Okayama Chapter

(Read the archived description for the Okayama Chapter)

Okayama Chapter Events in 2005

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

Saturday, January 15th, 2005

An overview of recent studies on English language teaching

Speaker: Paul Hackshaw
Time: 3:00 PM - 5:00 PM (Sat., January 15th, 2005)
Fee (JALT members): free
Fee (One-Day members): 1000 yen; students 500 yen
Prefecture: Okayama
City: Okayama
Venue: Okayama Sankaku building near Omotecho in Okayama city
Description: Around 86% of Japanese public elementary schools offer some kind of English lessons to their students with some getting as little as 11 hours of instruction per year per grade. Due to lack of proper training, many home room teachers do not know how to teach English or how to work with an ALT (Assistant Language Teacher). Many children also have problems in maintaining their English when they leave elementary school, and in adjusting to traditional methods at junior high schools. In this presentation, Hackshaw gives a brief background to the Monbukagakusho revisions and summarises recent research studies on the teaching of English to elementary school age children in Japan, including classes he observed that were taught with a native speaker ALT. This presentation is of interest to teachers of English to children and elementary school teachers wanting to learn how to teach English in their schools.

Saturday, February 19th, 2005

Codeswitching: Alternating between Japanese and English in Bilingual Interaction

Speaker: Tim Greer
Time: 3:00 PM - 5:00 PM (Sat., February 19th, 2005)
Fee (JALT members): free
Fee (One-Day members): 1000 yen; students 500 yen
Prefecture: Okayama
City: Okayama
Venue: Okayama Sankaku building near Omotecho in Okayama city
Description: When people who regularly use two languages are speaking together, they often alternate back and forth between the two in a kind of mixed speech that is known as codeswitching. Based on a corpus of forty hours of natural interaction video-recorded among bilingual Japanese teenagers in an international school, this presentation will focus on the way that blending languages helps them accomplish a multiethnic identity. The study employs the ethnomethodological discipline of Conversation Analysis to examine codeswitching from the participants' point of view. The session will examine one sequence of bilingual interaction in detail, using it as a springboard to discuss the socio-pragmatic functions of codeswitching in a variety of contexts.

Saturday, April 23rd, 2005

An Analysis of Pragmatic Errors Based on Riley's Hypothesis

Speaker: Hiroko Murakami
Time: 3:00 PM - 4:00 PM (Sat., April 23rd, 2005)
Fee (JALT members): free
Fee (One-Day members): 1000 yen; students 500 yen
Prefecture: Okayama
City: Okayama
Venue: Okayama Sankaku Building near Omotecho in Okayama city
Description: Intercultural communication can be interpreted successfully only when we are sensitive to the socio-cultural rules of language use and the differences between our first and second languages. This is a presentation of the analysis of pragmatic errors so as to avoid misinterpretation. Some common errors which occur in language classes or in an inter-cultural context of daily life in the early stages of living in Japan will be given. Riley classifies four types of pragmatic errors, analyzes the causes/reasons of pragmatic errors, and offers seven correcting-error strategies. Examples of errors adopted from a questionnaire as well as from personal experiences are illustrated. Then causes/reasons and error-correcting strategies are discussed.

Student Evaluations of Teachers. What do the learners think?

Speaker: Peter Burden
Time: 4:00 PM - 5:00 PM (Sat., April 23rd, 2005)
Fee (JALT members): free
Fee (One-Day members): 1000 yen; students 500 yen
Prefecture: Okayama
City: Okayama
Venue: Okayama Sankaku building near Omotecho in Okayama city
Description: The end of semester questionnaire given to students for course feedback has become a ritual for teachers and students. While the purpose of any student evaluation of teaching is the improvement of teaching and implicitly the improvement of student learning, are the results used to benefit the education system? For teachers to make improvements to their teaching after student feedback, they must consider student opinion worth listening to, and be willing to make the student a participant in the process. We assume that students answer these anonymous instruments honestly and willingly. Yet, do they? This study asked the students through a qualitative open-ended survey about their general attitudes toward the evaluation, how conscientiously they responded, what purposes they think are served by the evaluations, and what should happen to teachers who consistently receive poor evaluations.

Saturday, May 21st, 2005

Building L2 fluency: knowing how to say what you want to say.

Speaker: Brent Wolter
Time: 3:00 PM - 4:00 PM (Sat., May 21st, 2005)
Fee (JALT members): free
Fee (One-Day members): 1,000 yen
Prefecture: Okayama
City: Okayama
Venue: Okayama Sankaku Building near Omotecho in Okayama city
Description: Fluency is one of the most coveted skills of foreign language learners. However, most of the current discussion on fluency centers on the notion of automaticity. Automaticity is the ability to subconsciously process language

knowledge, and although it is certainly an essential component of any model of fluency, it is only one part of a larger and more complex puzzle. In this presentation, I will argue for a more comprehensive understanding of fluency

that also takes into account the �eburden of expression' for speaking situations. I will then suggest how the teaching of lexical chunks and

formulaic language can lower the burden of expression for our students and, in the process,

improve fluency.

Hybrid English Classes

Speaker: Richard Lemmer
Time: 4:00 PM - 5:00 PM (Sat., May 21st, 2005)
Fee (JALT members): free
Fee (One-Day members): 1,000 yen
Prefecture: Okayama
City: Okayama
Venue: Okayama Sankaku Building near Omotecho in Okayama city
Description: As an increasing number of students have internet access at both home and school, the use of hybrid classes, which combine face 2 face instruction with an online component, has become a practical means of introducing EFL learners to online learning activities. This presentation will report on the activities in a hybrid class for high school students. It will provide an overview of the three main areas of computer mediated communication used in this class; WebQuests, international e-mail exchanges, and discussion forums. The central platform for this class was the Moodle course management system. Class projects were designed to promote inquiry based learning and a recognition and awareness of other cultures, to improve computing skills and to provide an opportunity for learners to use English in a practical and authentic manner.

