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Sojo University Teaching and Learning Forum (SUTLF).
The language teaching industry is constantly changing, and advancements in the science of mind and brain have the potential to transform language teaching methods. The joint JALT Nankyu Chapter and the JALT Mind, Brain, and Education Special Interest Group (BRAIN SIG) conference aims to examine how the latest research on the mind and brain can be practically applied in educational contexts. We invite proposals from both members and non-members of the BRAIN SIG to make this conference informative and inspiring. Attendees can expect to gain a deeper understanding of how mind, brain, and education intersect, and how this multidisciplinary approach can enhance language teaching practices.
While the subject of brain sciences and language education can be explored in presentations, posters, and workshops, we want to invite proposals from both members and non-members of the BRAIN SIG to make this conference informative and inspiring. If you have research that you would like to share that doesn't necessarily fit into the brain sciences category, don't worry! You are more than welcome to participate. As this is a joint event with SUTLF, a conference that strives to foster opportunities to share research-focused and practice-focused investigations in language education, submissions that fall under other categories of study are more than welcome. When you submit a proposal, you can choose between a Brain Sciences track and a general TEFL track.
As with SUTLF 2023, this conference will offer opportunities for both in-person and online presentations, as well as dual-purpose rooms in which live speakers can be streamed to online attendees. Please be sure to mark yourself as attending either online or in person when you register.
Registration will open on January 1st. Tickets are 3000 yen (3500 for non-members) and free for students. Lunch and networking tickets will also be available.
A workshop followed by informal discussions.
Drinks and snacks are served (some drinks require purchase)
We will look at explanations from brain science about where profanity is processed and stored in the brain, to what extent we can control our production of expletives, and the emotional causes and effects of the use of profanity. We will then turn our attention to our role as educators and discuss whether we should broach this topic with students when they are bound to come across it and what stumbling blocks they may have when learning this language on their own.
Enjoy the art of Sojo University students as you network and enjoy an assortment of drinks and snacks provided by Warm Hearts Coffee.
Similar to the traditional foreign language classroom, self-access language learning, though different in its approach, is also centered around the basic process of learning and acquiring proficiency in an L2. From the point of view of the learner, in either of the two environments, L2 becomes the focus of the process, which in the Cultural-Historical Activity Theory (CHAT) context translates to ‘object’.
At the end of the previous academic year (March, 2023), an interpretive study was conducted among last year’s fourth-year students who were frequent users of the Global Lounge (GL), the self-access center of a provincial university in Japan. Wishing to improve learners’ L2 proficiency, the GL offers learners the possibility to book sessions with a self-access educator.
The data was collected through open-ended questionnaires and follow-up, semi-structured interviews with three of the ten students who replied. One purpose of the study was to reveal the students’ views towards different aspects of their GL sessions as compared with their regular foreign language classes.
According to Engeström and Sannino (2021), “[t]he formation of minimally two activity systems connected by a partially shared object may be regarded as the prime unit of analysis for third-generation [CHAT].” Taking the sessions at the GL and the foreign language classes as two separate activity systems, in this presentation I will use the third-generation of CHAT as a theoretical framework to illustrate how the learners conceptualize the differences between the two, and how they view their role and the educators’ in each of them.
This presentation details an innovative digital storytelling project and its effect on speaking anxiety among Sophomore Landscape Architecture students at a Taiwanese university, undertaken in partnership with an Academic English Course at a Japanese university. The study focused on whether digital storytelling could serve as an effective pedagogical tool to reduce speaking anxiety in an English for Specific Purposes (ESP) setting.
The project was implemented over an 18-week ESP course during the spring semester of the 2022/23 academic year, engaging a total of 35 students who completed both pre- and post-intervention assessments using a speaking anxiety scale (He, 2013). The methodology encompassed a blend of narrative construction, peer collaboration, and digital media engagement, aiming to foster a supportive learning environment conducive to lowering affective barriers.
Data analysis employed quantitative methods to evaluate changes in speaking anxiety levels, with statistical tests applied to pre- and post-test scores to assess the significance of any observed reductions. Preliminary results suggest a statistically significant reduction in speaking anxiety, particularly regarding discomfort with vocabulary uncertainties, oral presentation of critical or complex information, and impromptu group interactions. The outcomes of this study are expected to contribute to the discourse on innovative teaching strategies in ESP and provide practical solutions for educators grappling with the challenges of speaking anxiety.
