Kitakyushu Chapter

(Read the archived description for the Kitakyushu Chapter)

Kitakyushu Chapter Events in 2001

Events archive by year:
2008 [10]; 2007 [13]; 2006 [9]; 2005 [13]; 2004 [15]; 2003 [13]; 2002 [13]; 2001;

Saturday, February 10th, 2001

Star Taxi

Speaker: DramaWorks (Theo Steckler, Ian Franklyn, and Marc Sheffner)
Time: 7:00 PM - 9:00 PM (Sat., February 10th, 2001)
Fee (JALT members): free
Fee (One-Day members): 500 yen
Prefecture: Fukuoka
City: Kitakyushu
Venue: Kitakyushu International Conference Center, room 31 (a 5-minute walk from the Kokura train station for shinkansen, JR train)
Description: Star Taxi is a story told in twenty scenes of dialogue. Star Taxi is easy and fun to use, does not require any drama experience or props, and does not end in a full-blown dramatic production. It is a complete course but can also be used as a supplement. It is designed for use with teenagers and adults, although the warm-ups and language activities we include can be, and are, used with younger children. Most workshop participants find them highly entertaining and refreshing, whatever kind of class they teach.

Saturday, March 10th, 2001

Sign Language Contact Between Japanese Sign Language and American Sign Language

Speaker: Yoshizawa Go, Meiji Gakuen
Time: 7:00 PM - 9:00 PM (Sat., March 10th, 2001)
Fee (JALT members): free
Fee (One-Day members): 500 yen
Prefecture: Fukuoka
City: Kitakyushu
Venue: Kitakyushu International Conference Center, room 31 (a 5-minute walk from the Kokura train station for shinkansen, JR train)
Description: Most countries have their own sign language which is often similar to their mother tongue. Just as minority languages borrow from surrounding majority languages, Japanese Sign Language (JSL) borrows signs from spoken and written Japanese. Yoshizawa will present the processes involved in borrowing from spoken languages. The issue of deaf education in terms of literacy and language acquisition will also be included.

Saturday, April 14th, 2001

Two Presentations: (1) Exploring Ideas in the Pre K Through 12 Range, (2) Involvement and Motivation in the Junior High School EFL Classroom

Speaker: (1) Michelle Nagashima (co-author of SuperTots), (2) Katherine Mackay (ELT consultant)
Time: 7:00 PM - 9:00 PM (Sat., April 14th, 2001)
Fee (JALT members): free
Fee (One-Day members): 500 yen
Prefecture: Fukuoka
City: Kitakyushu
Venue: Kitakyushu International Conference Center, room 31 (a 5-minute walk from the Kokura train station for shinkansen, JR train)
Description: While the focus of these two presentations is on teaching younger students, the ideas presented will be applicable to all age levels.

Children are active and enthusiastic in the classroom, and receptive to almost all activities introduced by the teacher. It is always important that the same material be reviewed and reinforced in an EFL classroom. Using a minimum of materials for the curriculum currently being taught, and developing activities from these basics allows children to develop skills in the classroom at their own pace and level.
Motivating teenagers to learn English at Junior High School level can sometimes seem like an impossible task. These students need lots of encouragement and interesting, engaging tasks. Through a variety of activities and techniques, the aim of this workshop will be to show that it is possible to motivate and teach communicatively, even in large classes. Ideas will be taken from materials developed by Longman for students in Japan.

Saturday, May 12th, 2001

Using American and British Movies and TV Programmes for Learning English and Its Culture

Speaker: Lyudmila Fudzikata
Time: 7:00 PM - 9:00 PM (Sat., May 12th, 2001)
Fee (JALT members): free
Fee (One-Day members): 500 yen
Prefecture: Fukuoka
City: Kitakyushu
Venue: Kitakyushu International Conference Center, room 31 (a 5-minute walk from the Kokura train station for shinkansen, JR train)
Description: The best way of learning English for non-native speakers is doing it through extensive recording of, listening to and watching of certain American and British movies and TV shows. This practice creates an artificial English-speaking environment and helps to perfect pronunciation, reading and nonverbal communication skills witout going to English-speaking countries. Some of the most interesting video recordings will be shown. Have fun! About the presenter: A graduate of the All-Russian State Institute of Cinematography, Moscow, majoring in the making and selling of audio-visual products, Luda has been living in Japan with her Japanese husband for the past seven years. During that time she acquired her own fluent English through the method she now espouses.

