Collaboration Across Borders 2026: A Fukuoka JALT – Busan-Gyeongsang-Daegu KOTESOL Joint Symposium

Saturday 12 Sept 2026, 09:00 → 18:00 Asia/Tokyo

09:00 → 18:00 Room 1: Plenary Sessions

Conveners: Gabriela Villafradez (KOTESOL), KC Washington (BusanGD KOTESOL), Trevor Holster (Kyushu High-school)

10:00 Plenary Session 1

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Speaker: Sunao Fukunaga (Kyushu Institute of Technology)

16:40 Rudolph and Kim: Being, Becoming and Belonging as/in Practice: (Re-)Imagining “English” Language Education

Who are our students? Where do they (and we) live, work, and study at present, and potentially in the future? Who lives, works, and studies in their (and our) communities? Who else might they (and we) encounter in and beyond those spaces? What unique knowledge, skills, and experiences do they (and we) possess? What challenges have they (and we) had, and do they (and we) continue to face, negotiating being, becoming, and belonging in and beyond the classroom? What experiences with language do they (and we) have, and how can we relate to each other in and beyond the classroom? How can we contribute to equipping and empowering them for interaction in the communities they engage with and belong to, teaching-wise? How can this contribute to the community building, and to the betterment of people’s lives therein, in general? How might our professional activities enhance this? What affordances, constraints and real consequences might we face in the educational settings in which we work and the communities in which they are situated?

In this plenary talk, we (Miso and Nat) seek to address these questions through a community-based, transdisciplinary approach (Hammine & Rudolph, 2025). Community-based language teaching is grounded in sociohistorical context. Teachers would seek to listen, share, reflect, and (un-)learn in dialogue with their students, colleagues, and other stakeholders. They would aim to learn and grow as members of the communities in which they, their students, and other stakeholders live. They would draw upon stakeholders’ lived experiences negotiating being, becoming, and belonging, as well as upon their own (Motha et al., 2012). Community-based approaches to teaching (as with research and theorization) include the need to pursue learning in a transdisciplinary fashion. Pennycook (2018) notes that teacher-scholars engage with questions/issues/realities that require transcending areas of study (or “fields” and corresponding bodies of “literature”), and, of course, the bounds of academia.

In order to unpack these concepts, we will utilize our current context (Japan; Osaka) to discuss the personal-professional communities in which we and our students negotiate belonging within and transcending that space, and demonstrate classroom ideas and activities to explore the ways of belonging in our communities. We will underscore the fact that “Japan” is a site of movement, diversity and complexity past and present, and that there are many ways to be “Japanese” and/or a member of Japanese society. This is a direct challenge to the dominant historical narrative that Japan is “homogeneous.” Tensions between the realities of belonging in Japan, and the homogeneity narrative, however, manifest politically, educationally and socially. “English” language education is no exception, as there exists tension between dominant notions of essentialized and idealized Selfhood (“Japaneseness”) and Otherness (“nativeness” in English) and the diversity and complexity characterizing classrooms and the communities in which they are situated.

Though Japan is our primary point of dialogic departure, our personal and professional lives and the communities to which we belong (as with many of you) are inseparably interwoven with the Korean peninsula. As we talk about “Japan,” therefore, we will also concomitantly touch upon “Korea.” In doing so, we will encourage participants based in both South Korea and Japan to imagine what a community-based, transdisciplinary approach to “seeing” in theory, research and teaching might begin to reveal. We look forward to collectively dialoguing, reflecting and potentially re-imagining our approaches to “English” language education.

Nathanael Rudolph is Professor of Sociolinguistics and Language Education at Kindai University (近畿大学) in Higashiosaka, Osaka. The scope of his research includes community-based, transdisciplinary explorations of being, becoming and belonging within and transcending (language) education (with a focus on “Japan” and the Korean peninsula), and conceptualizations of and attention to “criticality” and “(in)justice” in applied linguistics and language education.

Miso Kim is Associate Professor (Lecturer) at the Division of Language and Culture, Graduate School of Humanities, the University of Osaka. She is committed to promoting diversity and translanguaging in English-language classrooms. Her research interests revolve around language teacher identity, action research, and emotions in language teaching and learning.

