Registration is now open for the Osaka JALT Back to School Conference.
Due to Covid-19, the conference will be held online this year. Presentation videos will be available as the date approaches, and those who wish to participate in Q&A sessions will be emailed a link to a scheduled Zoom meeting. In order to achieve this, participants should register interest with the following form.
Other presentations (in alphabetical order):
Gordon Carlson
Integrating Student and Teacher Perspectives on Curriculum and Textbook Selection
Although educator-selected texts are commonplace in tertiary education, student involvement in textbook selection can have favorable results. This presentation compares two analyses conducted one year apart that addressed textbook satisfaction and the balance of time spent on the skills of listening, speaking, reading, writing, vocabulary, and grammar. It concludes with the notion that closer alignment between student and teacher perspectives can result in improved curriculum modifications and positive learning outcomes.
textbook selection, curriculum development
Gordon Carlson is an associate professor at Otemae University where he teaches EFL and Global Japan Studies. His interests include teacher development, service learning, and designing interactive activities and games.
Chien Chih Chen
How Does a Tutoring Lesson Work for a Writer via Referencing Tools?
The study examines how a tutoring lesson works for a writer. Specifically, the writer’s writing structure and lexical use via reference tools were looked into to see what changes he has made after the lesson. The findings suggest that the learner made progress in terms of his writing structure, though he manifested a progressive and regressive pattern in the process.
referencing tools; writing; tutoring lesson
Chien Chih Chen, a Ph.D. candidate of National ChengChi University, currently teaches at SongShan Senior High School in Taipei. His research interest includes translingual practice and CALL.
Neil Cowie and Keiko Sakui
Emergency online teaching: Making effective videos
As a result of the current emergency situation many language teachers will have suddenly started to make and upload videos for their students. This presentation will discuss three questions to help make such videos as effective as possible: 1) Why are videos an important online tool? 2) What are the most common ways that you can make videos? and, 3) What are the common features of effective videos?
online teaching; effective videos
Neil Cowie teaches at Okayama University. As well as researching various aspects of online learning he has co-created (with Keiko Sakui) four wholly online courses. These are available on the Udemy online learning platform.
Keiko Sakui teaches English and teacher trainer courses at Kobe Shoin Women’s University. Her research interests include the use of ICT in language classes, English education at elementary schools and effective teacher training.
Sean Gay
Connecting Identity & Pedagogy
As students learn a language, they develop an L2 identity. Understanding the role that identity plays in the language acquisition is fundamental to developing an effective language program. The most common critique of this assertion is that it is difficult to reflect this concept in pedagogy. In this presentation several methods for including or improving identity formation into pedagogy can improve student experiences and learning outcomes.
Identity, EFL, CLIL
Sean Gay has a PhD in Health Sciences and an MS in TESOL and is a lecturer at Kwansei Gakuin University. He has worked on the optimization of university programs through evidence-based pedagogy.
Trevor Fernandes
Inspiration from learners
This school year started off with the first topic being the coronavirus. From the answers learners gave the next few topics have been adapted to suit their needs. The next topic was family, then the mind and following that the body. These are all online for high school students with one session a week where the teacher is online to give guidance.
learner-centred, adaptive, online
Trevor Fernandes is from England and currently works as an ALT in a private high school in Osaka. He also works at an international school on Saturdays. Recently his classes are online whereas before the classes were blended.
Jason Gold
Novel Brain Science-Backed Productivity Strategies for Students (and Teachers!)
In today’s fast-paced world, productivity is no longer about just how efficiently you work, it’s about how much you accomplish. This presentation will provide novel brain science-backed tips and strategies, focusing on the three key productivity facets of time, attention, and energy, in order to aid in accomplishing more in less time and freeing up more space in our lives to do the things we actually find meaningful and important.
Productivity, Brain
Jason Gold currently teaches at Kobe University and is in a doctoral program at Indiana University. His research interests involve neuro-education applications for classroom teaching – particularly regarding academic tenacity, learner mindsets, and self-regulation/metacognitive strategies.