The benefits of reading aloud have been thoroughly examined and supported by research (Anderson et al., 2003; Isik, 2016; Phillips, 2000; Shickedanz & Collins, 2012; Suggate et al., 2013). Reading aloud is regarded as a positive foundation for children's lives and is indicative of academic and social success (Gurdon, 2019). This case study delves into the cognitive processes of children while being read an English picture book. It aimed to investigate: 1) the cognitive activities observed, 2) the affective responses elicited, and 3) the language learning features. The pedagogical approaches employed were interactive read-alouds (Barrentine, 1996) and shared reading, both of which align with established theories of language learning. Two third-year students from a public elementary school (aged 9) participated in the "English picture book read-aloud" event organized by our university. The reading was conducted by a university student who majors in the university’s Children’s English Teacher Training Course. The research methodology employed participatory observation, wherein one researcher intermittently posed questions to the children during the reading session. These questions were designed to explore the children's thoughts, emotions, and reasoning processes. The discourse analysis revealed that the children exhibited advanced cognitive abilities, including content prediction, analogical reasoning, and inference—skills that are distinctive and surpass what adult listeners might conceive. Additionally, the children demonstrated imaginative and astute visual perception skills when engaging with the illustrations of the book. This study underscores the importance of reading books to children, as it may equip them with essential thinking skills that prove valuable throughout their lives.
This research presentation addresses the linguistic and neural change of one’s first language during second language learning in the second language environment. The participants of the research are three English native speakers (from the U.S. and the U.K.) who came to Japan to study and will stay here for a year. The research uses a neuroimaging technique, fNIRS(functional Near-Infrared Spectroscopy), taking a longitudinal design over a year to examine the interaction of first and second language processing in the brain. The tasks used in the experiment are the Stroop Color and Word Test, Verbal Fluency Task, and Code-switching task. Additionally, linguistic and extralinguistic background data will also be collected to infer which factors are related to the change seen in the language and biological data collected during the experiments. The first experiment took place about the second month after the participants arrived in Japan. The research process is still ongoing and the results of the first experiment will be presented during the presentation.
In tertiary English language education in Japan, the pursuit of academic excellence often overshadows critical emotional and relational factors for effective learning. Our ongoing research delves into the complexities faced by non-national scholar-practitioner faculty members in Japan, focusing on primary insights into well-being and support. Our collaborative model integrates expertise in social-emotional learning (SEL), positive psychology, and conflict resolution, to address faculty vulnerability. Since May 2023, our journey has involved establishing a shared understanding of well-being, conducting a literature review, and formulating research questions. Using an anonymous Google form survey with a WHO5 Likert scale and open-ended questions, we gathered faculty opinions, offering follow-up interviews.
Key questions guiding our research include:
· What is known about the connection between well-being, support, and teaching/learning?
· How do identity and perceptions of well-being differ between Japanese and non-Japanese teaching staff?
· Should well-being be integrated into the curriculum or faculty development?
· What is the relationship between well-being and support in language teaching, particularly at our university?
This 25-minute presentation provides illustrative examples of applying SEL, positive psychology, and conflict resolution in our ongoing research. We will visually demonstrate the application of these models, offering a glimpse into survey methodology and initial observations. Ongoing analysis aims to contribute valuable insights towards a more inclusive, empathetic, and balanced academic community in Japan.
Have you ever wondered how the content you’re teaching in class makes its way into your students’ brains? Well, that journey begins from their eyes and ears, which send information to their Sensory Memory. From there, the salient bit of sensory input–ideally that new content being taught–makes its way to a student’s Working Memory. After a couple of minutes, that new information finishes its travels and ends up in a student’s Long-Term Memory, where everything else they’ve ever learned is stored. Learning accomplished!
While the learning process seems straightforward enough, there are a few roadblocks inside our Working Memory that can derail everything. First, it has limited capacity, so it can only hold so many things at a time. Additionally, some things “weigh” more on the mind, which further impacts how much we can hold in our Working Memory. Finally, things can remain in our Working Memory for about 30 seconds before they disappear forever into the void of unlearned things. It turns out that making that two-minute trek to Long-Term Memory can be quite challenging!
This is where Cognitive Load Theory comes in, which gives us a framework we can apply to our teaching, so we can try and smooth over those roadblocks to learning. Participants in this session will learn about Cognitive Load Theory and discuss ways they can apply its concepts to their classrooms.
