Greetings from the Coordinator: Eric Skier

Hello everyone,

I hope things have settled down for you at work. For me, there has not been much of a turnover at NHK with my older learners, but I do have some new students. It is always heartwarming to see the enthusiasm and cooperation shared among the new arrivals and the continuing students.

As you may be aware, the LLL SIG played a major role in this year's Pan-SIG Conference. The conference,　held at Doshisha University in Kyoto, was an opportunity for a number of SIGs to collaborate while holding their own individual conferences. There were seven official SIGs represented at this year's conference, namely, Pragmatics, Materials Writers, Teacher Education, Testing and Evaluation, Gender Awareness in Language Education, Other Language Teachers, and Lifelong Language Learning, as well as the newly forming Study Abroad SIG. The theme was Diversity and Convergence: Education with Integrity. As language teachers with special areas of interest, we may sometimes focus too narrowly on a particular SIG and lose sight of the commonalities that bind us. I especially liked this year's conference theme because I believe that education with integrity is an area in need of exploration. In addition to plenary speakers Tim Murphy and Junko Yamanaka, some SIGs had their own featured speakers and Don Maybin presented for us. Details of his presentation can be seen in this issue of the newsletter.

Eric
LLL SIG Coordinator