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TESOL Situated Development Mini-Conference 2010: 'Astonishing Research'

Thursday, November 18th, 2010, 5:50 PM - 9:00 PM

Speaker: Nur Hooton, Jerry Talandis Jr, Oliver Mackie, Hayet Amdouni, Tim Marchand

Professional development for EFL teachers: Aston University in collaboration with the JALT West Tokyo Chapter and Toyo Gakuen University invites you to an evening of presentations exploring the topics of collaboration, pedagogy, corpus, course design and professional development.

17.50-18.00: Doors open

18.00 - 18.25:
Volunteer journal production: The behind-the-scenes story of JALT Publications' The Language Teacher
Jerry Talandis Jr. (Toyo Gakuen University)
Throughout its nearly 20-year history, JALT Publications' The Language Teacher (TLT) has been entirely produced by an all-volunteer staff. Until this year when the journal moved to bi-monthly distribution, TLT had been the only language journal published on a monthly basis. This presentation will examine how a constantly changing community of volunteers has been able to maintain this production effort over time and argue that lessons learned from this on-going effort can be of use to distance education programs seeking to create in-house journals run by course participants.

18.30 - 18.55:
To be or not to be
Oliver Mackie (Caritas Junior College)
In trying to render students' models of English more accurate, the temptation to remodel or rephrase conventional explanations of grammar may occur, particularly so when the teacher has a substantial knowledge of the students' native language. Before embarking on such, what things should be considered?

19.00 - 19.25:
The use of concordances to teach ESL grammar
Hayet Amdouni (Aston University)
The computer has been widely used in ESL contexts to teach grammar, but most software duplicate traditional approaches that focus on drilling techniques and quiz the learner on the use of the rules put forward by grammarians in grammar books. In this research, computer technology was used to test those very rules and reveal the gap between classroom grammar and real-life grammar. The article reports on a study that compares the use of conditional in grammar books to data from the British National Corpus. Implications of the study findings on teaching ESL grammar will also be discussed.

19.30 - 19.55:
The design process of a university course in "Current Affairs English"
Tim Marchand (Hosei University)
This presentation will look at the steps taken in the design of a university course in "Current Affairs English". Following a framework proposed by Graves (2000), the presentation will examine some of the choices made in terms of assessing needs, developing materials and designing an assessment plan among other things.

20.00 - 20.45:
Post-observation feedback as an instigator of learning and change
Nur Hooton (Aston University)
This session will explore two kinds of feedback: corrective and confirmatory, and explain the ways in which each kind of feedback may have contributed to the learning of a group of student teachers. It will demonstrate, through exemplification from data, how certain kinds of feedback seem to have led to different change outcomes.

20.50-21.00: Closing Remarks

Pre-Registration
Please pre-register to guarantee a seat. Email Andy Boon at: bromleycross@hotmail.com.

More Information
For more information, please refer to the JALT West Tokyo Chapter Upcoming Events page.

Organization: West Tokyo Chapter of the Japan Association for Language Teaching (West Tokyo JALT)

Cost: free

Venue: Toyo Gakuen University, Phoenix Hall, Building One Room 1301, Hongo campus, Tokyo map

Location: Tokyo, Tokyo Metropolis, Japan

Contact West Tokyo JALT

West Tokyo JALT gmail