Omiya Chapter

(Read the archived description for the Omiya Chapter)

Omiya Chapter Events in 2005

Events archive by year:
2008 [9]; 2007 [10]; 2006 [10]; 2005; 2004 [9]; 2003 [5]; 2002 [11]; 2001 [11];

Sunday, January 9th, 2005

Program Revision

Speaker: Dann Gossman, Kanto Gakuen University
Time: 2:00 PM - 5:00 PM (Sun., January 9th, 2005)
Fee (JALT members): free
Fee (One-Day members): 1,000 yen
Prefecture: Saitama
City: Omiya
Venue: Sakuragi Kominkan (near Omiya Station, west exit, see map).
Description: What�s the first thing you think of doing when "Program Revision" becomes necessary? If your first reaction is to reach for the publishers' catalogues to see what new texts are available, you may want to re-think the entire process.
In this presentation, Dann Gossman proposes a set of questions to help in discovering and focusing the environment in which the program will operate, and help confirm the various types of resources available to you. Using such focused data, you'll be able to prepare realistic objectives to guide the process of defining the course or courses in the new program.
Ideas for this process will be based on models adapted from organizational development and product improvement, and Gossman's experience working with these models as a consultant in industry, and in the on-going revision of the program at his university. While the examples he'll use refer specifically to his university, many of the ideas are readily adaptable to other situations and levels of education.

Sunday, February 20th, 2005

Tactics for Better High School Language Learning

Speaker: Karl O'Callaghan, Oxford University Press
Time: 2:00 PM - 5:00 PM (Sun., February 20th, 2005)
Fee (JALT members): free
Fee (One-Day members): free (sponsored by OUP)
Prefecture: Saitama
City: Omiya
Venue: Sakuragi Kominkan (near Omiya Station, west exit, see map).
Description: In daily life, we listen twice as much as we speak and four times as much as we write. Unfortunately, as important as this skill is, Japanese high school students are rarely trained beyond the simple level of listening for specific information. Karl O'Callaghan, ELT Consultant for Oxford University Press, will open this presentation with some ice-breaking activities, followed by an overview of the listening process. He will then move on to sampling a few listening activities and exercises designed to give teenage learners tactics for listening that will encourage them to become better thinkers and thus better language learners.

Sunday, March 20th, 2005

Effective Ways to Prepare for the TOEIC

Speaker: Joe Falout
Time: 2:00 PM - 5:00 PM (Sun., March 20th, 2005)
Fee (JALT members): free
Fee (One-Day members): 1,000 yen
Prefecture: Saitama
City: Omiya
Venue: Sakuragi Kominkan (near Omiya Station, west exit, see map).
Description: In the first half, the presenter will demonstrate conversational activities to teach learning strategies and listening skills for the TOEIC. In the second half, the presenter will discuss the findings of an ongoing study of a group of autonomous learners preparing for the TOEIC. Based on the insights coming from the study the presenter will outline effective ways for students to prepare for the TOEIC.

Sunday, April 17th, 2005

The Illusion of Synonyms

Speaker: Andy Boon, Takushoku University
Time: 2:00 PM - 5:00 PM (Sun., April 17th, 2005)
Fee (JALT members): free
Fee (One-Day members): 1,000 yen
Prefecture: Saitama
City: Omiya
Venue: Sakuragi Kominkan 5F (near Omiya Station, west exit,see map).
Description: This presentation questions the synonymic relationship between bias and prejudice. Firstly, the two terms are compared using their entries in the New Oxford English Dictionary. Secondly, the investigation examines bias and prejudice as they occur in a corpus to discover points of overlap and departure. Finally, the presentation discusses a number of implications for vocabulary teaching.

Sunday, May 29th, 2005

My Share

Speaker: JALT Omiya members and guests
Time: 2:00 PM - 5:00 PM (Sun., May 29th, 2005)
Fee (JALT members): free
Fee (One-Day members): 1,000 yen
Prefecture: Saitama
City: Omiya
Venue: Sakuragi Kominkan (near Omiya Station, west exit, see map).
Description: Give your fellow teachers a mid-year gift at a My Share Swap. Please bring 25 photocopies of an interesting lesson, technique, organizer, game, or other resource to exchange. Don't worry about planning a formal presentation, but get ready to talk about teaching ideas with your peers. Target age or level is not important: kids through adults, beginners to advanced.

Sunday, June 19th, 2005

Current Trends and the Future of Elementary School English Activities

Speaker: Tom Merner, Reitaku University
Time: 2:00 PM - 5:00 PM (Sun., June 19th, 2005)
Fee (JALT members): free
Fee (One-Day members): 1,000 yen
Prefecture: Saitama
City: Omiya
Venue: Sakuragi Kominkan 5F (near Omiya Station, west exit,see map).
Description: Elementary School English: what has happened since its implementation.

