Say a little more: Increasing turn content in student talk (Main)

• Yosuke Ogawa (Kobe University)

Some teachers may have struggled to increase the amount of student talk beyond these minimized turns. Numerous learning-motivation studies have demonstrated that student language anxiety lessen their L2 speech amount. However, the approach does not focus on how actually they interact in classroom. This presentation will outline ways students can be encouraged to expand their talk. The presenter will detail how students manipulate L1/L2 language choice and speech acts in oral activities and how students attend to their limited L2 proficiency. The findings suggest that students produce the least voluntary L2 speech when they are working on information-gap task-based activities, and they would not develop their chat once the task has been completed. Furthermore, some teaching tips to facilitate more expanded turns will be demonstrated based on the findings. The importance that learners should be given certain learning tips and be explicitly trained to manipulate interactional strategies will be broadly discussed. 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.

Playing to Learn: Teaching Language, Culture, and Diversity Using Video Game Narratives (Main)

• Jermaine GORDON-MIZUSAWA (Ryutsu Keizai University)

Narrative-based video games offer an opportunity to redefine how students learn; in some cases, they can supplement or even replace textbooks as a medium of instruction. Many games involve communication, decision-making, problem-solving, and critical thinking skills. With some preparation, many pre-existing games can be used to not only teach and practice language, but also history, social studies, and various other subjects to all ages or levels of education. Students preparing for foreign exchange language study can play a character who is visiting a foreign country with realistic dialogue to practice. Why only describe I'upiat Alaskan Native culture when you can hear stories told by actual I'upiat while playing a game based on their folklore? Empowering and giving underrepresented populations their own voice to tell their own stories in a way that is more widely accessible, informative, and entertaining makes their stories more accessible to students. By drawing upon the experiences of educators developing video game-based lessons for various student ages and subjects as well as my own classroom and homeschooling experience, I will show how the use of video games as narratives benefits not only language (including second and foreign language acquisition) but also literature, social studies, as well as STEM disciplines.

Enhancing Classroom Learning with Microsoft Teams: Exploring the Benefits of an Education LMS (Main)

• Phil Nguyen (JALT Niigata)

Room: Building 1 Section B There is a growing trend among educators and students to use various online tools and learning management systems (LMS) such as Google Workspace, Moodle, Canvas, and Blackboard. While many of them are popular and in use today, an LMS designed by Microsoft should not be overlooked. This presentation suggests that Microsoft Teams is helpful and simple for instructors to sign up for and deploy in the classroom without the need for additional assistance. Unlike other LMS platforms, Microsoft Teams will work "out-of-the-box", no additional plug-ins or modifications are required. Moreover, some of the popular software applications used include the Microsoft Office suite, which most companies use today; students can obtain real-time experience both in and outside the classroom. This presentation not only assists in understanding the digital learning platforms used in higher education that use Microsoft Teams as an LMS, but it also leads to necessary recommendations and suggestions for enhancing the usage of Microsoft Teams for Education for a better learning experience for both classroom and in the workplace.

CLIL, EMI or Mandarin+? Taiwan's Path Towards a Bilingual Nation (Main)

• Peter Iori Kobayashi (Niigata University of International and Information Studies)

Room: Building 1 Section B Educational institutions in Taiwan, from tertiary to pre-school, are currently under immense pressure to reform their English programs in response to the government's "Bilingual Nation 2030" policy. Based on the survey of policy documents as well as voices and practices on the ground, this presentation argues that for a multilingual nation like Taiwan to consider turning itself "bilingual," the stakeholders must consider it pseudo-monolingual in the first place in spite of the government's celebration of its diverse linguistic heritage. This presentation then posits that this may be related to the fact that all officially mandated linguae francae through Taiwan's history have been external languages, and that English is no different in this respect. It goes on to point out that the discrepancies in the implementation of the policy: the main approaches include: Supplanting Mandarin with English as the medium of instruction (EMI); incorporating English language teaching into the content-based classes (CLIL); and maintaining the status quo except some low-stake interactions conducted in English as an auxiliary language (Mandarin+). The future direction of the policy will depend on the ebb and flow of the politics of Taiwan identity.