Event

3 presentations, 2 presenters, 1 audience

Saturday, October 8th, 2016, 12:30 PM - 4:30 PM

Speaker: Alastair Graham-Marr (Abax), Tim Murphey (Kanda University)

JALT's West Tokyo Chapter and Abax are pleased to host three presentations by two well-known speakers in the field. This is a great opportunity for all ELT professionals who seek to expand their knowledge and gain useful insights which may well assist them with their teaching practice in the English language classroom. All are welcome!

• 12:30 Doors Open
• 13:00-13:45 Why Teaching Listening is Vital
  Alastair Graham-Marr
  Learners coming from syllable-timed (i.e. Chinese) or mora-timed languages (i.e. Japanese) often lack an understanding of how a stress-timed language such as English is actually spoken, impeding comprehension. Such learners are often unable to hear words that they know! And this seriously hinders learning. Presented is a look at how listening should be taught to help such learners better hear what they are listening to.
• 13:45-14:30 Teaching the Strategies of Speaking
  Alastair Graham-Marr
  Communication strategies are the strategies we use to negotiate meaning and to take some control in communicative situations. This workshop will give an overview of such strategies and look at how explicitly teaching such strategies can help Japanese students better take advantage of learning opportunities they are presented with.
• 14:30-14:45 Break
• 14:45-16:00 Teaching in Pursuit of Wow!
  Tim Murphey
  In terms of interaction, in terms of identity, how do we get students and teachers to plug in to the wow! of learning. And how do we put big picture ideas like this to work in the classroom?
• 16:00-16:30 Closing Remarks

Presenter Bios:

Alastair Graham-Marr, M. Appl. Ling., has been teaching in Japan for over 20 years. He has presented in Thailand, the UAE, the US, Taiwan and is a frequent presenter in Japan. He is author of Communication Spotlight: Speaking Strategies & Listening Skills, a series of textbooks for Oral Communication classes for high-school and college level students.

Tim Murphy, author of Teaching in Pursuit of Wow! Two Decades of Musings on Maximizing Learning Potential, did his BA in French and German in Fribourg, Switzerland. His MA (University of Florida) and his PhD (Neuchatel) were both in Applied Linguistics. Tim is a very experientially oriented teacher and travels widely giving presentations for governmental and private institutions. He is the series editor of TESOL's four volume Professional Development in Language Education series and is co-author with Zoltan Dornyei of Group Dynamics in the Language Classroom (Cambridge University Press, 2003). His novel on the Japanese entrance exam system, The Tale that Wags (Perceptia Press), came out in 2010 in English and in 2011 in Japanese.

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

Cost: free

Venue: Tokyo Keizai University, Room B202 (map)

Location: Kokubunji City, Tokyo Metropolis, Japan

Contact West Tokyo JALT

West Tokyo JALT gmail