Date: Saturday, May 12, 2012 (1:00-5:30)
Venue: Kochi University, Humanities/Jimbun Bldg, 5th Floor, Meeting Room 1
Sponsors: East Shikoku JALT & Matsuyama JALT
Website: http://esjalt.org
JALT Members and students: free
One-Day Member Fee: 1000 yen
Download the conference handbook here.
Keynote Lecture: Mike Guest (Miyazaki University)
Deculturizing language for communication – Can it be done?
Although most teachers are aware that cultural baggage may be attached to language, explicit ‘culture learning’ in the EFL classroom may actually serve to distance learners psychologically from the target language by presenting yet another communicative hurdle, one that is particularly susceptible to ‘othering’. Perhaps we can relieve students of this burden by taking some leads from the emerging analysis of ELF (English as a Lingua Franca) and – of all things – modern approaches to teaching grammar.
Matsuyama JALT Featured Speaker: Jim Ronald (Hiroshima Shudo University)
Bringing Pragmatics to the Classroom
Pragmatics is in the air we breathe – in how we express what we say or write, in how we catch each other’s meanings or feelings, in how we respond… Except in our language classrooms, where, very often, meaningful language use is filtered out, leaving only sterile, context-free language practice. This English many of our students experience is an alien language: direct, grammar-bound, and unsociable. Through this presentation we will explore various ways to increase real, pragmatics-sensitive communication in the classroom.
OUP Featured Speaker: Grant Trew – (Oxford University Press)
Business English and the TOEIC
Courses for practical workplace English are usually taught separately from test preparation courses, and there is the perception that the skills, language and classroom activities required by each are significantly different.This presentation will look at these two types of courses and show that they are much more similar and complementary than many teachers and students believe.
Presentation sessions:
Jennie Kern: The Effects of Planning and Task Type on Narrative Evaluation
Sean Burgoine: Incorporating Pronunciation Activities into Conversation Classes
Harry Carley & David Paterson: The past, present and future of a Travel English course
Samuel Barclay: Do we have an accurate picture of our students’ vocabulary knowledge?