Speakers: Nathanael Rudolph (Kindai University (近畿大学)), Miso Kim (The University of Osaka)

Miso Kim.jpeg

Nathanael Rudolph.jpeg

11:10 → 16:50 Room 1: JALT

Conveners: Bill Pellowe (JALT Director of PR), Trevor Holster (Kyushu High-school)

11:10 Collaborating Across Intercultural Borders: Negotiating Meaning in Campus Interviews

This study explores collaboration across intercultural borders through a campus interview task assigned to 167 first-year students at a national university in Japan. The participants designed their own questions on topics of interest and conducted English-language interviews with international students outside class time. The task positioned both parties as valuable contributors: the participants controlled the interview’s content and structure, while their respondents served as experts on their home countries and cultures. An analysis of the participants’ post-task reflective reports reveals how both sides negotiated meaning in English as a Lingua Franca (ELF) interactions, employing strategies such as simplified language, visual aids, and nonverbal communication. Findings highlight the collaborative, two-way nature of these exchanges and offer practical implications for designing intercultural interview tasks that build learner confidence and help to develop their English communication skills.

Speaker: Khadijah Omar (Kyushu University)

11:50 Crossing Borders with Curiosity: An Activity Based On Students' Innate Curiosity

In my personal life, I go online for a few minutes to answer a small question. One thing leads to another and I realize I have spent hours covering a wide variety of topics. All powered by curiosity, as explained by Kidd (2015). This can be transferred to the classroom through the activity described in this presentation. The activity asks students to choose any topic they have an interest in and freely explore, moving from topic to topic. They must note each topic and URLs they explore and then create a poster with their results including a timeline of how much time and how many topics they examined. The crossing borders characteristic of the activity goes from the personal realm to the classroom, and then the results can be shared with other classes in the same building, institution, or a classroom in a completely different city or country using Zoom.

Speaker: David Kluge (Chukyo University (Adjunct Professor))

12:30 Translanguaging arts-based pedagogy exploring gender and language intersections

In English language education (ELE) and literature education in outer and expanding circle (Kachru, 1986) contexts, modern/colonial legacies have initiated and sustained monolingual bias and logocentrism. In Northeast Asia, nationalism and neoliberalism contribute to these dynamics, limiting the transformative and justice-building potentials of ELE and literature education. While many educators work in justice-centered ways, monolingual and logocentric means can only go so far. Integrating translanguaging and arts-based pedagogy, or ABP (Rhoades, 2022) can “expand the channels” (Rajendram & Tian, 2026, p. 195) for greater complexity and more deeply affirming practice that facilitates boundary crossing and collaborative meaning making. This presentation offers understandings generated from a Japan-based empirical study examining how integrations of translanguaging and arts-based pedagogy facilitate critical explorations of the intersections of language, gender, sexuality, and other embodied dimensions of social location. Engaging with these intersections fosters belonging, affinity, and collaboration that goes beyond national and linguistic borders.

Speaker: Dr Yaya Yao (Kyushu University)

14:00 Implementing DDL to Foster Autonomy and Close the Digital Divide

Data-driven learning (DDL) is widely recognized as a powerful pedagogical approach that helps learners check word usage and self-correct errors, particularly for vocabulary and grammar (Huang & Ma, 2025; Ma & Mei, 2021; Zareva, 2016). Yet despite this potential, DDL remains underused in classrooms worldwide. This presentation asks why, examining key barriers: a lack of readily available, level-appropriate teaching materials (Crosthwaite et al., 2021; Eslek-Onur & Tosun, 2023; Luo, 2025), steep learning curves and overly complicated platforms (Cakebread-Andrews & Donnellan, 2024; Crosthwaite et al., 2021; Huang & Ma, 2025), time-consuming implementation (Eslek-Onur & Tosun, 2023; Ma & Mei, 2021), and the extensive scaffolding DDL requires (Schmidt, 2022). Learners may also feel overwhelmed by a style of learning so different from traditional approaches (Huang & Ma, 2025). Despite these challenges, DDL's potential is too valuable to overlook. I will present practical strategies for integrating corpora into the classroom, including custom corpus design and targeted teacher training.

Speaker: Sarah Deutchman

14:40 Hasan Ghazali: An Exploratory Study of AI-Enabled Cognitive Offloading Among Elite Scholarship Students During an Authentic Academic Task

The growing use of Generative AI has changed how students approach academic work, making conversational AI a common source of support during learning. While existing research has examined AI adoption and its impact on academic performance, less is known about what motivates students to seek AI assistance during a learning task. This exploratory study examines how elite scholarship students engage in AI-enabled cognitive offloading during an authentic academic assignment. It introduces student friction, a proposed concept describing the cognitive and emotional resistance students experience before shifting from independent problem-solving to AI-assisted support. Guided by Cognitive Offloading Theory and metacognitive regulation, data will be collected during a single task-based session with a purposive sample of government-funded scholarship recipients, including AI interaction logs, prompting behaviour, task completion records, and post-task questionnaire responses. Rather than focusing only on usage frequency, the study explores how students decide to use AI, refine their prompts, and evaluate AI-generated responses, offering initial evidence for the proposed framework and practical insights for designing responsible AI use in higher education.

