The Japan Association for Language Teaching

Okayama Chapter

(Read the archived description for the Okayama Chapter)

Okayama Chapter Events in 2001

Events archive by year:
2008 [11]; 2007 [13]; 2006 [8]; 2005 [12]; 2004 [9]; 2003 [9]; 2002 [12]; 2001;

Saturday, April 21st, 2001

My Share: Lesson Ideas That Will Keep You Awake at Night

Speaker: Scott Gardner, sngard@mx1.tiki.ne.jp
Time: 3:00 PM - 5:00 PM (Sat., April 21st, 2001)
Fee (JALT members): free
Fee (One-Day members): 1,000 yen
Prefecture: Okayama
City: Okayama
Venue: Sankaku Arc Square Building
Description: EUREKA! Closet Archimedeans! Surely something you've taught has worked! Why not share your intimate classroom discoveries with other teachers? Come out to the swap meet, give it all away, and go home with a fistful of equally superb ideas dreamed up by your friends and colleagues. Just in time to use in the new class term! What you need to do: Put your idea descriptions, procedures, explanations, whatever in a handout form and make 10 copies.

Saturday, May 19th, 2001

Elementary School Education

Speaker: Adele Yamada
Time: 3:00 PM - 5:00 PM (Sat., May 19th, 2001)
Fee (JALT members): free
Fee (One-Day members): 1,000 yen
Prefecture: Okayama
City: Okayama
Venue: Sankaku Okayama, ARC Sqaure 2nd floor, Omotecho 3-chome
Description: The new Sogo Gakushu program that will begin soon, will bring English lessons to many elementary schools all over Japan. Adele Yamada will discuss how to implement the new program in an effective way, including her thoughts on the program's purpose, current curricula issues and the role of ALTs in elementary schools. Teaching ideas and suggestions, as well as specific examples of lesson plans, activities and games will also be presented.

Sunday, June 17th, 2001

Content-based programs for General L2 Programs

Speaker: Trudie Heiman
Time: 3:00 PM - 5:00 PM (Sun., June 17th, 2001)
Fee (JALT members): free
Fee (One-Day members): 1,000 yen
Prefecture: Okayama
City: Okayama
Venue: Sankaku Arc Square Building
Description: The presenter will outline the criteria and rationale used to develop a content-based writing program based on personal development topics for a general language program. Examples of students' work, which illustrate the language skills developed while doing self-reflective activities, will be shown. Participants will be invited to discuss problems of developing content-based programs for general language programs.

Sunday, July 1st, 2001

Introducing Public Elementary School English and the Monbusho Handbook

Speaker: Tom Merner, Japan College of Foreign Languages
Time: 1:30 PM - 5:00 PM (Sun., July 1st, 2001)
Fee (JALT members): free
Fee (One-Day members): 1000 yen students 500yen
Prefecture: Okayama
City: Okayama
Venue: Okayama University, Department of Education Room 5101
Description: Amid much confusion, concern, and worry, English instruction is about to officially become one of the options for the new "Period for Integrated Studies" in the Japanese public schools. The Ministry of Education has recently published a Handbook for Elementary School English Teaching Activities, in hope of clarifying its position and also to provide support to elementary school teachers with little or no background in teaching English. The presenter, a member of the authoring committee of this handbook, will introduce the contents of the handbook. He will also share some views of what has already taken place, and in which direction public elementary school English seems to be heading. He will also introduce results of a survey he conducted to investigate the current situation in schools which have already implemented English.

Sunday, September 16th, 2001

Japanese Language Proficiency Testing

Speaker: Chie Yamane
Time: 3:00 PM - 5:00 PM (Sun., September 16th, 2001)
Fee (JALT members): free
Fee (One-Day members): 1000 yen; students 500 yen
Prefecture: Okayama
City: Okayama
Venue: Sankaku Bldg. 2f
Description: Language Testing International uses the ACTFL Oral Proficiency Interview(OPI), a standardized procedure for the grobal assessment of functionalspeaking ability. This means that an OPI is a testing method which measureshow well a person speaks a language by comparing their performance ofspecific language tasks, not with some other person's, but with the criteriafor each of ten proficiency levels described in the ACTFL RevisedProficiency Guidelines. The presenter demonstrates how to check the native English interviewee'sJapanese Oral Proficiency. Then the presenter will tell the audience how to progress in Japaneseoral ability.

Saturday, October 20th, 2001

Getting Students to Express Themselves

Speaker: Alastair Lamond, Thomson Learning
Time: 3:00 PM - 5:00 PM (Sat., October 20th, 2001)
Fee (JALT members): free
Fee (One-Day members): 1000 yen (500 yen for students)
Prefecture: Okayama
City: Okayama
Venue: Sankaku Bldg. 2f.
Description: Learning a language provides special challenges for all students. This presentation shows how to use the learner-centered task-based approach to encourage active communication, getting students to learn by doing. The presenter will use examples from Expressions, a new 3-level, 4-skill series by David Nunan, to demonstrate step-by-step language-building tasks.

Monday, November 19th, 2001

Stimulus Based Teaching

Speaker: Tessa Woodward
Time: 6:30 PM - 8:00 PM (Mon., November 19th, 2001)
Fee (JALT members): free
Fee (One-Day members): 1000 yen (500 yen for students)
Prefecture: Okayama
City: Okayama
Venue: Okayama University, Faculty of Education. For info, contact nikki@cc.okayama-u.ac.jp
Description: Stimulus based teaching is a generative framework which can be applied to any learning/teaching stimulus be it a verb list, a potato, a coursebook or a photo and which saves planning time and gets the most out of any material. In this workshop, Tessa Woodward will explain and show the five categories of moves contained in the approach and we will have a chance to try out the framework and discuss its advantages and disadvantages.
This event is part of the Four Corners Tours 2001, which are opportunities for JALT National Conference speakers to visit local JALT chapters throughout the country.

Saturday, December 15th, 2001

Year-End Party with Okayama JALT

Speaker: No speakers, but plenty of singers!
Time: 6:30 PM - 8:30 PM (Sat., December 15th, 2001)
Fee (JALT members): 2,800 yen for food and limited drinks
Fee (One-Day members): 2,800 yen. Please consider joining JALT!
Prefecture: Okayama
City: Okayama
Venue: Contact Senor Chris Creighton at 086 270 1977
Description: Let your hair down, air your views and dance on the occasional table or two at the Okayama JALT Bonenkai held this year in a local Brazilian restaurant. Fancy some feijoada then come along! 2,800 yen includes SOME complimentary drinks, then pay bar! Cheap at twice the price!

Find Events


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