Back to School 2025 - Osaka JALT's 15th annual spring conference, at Osaka Jogakuin University

Back to School 2025 is Osaka JALT’s 15th annual spring conference sharing ideas on a wide range of topics related to language teaching and learning in a low-key environment to help everyone in the new academic year. This year's conference will again be in person at Osaka Jogakuin University, near Tamatsukuri station on the JR Loop Line and Nagahori Tsurumi-Ryokuchi Metro line. It will also again be an Open Campus day at OJU, so there will be additional presentations that participants in the conference can attend as well.

The Call for Presentations is now open via this link. The deadline for submissions is Saturday, March 15, 2025.

Please mark your calendar and plan to join us on Sunday, April 27th for what is sure to be another fantastic day of learning and sharing at OJU!

First-ever Pragmatics My Share

The Pragmatics SIG is partnering with Osaka JALT to present: “The-First-Ever Pragmatics My Share”

If you have a pragmatics-related experience, you can present this for 10-12 minutes to a larger audience. This will be an informal setting and thoughts and discussion will follow. All are welcome.

When:  Saturday, March 1, 2025, 13:00 -17:00   

Venue: Osaka Jogakuin University (near JR loop line and Metro Tamatsukuri station)

Fee: Free for JALT members, 500 yen for nonmembers

Submissions: Title plus 50-100-word description; name and contact info.  Deadline: February 15, 2025

Submission form: https://forms.gle/p37B93LTP76DrXVV6

For registration: https://forms.gle/RbaYChfRkypsPHtQ7

Questions?     Contact Donna Fujimoto fujimotodonna@gmail.com

If you have a pragmatics-related experience, you can present this for 10-12 minutes to a larger audience. This will be an informal setting and thoughts and discussion will follow.

What is pragmatics?

It can be found everywhere in our everyday life. It is about speech and action that are expected and appropriate…but also when these are NOT appropriate. That is usually when we notice.

Here are some examples of possible My Shares:

A Multi-lingual asks: Is my L1 affected by learning other languages?

My L1 is Japanese, and I've studied English for 10 years, German for 7, and French for a year. I noticed my use of Japanese actually changed while learning these other languages. It is not always a positive experience; in fact, the worst thing was when I lost a boyfriend!! Let’s explore possible issues of bi- and multi-linguals.

Is it possible to be polite when refusing an invitation?

In my class, I used role plays where students offer an invitation to someone, and that person has to refuse. I noticed that students had great difficulty trying to be polite. When they directly translated what they would say in Japanese, the role play became rather awkward. I want to discuss what students can say to refuse but be polite.

Happy New Year! Best wishes for a healthy and fruitful 2025!

Current and prospective Osaka JALT officers, other JALT members and prospective members

It's that time of year again for our Annual General Meeting (AGM) to report and reflect on the past year as a Chapter and discuss plans for the coming one, including chapter officer positions. Nominations for all officer positions are open to Osaka Chapter members up to and during the meeting. Officer terms are for one year, starting January 1st. If a position is contested, we'll hold an online election after the AGM.

To get a better sense of our team of officers, here is our current roster.

Officers' duties are roughly as follows:

• The Chapter President coordinates and oversees the running of the chapter, recruits and liaises with and assists other officers as necessary, represents the Chapter at JALT’s 3 annual national Executive Board meetings and in ongoing online JALT-wide discussions, and submits an annual report to the Executive Board.
• The Treasurer manages the chapter’s money and maintains and submits monthly and annual financial reports.
• The Program Chair(s) oversees the organizing of our events, in collaboration with other officers and volunteers.
• The Membership Chair focuses on our regular members by signing up and welcoming new members, sending reminders to those whose membership dues are coming or have come due, and maintains our membership records.
• The Publicity Chair(s) primarily focuses on spreading the word about what we’re doing to non-JALT members via our email list, facebook group, and any other way that is deemed appropriate.
• Officers at Large have no specific duties but pitch in as needed in a variety of ways as their time permits.

RSVP HERE to get the Zoom link, to ask questions or give feedback, and/or to let us know whether you'd like to nominate yourself or another Osaka JALT member to serve as an officer or in some other way in the coming year. 

This is a good chance to learn more about Osaka JALT, share ideas, and meet several of our officers and other members. We do hope to see you online at the meeting, but if you're not able to attend, you can still nominate yourself or another Osaka JALT member for an officer position, or give us feedback on the RSVP link with any questions, concerns, or suggestions you might have. 

Simple and Effective Corpus Tools for High School and University EFL Learners

Please join the first in a series of Osaka JALT Online Forums. Martin Spivey will present simple and effective corpus tools for high school and university EFL learners. Here is a brief introduction to his talk: 

Although the concept of using corpora in language education has been around for a while (Johns, 1986), it is still considered quite niche, and various factors have limited its widespread application in the classroom (Poole, 2020). However, there is an increasing number of online corpus tools available that are easy to access and require little training for teachers and students alike. In this talk, a brief explanation of what a corpus is and the different types of corpora that currently exist will be given, followed by a practical demonstration of a selection of free and simple corpus tools that instructors can use to promote learner autonomy and give their students the opportunity to explore authentic language for themselves during in-class activities or outside the classroom. 

Martin Spivey is originally from the UK and has been teaching EFL to students of various ages and levels for almost two decades. He has an MA in TESOL from the University of Birmingham (UK) and is currently teaching EAP courses at Akita International University and Akita University. His main research interests are corpus-assisted discourse analysis and learner corpora study.

The event is FREE for everyone.