Tag: language

  • Music and language in the brain: Ways to use music to facilitate language learning – Amanda Gillis-Furutaka

    • Date: Sunday, February 26 1:30pm
    • Location: Online – Zoom link included when you register for event
    • Cost: JALT Members – Free. Non-member – 500 yen
    • Event Registration is here: https://iwamorifeb26.peatix.com/view

    Outline: Music is found in all cultures worldwide. It is an international language that communicates emotion across other language barriers. Importantly, listening to music involves the whole brain. We will explore how music is processed not only through our ears and auditory cortex, but also through our senses of touch and sight, and how we can recall music through visual and tactile stimuli as well as an audio stimulus. We will experience howinstrumental music activates areas of the brain associated with language. And understand why motor areas of our brain are activated automatically when we hear music, even when we are sitting or lying still. These phenomena explain why using music in a classroom is especially stimulating and conducive to learning. Participants will be invited to share the ways in which they use music in their classrooms and the positive outcomes they have experienced. The presenter will also introduce additional suggestions for using music to stimulate language learning both in the face-to-face classroom and when teaching online.

    Bio: Amanda Gillis-Furutaka is a professor in the Department of English at Kyoto Sangyo University. She has an MA in TESOL from the University of Birmingham and a PhD in music from the University of London Goldsmiths College. She has taught in a variety of countries and researched in a variety of fields but her main interest these days is how to apply the latest findings in brain science to the language classroom. She is currently the Coordinator of the JALT
    Mind, Brain, and Education SIG.

  • February 27, 2022: Dr. Jackie Steele

    Event Date: February 27, 2022 Sunday, 1pm 
    Location: Online (Register with Peatix here!)

    Come and join us on February 27th for our event with Dr. Jackie Steele.

    Co-sponsored by the JALT CALL and GALE SIGs and the Iwate-Aomori, Kyoto, Okinawa, Saitama, Shizuoka and Yokohama JALT Chapters. 

  • Embracing Folk Culture through English Language Courses – Ben Grafström

    Date – January 30

    Time – 2:00pm – 4:00pm

    Venus – Online – Zoom Link TBA

    Event Page – https://www.facebook.com/events/323838102984391

    Ben Grafström (Akita University)

    Abstract

    This presentation is a reflection on my teaching practices—specifically, those I use in a class called “English Conversation for the Humanities” for first year university students. This class (in Japanese, Bunkei eikaiwa) is a core curriculum course for humanities and social science students. By selecting a cultural theme for the course (e.g., time studies, textual analysis, folk cultural studies), I tend to emphasize the “humanities” component over the “conversation” one. Since my background is in Japanese literary and cultural studies, emphasizing the bunkei provides the students with interesting course material as well as increases my motivation as a teacher.
    Keeping in mind that the ultimate purpose of the course is to improve students’ English language ability, I use a number of approaches that will meet their needs as foreign language learners. The approaches I rely on most are Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL), English Medium Instruction (EMI), Integrated Learning, and Active Learning. In this presentation I will share my successes with CLIL, EMI, and Integrated Learning, and my failure with Active Learning! Educators do not always share their failures with each other in public forums, but in so doing I hope to reflect on my teaching practices with colleagues so that we may all progress as educators together.

    BIO

    Ben has an M.A. in East Asian Language and Literature with a concentration in Japanese literature from the University of Colorado, Boulder. He is currently a lecturer at Akita University, where his course load mainly consists of English for Academic Purposes for 1st and 2nd year students.Ben has been in Japan for 13 years—3 in eastern Hokkaido and 10 in Akita. Before coming to Japan he was a high school teacher at Monsignor Bonner High School, just outside Philadelphia, and a graduate student at the University of Colorado, Boulder.