2015 Lightning Presentation Night
Various Presenters

The chapter held its annual pecha-kucha night, which featured six presenters discussing a variety of topics related to language teaching and learning.

Andrew Quentin, 16 Communicative Classroom Activities Using the 4 Strands. Andrew discussed how to address four key areas to language instruction: meaning focused input, meaning focused output, language focused learning, and fluency development. He offered a wide array of practical lesson ideas for implementing these strands in a variety of classroom settings.

Jason McDonald, Presenting Like a Boss - Hints and Tips for Great Presentations. Jason discussed several ways to improve presentations at both a formatting and organizational level. He alluded to several famous presenters and the techniques they use such as making use of props, keeping slides simple, and making sure there is a minimal amount of visible text on each slide.

Zack Robertson, We Teachers Are Weirder Than We Think. Zack talked about how language teachers bring with them certain ideas about self-esteem and achievement that we consider universal but are actually culturally informed. He went on to discuss a study held in both Canada and Japan which suggests that Japanese and Canadian students hold fundamentally different conceptions of the idea of self-esteem, which resulted in drastic differences in motivation to achieve in an experimental setting.

Markus Yong, Game Theory in English Teaching. Markus discussed the theoretical components of what constitutes a game, important aspects being voluntary, enjoyable, challenging, and containing rules or structure. He offered ideas for incorporating elements of game design into normal classroom instruction to make the activities more enjoyable for students such as integrating a story or randomization.

Stephen Case, 20 Books 20 Thoughts. For his presentation, Stephen introduced twenty books that he felt offered benefit to English teachers, both directly and indirectly. The books covered a wide variety of topics and genres, some directly related to language teaching while others were more focused on personal discovery and development.

Charles Ashley, Challenges of Teaching Pronunciation in Japan. Charles discussed some of the unique challenges facing Japanese learners in developing pronunciation skills in the English language. He pointed to several linguistic and neurological reasons for why Japanese learners often struggle with certain English sounds, and offered practical approaches to dealing with the topic in the classroom. He went on to suggest that overemphasis on pronunciation is not the best pragmatic use of time in the classroom and that we as teachers should instead remain focused on communicating as the primary focus of classroom instruction.
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