We now have an understanding of how the brain does language. Embodiment is the key, meaning that almost all meaning comes from the way your brain records experiences as sensory routines. Language too is stored in motor-sensory models. If you hear the expression coffee-colored dog, you not only activate sensory routines for the sight and smell of a dog, but for coffee too, and more. This view of how the brain simulates the motor-sensory experiences that each word represents gives us insights into language teaching. For example, why stories are so successful, why we have grammar, and why a lot of what we are doing just doesn't work. Let us explore and share at this talk.
Supported by research findings, the Brain-friendly Study Skills workshop proposes a bottom-up and health-conscious approach to enhance learning productivity for you and your students. Bottom-up in order to work on learning problems at the root causes, and health-conscious because, on top of the obvious health benefit to be expected, healthy lifestyles are often more productive. The workshop is packed with digestible science and practical solutions on various intriguing themes. Instead of depending on limited resources like will power or working memory, follow logical steps smiling to the goal.
This session samples a selection of topics and activities from the modules that discuss steps you can take to achieve your life goals, from identifying genuine dreams to day-to-day task management. Genuine dreams have a powerful drive to motivate and support you in achieving the very dreams, but research suggests identifying them can be unexpectedly difficult and we are not even aware of the difficulty. We will look at the two systems in our brain for why dream identification can be so difficult.
The Brain-friendly Study Skills workshops have been successfully delivered at international conferences for the past four years and are adaptations of part of the well-received university courses the organiser has been developing and teaching regularly since 2020. She has taught two languages in three countries, acquired a PhD in the psychology of language in Hiroshima University, and currently teaches psychology and English at Tokyo University of Pharmacy and Life Sciences.
Focusing solely on academic achievement in teaching can lead to missing out on important emotional and relational factors that significantly impact learning. These factors are always present in the classroom and are crucial to students' progress. How educators engage with students can affect the neurological and human connections that influence teaching, which can either facilitate or impede language learning. This presentation aims to highlight these hidden factors so that we can address them in ways that foster effective teaching and learning.
Global companies in Japan require students to possess both 21st-century skills and basic English skills. This practice-focused presentation will show how English can be integrated into IoT education for Computer Science and engineering students in a Japanese university.
Project-based learning or CLIL approaches are increasingly popular in Japan.
This presentation will describe how students from the IoT club were encouraged to build a self-driving car and work on personal projects by learning how to use Arduino microcontrollers and consult English language documentation.
There is hope that this type of activities will be replicated in other universities and be extended to other departments and topics.
The club activities took place in the second semester of 2023 and were attended by a small core of students who documented their learning experience for a local cable TV show.
Additionally, this presentation will describe how a foreign teacher and two Japanese teachers collaborated to ease the students into working in English.
Games and kinesthetic learning can make any lesson’s content more accessible to students. For example, visualizing the differences between DNA and RNA with a drawing or using beads to represent changes in population genetics. The presenter will share four different activities from a CLIL course teaching evolution concepts in English for 3rd and 4th year university learners and participants will get to try them out.
It can be easy for teachers to assume that if they have the correct method, correct approach, and motivated students that learning will take place. However, even with all these things in place, sometimes the most dedicated of learners may show signs of demotivation or slow progress. The core of this problem may be because of both hard-wired cognitive limitations common to all learners and cognitive patterns that have developed due to previous educational experiences. This may be seen most clearly in the transition from high school to university, in which students may be expected to undertake a sudden change from primarily Japanese-led classes to English-only classes. Cognitive theories may offer some insight into the reasons why this causes problems for certain students. In particular, there may be some cognitive limitations that university lecturers have perhaps not taken into consideration. In this presentation, I will look at the problem of cognitive limitations using Anderson’s ACT theory (2002). I will look at how this theory may suggest some cognitive limitations for students in the transition from high school to university. I will then look at how this may manifest as problems in the English classroom at universities. I will finally offer some possible solutions.
Given that attention is an internal process that is hard to observe and the same term “attention” is used to refer to a wide range of experiences and situations, defining the concept of readerly attention poses even more challenges to scholars and educators. Humanities and Social Science researchers have been exploring the mechanisms of readers’ attention by exposing them to narratives and conventional poetry. In this research-oriented presentation, three main sources of readerly attention in contemporary English-language haiku, a genre of short-form poetry, will be discussed: brevity, natural imagery, and juxtaposition. The sources of readerly attention were identified through a cognitive stylistic analysis of textual features of English-language haiku, supplemented by findings of a reader-response study carried out in the Japanese university setting. This exploratory research has shown that the extreme brevity of English-language haiku is a significant source of readerly attention in this genre of poetry. Simple natural imagery expressed in English-language haiku through common language facilitates the embodiment of readerly attention and is decoded by the reader more automatically, freeing the capacity for performing more cognitively demanding tasks, such as construing the overall meaning of a poem. Constructing the global meaning of an English-language haiku poem is heavily dependent on processing the ‘cut’, a conceptual gap between images, also known as juxtaposition. The technique of juxtaposition defamiliarizes the relationship between images encountered in English-language haiku, making it another powerful attention-grabber.
