Leaving…
for Chiang Mai tonight, to attend Thai TESOL. It will be my first conference outside of Japan, and I am looking forward to presenting to a completely new crowd.
I’ll be talking about “General English Education in North-East Asia”, based on observations from my visits to universities in Hong Kong and Seoul.
I saw an interesting Youtube mashup of people apologising for not updating their video blogs. The fascinating thing was that everyone, men and women, seven-year-olds and seventy-year-olds, pretty much said exactly the same thing: “I’m sorry I haven’t posted for a while, things have been really busy…”.
I hope to have more for you as we move into 2011.
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by sendaiben
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Annual Review
I’ve been doing an annual review of the year, as well as looking ahead to 2011, and it’s been incredibly useful.
I’ve managed to do both much more, and much less, than I thought. Here is the 30-second report card:
- (A+) presentations and general exposure a big win: I presented a LOT this year, and really enjoyed meeting people at conferences all over Japan. Hoping to continue that next year
- (A) Cambridge English a solid satisfactory: we grew about 50% and greatly improved our programs
- (B) university work went well: my classes need work but are improving
- (B-) I completed all my MA assignments for the year, albeit at the bare minimum level
- (C) I did not write nearly enough, and didn’t manage to finish a couple of really interesting projects
- (D) my work/life balance is still completely out of whack, although I did manage to start watching my diet/exercising
How was your year? More importantly, what can it tell you about how to approach 2011?
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Power Seminar in Nagoya
I went to the latest Power Seminar in Nagoya last Sunday. It was a really long day (10-19:30) and studying for so long with short breaks really took its toll, but I really enjoyed the day and got a lot out of it. There were four presenters, each presenting for 90-120 minutes on their area of expertise.
Kim Horne, on Creating a Culture of Character in the Classroom;
Kaj Schwermer, on Teaching Children with Games and Activities;
Jeffrey Scott, on Dramaturgy and the Art of Classroom Management;
and Peter Warner, on The Four Stages of the English Alphabetic Code.
Overall, it was a great and well-organised event, and well worth the time and money.
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My favourite conference in Japan
The call for papers for my favourite conference in Japan just came out -you can see more here.
The 2011 JALT Pan-SIG Conference will be held in May in Nagano. I really recommend it. Smaller, more relaxed, and friendlier than the national conference, the real selling point is the distilled value.
The Pan-SIG is made up of all the special interest groups in JALT, groups that specialize in things like computer assisted language learning, extensive reading, teacher training, pragmatics, teaching adult learners, and many others. These specialised groups then choose the presenters they want to represent them. In practice this means that the quality of presentations tends to be very high. I seldom feel I am wasting my time at the Pan-SIG.
I will hopefully be presenting on extensive reading (that idea that Eleanor told me to develop). I hope to see a lot of friends there too!
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Raising Expectations, Measuring Results
It was a great honour to be asked to present on student learning outcomes by OUP. I seized the chance to talk about how important expectations are, how raising expectations (of students, teachers, and institutions) is likely to be the key to improving English education in Japan, and how important effective assessment is. Of course I also talked about student learning outcomes and how useful the CEFR can be when thinking about our courses.
I had a great audience for this and thoroughly enjoyed the presentation.