2016 PechaKucha Night Various Our chapter held its annual PechaKucha night and four people gave presentations on a variety of topics. For the first presentation, Zack Robertson ("Quiet Learners: What to do?") talked about different factors that can contribute to quiet, unenthusiastic classes and what can be done to improve...

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NeuroELT: Practical and highly-effective teaching ideas that you can use right away! Robert Murphy Robert discussed various maxims from his collaborative research related to NeuroELT and the theoretical underpinnings of some of these concepts. He began by briefly introducing Kurt Fischer's dynamic skill theory, a cognitive theory that postulates dynamic...

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Creative Teaching for 21st Century Learners Barbara Hoskins Barbara introduced several approaches for eliciting and developing creativity in the language classroom built around 4 key concepts: Communication, Collaboration, Creative Thinking, and Critical Thinking. Ideas centered around students collaboratively creating learning content together in the classroom, with the teacher as a...

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Bringing Neuroscience and Technology into Your Classroom at Minimal Cost Tom Gorham Tom introduced several ideas for bringing the latest neuroscience and technology into the language classroom. Augmented reality has now become a relatively feasible possibility for language learners utilizing google street view and expeditions with headsets, and Tom demonstrated...

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Freeing up Fluency in a Silent Speaking Class / Katakana & English Yumiko Cochrane; Steve Paton Yumiko Cochrane - Lost in Katakana: Exploring the efforts of loanword cognates on English Acquisition. Yumiko began by stating that 10% of Japanese words are loan words, and only 6% of that 10% are...

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Student-Created Videos Bill Pellowe In this presentation Bill showed his first year university students creating short 1 minute presentations about a variety of topics. An example assignment was students talking about a piece of art, answering three questions: 'what are you talking about?', 'where is it located?' and 'who was...

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The Other Side of the Desk - Managing Teachers Jason McDonald Jason opened his presentation by explaining important factors that employers and administrators must consider when managing English programs at both a private and public level. Drawing from experience, he illustrated how managing a curriculum over time with multiple teachers...

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Adaptable Vocabulary Activities for ESP and Beyond & Engaging Learners with Lateral Thinking Tasks Simon Capper Simon began his presentation by demonstrating the benefits of utilizing lateral thinking puzzles and riddles to create communication opportunities in the classroom and target specific question pattern constructions. He demonstrated how small groups could...

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Speak Now or Forever Hold Your Peace Andy Boon In this presentation Andy discussed how to get students talking in class using examples from Inspire II which he co-authored. He outlined a variety of communicative activities designed to encourage students to speak, build confidence and break the silence usually encountered...

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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...

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