Meeting Reports

Reports of our meetings. Click on a heading to see details.

  • Reports for meetings prior to July 2008 can be found in the JALT National meeting archives.
  • If you are looking for details of upcoming meetings, these are available on our schedule page.
  • Click on an event title to see the original meeting announcement for that event.

neuroELT: Focusing on the Importance of Choosing the Right Levels for Our Students Ai Murphy Ai's presentation focused on the idea that it is far more important for classes to be organized based on English level rather than on age. She argued that at many English schools, particularly at the...

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Ways to Ensure Your Students Are Actively Engaged When Reading in Class Amanda Gillis-Futaka Dr. Gillis-Futaka's presentation began by outlining a number of points to lay the groundwork for a broader workshop on methods to engage students while doing extensive/intensive reading classes. She outlined 6 areas that teachers need to...

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2017 Lightning Presentation Night Juha Vaittinen, Zack Robertson, Jason McDonald, Roderick van Huis The chapter held its annual Pecha Kucha night where four presenters each gave a short presentation on various topics related to language teaching followed by a short discussion session. Insider: 20 Questions Made Fun by Juha Vaittinen....

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Resistance on the Brain—Why Student Demotivation is Normal (and What to Do About it) Joseph Shaules Joseph's presentation examined motivation as not only a psychological phenomenon but also a neurological and biological process. Motivation, he argued, cannot be understood as merely an emotion that an individual either possesses or does...

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Money 101: Personal Finance, Investing, and Retirement for Residents of Japan Ben Shearon For his presentation, Ben discussed severall topics related to both short and long-term financial stability and success for language teachers residing in Japan. In the first half he touched issues such as personal spending habits and savings,...

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The Brain is Built for Stories: Using them in ELT Curtis Kelly In his presentation, Curtis discussed why stories and narrative structure are so readily received by the human brain and how language teachers can implement narrative structures in their classes to assist language learning. Curtis explained that the mind...

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Helpful Hints on How to Get Published in the EFL Market in Japan: Making your Proposal Count--Four Industry Perspectives...the Publisher, Editor, Salesperson, and Author Todd Jay Leonard In his presentation, Todd discussed the realities of publishing language learning material in the Japanese market, arguing that in order to successfully establish...

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Developing a Sustainable Extensive Reading Programme Paul Collett and Malcolm Swanson Paul and Malcolm discussed how they have implemented an extended reading programme at their institution with the primary goal of increasing student reading fluency, comprehension, and fostering the the growth of intrinsic motivation towards reading and language study. Over...

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Practice makes Perfect? Colin Thompson In his presentation, Colin discussed how practice relates to language acquisition from both a theoretical and research perspective. The first half of the presentation focused on theoretical aspects of practice and how it relates to language skill development. Certain factors of practice that were mentioned...

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Online Learning, Fluency, and Dysfluency José Cruz and Robert Long In the first half of the presentation, José discussed how traditional textbooks and classroom materials often fail to expose students to authentic spoken English conversation due to the limitations of the textbook medium and the tendency for instructors to use...

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