The School House Volume 30 Issue 3
The Sapporo Snow Festival is back, and with it, last weekend we had a face-to-face JALT Hokkaido conference. I wish you all could have been there. Don’t we love it when we come away energised and inspired by a session? Well, that was my experience, and I want to share a little of that energy, as I began to feel a fresh wave coming into EFL in Japan.
What inspired me so much was a presentation given by Kristen Cardona & Claire Lee titled, ‘Free OPEN Resources for Professional Development’ and it was truly a treasure trove of online resources. Do you know that the Office of English Language Programs at the U.S. Department of State provides programs and resources for English language teachers and learners? Their focus is on the teacher, supporting them and offering professional development. I give a brief overview of the session in this edition. I’m confident you will find something to inspire you.
First of all, for this edition, our keynote speaker for JALT International 2022, Kensaku Yoshida, has kindly written up his presentation for us titled, ‘The Importance of Knowing the Needs of the Students’ that gives us food for thought. He discusses factors that impact students’ learning in the classroom.
He explains that students who are taught by teachers using all four skills (five areas) in their teaching are more highly motivated to use and understand English than those who are not. However, these results do not reflect the students’ English test scores. In other words, when a student says he/she likes English, it does not necessarily mean that
he/she has high scores in English tests. The point to note here is the importance of integrating all four skills and five areas in teaching English because that’s what seems to motivate the students most in wanting to learn English.
I’ll stop there, and let you enjoy reading Yoshida sensei’s article (and note, some of the tables contain URL links to the sources in Japanese), and take a look at some of the resources Kristen & Claire so freely shared with me, and in so doing, with you too.
I hope you have a splendid wrap up to the academic year and a wonderful spring!
Kate
Articles:
The Importance of Knowing the Needs of the Students - Kensaku Yoshida, Eiken Foundation of Japan and Sophia University
Free OPEN Resources for Professional Development: Report from JALT Hokkaido - Kate Sato, Hokkaido University of Science
The School House Volume 30 Issue 2
This year is flying by. In July we had the PanSIG, and we have three exciting events coming up in succession: at the start of October there is the TYL SIG & JALT Okinawa annual conference with Penny Ur as plenary speaker. Please note this event is FREE to you as a SIG member!! Penny is a much-published author, and you may know, or recognize her from her YouTube ‘tips’ videos. Then, next is Tokyo TYL with presentations by Yoichi Kiyota and Ruth Iida, and to finish off this triple bonanza is
JALT Junior (JJ) which runs concurrently with the JALT International Conference in Fukuoka over the 2nd weekend in November. For our JJ plenary speaker, we are excited to inform you that Kensaku Yoshida is going to talk to use about the new Courses of Study. We anticipate this will influence many realms of English teaching in Japan, as the current changes are influencing many aspects of language teaching here in Japan.
Our feature article is appropriately on the topic of factors that have influenced and continue to influence trends in English language learning: Exploring Young Learner Education Trends in Japan to Find Future Directions for Young Learner Research. Before you reach the feature article, both Martin and Gaby have written reports on the PanSIG (on a collaborative writing workshop and the forum and respectively). Finally, Grant starts this issue with a word to you as his term as SIG leader comes to an end.
Through Grant’s patient and encouraging leadership, the TYLSIG core officers have become a stable, well-coordinated and focused group. Although he promises to support us from the wings, we will miss his leadership. If you can come to Fukuoka this November, please join us in raising a glass in thanks to Grant for all he has done.
You may be wondering how to find us at JALT. Please come up to the JALT Junior table and introduce yourself. We would love to meet you in person. If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to ask any one of us – we are here to help.
We, Kate & Gaby, hope to see you at one of the upcoming events, and wish you all the best as Christmas (yes, I did dare write that word) is now only 16 weeks away! The next issue is due out in early 2023. We hope to hear from you as even a short article is
welcome in The School House.
Best wishes,
Kate & Gaby
Articles:
PanSIG 2022 Presentation Report - Martin Sedaghat, Niigata University of Health and Welfare International Preschool
PanSIG 2022 Forum Report - Gaby Benthien, Shumei University
Exploring Young Learner Education Trends in Japan to Find Future Directions for Young Learner Research - Andrew A. Kirkpatrick