Learners’ successful application of their learning to later practical situations is called transfer of learning. Considering transfer of learning as one of the fundamental goals in education, educational psychologists started to examine what triggers this phenomenon more than a century ago. The central theory at that time was called the identical element theory, which claims that transfer is likely between problems including similar elements. On the other hand, it was largely believed that learners would fail to transfer their useful knowledge when they face dissimilar problems. Since the identical element theory, many researchers have examined it and supported its basic claim, while others have developed and expanded the theory, taking broader perspectives to include more transfer factors around the similarity principle. As a result, when transfer is discussed in recent literature, many researchers refer to the transfer-appropriate processing theory instead, which essentially makes similar claims to the identical element theory but putting more emphasis on learners’ processing rather than problems seen in isolation and detached from learners. Therefore, it is now very difficult to understand transfer of learning from the singular lens of similarity. In order to make the discussion of transfer more applicable to second language education, this presentation tries to clarify three important types of similarity with the help of a diagram containing three elements: contents, contexts, and cognition. The presentation discusses how these three types of similarity foster learners’ transfer, how they interact with each other, and how they might contribute to second language education.
Navigating the intricate landscape of motivation in English language learning, cultivating a positive perception emerges as a fundamental factor. An exploration of this interplay through the dopaminergic system highlights that positive reinforcement not only activates neural pathways but also instigates behavioral adjustments and facilitates memory formation. Conversely, a lack of perceived reward dims these pathways, hindering the formation of new habits and impeding language acquisition. Language learners frequently oscillate between the realms of motivation and apathy during their learning journeys.
This presentation underscores the indispensable link between reward perception and language learning, proposing a valuable solution. The introduction of a simple, practical, and student-centered writing exercise empowers educators to guide students in uncovering personal motivations for learning English, connecting language acquisition with the activation of dopaminergic pathways. This tool aims to help students articulate diverse reasons for learning ESL and feel personally rewarded for their efforts. Educators can leverage this feedback to tailor strategies aligning with the unique motivations of each student.
This presentation will describe how surveys were utilized during the development of a university self-access language learning center. Although we focus on self-access, we hope the insights from the survey will be of interest to teachers focused on classroom contexts.
The center, opened in 2021, provides opportunities for L2 use (English, Spanish and Chinese), cross-cultural interactions, self-directed language learning support and preparation for study abroad. The center caters to students from three faculties and is run by a committee of faculty members and administrative staff.
Based on discussions with students and staff, our analysis of questionnaire results focused on the following areas:
1) Are students aware of the facilities and resources available?
2) Do the two English conversation lounges meet the needs of the student body and provide a welcoming atmosphere?
3) What resources and events would be of most interest to students?
The survey was administered in Fall 2022, and Spring and Fall in 2023. Initial results suggested that efforts to promote the center to students had been unsuccessful with many students. Furthermore, a comparatively large number of detailed responses described a clique-like atmosphere that had developed in the upper-level conversation lounge. We began several initiatives to address issues like these, including adjusting the survey itself to provide data that could be used when presenting the proposed initiatives to the SALC committee.
We will summarize the results of the survey up to Fall 2023, including students’ voices, to evaluate the extent to which initiatives had led to positive change.
Drilling, as a language-learning activity, has fallen out of favor over the past few decades, but it is finding support in Skills Acquisition Theory (DeKeyser, 2007) literature and as falling within Butzkamm and Caldwell’s (2009) generative principle of language development.
When drilling was last in vogue, modern technologies and language learning tools had not been developed. Now, tools such as spreadsheets and simple text-to-speech generators such as that within the Quizlet application can be combined to produce almost limitless pattern practice opportunities that can be carried out by an individual using tools they already carry with them.
This presentation will show how a spreadsheet was developed which could produce double-sided Quizlet flashcards for drilling Japanese grammar conjugations. The cards were enormously effective in helping the presenter untangle the complexities of Japanese grammar, and the spreadsheet functions and applicability within the Quizlet app can be copied by other teachers or learners who want to practice or assign drilling practice in Japanese, English, or (presumably) any language.
