Category: Uncategorized

  • Revisiting Mechanical Speaking Practices – Emiko Kaneko

    IMG_5595 On Sunday, we had a visit from Emiko Kaneko from the University of Aizu, in Aizu Wakamatsu, Fukushima. She was in Morioka to give a talk about mechanical speaking practices such as repetition and drilling. Traditionally, when we think of these practices, we are reminded of endless sentence and vocabulary lessons at grade school. While there has been a push to more hands-on learning with foreign speakers, Emiko believes that there is still a need for more explicit learning techniques, and studies have shown that they are effective in improving the students language ability. She added that not all students have access to native language speakers or the ability to travel overseas.

    Emiko’s talk focused on how educators traditionally use mechanical speaking practices, and how we can adjust the way we use them when teaching lower level students who aren’t able to generate their own conversation patterns during class. Emiko added that generally, Japanese students can be shy around fellow students that are not in their peer group and it is difficult for them to even make small talk in Japanese.  She lists a number of teacher directed techniques such as shadowing, read-and-look-up and mimicking, and shows how these techniques have had a positive impact on the language creation abilities in students.

    Emiko wanted to emphasize that language acquisition is something that still requires a lot of time and patience. Thousands of hours are necessary to gain fluency. However, she is confident that mechanical speaking techniques are still some of our best tools for getting our students up to fluent levels. We want to thank Emiko for taking the time to come up and share her research with us.

    Reported by Jason Hill

    All photography ©2014 Jason Hill

  • The First Annual Michinoku English Education Summit

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    I have just gotten back from Hachinohe,  where The University of Hachinohe, together with Iwate JALT hosted the first Michinoku English Education Summit, or M.E.E.S. for short. This was a one day event packed with dynamic speakers.  The theme of the summit was ‘Collaboration’, and it was the first summit of its kind in Aomori. Putting a conference of this size in Hachinohe let people come together and discuss collaboration and other topics without having to travel across the country to do so.

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    The plenary speaker for the summit was Mark
    De Boer, an academic research at Iwate University in Morioka.  He had a spirited opening talk about the death of the native speaker. He spoke about planning out classes in a way that places students in collaborative groups that mimic real-life jobs situations, thus having them use English for problem solving and presenting rather than  simply as traditional classroom environment with grammar lessons and readings.

    Following Mark was Mike Smith, a teacher at the Hachinohe Institute of Technology,  who talked about globalism in Japanese school and the role of ALTs. He spoke about the motivations for English as a foreign language and looked at ways that ALTs an Japanese teachers could create more effective classroom environments. He also brought up the topic of costs of EFL in Japan.

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    After Mike, Ben Shearon gave a lecture about getting your ideas off the ground in schools and how to sell them effectively. Ben is a lecturer at Tohoku University. He believes that recruiting and collaborating with others helps get ideas off the ground. He suggested growing new projects slowly and carefully, and getting proper the proper funding to make them work.

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    James Hobbs from Iwate Medical University told us about running a medical lab class that taught practical English by getting the students to learn and collaborate with each other, much in the same way Mark spoke of in his opening talk.  What started out as idea pitched in a report, ended up begin a successful class that has enhanced the English abilities of the university’s students.

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    To wrap up the morning session, Sean Anderson gave an intro to his popular English Learning Card game Question Quest. He gave an overview of his motivations for creating the game and have a quick tutorial on how to play it.

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    After a ninety minute lunch break, the afternoon sessions opened up with a workshop that let all participants collaborate themselves and discuss how the morning talks might be applied in their own realms of English Education. The workshop was divided into two one-hour segments, with participants switching groups between sessions.

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    Conferences of this size can often be a logistical nightmare, however the First Annual Michinoku English Education Summit was more than up to the challenge. Not only was it the first conference of its kind in Aomori, but it drew a  sizable number of attendees and speakers. This can only help it further reach English education professionals in the future.  I look forward to the next one.

    A big thanks to Greg Anthony and Barry Grossman at The Universtiy of Hachinohe for putting this amazing conference together. I’ve placed a few more event photos at the bottom of the article.

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    Reported by Jason Hill

    All photography ©2014 Jason Hill

     

  • Welcome to the New Iwate JALT Website

    You’ve found the new website for Iwate JALT. My name is Jason Hill and I am the new publicity chair for Iwate JALT. We are going to be using this site to publicize upcoming events and write about English language teaching around Iwate. If you are an English educator in Iwate, JALT has a number of resources you might want to check out. Please stayed tuned for exciting new events coming soon from Iwate JALT.