Saturday, June 18th, 2005

Teaching strategies and classroom materials for TOEIC

Speaker: Ritsuko Uenaka and Seiko Korechika
Time: 3:00 PM - 5:00 PM (Sat., June 18th, 2005)
Fee (JALT members): free
Fee (One-Day members): 1,000 yen
Prefecture: Okayama
City: Okayama
Venue: Okayama Sankaku Building near Omotecho in Okayama city
Description: The TOEIC test appears to be gaining in popularity each year but some teachers do not know very much about it or how it can be approached. In the first half of the talk the presenters will share their experiences of teaching TOEIC focusing on various classroom strategies, and highlighting some key problem areas (for example, teaching for the test versus 'normal' teaching). In the second part of the presentation the presenters will talk about their experience of publishing a text book for teachers who are thinking about publication but do not know where to start. They will also discuss various lessons they have learned that may be useful to other teachers who are thinking about teaching TOEIC.

Saturday, July 23rd, 2005

Noticing gaps in cross-cultural understanding

Speaker: Eiko Nakamura and Yuri Okunishi
Time: 3:30 PM - 5:30 PM (Sat., July 23rd, 2005)
Fee (JALT members): free
Fee (One-Day members): 1000 yen (students 500 yen)
Prefecture: Okayama
City: Okayama
Venue: Kooki Kominkan near Okayama City Central Library
Description: The two presenters, who have been involved in exchange programs for many years, will introduce a task-based learning approach for cross-cultural study. Starting from the point that being aware of gaps in cultural situations is necessary for intercultural understanding, two types of such gaps: �eexpectation gaps�fand�ecommunication gaps�f will be shown. Through a problem-solving task participants will then be guided to uncover and understand different values in inter-cultural understanding.

Wednesday, October 12th, 2005

Four Corners- Talking Texts

Speaker: Clyde Fowle
Time: 6:30 PM - 8:30 PM (Wed., October 12th, 2005)
Fee (JALT members): free
Fee (One-Day members): free
Prefecture: Okayama
City: Okayama
Venue: Okayama University Department of Education Room 5101
Description: Setting up speaking activities that work is always a challenge. The three major obstacles facing teachers seem to be

a) do the students have anything to say on the subject;

b) do they have the language required to complete the activity;

c) do they have the confidence to use the language to complete the task.

This workshop will look at how short texts, both reading and listening, can be used as a springboard for speaking activities. I believe that topical texts can act as a stimulus to students helping unleash their background knowledge on a subject. Texts can also provide useful language input offering students a model of the language being used and suitably designed tasks can help support students�f own production.

In this session participants will look at the benefits of using texts as a springboard for speaking activities with reference to several example texts.

Participants will be then given an opportunity to work with a selection of texts to create follow-on speaking activities to use with their learners.

Sunday, November 20th, 2005

Grammar Dictation

Speaker: Shirley Leane
Time: 3:00 PM - 4:00 PM (Sun., November 20th, 2005)
Fee (JALT members): free
Fee (One-Day members): 500 yen
Prefecture: Okayama
City: Okayama
Venue: Sankaku A Bldg. 2F
Description: Grammar Dictation is quite different to traditional dictation in that it is a type of information gap activity that requires the learners to interact with each other to complete the task. It requires students to be actively involved in the lesson.

On November 20 I will explain the procedure of a grammar dictation activity, then demonstrate a typical lesson that I hope will be both challenging and fun for JALT members. Finally we will discuss how a simplified activity could be used in your own classes.

Letting Rock Music Move Us in the EFL Classroom

Speaker: Scott Gardner & Ian Nakamura
Time: 4:00 PM - 5:00 PM (Sun., November 20th, 2005)
Fee (JALT members): free
Fee (One-Day members): 500 yen
Prefecture: Okayama
City: Okayama
Venue: Sankaku A Bldg. 2F
Description: Popular music is often touted as useful linguistic and cultural material for EFL classrooms, but it is just as often belittled for its cultural hegemony and its use as simple student entertainment. Instead of co-opting it into pre-decided classroom aims or using it as classroom filler, teachers should consider this music�s original goal�to emotionally transform its audience�and through it try to convey something to their students that transcends simple language and culture study.

Saturday, December 10th, 2005

Functions of fixed expressions and idioms and metaphors in two different genres in English

Speaker: Nobuko Tahara
Time: 3:00 PM - 5:00 PM (Sat., December 10th, 2005)
Fee (JALT members): free
Fee (One-Day members): 500 yen
Prefecture: Okayama
City: Okayama
Venue: Sankaku A Bldg. 2F
Description: Fixed expression, idioms and metaphors are widely seen in many texts but their functions are not often understood. The presenter will report on the study of the distribution of these vocabulary types in two kinds of English texts (an information report and an analytical exposition), and the transferability of their functions into the Japanese translated texts. The examination of the English original texts is conducted from two discourse views: one represented by generic stages and the other by textual patterns. It shows that the use of these vocabulary items in the texts reflects the organizational structure of the text and their purposes. Also, an examination of the transferability of the vocabulary functions into Japanese makes such functions clearer in the English texts.

After the meeting we will have drinks at a nearby German restaurant and then the chapter bonenkai.

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