Several years have passed since English was added as an option within the newly implemented Sogo timeframe. What are the trends? What are schools doing? Who is teaching? Will English become a formal subject for elementary schools in Japan. Questions are welcome and it is hoped that we can discuss a possible direction schools can take.� Finally, the presenter will introduce a new textbook currently being developed for elementary school English lessons. The series is based on a content-based curriculum and takes a totally new approach compared to other existing textbooks for children

Sunday, July 10th, 2005

A Tinderbox for your Thoughts

Speaker: Hugh Nichol, Miyazaki Municipal University
Time: 2:00 PM - 5:00 PM (Sun., July 10th, 2005)
Fee (JALT members): free
Fee (One-Day members): 1,000 yen
Prefecture: Saitama
City: Omiya
Venue: Sakuragi Kominkan 5F (near Omiya Station, west exit,see map).
Description: Tinderbox, a swiss army knife software tool from Eastgate Systems in Watertown, Massachusetts has become my favorite application for taking research notes, writing,, developing teaching plans, and for coordinating JALT and other communications and planning efforts.

Tinderbox is described by its designer and programmer, Mark Bernstein, as a personal information management tool. It is an outliner, a brainstorming tool, a weblog editor, a research assistant, and can be programmed to perform a host of functions, allowing the user to take notes on the fly, and use the software to help discover the emerging structures of one's data sets, whatever they may be.

In my presentation I will offer a brief introduction to the software,

share some of the ways in which I have been using it in my teaching, research, and JALT lives. Tinderbox is currently available only for Macintosh computers, but the Windows version is coming soon.

So, if you're interested in a flexible and powerful tool that can be adapted to the ways you work (or would like to work), come with your questions.

Sunday, September 18th, 2005

Using Magic in the Classroom

Speaker: David Gann - Seigakuen University
Time: 2:00 PM - 5:00 PM (Sun., September 18th, 2005)
Fee (JALT members): free
Fee (One-Day members): 1,000 yen
Prefecture: Saitama
City: Omiya
Venue: Sakuragi Kominkan 5F (near Omiya Station, west exit,see map).
Description: Since beginning to use mathematical magic in English lessons over five years ago, the presenter has found the fun of magic to be a great motivator. This presentation will feature three magic-based activities that are flexible enough to be used with English students of various ages and skill levels. They are: The Magic Square, The English Decoder Card Trick, and The Criss-Cross Card trick. These activities get and keep students attention while maintaining a professional atmosphere; require almost no preparation; and most importantly, are very easy to perform. None of these activities involve sleight-of-hand, nor do they require special props. The lasting impression of magic effectively reinforces the target structures and vocabulary practiced in a memorable way. The step-by-step procedures involved in doing magic use language containing simple requests, commands and questions about common objects and concepts, specifically counting, adding, writing, pointing, opening closing, choosing etc. They involve listening and responding to contextually similar but grammatically different questions. They incorporate all four skills. Group-based magic tricks, incorporated into a meaningful language task, can take the lesson beyond the teacher-student/entertainer-audience hierarchy, empowering students to use the English they�ve practiced. Criteria for discerning the difference between a great magic trick and an unsuccessful English activity will be discussed. Each of the three activities demonstrated will be rated using those criteria. Examples of follow-up materials will be provided. Lastly, the limitations of magic activities will be mentioned.

Sunday, November 20th, 2005

Two Presentations: Teaching Listening to Low Level Learners;

Teaching the Strategies of Speaking

Speaker: Alastair Graham-Marr (Author Communication Spotlight)
Time: 2:00 PM - 5:00 PM (Sun., November 20th, 2005)
Fee (JALT members): free
Fee (One-Day members): free
Prefecture: Saitama
City: Omiya
Venue: Sakuragi Kominkan 5F (near Omiya Station, west exit,see map).
Description: Teaching Listening to Low Level Learners: the importance of script and of suprasegmental phonology.
Teaching listening effectively means teaching both phonology and knowledge of discourse. That is, giving students a solid awareness and working knowledge of the phonology of natural connected speech, elisions and liaisons, weak forms and reductions helps develop their 'bottom-up' decoding skills while developing student knowledge of discourse, particularly of scripts (those discourses in English that tend to follow a set pattern) helps develop their 'top-down' predictive skills.

Teaching the Strategies of Speaking: helping students with fluency, involvement and clarification strategies.
All of us use strategies when we speak. We use strategies to confirm or clarify what we're saying and what we're hearing. We use strategies to show interest, to maintain and develop conversations. We use strategies that help with fluency. Learners of English in particular use strategies to compensate for their lack of language. This talk introduces a new speaking and listening text, Communication Spotlight, that in addition to giving students practice in talking and helping them with the means to do so, helps students be aware of and learn to use these different communication strategies.

Sunday, December 11th, 2005

My Share and End of year party

Speaker: JALT Omiya members and guests
Time: 2:00 PM - 5:00 PM (Sun., December 11th, 2005)
Fee (JALT members): free
Fee (One-Day members): 1,000 yen
Prefecture: Saitama
City: Omiya
Venue: Sakuragi Kominkan 5F (near Omiya Station, west exit,see map).
Description: Omiya My Share and Bonenkai. Give your fellow teachers a year-end gift of a My Share Swap. Please bring 25 photocopies of an interesting lesson, technique, organizer, game, or other resource to exchange. Don't worry about planning a formal presentation, but get ready to talk about teaching ideas with your peers. Target age or level is not important: kids through adults, beginners to advanced. Afterwards, join the annual end-of-year party.

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