How to get your students to read without really trying Thomas Robb Thomas Robb started his reading program at Kyoto Sangyo University in 1988 with popular foreign English youth literature, having students write summaries @ 1 notebook page per 40 pages read. However, syntax, vocabulary and slang in children's books...

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Dogme in ELT: A demonstration Barbara Hoskins Sakamoto In true Dogme fashion, rather than telling us what the approach is about, Sakamoto had us co-construct a definition by sharing in groups what we already knew about it and formulating questions to ask her. We came to the conclusion that Dogme...

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Behavior Management Matthew Jenkins After outlining behavior management theories from Skinner, Canter, Dreikurs, Glasser, and Gordon (he particularly recommends Bill Rogers' Classroom Behavior, which practically applies elements of several theories), Jenkins highlighted what he considers the most common scenarios for bad behavior in Japan: rowdiness, inattentiveness, sleeping, and cell phone...

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Active Participation through Student Response Paul Shimizu & Bill Pellowe Shimizu and Pellowe demonstrated two types of tools for checking student understanding, which they described as ‘low-tech' and ‘high-tech". The low-technology goes back at least 30 years, when "teaching paddles" were used by medical students to demonstrate their understanding of...

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Improve your memory and learning: Practical classroom applications Robert Murphy Many of the ideas in this "Crash Course in the Brain", were credited to Brian Hudson at Harvard University where Murphy does neurolinguistic research to try to become a better language teacher in Japan by helping students retain and use...

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Teaching and learning English humour, in principle and practice Richard Hodson Humor is playing with language, and teaching it can usefully combine authentic input with creative output for a dynamic aspect to second language classes. Richard Hodson has been researching and teaching humor for several years and shared with us...

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Portfolios, Assessment and Institutions: An Interim Report. Hugh Nicoll Nicoll distributed copies of self-evaluation forms and explained how he uses portfolios in his reading classes at a small aspiring Liberal Arts college doggedly pursuing its perceived vocation as a teaching institution in the face of pressure to pursue grant money...

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MASH ETJ JALT Equinox Matthew Jenkins; Yukiko Arima; Hiroshi Otani & Scott Thornbury Fun and Easy Japanesey* Matthew Jenkins used Japanese throughout his talk to demonstrate how exclusive use of the target language, while not necessarily the teacher's native language, may expedite learning, in combination with gestures and role-playing reminiscent...

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My Share: Internet Resources Malcolm Swanson, Jose Cruz & Greg Holloway We had another great session of experienced teachers and expert computer users who are continually finding and testing what's new and applicable to language teaching out there on the net— and provided us with some succinct, accessible explanations. Swanson...

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Dictionary Use Panel Mark Gibson; Eiki Hattori; Go Yoshizawa; David Latz Instructors at primary, secondary and tertiary levels of English language education in the Kitakyushu area shared their successes, failures and insights from using dictionaries in their classes. Frustrated at the lack of appropriate elementary level bilingual dictionaries, Mark Gibson...

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