The Kyoto Chapter of the Japan Association for Language Teaching

Kyoto MyShare @ Campus Plaza, Kyoto – photos from the event now available

Educators were invited to present their research or an aspect of their teaching practice. In this event, we continued our tradition of offering insightful and useful research as well as experience-based ideas to help start your classes at the beginning of the new year. The event was held in person and was a good chance to network and meet local chapter members.

Kyoto JALTでは、教員の皆さまに、自身の研究や教育実践をご発表いただけるMy Shareイベントでした。本イベントは対面での開催予定ですので、ネットワーク作りや他の地元の支部会員と知り合えるよい機会になりました。

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Event Information

• Event Type: Face-to-face
• Date: 25 March, 2023
• Location: Campus Plaza, Kyoto
• Fee: JALT members = free, non-members = ¥1,000

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Schedule

Time	Session 1 (Ritsumeikan Room, 6F)	Session 2 (Kyoto Gaidai Room, 6F)
9:45	Registration
10:00	Opening
10:05	ChatGPT – A threat or a productive tool? Sean Banville – Tottori University of Environmental Studies	Learning from the essays of my senior high school students Leilani de Vera – Doshisha Graduate School of Global Studies
10:40	PechaKucha™ for secondary EFL learners Edward Escobar – Kyoto Gaidai Nishi High School	A manga-based approach to college-level writing skills Takako Yasuta – Fukushima Medical University
Break
11:30	Technology mediated EFL settings Tomotaka Shiroyama – Nagoya University	EFL activities using self-graded Google forms, a useful and easy-to-do activity for your students Erin Noxon – Sagano High School
12:05	Interactive reading task using poems: Comprehensive, writing, and critical thinking skills to intermediate ESL learners Erika Tavesa – Temple University	“Learning Commons” as spaces for English language learning in the Kansai area Gabriel Toma – Ritsumeikan University
12:30	Closing

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Abstracts

ChatGPT – A threat or a productive tool?

Sean Banville – Tottori University of Environmental Studies

The launch of the chatbot ChatGPT in November 2022 has sent shockwaves throughout the field of education and beyond. Educators have been wondering how this new platform, and others that will follow, will affect teaching and learning. Some teachers have expressed fears that it might mean the end of homework. Will chatbots be a threat in the classroom or a useful tool? The presenter will share ideas on how learners can use chatbots to enhance their writing, speaking, vocabulary, grammar, and independent learning. There will also be ideas on how teachers can use this technology more productively to create materials, improve their knowledge of matters related to ESL, and check and grade homework. In addition, the presenter will highlight a few of the challenges ChatGPT presents.

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Learning from the essays of my senior high school students

Leilani de Vera – Doshisha Graduate School of Global Studies

Composing written works like essays and short stories remain to be one of the tasks that students heavily struggle with at many schools. The difficulty is doubled when students are asked to write in a foreign or secondary language, like English. In Japan, this phenomenon is more noticeable in Junior and Senior High Schools where students are given more challenging English writing tasks at school. The pressure of other subjects like Math and Sciences, and the low motivation of Japanese students to be better in English add to the reluctance of students to produce good written work in English. Under these tough conditions, English teachers come up with different strategies to help students easily accomplish their writing tasks. Some teachers give a structured linear process of writing. Some use a more free-flowing writing process. What other strategies might English Language teachers help Japanese students make writing tasks easier and more enjoyable for students? This presentation will share some insights and learnings taken from the final essay projects of some senior high school students at Doshisha Girls’ Junior and Senior High School. Drawing ideas from the Cognitive Process Theory of Writing, this presentation will take a look at the finished essays of senior high school students and discuss how these written works can provide useful insights for teachers to use in designing their writing tasks in the future.

