Student Reactions to Extensive Reading (Pan-SIG 2013)

I was at the Pan-SIG conference this weekend, held in Nagoya (the excellent Nanzan University hosted the event). This is the video of my presentation (a little shorter than usual):

 

Thanks to everyone who attended.

JALT Pan-SIG 2013 @ Nanzan University in Nagoya: May 18-19

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I’ll be attending and presenting at one of my favourite conferences, the JALT Pan-SIG, this weekend.

I love the pan-SIG because it is a gathering of teachers that belong to special-interest groups (the SIGs) that focus on things they are passionate about. The quality of the presentations and interactions at pan-SIG is always very high, and I always come away with new information, techniques, and memories.

I’ll be presenting on Saturday at 14:30, on student reactions to extensive reading classes.

The full schedule is here.

Hope to see a lot of you there!

Ken Robinson’s latest talk

Ken Robinson, the most popular speaker on the TED website, and someone who talks about education to boot. I’m guessing many of my readers have seen this talk already, but just in case I’m putting it on here.

Ken Robinson is one of my favourite speakers. He is incredibly skilled. Notice how he speaks for 20 minutes in the video above, with no notes, no slides, nothing to support him, and still manages to be compelling and stay on track. I can only imagine the hours of practice that went into that one off-the-cuff seeming talk.

This particular talk struck a chord because it seems to go against everything I’m working on at the moment in terms of setting standards and expectations at my university. However, once I thought about it, our programs involve setting expectations but then giving students a lot of leeway as to how they meet them (which books they choose to read, how they talk about articles, which websites they choose to use). We don’t expect the same from all students, but we expect all students to put in similar amounts of time and effort (or understand the consequences of not doing so).

Having watched the talk, do you see any connection to your own teaching practice?

 

SLIDES: Extensive Reading Explained (ACLL, 28th April 2013)

Itami Airport observation deck

It’s a beautiful day in Osaka, and I am sitting in Itami Airport waiting for my flight home to Sendai.

I was fortunate enough to have the chance to present at the Asian Conference on Language Learning today, on the topic of extensive reading. Here are my slides, in .pdf format:

1304 ACLL Extensive Reading Explained

I enjoyed the conference, especially the chance to meet teachers from all over the world. Thanks to the ER SIG for helping me attend, and Cheryl D. for hanging out and talking shop for a couple of days.

25 Apr 2013, 10:19am
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The ACLL in Osaka

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I’ll be at the Asian Conference on Language Learning in Osaka from tomorrow until Sunday. I’ll be manning the JALT ER-SIG table and doing a workshop on extensive reading at 13:30 on Sunday, details below:

“Extensive reading is becoming part of the mainstream of language teaching, but many teachers and institutions are only vaguely aware of it and are not confident of being able to integrate it into their classes. The good news is that ER is extremely flexible and would be a valuable addition to any language program. This workshop will start with a brief overview of extensive reading: what it is, the potential benefits for learners and teachers, several examples of how to implement it in different contexts, and an overview of resources to get more information. The latter half of the workshop will be open for questions about any aspect of extensive reading.”

Would be great to see you there.