JALT 2000 International Conference
The next JALT International Conference, Towards the New Millennium, will be in Shizuoka next November 2 to 5. See below for information about the plenary addresses. For more details about the conference, click here.
Jane Sunderland Plenary Address
Jane Sunderland, Ph. D
Lancaster University, Department of Linguistics and Modern English Language
Critical Pedagogy in Language Classrooms
In this session I explore two ways in which teachers can develop a critical awareness of their own classroom practices in relation to gender. The first concerns whole-class classroom talk, learning opportunities and gendered academic identities. The second concerns textbooks - not in terms of the familar 'gender bias', but in terms of teachers' own use of gender-related texts.
Anne Burns Plenary Address
Anne Burns, Ph.D
Dean of the Division of Linguistics and Psychology, Macquarie University
Teachers As Learners: Exploring Collaborative Action Research
Sponsored by Tuttle Publishing Inc.
Interested in action research, but not sure what it means? Puzzling over teaching questions but wondering where to start? Pondering about data collection? Wanting to work with colleagues to change classroom practice?
I discuss where action research came from and why it is becoming popular in the TESOL field. Different approaches taken to action research will also be considered. My argument will be that collaborative approaches are most likely to bring about changes in practice.
Gabriele Kasper Plenary Address
Gabriele Kasper
University of Hawai'i at Manoa
Pragmatics in Second Language Teaching and Testing
Pragmatics is now a well-established component in many second and foreign language curricula and classrooms. Language educators can draw on many proposals of how to help students develop pragmatic ability in a foreign language. The question is: which of these proposals are effective? Answers come from the classroom research literature on instruction in L2 pragmatics. This research has examined how students respond to instruction in such L2 pragmatic features as routine formulae, discourse markers, mitigation, speech acts, implicature, and sociostylistic variation. Studies involve student populations with different linguistic and cultural backgrounds, at different levels of proficiency, and learning different target languages in a variety of educational settings.
Kumiko Torikai Plenary Address
Kumiko Torikai
Director, English Language Program; Rikkyo University
What's Happening to English? Language Teaching in Japan
English has always been an issue in post-WWII Japan, but never in modern Japanese history has language teaching attracted so much attention as it does now. The wave of changes in Japan in terms of language teaching is engulfing high schools, universities and even elementary schools. An overview of these changes will give us some valuable insight in our classroom teaching, and hopefully, will lead us into better language education in the 21st century.
