Join us for this special event in collaboration with MASH and ETJ-Kitakyushu. The plenary speaker for this event will be Scott Thornbury who will be talking about How To Make Grammar Easy (By First Making It Difficult!). There will also be three local speakers giving presentations of special interest to JTEs in elementary and secondary schools.
Matthew Jenkins—Fun And Easy-Japanesey!!
Summary: Teaching only in the target language can be daunting for language teachers. In this class, Matthew will teach an activity for an introductory English class, using only English. He will then teach an activity for an introductory Japanese class using only Japanese. He will create a fun, easy and relaxed class with his students using gestures, teachers’ aides, and humor. If you want to make monolingual classrooms fun and easy, don’t miss this presentation!
Bio: Matthew Jenkins has an MA in applied linguistics, a business degree, and is currently completing a Masters of Teaching. He has taught at university, and currently teaches junior high school and elementary school children. His hobbies include surfing, camping, martial arts, and travel.
Yukiko Arima—Easy Steps To More English Use In The Classroom
Summary: According to the survey by Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology, only less than 30 percent of Japanese teachers of English (JTEs) at junior high school reach the expected English level and less than 30% of the teachers use English at least half of the time in the classroom. These results tell us that many JTEs may not feel confident with their own English skills –at least not enough to use more English in the classroom. When JTEs don’t use much English in the classroom, they give not only themselves but also their students less chances to acquire English skills as real communication tools. This creates a vicious circle for language learning. They need to break this vicious circle and to let themselves become active language learners first. However, as the survey showed, there seems to be a big gap between what should be done by JTEs and the reality in the classrooms. Some hints will be suggested to JTEs as their first step to use more English in the classroom confidently.
Bio: After one year of English teaching experience as a new teacher,
I decided to go to Australia to see, hear, and feel a real overseas life. Through the stay in Australia for 7 years, I learned a lot of “生きた英語(ikita eigo)”, which is English that is used in a real communication, not on a textbook.
Having come back to Japan with the academic knowledge and experience of language teaching, and also with “Aussie culture” of course, I’ve been enjoying sharing them with my Japanese students in the classroom.
Hiroshi Otani—Teaching English In English—Easier Advocated Than Done In Japan
Summary: In his college days, the speaker taught English in English at an English Conversation School in Tokyo, and as a student teacher at Kokura High School, Hiroshi Otani spoke almost nothing but English in front of the students from the morning homeroom period through the clean-up periond after class. But on becoming a professional teacher of English a year later, he found it hard to use a lot of English in his class. And basically he experiences the same kind of difficulty doing so at his current school as well. Why is that? His command of English should be good enough for all- English class management, but there are several factors that discourage both the teacher and his students from using English between them in Japan. Nonetheless, Japanese high school teachers of English will have to teach English primarily in English according to the new guideline that is to start in April, 2013. He will share some ideas about how JTEs can start teaching English in English for their students and briefly discuss several factors that hinder many Japanese people from using English.
Scott Thornbury—How To Make Grammar Easy (By First Making It Difficult!)
Summary: Traditionally, grammar is presented, practised and produced (PPP). Durable learning, however, probably depends as much on the learners discovering things for themselves, and the raising of awareness that results. How can teachers engineer this? One way is by “problematizing” grammar, that is, by posing grammar problems, the solving of which may trigger a restructuring of the learner's internal grammar. Combined with personalization, you have a PP approach, as opposed to the old PPP one.
Bio: I’m originally from New Zealand, and I started my ELT career in IH London in 1975, where my initial training cost me just £65. Now I work for an MA TESOL program run by the New School, New York. I teach online, with two months’ face-to-face teaching in New York in the summer. The experience of teaching online has been enormously interesting.A glance at my bibliography would suggest that my main interest is grammar – I have written (or co-written) five books with the word grammar in the title. In fact, this is misleading. I’m really more interested in teaching – in methodology, in fact – and grammar teaching just happens to be part of that.
Location: Kitakyushu International Conference Center. I
Entry Fee: ¥1,000 (members) ¥2,000 (non members).
More details: http://tinyurl.com/32dsd74

Next Meeting Previous Meeting