West Tokyo Chapter

(Read the archived description for the West Tokyo Chapter)

West Tokyo Chapter Events in 2008

Events archive by year:
2008; 2007 [5]; 2006 [5]; 2005 [6]; 2004 [5]; 2003 [7]; 2002 [6]; 2001 [5];

Sunday, April 27th, 2008

Teacher Development: Perceptions and Reflections

Speaker: Dr. John Fanselow, Dean Charles, Clair Taylor, Andy Boon
Time: 10:00 AM - 5:30 PM (Sun., April 27th, 2008)
Fee (JALT members): free
Fee (One-Day members): 2000 yen
Prefecture: Tokyo
City: Tokyo
Venue: Tokyo Keizai University, Daiichi Kenkyuu Center, Room 1310
Description: The West Tokyo Chapter of JALT (the Japan Association for Language Teaching), and Tokyo Chapter announces the seventh in a series of micro-conferences, each featuring several presenters exploring a particular topic for a whole day. The theme of this conference is teacher development through neuro-linguistic processing, action research, reflective practice and transcript analysis.

10:00-10:15: Doors open

10:15-12:15 Dean Charles (British Council)

NLP and Teacher Perception

Neuro-linguistic programming is an attitude of mind that can be used to maximise and consistently apply best practice, as human beings in general and as teachers in particular. In this workshop, we will look at the teaching experience through the stages of lesson planning / preparation, being in the learning environment and post-lesson reflection. Applying NLP, we will examine how to develop the teaching skills that we have in these areas and attain the teaching skills that we don't yet have. The workshop will be practical and will supply participants with an NLP 'starter kit' for further research into their own teaching practice.

12:15-13:15 : Lunch

13:15-14:00 Clair Taylor (Toyo Gakuen University)

Your Baseline Teaching State

In humanistic approaches to teaching 'state' is central. Your 'state' includes the way you are thinking, feeling, holding your body and breathing at any time. This state can affect your students and their participation and output in your classes. This presentation will summarize the results of an action research project showing how teacher state change led to improved conversational flow in an English Lounge setting. Participants will be invited to explore their own baseline teaching state and experiment with a state change activity.

14:15-15:00 Andy Boon (Toyo Gakuen University)

On Becoming Reflective

In the act of teaching, we have little time to reflect on the successes, failures or puzzles that occur within our classes, and valuable opportunities for gaining insights into our pedagogic practice can be lost. There is a need, therefore, for practical ways to help us think back, to explore these experiences more deeply, and to discover what is actually happening in our classrooms. This presentation discusses the process of becoming reflective and examines a number of strategies that can be used by teachers to facilitate critical reflection on their teaching and discover new possibilities there.

15:15-17:15 Dr. John Fanselow (Professor Emeritus, Columbia University, Teachers College, U.S.A.)

Take 1, Take 2, Take 3

Authors of articles about classroom interaction tend to present only one interpretation of the transcripts they analyze. However, when I asked a range of ESOL/EFL teachers to interpret 3 transcripts from articles on classroom interaction, no one interpreted them in the same way the authors did. When different people experience dialog in plays and movies, they tend to interpret the interactions in a range of ways. Why should it be any different for the conversations in our classrooms? In this workshop, I will present the 3 transcripts, as well as a 3-stage process for moving beyond one-dimensional interpretations. I will also invite participants to apply the process to a dialog between a teacher and a supervisor so that each person can better understand the 3-stage process, and to show how analyzing transcripts of teacher/supervisor interaction can facilitate professional development.

