on Zoom. Finishing up around 8:00pm, with a social hangout after the presentation.
First presentation:
Using Booklog for Extensive Reading
Mark Brierley
Extensive Reading is an approach to language learning by reading a lot of easy, enjoyable books. It can only work when learners have access to a large range of books at a range of easily determined levels, and libraries are natural allies to proponents of this practice. While libraries are familiar with procedures to buy paper books, and can arrange them in shelves and with stickers to make their levels apparent, digital books present several challenges: finding books; navigating purchasing or licensing; finding funds to pay for them; displaying books to students and indicating how students can access them. Books are available through Maruzen and Ebsco, and our university library allows students to access them once logged into the University's online system. Librarie licenses titles for a limited number of years but requires students to set up accounts. None of these systems gives any indication of the level of books and only work well if you know which book you want to read. We have used a system called Booklog to help students see what books are available and at which levels.
Mark Brierley teaches at Shinshu University, in Matsumoto, Nagano. He has worked on the Extensive Reading Foundation Online Placement Test, an online systems for keeping track of student reading and a database of Graded Readers. He is an editor of JALT ER SIG's ERJ newsletter, and the Journal of Extensive Reading.
Second presentation:
Xreading: What’s New and What’s Next
Paul Goldberg
Xreading is an online library that gives students access to over a thousand graded readers from major publishers such as CUP, Cengage, and Macmillan. Students have unlimited access to all books at all times, and besides the books, they have access to the audio narrations, book ratings, and quizzes. In addition, the system tracks students' reading progress (books read, words read, reading speed, quiz scores, etc.) so it makes management and assessment much easier for teachers.
Since the launch of Xreading in 2014, constant improvements have been made to the system. However, the number of new features were accelerated this past year to help teachers deal most effectively with remote teaching. For example, teachers can now see in real time if their students are actively reading, and send messages to them. In this presentation, the founder of Xreading will explain the new features and functionality that have been added, and review what is planned for the future. Current users of the system who attend are encouraged to provide feedback and suggestions based on their experience.
Paul Goldberg is a native New Yorker. He has an M.S. in Secondary Education from Dowling College in New York, an M.A. in TESOL from Long Island University, and completed the coursework (ABD) for an Ed.D in TESOL at Temple University. He has taught English as a foreign language in Venezuela, Spain, Korea, the US, and most recently at Kwansei Gakuin University in Osaka, Japan. He also has done teacher training for many years, specializing in communicative activities. His main areas of interest are extensive reading and extensive listening. Finally, Paul is the founder of Xreading, which he developed because of his desire to make graded readers more accessible for students, and extensive reading programs easier for teachers to manage. Email: paul@xreading.com.
Online Meeting Link: Check our website for the Zoom link on the day of the presentation
Speaking in the new normal
Iwate-Aomori JALT
Date: Sunday, February 28, 2021 - 1:30pm
Event Speaker: Jason Hill, John Hozack, Andrew Caldwell, Ivan Lombardi, Revathi Viswanathan, Jason Pipe, Parvathy Ramachandran
Fee for JALT members: Free
Fee for non-JALT members: 500 yen
Where has 2021 brought your classroom? Have you continued online, gone back to F2F? Mix of both? Have you been F2F all along? What has been your approach to speaking activities online or in the classroom with COVID protocols in place? Any life-saving hacks, tips, and tricks you have to share for the new school year? Teachers of all levels and backgrounds are welcome and encouraged to participate and present for Iwate-Aomori JALT’s upcoming roundtable discussion. We want to hear from university teachers, secondary and primary JTEs, and ALTs!
For this event, we hope to have three designated roundtable discussions about how speaking activities are managed in different teaching contexts so as to ensure as many people benefit and take away from this event as much as possible, just in time for the new school year.
Of course any participant can chim in throughout these discussions, but if you have something specific you’d like to share that’s been working well in your classroom, please sign-up for your context category below! If you teach and can contribute to multiple contexts, you can sign up for all of them, or just the one you prefer.
NOTE: Depending on the total number of signups in each context, we may adjust the time allotted for each discussion.
Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) and Humanistic Approaches in English classes
Sendai JALT
Date: Sunday, February 28, 2021 - 3:00pm to 5:00pm
Event Speaker: Tomoaki Oono
Fee for JALT members: Free
Fee for non-JALT members: Free
Event Theme: CLIL
Abstract: Typically, every class we teach is mixed ability. Some students have high skills and motivation for learning English. In contrast, others are not good at it and need lots of help from teachers. All teachers must acknowledge mixed-ability classes and consider ways to cope with them. I believe one solution is to introduce CLIL (Content and Language Integrated Learning) with the idea that "the more interesting the content is, the faster and easier the students learn language, regardless of their abilities." Also, I am sure that learning a foreign language is useful for raising self-esteem and valuing others. I have been trying to bring back the smiles of my students since the Great East Japan Earthquake.
Speaker Bio: Tomoaki Oono works for Sendai Nika High School. He also serves many English instructors through teacher training seminars inside and outside Miyagi. After the Great East Japan Earthquake, he set up the "英語教師学びの会 (English Teachers Learning Group)" to make students smile through class improvement. The group is developing inside and outside the prefecture, helping instructors at elementary, junior high, senior high, and university levels collaborate and think about English education.
Online Meeting Link: Register to get meeting information
JALT Zoom for Professional Development (ZPD)
JALT Central
Date: Sunday, February 28, 2021 - 7:00pm to 8:00pm
Event Speaker: Opening remarks by Bill Pellowe, JALT Director of Public Relations
Fee for JALT members: Free
Fee for non-JALT members: Free
Please join us on Sunday, February 28th, 19:00-20:00 for the second monthly JALT Zoom for Professional Development (ZPD)!
Opening remarks by Director of Public Relations Bill Pellowe, icebreakers and networking, orientation for new officers and new members, as well as breakout rooms for discussing research and finding research collaborators, tips and best practices in teaching, and Q&A.
Please join us for networking, informal chat, and in building a community of practice with JALT members and prospective members.
This event is free and open to all.
Schedule:
- Room opens 18:50
- Opening remarks & Meet and Greet 19:00-19:10
- Icebreakers & Networking 19:10-19:30
- Breakout rooms 19:30-19:50
- Q&A, announcements & closing 19:50-20:00
To sign up or submit a discussion topic, and to receive the Zoom link, click here: Bit.ly/ZPDRSVP
Participation will be limited to the first 100 participants.
Online Meeting Link: Register to receive Zoom link
Research Study Participation Request
Calling for participants to complete a brief survey (30 questions, approximately 10 minutes to complete) about professional development/faculty development at your home institution. The survey is open to full-time and part-time language instructors in higher education in Japan, and all participation is voluntary.
あなたの勤務している機関でのファカルティデベロップメント(FD)に関するアンケート調査へご参加いただける方を募集しています（全30問、回答所要時間約10分）。本調査は日本の大学の常勤職および非常勤職の言語教員を対象としています。ご参加は任意です。
If you are interested in completing the survey, please follow this link to read about the project in the informed consent form.
ご参加に興味のある方は、こちらのリンクから本調査の内容が記載されている同意書をご一読ください。
https://liberalarts.syd1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_doh8LZUz2s1nRCl
Finally
Kyoto JALT on Social Media
Visit our website https://kyotojalt.org/
To keep up to date with all the things from Kyoto JALT via Facebook, please join our Kyoto JALT Facebook Group
Follow us on Twitter: @JaltKyoto
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Hope you have a wonderful February
Richard Sparrow,
Publicity Chair
On behalf of the Kyoto JALT Team
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