This poster consists of the rationale, methodology, results, and discussion of an exploratory study with the purpose of focusing the potential scope of research possibilities regarding the use of conversation strategies in first-year English Communication, or EC1, courses at Sojo University. Conversation strategies have been included as a component of the EC1 and 2 curriculum in part since 2019. The purpose of this research is to gather and analyze general data is gathered about students’ knowledge of communicative competence, opinion of strategic competence in conversation, and perceptions of the specific strategies learned in their first English Communication course, or EC1. Communicative language teaching targets improving a language learner’s communicative competence. The theory on which the inclusion of conversation strategies in EC1 is that strategic competence is an integral part of communicative competence, and it is believed that communication strategies perform an important function in the development of strategic competence, and therefore the development of a learner’s overall communicative competence (Canale and Swain, 1980). Data consists of a survey which addresses students’ knowledge and opinion of conversation strategies, as well as test transcripts which were analyzed for the presence of conversation strategies in use by the students. Results of data analysis show a generally positive opinion on the inclusion of strategies in the course, as well as their usefulness in spoken conversation. The results of this study will inform the design of a more in-depth, larger scale project in the future.
Wood et al. (1976) used the term “scaffolding” to describe the support given by an adult to a child. Since then, the term has also been used to describe support offered to a novice by a more knowledgeable other. Wood et al. specified scaffolding as consisting of six functions: recruitment, reduction in degrees of freedom, direction maintenance, marking critical features, frustration control, and demonstration. Most work in scaffolding has taken these six functions as definitive/definitional. One example is McCormick and Donato (2000), who look at the questions asked by teachers in university EFL classes and classify those questions according to the six functions.
The authors reexamine McCormick and Donato’s data and suggest that their classifications are questionable and that many of the questions they analyze may actually have multiple functions. They also draw attention to the work of Maryam et al. (2020), who propose eight functions of scaffolding realized through 21 scaffolding actions, such as concretizing and simplifying. The two extra functions proposed are mutual enjoyment and participation in the activity. While the authors suggest that these additional functions are not well-founded, the fact that new functions are still being proposed demonstrates that the precise specification of scaffolding is still an open issue.
We conclude by discussing recent work by van de Pol (2010, 2011, 2013), who examines teacher–student interactions in fine detail from the point of view of contingency, a central notion in distinguishing scaffolding from other kinds of support.
The growing popularity of social media sites, coupled with the omnipresence of digital devices, means that most Japanese university English language learners (ELLs) process a tremendous amount of digital stimuli on a daily basis. Thus, it is important that English as an international language (EIL) educators put more emphasis on cultivating students’ critical thinking skills. Creating a critically conscious and active learning environment is something that is much easier said than done, especially for neurodivergent learners. Conditions such as autism spectrum disorder, attention deficit hyperactive disorder (ADHD), and dyslexia fall under the umbrella of neurodiversity. Neurodiverse students have unique strengths and learning needs that are often overlooked by teachers. This presentation will highlight how EIL educators can make their lessons and instructional materials more accessible to neurodiverse ELLs. The presenters will describe the adaptive pedagogical practices they utilized with neurodivergent students in a communicative English course. They will also discuss how YouTube content (e.g., viral marketing videos) and technology-enhanced learning projects (e.g., multimodal videos, e-portfolios) can be used to foster Japanese ELLs’ creativity and critical thinking abilities. This presentation should be of interest to EIL educators who wish to establish a more active learning environment and expand their teaching repertoire. The lesson ideas and pedagogical pointers that will be examined in this presentation can be used with both neurodivergent and neurotypical students and applied to a wide range of instructional contexts.
As approaches to language teaching based on interaction between learners (e.g., Communicative Language Teaching; Task-based Language Teaching) have become the norm in many classrooms, group and pair work have come to play a prominent role in language learning. Working in groups or pairs gives learners more opportunities to use English, share information about themselves and build rapport with other learners. It can also help to reduce learners’ fears about speaking in front of others. However, for some learners, simply doing pair- or group-work brings about feelings of unease because of social anxiety. When learners work in small groups, they often work with unfamiliar classmates or are placed in situations where they are unsure of what to do. Such situations can be difficult for learners to cope with even in their first language. With the increased cognitive and psychological demands involved when using a second language in pairs or groups, feelings of unease can be amplified, causing discomfort, or even distress. Social anxiety has been shown to play an influential role in learners’ attitudes towards working in groups (e.g., Zhou, 2015), and thus placing socially anxious learners into group-learning contexts without due consideration can be detrimental not only to the individual learners, but also to the learning of the group. In this presentation, I discuss situational triggers of anxiety reported by learners and activities to help curb the influence of anxiety based on research into anxiety and classroom experience.