Sunday, October 5th, 2008

The JALT 3rd Annual Joint Tokyo Conference - Exploring and Evolving Classroom Environments

Speaker: Rob Waring, Neil Cowie, Keiko Sakui, Kevin Ryan, Alastair Graham-Marr, Tomio Uchida, and Alan Bossaer
Time: 9:45 AM - 5:30 PM (Sun., October 5th, 2008)
Fee (JALT members): Pre-Registered - 1,500yen / Non-Registered 2,000yen
Fee (One-Day members): Pre-Registered - 2,500yen / Non-Registered 3,000yen
Prefecture: Tokyo
City: Tokyo
Venue: Toyo Gakuen University, Hongo Campus - http://www.tyg.jp/e/other_information/access_information.html
Description: 9.45-10.15: Registration

10.15-11.00: Kevin Ryan (Showa Women's University) - Some ideas for blending technology into the ELT Classroom

Where exactly does technology meet with the traditional classroom interface to make the most of a blended learning program? What kind of considerations are important in choosing, adapting and using technology as part of a skills program? How will the recent innovations of Web 2.0 affect use of IT in language learning? Do teachers and students (want to) understand and harness technology for the classroom? We look at some typical language learning software to show examples of ways technology can fit and fill instead of fight and frustrate.

Kevin Ryan has taught in Barcelona, Chicago, Nanjing and Tokyo. He began teaching in language labs in the early 90's, and has since moved most of his materials and approaches online, but still values the personal interface, especially here in Japan. Past President of the CALL SIG (twice) and editor of the CALL newsletter, Kevin is now taking care of JALT's money until November. See kevinryan.com for more details.

11.15-12.00: Tomio Uchida (Meisei University) - Exploring how to use a corpus in oral communication courses

Making the best use of relatively challenging but interesting ELT course books, how can we effectively teach oral communication courses? Utilizing applied corpus linguistics, I will present some innovative ideas we can apply to listening/conversation lessons and demonstrate the use of corpus-driven learning/teaching materials. Through illustrating the pedagogical applicability of corpus linguistics methodology in preparing and teaching oral communication courses, I wish to clarify some practical benefits of corpus linguistics.

Tomio Uchida has been teaching at high schools and universities for over 20 years, and is currently a lecturer at Meisei University in Tokyo. His current research interest is in applied corpus linguistics and he has recently been working on learner corpora and corpus-based dictionary projects.

12.00-13.15: Lunch

13.15-14.00: Keiko Sakui (Kobe Shoin Women's University) & Neil Cowie (Okayama University) - Beyond motivation: Exploring group dynamics, investment and resistance in Japanese EFL students

Research on individual differences in student motivation often assumes that students are either motivated or not motivated; but this can cover up complex and evolving reasons for student behaviour. The two presenters critically examine student classroom behaviour from alternative perspectives to motivation including group dynamics, investment and resistance. Key patterns of student behaviour, the influence of social and cultural factors in explaining them, and implications for teaching and teacher development are outlined.

Keiko Sakui is Associate Professor at Kobe Shoin Women's University, Japan. Her research interests include learner and teacher beliefs about language learning. She is particularly interested in student resistance, learner motivation and classroom management from language teachers' perspectives. Neil Cowie teaches English in the Foreign Language Education Centre at Okayama University, Japan. He is especially interested in emotional aspects of studying and teaching foreign languages, and classroom applications of socio-cultural theories of language learning.

14.15-15.00: Rob Waring (Notre Dame Seishin University) - Building an interesting Extensive Reading library

This presentation will focus on ways to build variety into your extensive reading library by introducing both fiction and non-fiction materials as well as native materials suitable for your students. Ideas for student generated and student graded materials will also be presented. We will then discuss ways to present the library in such a way that would attract students to reading extensively.

Dr. Rob Waring is an acknowledged expert in Extensive Reading and second language vocabulary acquisition. He is Associate Professor at Notre Dame Seishin University in Okayama, Japan. Professor Waring is a board member of the Extensive Reading Foundation.

15.15-16.00: Alastair Graham-Marr (Tokai University) - The benefits of output: an evolving understanding

Does student output enhance language learning? Although most teachers would answer affirmatively, research results in support of output have not been unanimous. This talk will go over current and past teaching practices and look at how the related research in the field of Second Language Acquisition has evolved. This talk will examine how output not only aids fluency but also helps develop language accuracy.

Alastair Graham-Marr is a Junior Associate Professor at Tokai University. He holds a Masters in Applied Linguistics from Macquarie University and has presented extensively through Japan and abroad. His current research interests are communication strategies and output.