Af'idatul Husniyah
On Machine Writing Feedback: How "Write and Improve" Website Helped My Students Write Better
During the pandemic, one of the key issues for teachers is giving online feedback to the students. In some contexts, for example, in Indonesian classrooms, teachers are responsible for a class consisting of at least 30 students. Such situation creates a huge pitfall for teachers who attempts to provide a good learning experience for students. This mini research reported how machine writing feedback can help teachers to provide writing feedbacks for the students. The research also revealed students' opinions and experiences regarding their writing progress.
writing, machine writing feedback, digital learning
Af'idatul Husniyah is an English lecturer in State Polytechnic of Malang, Indonesia. Her research interests include Second Language Teaching and Learning and Second Language Acquisition.
Patrycja Indycka, Zofia Kupka, Gabriela Jeż, & Ewelina Cop
Pain-free group work
As a popular meme reads, "What group projects are supposed to teach you: communication, responsibility, collaboration, teamwork. What group projects taught me: trust no one." In this workshop, future teachers from the University of Rzeszów in Poland will use humor to share students' perspectives of successful and unsuccessful collaborative work. The presentation will include ideas for facilitating group work in the classroom, useful for instructors in any context.
group projects, collaborative work strategies
Patrycja Indycka, Zofia Kupka, Gabriela Jeż and Ewelina Cop are third year students of English Philology from the University of Rzeszów in Poland eager to broaden their minds as prospective teachers.
Min Ku
Tell Me About TELL: Mental health and students
I will explain the mental health services available from the non-profit organization TELL, and will give a few concrete tips for supporting your students' mental health.
listening, well-being, support
Min Ku is the Kansai Outreach Coordinator for the certified NPO TELL, which provides mental health services for the international community in Japan. She has a Ph.D. in molecular biology, and also has experience teaching and parenting Third Culture Kids.
Paul Lyddon
Helping Students Better Learn to Speak, Listen, Read, and Write in English
Many students struggle not only to improve their basic English skills but also, ironically, even to talk about them, as it involves some of the most idiosyncratic verbs in the language. This presentation will demonstrate how explicit teaching of word properties and usage patterns can help learners overcome the difficulty of mastering these and other often frustrating English verbs.
pedagogical grammar, word properties, co-occurrence
Paul Lyddon is Associate Professor of Global Communication in the School of International Relations at the University of Shizuoka. He has a Ph.D. in Second Language Acquisition and Teaching from the University of Arizona.
Oliver Rose
Setting Engaging and Effective Online Phrase Practice with LingoLab
The LingoLab activity is a free multi-platform web app for practicing words and phrases. It has several unique modes providing various kinds of practice at different levels of difficulty. There are three functionally different sites that host the activity, as follows:
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www.lingolab.online - for setting a quiz which reports student results
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www.lingolab.co - for self-study with spaced repetition progress tracking & sharing
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www.lingolab.live - a multiplayer real-time quiz game
online, quiz, listening/reading
Oliver Rose teaches EFL at Kwansei Gakuin University in Hyogo. His main research interests are in CALL/MALL, having developed several sites/apps for language learning.
Jason Tacker
Culture and Technology: Cheating with Smartphones in Japanese EFL
This presentation explores a reason why smartphones are used for cheating in Japanese EFL through understanding of the cultural dimension of uncertainty avoidance. Cheating behaviors can be understood with a combination of uncertainty avoidance and The Technology Acceptance Model (TAM). When uncertainty avoidance is used as the TAM’s external variable, an argument can made about why Japanese students use technology to deal with the unknown anxieties of the classroom.
Technology, culture, education
Jason Tacker is an Assistant Professor of EFL at Akita Prefectural University in the department of Research and Education Center for Comprehensive Science. His main interests are in education, technology, and culture.
Nanami "Mimi" Yoshii
CLIL for Young Children: Ballet School in Australia
I have been teaching at a ballet school for young children in Australia and found how pre-school children learn the ballet terminology. This is an introduction for my further studies in the future.
CLIL, PIE, TYL
Nanami "Mimi" Yoshii had studied at Kansai Gaidai University and has currently been studying Applied Linguistics and Performing Arts at the University of South Australia. She has been teaching languages and dance as a freelancer.
Stephanie Ann Houghton PhD is an Associate Professor of Intercultural Communication at the Faculty of Art and Regional Design, Saga University. She has published multiple academic books and articles in peer-reviewed international journals. She is co-editor of the book series Intercultural Communication and Language Education with Melina Porto. Addressing the development of intercultural communicative competence, her main research areas include intercultural dialogue, native speakerism and citizenship education, with a special focus on the prevention of Alzheimer’s disease.
Saturday, September 19, 2020 at 3:44PM