Saturday, June 9th, 2001

Ten Reasons Why Not to Teach Culture in the Language Classroom

Speaker: Michael Guest, Miyazaki Medical College
Time: 7:00 PM - 9:00 PM (Sat., June 9th, 2001)
Fee (JALT members): free
Fee (One-Day members): 500 yen
Prefecture: Fukuoka
City: Kitakyushu
Venue: Kitakyushu International Conference Center, room 31 (a 5-minute walk from the Kokura train station for shinkansen, JR train)
Description: Every language teacher would like his or her students to become sensitive to and understanding of other cultures. But do some of the currently popular models actually help or hinder in achieving this aim? I believe that the current emphasis upon detailing differences of cultures not only rests on faulty theoretical foundations but can and does easily lead to cross-cultural misunderstandings and even hostility. In this workshop I'd like to explain and demonstrate some of the dangers of certain popular approaches to teaching culture. I will ask participants to examine and interpret "loaded" cultural interactions and language samples with the hope that we can come to a more refined and accurate understanding as to role and method of teaching culture in a language classroom.

Saturday, July 14th, 2001

Collaborative, Student-Centered Activity: Does it work in language classrooms in Japan?

Speaker: Miki Niiyama
Time: 7:00 PM - 9:00 PM (Sat., July 14th, 2001)
Fee (JALT members): free
Fee (One-Day members): 500 yen
Prefecture: Fukuoka
City: Kitakyushu
Venue: Kitakyushu International Conference Center, room 31 (a 5-minute walk from the Kokura train station for shinkansen, JR train)
Description: The present study investigated the effects of group activity in an EFL college writing classroom in Japan. Collaborative group activity like peer feedback is generally assumed to be difficult for Japanese students to perform because of their linguistic limitations and unfamiliarity with such student-centered tasks. The participants of the study were seventeen students in a mandatory English writing class at a private women's university in Japan. Focusing on the peer feedback activity incorporated in the middle of the one-year writing course, this study explored students' perceptions of such a collaborative activity. The findings reveal that overall, the students in the study perceived peer feedback as an effective method to improve their writing and English. This presentation will discuss the difficulties and effects of such a collaborative group work for Japanese students.

Saturday, September 8th, 2001

Project Work for the University- Based Classroom

Speaker: Joe Tomei, Kumamoto Gakuen Daigaku
Time: 7:00 PM - 9:00 PM (Sat., September 8th, 2001)
Fee (JALT members): free
Fee (One-Day members): 500 yen
Prefecture: Fukuoka
City: Kitakyushu
Venue: Kitakyushu International Conference Center, room 31 (a 5-minute walk from the Kokura train station for shinkansen, JR train)
Description: Tomei has been working with projects for university classes for the past 6 years and they have offered a number of rewards, both in terms of organization and curriculum. In this presentation, he'll present the projects he is doing with his students now and the organizational steps he uses to make them managable. The presented projects will include

A Campus Survey
1192-Making a new Country
A Campus improvement Project
Designing a Restaurant
Handicapped Access Project
Foreign Language Presentation Project

He will also describe steps to make project work feasible with part time teaching work.

Saturday, October 13th, 2001

Looking at Asian EFL Students' Silent Actions

Speaker: Ian Nakamura
Time: 7:00 PM - 9:00 PM (Sat., October 13th, 2001)
Fee (JALT members): free
Fee (One-Day members): 500 yen
Prefecture: Fukuoka
City: Kitakyushu
Venue: Kitakyushu International Conference Center, room 31 (a 5-minute walk from the Kokura train station for shinkansen, JR train)
Description: If it is true that a significant amount of our conversations are being transmitted and perceived nonverbally, then teachers need to account for this fact in the way they teach. Understanding Asian EFL students' silent actions should be of particular value to teachers of oral communication classes. One challenge of teaching in this context is silent students. The focus of this guided discussion will be on what teachers can learn by studying students' nonverbal behavior. Ian Nakamura teaches at Hiroshima Kokusai Gakuin University and Okayama University. He is interested in Asian EFL students' nonverbal actions as part of valuable feedback to inform teachers.

Saturday, December 8th, 2001

Reverse-engineering communication tasks

Speaker: Craig P. Lambert, Kitakyushu University
Time: 7:00 PM - 9:00 PM (Sat., December 8th, 2001)
Fee (JALT members): free
Fee (One-Day members): 500 yen
Prefecture: Fukuoka
City: Kitakyushu
Venue: Kitakyushu International Conference Center, room 31 (a 5-minute walk from the Kokura train station for shinkansen, JR train)
Description: The speaker will introduce an approach to planning sequences of communication tasks that require learners to become personally invested in their learning. In the approach, learners are required to draw on their own ideas and personal resources to create, as a product of earlier tasks in a given sequence, the content and resource materials on which subsequent tasks in the sequence operate. The talk will be supported with many examples of classroom materials to illustrate the design principles. Participants will gain an increased understanding of the potential of tasks as a planning tool in second language education and a framework for experimenting with the approach in their own classes.

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