Author: jasohill

Event sponsored by Cengage Learning.

 Presentation #1

Inspire or perspire? Getting students speaking This presentation will introduce the audience to a number of strategies that can help break the silence in the Japanese classroom and get students engaging in meaningful communication. Audience members will be asked to try out a number of tried and tested speaking activities and also be encouraged to share their ideas for getting students talking to one another in the L2. Inspire is a listening and speaking course with additional content reading designed to create a richer speaking experience. The spectacular National Geographic photos and video provide enduring images that inspire learners to discover the world in all its brilliance.

Presentation #2

Facebook Groups: Facilitating L2 Interaction Outside of the Classroom Social networking sites are potentially useful tools for managing classrooms and fostering target-language interaction among classmates. The presenters will describe how they used Facebook groups with 2nd-year English for Academic Purposes classes over three different school years at a Japanese university to encourage L2 interaction outside of the 2 90-minute lessons per week. The presenters will describe setting up the group, the various homework tasks that were assigned, and how the students used the group. Examples of students’ posts will be shown to highlight the potential pedagogical advantages Facebook may offer. Finally, results of a questionnaire to discover student opinions of using Facebook to support their learning will be included. Participants will be able to ask questions and will be encouraged to share their own experiences as well. Bio Andrew Boon is an associate professor in the faculty of humanities at Toyo Gakuen University, Tokyo. He has been teaching in Japan for over 17 years and is an Aston University PhD student. He has been an active member of JALT since 2004, has presented at numerous conferences, and has published several articles on teacher development, motivation, and methodology. He is also co-author of Inspire; a 3-level listening and speaking coursebook (Cengage Learning, 2013-14).