12th East Shikoku JALT Conference
Professional Development Series: Supporting Young Practitioners
Sunday, June 17th (9:30-3:00)
Kochi University, Room 136
Click below on the ‘Continue reading’ link to view presentation schedule and abstracts.

12th East Shikoku JALT Conference
Professional Development Series: Supporting Young Practitioners
Sunday, June 17th (9:30-3:00)
Kochi University, Room 136
Presentation schedule:
9:30 – 9:50
Von Holt – Incorporating Multiple Intelligences in the EFL classroom
This presentation will first provide an overview of Multiple Intelligences theory and describe benefits for the EFL classroom. Students with different strengths are given the opportunity to succeed in class and students gain the ability to communicate more effectively in several different ways and across different media. I will give a quick example of a lesson taught at KU about describing physical appearance (from Talk a Lot). This will consist of a warm up, and several activities that encourage communication and development of each of the different intelligences. How can the average teacher incorporate this into their classes on a regular basis? It is unlikely that a teacher will be able to teach to all of the intelligences in a single lesson every time, but by allowing a larger percentage of students to display their relative strengths, teachers should see increased interest and motivation in their Eikaiwa classes.
10:00 – 10:20
Andrew Oberg – Teaching Vocabulary to Low-Level LearnersTeaching Vocabulary to Low-Level Learners
This presentation will cover 1) how the brain stores and retries words, 2) the nature of lexis/lexis in the classroom, and 3) practical teaching tips; vocabulary cards and notebooks.
10:30 – 10:50
Jennie Kern – Extensive Reading in the Eikaiwa Classroom
This presentation will focus on the implementation of extensive reading in a lower-intermediate English conversation class at Kochi University. We will discuss the practical application of extensive reading in the classroom with a focus on how to get started and keep the momentum going while also taking a look at some of the current results and student reactions.
11:00 – 11:20
Kaoru Watanabe – A Study of the Effective Use of Communicative Tasks
in Japanese Senior High School Settings: Textbook Analysis of Oral Communication I & II
My presentation is about the current status of Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) in the Japanese EFL settings by focusing on the role of communicative tasks in the teaching at local senior high schools. The communication activities in thirteen different Oral Communication I & II textbooks that are currently used in public senior high schools in Kochi Prefecture were analysed to investigate how and to what extent these activities corresponded to the criterial features of tasks identified by second language acquisition theorists. Suggestions are made for how English teachers at Japanese secondary schools can design tasks in the communicative lesson, as well as make the best use of the language activities in the present textbooks.
11:30 – 11:50
Sean Burgoine – 7-Up: Documentary Video Resources for the EFL Classroom
This presentation will outline how the British documentary 7-Up can be used to stimulate conversation about people and personalities. The focus will be on applications for the false-beginner groups, although applications for high level classes will also be touched upon.
1:00 – 1:20
Maiko Ogasawara – Outcomes of High School Oral Communication Classes
This research describes a teacher-student interaction in an Oral Communication class taught by a native English speaking teacher. Though the students are given an opportunity to speak freely, there is not much active teacher-student interaction. This probably results from Japanese classroom culture and the negative washback effect of examinations. To overcome such constraints in Japanese classroom, some suggestions are offered.
1:30 – 1:50
Charlie Robertson – Video Storyboarding
EFL instructors often struggle when trying to create approaches and/or lessons that foster more native-like modalities in their students’ discourse—both spoken and written. Further, many of these instructors wonder how to create project-based approaches that will empower students to understand how rhetorical positioning affects language use. In this presentation, I will highlight one assignment which asks students to solve a mystery: a robbery case. Through several preliminary tasks, students must answer questions about what they know to be true after observing “crime scene clues.” Next, students are asked to make inferences based upon what they think happened, forming a sequence of possible events. Finally, students examine the possibility (or likelihood) of these various scenarios. While borrowing heavily from the ideas of composition theorist James Moffett, students are asked to shift their rhetorical position – from the literal recording of information to actually theorizing what they believe to be likely and/or true about “the case.” The final product is a 9-15 cell Manga Video, scripted and shot by students. For this graded assignment, they must prepare a final script to “report their findings” as police detectives to explain, “What they think happened,” while creating an animation piece to accompany their narrative. The video storyboards help reinforce the importance of sequencing events, both visually and textually, to create a cohesive story that is logically framed. Moreover, this assignment emphasizes the use of native-like modality by requiring students to tell a story utilizing sentences beyond the simple declarative form.
2:00 – 2:20
David Grant – Creating a Moodle-based Extensive Reading Community
This presentation introduces a system whereby students create a portfolio of book reviews, activities and journal entries as a means of recording and assessing their reading history. Using Moodle, teachers can create, manage and assess a community of readers. Although student self-motivation is the foundation of success in an extensive reading program, getting our students to read regularly has been a major problem for many of us. An online community where students interact and depend on each other is a possible solution. I will discuss the developmental stage of my current solution in which I use Moodle LMS.
2:30 – 2:50
Mike Sharpe – Creating and Publishing Study Materials for a Specific Audience
A language teacher may be motivated to do some curriculum development out of a desire to provide students with suitable materials, frustration with a perceived lack of alternatives, personal satisfaction or gain, or some other factor. This can have both personal and professional benefits, in terms of increasing ‘saleability’ in the employment market, providing insights into the challenges faced by EFL learners and offering valuable schooling in related creative skills such as writing and design. The curriculum development framework presented here can facilitate the process, both in terms of efficiency and pitfall avoidance.