Teachers generally devote themselves to various important roles that predominantly focus on student learning. All too often, students we observe show evidence of recurring self-defeating lifestyle habits that inhibit learning and long-term goal achievement. Essentially, sleepy and distracted students are less likely to effectively pay attention and remember, which are the two key factors for learning. This classroom research sheds light on the significance of engaging students with specific content-based lifestyle related topics, in conjunction with current habit theory approaches that counter the information-action fallacy. Based on two ongoing Japanese university teaching contexts, the presenter aims to briefly highlight the results of student self-reflection, subsequent action and positive feedback. This session will also enable participants to self-reflect on their keystone habits, establish and utilize tiny habits and create implementation intention statements applicable to situations in and out of the classroom.
Virtual Exchanges (VE) repeatedly show that they promote language acquisition through the employment of various negotiation of meaning strategies, with both synchronous and asynchronous exchanges showing similar acquisition results as face-to-face exchanges. This presentation details a short VE between approximately 400 students in Japan and Korea. Students created two Flip videos, commented on the videos of other students, and had a synchronous video conversation in groups of four to seven students. Students completed surveys pre- and post-VE. The pre-VE survey had three Likert-like scales measuring self-efficacy, self-perceived communication competence (SPCC), and communication anxiety. The post-VE survey contained the same three scales, an additional enjoyment scale and open-ended questions. Students significantly reported higher self-efficacy post-VE and had slight positive changes in SPCC but almost no difference in their communication anxiety. Most students enjoyed the activities, especially creating videos, and recommend the VE be offered to students next year.
How much are you sleeping each night? How about your students? Probably not enough, if you live in Japan, which ranks among the most sleep-deprived societies in the world. School schedules, after-school activities, commuting times, homework, and screen time can all contribute towards students’ (and teachers’) lack of sleep. Students face additional obstacles towards good sleep with the changing of their circadian rhythms, which makes adolescents unable to fall asleep until later at night and unable to wake up until later in the morning. It’s little wonder that so many students are sleep deprived! However, research shows that good sleep is not only essential for memory function during the day, but that the brain actually continues learning during sleep. Good sleep, then, can be the ultimate study tool.
This presentation aims to serve as a brief introduction to the neuroscience behind sleep–what happens during sleep, how much sleep is necessary, the consequences of sleep deprivation, and how sleep quality and duration can be improved. Participants will then discuss what role teachers have (if any) in encouraging better sleep for our students.
Some teachers may have the experience of students terminating their L2 speech immediately after an allocated speaking task has been completed in minimal fashion and teachers have struggled to increase the amount of student talk beyond these minimized turns. Numerous learning-motivation studies have demonstrated that the factors behind minimized talk are language anxiety towards syntactic, lexical, or phonological accuracy. However, those studies are based on students’ self-evaluation through questionnaire or interview. In other words, the approach does not focus on how they actually interact in classroom. This presentation will outline ways students can be encouraged to expand their talk. Firstly, the presenter will detail how students manipulate L1/L2 language choice and speech acts in classroom oral activities and how students attend to their limited L2 proficiency. Second, the language use will be categorized based on topic, learning task, interactant(s) and peripheral participants such as overhearer and eavesdropper. The findings suggest that students produce the least voluntary L2 speech when they are working on information-gap tasks. Furthermore, participant variation does not affect their speech rate. That is, even direct teacher observation does not affect the amount of talk. Additionally, frequency of their embodiment gesture use increases proportional to their L2 speech amount. Finally, some teaching tips to facilitate more expanded turns will be widely demonstrated based on the findings. An awareness of those interactional issues can help both students and their teachers orientate themselves to an interactional view of language with concomitant consequences for teaching and learning.
This practice-orientated presentation addresses the problem of poor information retention in the university classroom context. In relation to tertiary education, the Japanese Ministry of Education (MEXT) mandates that each credit acquired by the student requires that s/he complete 45 hours of study, up to 30 hours of which is spent on student-teacher contact time. The imbalance between contact time and independent study presents students with a greater volume of information to process within the academic day. Information may fail to be adequately retained, thus negatively affecting student learning outcomes. To address this issue, it is necessary for educators to exploit note-taking techniques that facilitate knowledge retention. Examples of note-taking methods are the Cornell method, the outline method, and the charting method. The presentation explores the features of each method, their application in the classroom, and the associated benefits and drawbacks regarding suitability.
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