Tag: JALT

  • Double Presentation – Adam Murray – March 3, 2024

    A double feature presentation with Adam Murray at Iwate University.

    Sunday, March 3, 2024

    The Faculty of Education, Building 1 (教育学部一号館)
    Room E22.

    Free Admission.

    Listening: The Essential Language Skill In the first part of my talk, I will talk about the impact of anxiety on foreign language learning. I personally became interested in this area of research from my experiences learning and using Japanese. I conducted a medium-sized study with 176 undergraduate students who were enrolled in compulsory EFL classes for non-English majors at four universities. I will talk about the design of the study in both practical and theoretical terms. I will also describe the relationship between listening anxiety and performance on the one-way listening tasks based on the listening section of the TOEIC test. In the second part, I will talk about listening instruction in the classroom. I will talk about some of the issues that need to be considered when selecting listening materials (authentic vs. textbook). Also, I will talk about students’ perceptions of listening materials in terms of perceived difficulty. Finally, I will demonstrate some supplementary listening activities that can be easily adapted for your classes.

    Formative Assessment for the Language Classroom: Do’s and Don’ts Effective classroom-based assessment is essential for all language classrooms. At the end of today’s hands-on workshop, the participants will be able to: 1. Understand basic concepts about testing and assessment 2. Know the purposes of summative and formative assessment 3. Be able use some assessment tools in their courses

    About Adam Murray: 

    Adam Murray is a professor at the University of the Ryukyus. His research interests are listening instruction, materials development, and classroom-based assessment. He is currently the President of the JALT Okinawa Chapter.

  • Double Presentation with Edo Forsythe and Jim Smiley

    Date: Sunday, January 21, 2024 1:30pm

    Location: AIINA – Rm 807

    Cost: JALT Members – Free. Non-member – 1000 yen

    Event Registration is here: https://www.facebook.com/events/1116409366393717/

    Edo Forsythe
    Student Perceptions of Benefits of Free Writing in English

    Japanese university students are often required to perform free writing activities in their English language classes in an attempt to encourage confidence in writing in English. This session will explain the free writing activities used in the authors’ courses, discuss the changes in fluency observed, and provide qualitative data describing the participants’ thoughts about free writing activities. Attendees will receive ideas for effectively employing free writing in their English language classes to meet students’ desires.

    Jim Smiley
    Multiple document reading in Japanese English majors

    One key aspect of successful academic writing is the capability to assess and evaluate information sources (Moon, 2008). Japanese undergraduate academic writers are known to trust authority sources in preference to anonymous writers when resolving controversial everyday topics (Kobayashi, 2014) and are capable of coherently arguing on social topics with which they have adequate topic knowledge (Stapleton, 2001, 2002). However, the issue of how undergraduate subject specialists deal with unresolved debates in their major field of study remains unknown. The speaker addresses the question of how advanced third-year undergraduate English majors resolve discipline-specific controversies in second- language theory. A mixed-methods research design centring on multiple document reading was used to investigate this question. Participants read two articles that presented conflicting perspectives on the critical period hypothesis (CPH). They answered comprehension questions on each article, submitted a written report on their beliefs about the CPH and participated in a semi-structured interview that collected information about their reasoning and writing processes. The results suggest that the role of prior beliefs, personal experiences and opinions strongly informs participants’ perspectives and that encountering alternative viewpoints may fail to generate a deeper critical engagement appropriate to this level. The presenter will discuss some implications for pedagogy relevant to developing subject specialists’ academic writing in the later years of undergraduate study.

    JALT Officers Meet and Greet after the presentation. 

  • MEES 2023 Presentations and Schedule

    Hachinohe Gakuin University and Iwate-JALT are proud to announce our presentation lineup for MEES 2023. All details can be found on the main event page. Here is the schedule.