15:20 Motivating Factors for Collaborating Teachers in a Small-Scale Virtual Exchange

This presentation reports on a small virtual exchange between university students in Okinawa, Japan, and Göttingen, Germany. The student task was intentionally kept modest in scope: students used English through asynchronous tasks to introduce their everyday university life, respond to students overseas, and reflect on similarities and differences in their experiences. The presentation also considers the teacher side of the project. While much research on virtual exchanges focuses on learners, less attention has been paid to how teachers manage the additional planning, coordination, uncertainty, and workload such projects involve. Through individual reflection and comparison of our experiences as collaborating language teachers, we examine what motivated us to take part, what helped us sustain the project, and how the collaboration affected our motivation and professional well-being. The presentation concludes with practical takeaways for language teachers interested in developing small virtual exchange projects within institutional, scheduling, and workload constraints.

Speakers: Heather Kretschmer (Georg-August-Universität Göttingen, Germany), George MacLean (University of the Ryukyus)

16:00 Collaboration across - Examples from Languages other than English

Examples from languages other than English, here German language in the fields of German literature, linguistics and language teaching in East Asia are showing a divers and promising landscape. For learners of German there is a regular online meeting organized between Tokyo University of Foreign Studies and Seoul National University for learners on various levels of learning. Attendance is free and open internationally. The German Literature and Linguistics organizations in Japan, South-Korea, China are organizing in a three years-rotation a well-known East-Asian Conference. There is mutual attendance between the East-Asian colleagues on German related seminars. Recently on Graduate School level a new collaboration is emerging. These are some examples drawing on. Working together across borders in the field of teaching, learning and researching is beneficial for all parties involved. It gives is vibrant examples, helps to find new ways and think not only outside the box but across the borders.

Speaker: Gabriela Schmidt (JALT CEFR LP SIG President)

11:10 → 16:50 Room 2: KOTESOL

Conveners: Gabriela Villafradez (KOTESOL), KC Washington (BusanGD KOTESOL)

11:10 Meadows: Virtual Collaboration within a Multi-Bordered Landscape: Language, national identity, and convenience store foods.

In this talk, I present a reflective account of a Virtual Exchange (VE) project between two language classrooms, one in Korea and the other in Japan. The combination of the two classrooms formed a complex multi-bordered landscape. For example, the students in Korea were studying Japanese as a Foreign Language (JFL) at an English-medium international school while using Korean everywhere else in civil society. The students in Japan were studying English as a Foreign Language (EFL) at a Japanese-medium private high school while also following with enthusiasm Korean pop culture and language. The Virtual Exchange took place over two stages, one asynchronous via an online bulletin board and a second synchronous via online conferencing software. Comparing the design of this VE project with the most recent literature, I will share observations of the strengths and weaknesses of this project with an eye towards similar VE projects in the future.

Author Bionote:
Bryan Meadows holds a PhD in Second Language Acquisition and Teaching from the University of Arizona (USA), an MEd in Second Language Education from the University of Houston (USA), and a BA in Japanese Language and Culture from San Francisco State University (USA). His academic interests include Interculturality, Nationalism, Folk Linguistics, and Teacher Education. His research output is found in over 30 peer-reviewed publications and over 60 peer-reviewed conference presentations. His ORCID page is https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4310-6337.

Speaker: Bryan Meadows (Yongsan International School of Seoul)

11:50 Thibault: Shades of Cultural Adjustment: From Pink to 3-D

As expats in a foreign country, how can we adapt to a new environment? How can we make sense of unfamiliar social codes, connect with others, and thrive? As educators, how can we connect better with students from different cultural backgrounds and bridge our cultural differences?

EFL teachers in Korea and Japan have all faced these questions. This presentation is designed to offer some answers, as well as avenues of reflection and action to help expatriate educators find their footing, learn, and blossom in a foreign cultural environment. By helping them deepen their own cross-cultural awareness, we can help develop insight that can better support and guide students preparing to travel or study
abroad.