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PechaKucha™ for secondary EFL learners

Edward Escobar – Kyoto Gaidai Nishi High School

This workshop will take you through a scaffolding process of introducing a PechaKucha™ presentation format, a presentation of 20 slides spoken at a speed of 20 seconds per slide, to secondary EFL learners. As Escobar described in a recent The Language Teacher: MyShare column (November, 2022), using a PechaKucha™ format can “…encourage students to deviate from the traditional presentation style of slide reading [and bullet points] towards a more streamlined story supported by simple images.” Workshop participants will get first-hand experience in creating a 20-second monologue from a single image, create a story from random images in a 20×20 relay activity, and engage in discussion on how a PechaKucha™ presentation format can be used to better students’ presentation skills in your classroom.

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A manga-based approach to college-level writing skills

Takako Yasuta – Fukushima Medical University

This presentation introduces a Manga-based approach that encourages students to use English for a real-life purpose. The project provides useful information to foreign residents and promotes local businesses. Through the project, students learned both academic and colloquial English, sociolinguistic appropriateness, and academic skills such as how to use licensed materials correctly. When making Manga, “role language,” a set of linguistic features that are psychologically associated with certain character types, played an important role. It showed students how to use particular English expressions appropriately in a given context. Fifty health sciences majors participated in the project. They made English Manga utilizing 3 components; conversations in speech bubbles, formal background descriptions in narrative boxes, and images that visualize sociolinguistic contexts. By making Manga, students learned appropriate English for different registers (i.e., academic writing and conversation) and contributed to the local community. The author will introduce her approach and student work.

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Technology mediated EFL settings

Tomotaka Shiroyama – Nagoya University

In EFL teaching, the main goal for learners is to be able to communicate with a wide range of people. Tragant et al. (2020) argue that many learners have limited opportunities to use English outside of the classroom. According to Hagley (2020), “EFL often became an academic activity with few chances to use English in real-world communicative events.” To address this problem, researchers including myself have used a variety of technologies in their EFL classrooms for the past a few years. In this session, I am going to introduce my past research activities.

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EFL activities using self-graded Google forms, a useful and easy-to-do activity for your students

Erin Noxon – Sagano High School

Have you used self-grading Google forms? They do take a little time to initially set up, but once they are ready to go, all you have to do every year is clean out the old answers and send them out to your new students. They are great for vocabulary quizzes, listening activities, essay activities, formative assessments, and so much more. As an example I will show you a self-grading listening activity that I use every year which includes a video for the students to watch, questions for them to answer, and a Cloze activity. As a bonus, I’ll give you copies of all of my forms so you can use them yourself! Save yourself so much time, use Google forms, and use them in a powerful way that will not only help you, but also your students.

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Interactive reading task using poems: Comprehensive, writing, and critical thinking skills to intermediate ESL learners

Erika Tavesa – Temple University

Teaching literacy is an essential aspect to second language learners, and teachers should always be willing to take new directions to teach it more efficiently and interestingly. This presentation discusses approaches to English comprehension and grammar while instilling critical thinking awareness in ESL classrooms through interaction with text and peers. Heavily inspired by Bobkina and Stefanova’s (2016) article, “Literature and critical literacy pedagogy in the EFL classroom: Towards a model of teaching critical thinking skills,” Interactive Reading is presented holistically by reading a poem, analyzing text structure, comparing it to the current social context, and creating students’ original text. I will begin with a short review of Bobkina and Stefanova’s (2016) article and how I have modified it to be used in ESL classrooms for intermediate learners, followed by a literature review and particularly the Japanese student identity, and ending with a description of the procedure following the lesson plan and a conclusion and summary of limitations. This project contributes to improvements in learners’ conversational skills, writing skills, and critical thinking skills which will help them beyond just the English classroom.

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“Learning Commons” as spaces for English language learning in the Kansai area

Gabriel Toma – Ritsumeikan University

Although the “learning commons” are facilities present in the libraries of many established universities in Kansai, there is not much research done on how language learning can be encouraged in such facilities. I will try to show some aspects of the accessibility of the “Learning Commons” as spaces for language learning in the Kansai area by pointing out several examples and approaches done by managers to encourage it. Since it is impossible to mention all relevant universities in the area, I will discuss a range of universities to be as comprehensive as possible. Moreover, I will provide some ideas about how language learning can be encouraged in such spaces.

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