Tag: Andrew Boon

  • Upcoming – September 27, 2015 – Andrew Boon

    Date and Time: Sunday, 27 September 2015 – 1:30pm – 4:30pm
    Speaker: Andrew Boon
    Location: AIINA Rm 605  814
    Fee for JALT members: Free
    Fee for one-day members: 1,000 yen

    !!!!We are meeting in a different room than usual. Rm 605  814!!!IMG_6889

    We loved the presentations by Andrew Boon in June. We loved them so much, we are bringing him back to do two more presentations on September 27. If you missed him the first time, please be sure not to miss these.

    1] The reflective teacher

    In the act of teaching, we have little time to reflect on the successes or puzzles that occur within our classes and can lose valuable opportunities for gaining insights into our pedagogic practice. there is a need, therefore, for practical ways to
    help us think back upon our experiences more deeply and to discover what is actually happening in our classrooms. This workshop discusses the process of becoming reflective and the journey towards pedagogic self-actualization. It also provides
    a number of strategies and frameworks that can be used by teachers to facilitate critical reflection on their teaching and find new discoveries, possibilities, and ideas for research themes there.

    2] Negotiated syllabuses: Do you want to?

    It has been said that negotiated syllabuses can increase student motivation and involvement in the learning process. And yet, learner and teacher reservations towards gaining or relinquishing control of syllabus design decisions can often mean that negotiated syllabuses are difficult to implement. This presentation will look at three different teaching contexts in which negotiated syllabuses (or certain elements of negotiation) have been implemented (business courses, extension center courses, and university courses). It will describe the results of a qualitative research study into whether teachers and students really want to negotiate syllabuses. Finally, the audience will be invited to share their own experiences by answering the questions; have you and do you want to?

    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).

    Facebook event page: https://www.facebook.com/events/1041167942568271/

  • Andrew Boon – Double presentation – June 21, 2015

    I have to apologize for getting this up so late.  On June 21, we had visit from Andrew Boon, an associate professor in the faculty of humanities at Toyo Gakuen University, Tokyo.  He gave twoIMG_6889 amazing presentations. The first was a talk on how to get students speaking during class time by using a new textbook called Inspire.  Andrew  is a co-author of Inspire and he demonstrated that by showing them a series of National Geographic photos and videos, the students could get  into lively discussions about the subject matter. Some of the topics in the textbook included cities and food from around the world. Cengage Learning sponsored this presentation and also had a selection of their materials on display.

    Andrew’s second presentation focused on Facebook groups and how they can be set up to give students a place to interact socially online with their classmates and instructors in English. He went over how he set up the groups for his classes and how they are maintained. He gave us a live demonstration of of couple of his groups. It was clear that his students were getting valuable feedback, not only from him, but from their peers. This also got them immersed  in a native language environment. He stressed that you need to be able to actually add your students as friends on Facebook to make this work and that it might not be suitable in all situations.

    Andrew’s presentations were very enlightening. We were grateful for him taking the time to come and visit us in Morioka, and we’d like to thank Cengage Learning for sponsoring his visit. Hopefully we can get Andrew up here again for another talk.