16.15-17.00: Alan Bossaer (Sapporo University) - Do my students really know what I've just taught?

Comprehension checking, by definition, is confirming a student's understanding or knowledge of a language item without asking, "Do you understand?" Instead, the teacher employs a variety of techniques, which induce students to produce evidence of this understanding. This presentation deals with the skill of comprehension checking as it relates to the teaching and learning of vocabulary. The presenter will provide teachers with a variety of useful comprehension checking devices they can use in the classroom.

Associate Professor at Sapporo University, Alan Bossaer serves as the English Department's e-learning program director as well as material development coordinator. He spends much of his time designing course books and e-Learning materials.

17.00-17.30: Coffee with the Presenters

To Pre-Register, email: Andy Boon (Conference Chair) andrew.boon@tyg.jp

Conference Website - http://www.jalt.org/tokyo/joint_conference/

Thursday, October 30th, 2008

Astonishing Research - TESOL Action Research Mini-Conference 2008

Speaker: Dr, Fiona Copland, Andy Boon, and Mike McDonald
Time: 6:00 PM - 9:00 PM (Thu., October 30th, 2008)
Fee (JALT members): free
Fee (One-Day members): free
Prefecture: Tokyo
City: Tokyo
Venue: Toyo Gakuen University, Hongo Campus - http://www.tyg.jp/e/other_information/access_information.html
Description: Professional development for EFL teachers: Aston University in collaboration with the JALT West Tokyo Chapter, Toyo Gakuen University, and Oxford University Press invites you to an evening of presentations exploring the topics of research, writing, corpus, ethnography and linguistics.

17.45-18.00 Doors Open

18.00-18.45 - Mike McDonald (Hosei University)

Combining general and genre-specific approaches to L2 writing instruction.

Many English for Specific Purposes (ESP) writing courses follow a genre-specific approach to writing instruction. For example, students learn to write business letters or research reports by studying examples of the genre, identifying common features in the language and rhetorical steps, and then attempting to use them in their own writing. This talk will show how such a procedure can be combined with a more general approach focusing on discourse patterns common to many different genres, such as Situation�Problem�Response�Evaluation. This two-layered approach to writing instruction may help students to transfer their knowledge of a particular genre to a wider range of writing tasks.

19.00-19.45 - Andy Boon (Toyo Gakuen University)

The illusion of synonyms: Investigating the similarities and differences between bias and prejudice.

This presentation questions the synonymic relationship between bias and prejudice as it appears in a coursebook task. Firstly, the two terms are compared using their entries in the New Oxford English Dictionary. The analysis reveals that the dictionary cannot fully account for the two terms and only offers limited assistance in guiding a user to an understanding of their differentiation. The second part of the investigation examines bias and prejudice as they occur in a 50 million word corpus of modern English (Collins Cobuild Wordbanks Online) to discover points of overlap and departure between the two terms. The analysis shows that bias and prejudice share an illusory synonymic relationship which begins to fade once the terms become situated in separate contextual and co-textual environments. The final part of the presentation discusses a number of implications for vocabulary teaching arising from the investigation.

20.00-20.45 - Dr. Fiona Copland (Aston University)

Legitimate talk.

Feedback in pre-service teacher training contexts is, for the most part, hidden from view. 'Trainee' teachers receive critical comment and advice from experienced 'trainers' in an event that is rarely researched and under-discussed. Drawing on data from two pre-service teacher training courses for English language teaching to adults, this paper conjoins linguistics and ethnography to uncover the discourse practices of trainers and trainees as they discuss learning and teaching. The research shows that for much of the time, participants reproduce traditional transmission discourses. However, other exchanges also take place that challenge the legitimacy of transmission talk and reveal feedback to be a place where the emotional and social are fundamentally present. The paper argues that talk in feedback is a sophisticated, multi-faceted enterprise in which competing ideologies and identities jostle for position and where participants who can play by the 'rules of the game' (Roberts and Sarangi, 2001) negotiate the event successfully.

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