Category: Talk

  • Upcoming: June 19 – Ben Shearon – Money 101

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    Date and Time: Sunday, 19 June – 1:30pm – 4:30pm
    Speaker: Ben Shearon
    Location: AIINA Rm 602 (map https://goo.gl/maps/kEQo5UV2jPr)
    Fee for JALT members: Free
    Fee for one-day members: 1,000 yen (500 yen for students)

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    Money 101: Personal Finance, Investing, and Retirement for Residents of Japan

    Abstract: 

    Many teachers in Japan would like to get their finances in order, but aren’t quite sure where to start. This exposes them to three big potential dangers: not doing anything, doing the wrong thing, and being taken advantage of by ‘advisors’ or financial institutions.

    This workshop will cover basic aspects of personal finance and investing, as well as specific investing and retirement options for residents of Japan. A reading list of websites and recommended books will also be provided.

     Come with questions, and leave with information and a road map of where to find answers. Putting your financial affairs in order is like planting a tree: the best time to do it was twenty years ago. The second best time is now. 

    Bio: 

    Ben Shearon is an English teacher based in Sendai, Japan. He is passionate about extensive reading and personal finance. Ben runs the teaching blog sendaiben.org and the personal finance site retirejapan.info.

  • Upcoming: Febraury 28 – John Campbell-Larsen

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    Date and Time: Sunday, 28 February – 1:30pm – 4:30pm
    Speaker: John Campbell-Larsen
    Location: AIINA Rm 602 (map https://goo.gl/maps/kEQo5UV2jPr)
    Fee for JALT members: Free
    Fee for one-day members: 1,000 yen (500 yen for students)

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    Discourse marking: Function not Filler

    Talk-in-interaction is more than just the exchange of propositional statements by participants. Speakers suffuse their talk with words and chunks that perform a variety of interactional tasks such as managing turn taking and floor holding, showing the speaker’s attitude to what they are saying and the like. These discourse markers (DM) are among the most frequently occurring items in spoken language and are also key components of spoken fluency, but they are often absent in learner language and are often dealt with in a cursory manner, if at all, in many language courses. This presentation will look at DM in English and examine the meanings and functions of common markers with reference to the literature. The presenter will then go on to describe some ways in which DM can be taught to learners.

    Discourse Marking in the L2 Classroom

    In this workshop participants will have the chance to engage in activities to raise awareness of discourse marking in English and investigate the meanings, functions, pronunciation and usage of common English discourse markers. The presenter will supply materials that can be used in the classroom and participants can practice the activities from a students’ perspective and discuss how to utilize or adapt materials for their own particular teaching context. The session will conclude with a discussion on any issues raised during the workshop.    

     

     

  • Upcoming: January 31 – Diane Nagatomo

    Teaching English in Japan: Understanding Identity Development Through Teachers’ Stories.

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    Date and Time: Sunday, 31 January – 1:30pm – 4:30pm
    Speaker: Diane Nagatomo
    Location: AIINA Rm 707 (map https://goo.gl/maps/kEQo5UV2jPr)
    Fee for JALT members: Free
    Fee for one-day members: 1,000 yen (500 yen for students)

    NOTE: We are in a different room than usual.

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    This presentation for Iwate JALT will be divided into two parts. First, I will describe the results of my recent study that investigated the personal and professional identity development of English teachers in Japan who have chosen to reside here as permanent migrants. Most teaPhotochers come to Japan because of a desire for a temporary overseas adventure, but some decide to make Japan their permanent home and English language teaching their career. In particular, my research focused on foreign women who are married to Japanese men. These women must deal with the racially motivated employment constraints that affect all foreign EFL teachers in Japan, but unlike their male counterparts, they must also navigate gendered waters that primarily view women as wives and mothers. The participants of my larger study are women ranging in age from 25 to 64, and they have lived, worked, and taught in various contexts. My talk at Iwate Jalt,however, will focus mainly on one participant who has been living in a conservative and remote rural area in Japan for twenty years. Through “Victoria’s” narratives obtained from multiple interviews, I will describe the twists and turns of her personal and professional journey in Japan, which began with her teaching as an ALT on the JET program. Using Gee’s (2000) theoretical lens, I will describeVictoria’s resistance in accepting gendered and racial identity characteristics ascribed to her by others, and how she resourcefully turned them into achieved identity characteristics of her own making. The second part of the presentation will be a workshop, where participants will be invited to analyze and discuss their own personal and professional identity development using the four perspectives from Gee’s theoretical framework. Participants will hopefully become more aware that their own personal and professional identity development is the result of interaction with numerous people,not only with students, colleagues, and school administrators, but also with teachers’ own families and with members of the local community as well.

    Bio: Diane Nagatomo has been living and teaching in Japan since 1979. She is an associate professor at Ochanomizu University and her research interests include teacher and learner beliefs, teachers’ professional identity. She has written many EFL textbooks for the Japanese market and her first monograph, Exploring Japanese English Teachers’ Professional Identity, was published in 2012 by Multilingual Matters. Her forthcoming book, also published by Multilingual Matters, Identity, Gender and Teaching English in Japan, will be available from April 2016.