The Japan Association for Language Teaching

Akita Chapter

(Read the archived description for the Akita Chapter)

Akita Chapter Events in 2001

Events archive by year:
2008 [5]; 2007 [6]; 2006 [8]; 2005 [8]; 2004 [9]; 2003 [10]; 2002 [8]; 2001;

Saturday, January 27th, 2001

Suggestopedia

Speaker: Charles Adamson, Miyagi University
Time: 2:00 PM - 4:00 PM (Sat., January 27th, 2001)
Fee (JALT members): free
Fee (One-Day members): 1,000 yen
Prefecture: Akita
City: Akita
Venue: Minnesota State University-Akita (MSU-A)
Description: Suggestopedia accelerates language learning by employing suggestion to freethe students' functional reserves. Joy, mental relaxation, and concentrationwithout tension allow both the conscious and the unconscious to becomeinvolved in learning. Art, psychology, and pedagogy are combined into aseamless whole which allows the student to cope with the three barriers tolearning. In practice this means the use of infantilization, concertpseudopassivity, prestige, double-planeness, intonation, and rhythm. A puresuggestopedic class consists of three phases: the decoding of the material,a concert session, and elaboration. Suggestopedia as an independent method will be described first and thensuggestions will be offered concerning how these ideas could be applied tothe participants' classrooms.

Saturday, April 21st, 2001

Introducing Public Elementary School English and the Monbusho Handbook

Speaker: Tom Merner, Japan College of Foreign Languages
Time: 2:00 PM - 4:00 PM (Sat., April 21st, 2001)
Fee (JALT members): free
Fee (One-Day members): 1,000 yen
Prefecture: Akita
City: Akita
Venue: Minnesota State University-Akita (MSU-A)
Description: English instruction is about to become an option for the new "Period for Integrated Studies" in the Japanese public schools. Monbusho has published a "Handbook for Elementary School English Teaching Activities," to provide support to teachers. Merner, a member of the authoring committee, will introduce the handbook, share views about the direction public elementary school English seems to be heading, and introduce results of a survey about the current situation in schools which have already implemented English

Saturday, June 23rd, 2001

Testing In the Classroom

Speaker: Watanabe Yoshinori, Akita National University
Time: 2:00 PM - 4:00 PM (Sat., June 23rd, 2001)
Fee (JALT members): free
Fee (One-Day members): 1,000 yen
Prefecture: Akita
City: Akita
Venue: GH-300, MSU-A (Minnesota State University Akita)
Description: Detailed information about his workshop/presentation will be provided later.

Saturday, July 28th, 2001

Global Links: English for International Business

Speaker: Keith Adams, Tohoku Gakuin University, co-author of Workplace English: Office/Travel File
Time: 2:00 PM - 4:00 PM (Sat., July 28th, 2001)
Fee (JALT members): free
Fee (One-Day members): 1,000 yen, students 500 yen
Prefecture: Akita
City: Akita
Venue: GH-300, MSU-A (Minnesota State University Akita)
Description: Adams will introduce Global Links, a new three-level business English course for executives from Longman. Activities and techniques from Level One, written for managers at the false beginner/elementary levels, will be discussed in the first part of the presentation. This will be followed by a talk focusing on the many processes involved in writing and publishing a textbook.

Saturday, September 8th, 2001

Teaching English in an EFL Context

Speaker: Kensaku Yoshida
Time: 2:00 PM - 4:00 PM (Sat., September 8th, 2001)
Fee (JALT members): free
Fee (One-Day members): 1,000 yen, students 500 yen
Prefecture: Akita
City: Akita
Venue: GH-300, MSU-A (Minnesota State University Akita)
Description: Each country has its unique objectives for teaching foreign languages. In Japan, as is well known, getting into higher institutes of education is probably one of the most obvious objectives. At the same time, there is also a more general need for the Japanese to learn English, which is to acquire it as a means to surviving in the international society of which Japan is a prominent member. I will try to present several criteria to, hopefully, clarify these points.

Saturday, October 13th, 2001

What Influences our Individual Approaches to Teaching in the Classroom?

Speaker: Thomas Simmons, JALT national president
Time: 2:00 PM - 4:00 PM (Sat., October 13th, 2001)
Fee (JALT members): free
Fee (One-Day members): 1,000 yen (500 yen for students)
Prefecture: Akita
City: Akita
Venue: GH-300, MSU-A (Minnesota State University Akita)
Description: Over the years, Simmons has developed approaches to teaching that deal with restrictions in inadequate class time, apathetic students, administrative demands and overlarge classes. He will discuss his class management activities and class content within the framework of his pro-active approaches. See Akita JALT's web site for more detail.

Saturday, November 3rd, 2001

Focus on Form in English Teaching: Integrating Meaning and Form

Speaker: Sean Izumi, Sophia University
Time: 2:00 PM - 4:00 PM (Sat., November 3rd, 2001)
Fee (JALT members): free
Fee (One-Day members): 1,000 yen (500 yen for students)
Prefecture: Akita
City: Akita
Venue: GH-300, MSU-A (Minnesota State University Akita)
Description: We will focus on the issues concerning how we can best integrate focus on meaning or communication on the one hand and focus on language forms or grammar on the other. We will also take a historical perspective on the issues of grammar teaching and overview some of the most popular proposals that have been put forth for language teaching over the last few decades. We will examine the rationale and problems of each of these approaches to language teaching. Then, we will consider the notion of focus on form proposed by Mike Long (1991, 1998) and others, which tries to integrate attention to form and attention to meaning in the course of language leaning and teaching. The subsequent discussion will focus on issues that need to be addressed in focus-on-form teaching. We will see some SLA studies that have examined the efficacy of focus on form in second language leaning.

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The Japan Association for Language Teaching
Urban Edge Bldg 5F, 1-37-9 Taito, Taito-ku, Tokyo 110-0016, Japan
Tel: 0352885443