Through a witty and sensitive exploration of the ways culture shapes thoughts, communication, and actions, the presentation will help teachers navigate cultural differences, explore visible and hidden layers of culture, examine the four stages of cultural adjustment, and reflect on where they and their students may be in the process. The
workshop also addresses how to identify and challenge stereotypes, prejudice, and unconscious bias, which are critical skills for educators shaping intercultural attitudes in the classroom.

Dr. Natalie Thibault is an assistant professor at Wonkwang University in Iksan, South Korea. She is an experienced English as a second language (ESL) instructor, having taught in Asia for nearly two decades. In addition to her teaching career, she has been focusing her qualitative research efforts on rapport-building between students and professors, internationalization of Korean higher education, and international student experiences. Dr. Thibault is involved with several international publications dedicated to qualitative and education-related research, including The Qualitative Report, for which she is a Senior Editor.

Speaker: Natalie Thibault (Wonkwang University)

Natalie Thibault

12:30 Svoboda: The Existential ELT Classroom: Yalom’s Givens and the Pedagogy of Care

This workshop explores how Irvin Yalom’s four existential givens—mortality, freedom, isolation, and meaning—can serve as powerful lenses for expanding empathy within ELT. We examine how these profound human themes can recalibrate our pedagogical stance and collegial relations, foregrounding an active ethic of care and mutual regard. By re-contextualising these givens for the EFL classroom, we demonstrate how an empathetic presence can transform the climate for learner interaction. Rather than prescribing rigid techniques, this session cultivates a shared vocabulary: empathy as a foundational orientation rather than an ornament, and connection as a deliberate practice. Participants will be equipped to imagine context-sensitive applications that honor their unique local constraints. Attendees will leave with conceptual touchstones for designing humane, language-rich spaces where existential awareness bridges isolation, fostering a deeply empathetic and resonant classroom experience.

Daniel Svoboda is an Assistant Professor of Korean-English Translation at Hankuk University of Foreign Studies and a professional translator since 2009. He has worked with major Korean corporations and institutions, and is a contributing author to educational publications for the King Sejong Institute and the International Korean Education. He is the co-author of Copywriting in English (2025), Korea's leading guide to English marketing copy.

Speaker: Daniel Svoboda (KOTESOL - Hankuk University of Foreign Studies)

Daniel Svoboda

14:00 Hollander, Slagle & Washington: Cultural Context in the Classroom

Accessing a culture that you don’t have the context for is fraught with challenges that range from minor slip-ups to major
faux pas. But it can also give opportunities to grow understanding, inspiration, and consideration for others. As educators,
building the context around culture is crucial to allow students to explore subjects safely and gain perspectives that
challenge them.

In this panel, we will discuss experiences in exploring cultural context in the classroom and how
educators can best bring those experiences into practice. In doing so, we can better support students in their context so
they can feel encouraged and included in their own education.

Panel Members

Maiah Hollander is an American (California and Washington) educator who broke out of corporate life to become an EFL teacher and explore the world. Maiah has been teaching internationally for four years, earning her master’s in communication and education with a focus on media literacy and AI technologies in the classroom. Fresh from two years of teaching English in Spain public schools, Maiah made her way to Korea in August 2025 as part of the government-sponsored EPIK program. She was invited to take on the role of the KOREA TESOL 2026 International Conference Publicity director due to her background in journalism and will reprise this role in 2027, focusing on developing and expanding brand awareness and partner collaborations. Looking ahead, Maiah’s next academic project will be obtaining a PhD in Japan to further expand on the topics and experiences she has gained through her educational research and international experiences.
maiah.hollander@gmail.com

Since 2013, Sarah Slagle has been attending, volunteering, and presenting at KOTESOL conferences and chapter meetings. Meeting fellow educators and discussing professional challenges is her favorite aspect of being in the KOTESOL community. Having spent more than 10 years teaching at Korean universities, she has helped many students reach their dreams of becoming more confident and proficient in using English. Her current endeavor is opening a language education company, with English and Korean language programming for adults in the greater Busan area. She may be contacted at sarah.slagle@gmail.com or on LinkedIn.

KC Washington is a Foreign Language Lecturer at Gyeongsang National University, novelist, travel blogger, and freelance independent historian. She has an Associate of Arts degree in Journalism from the University of Missouri-Columbia, a Bachelor of Arts in English from Brooklyn College, and a Master of Arts in Bilingual Education/ESL and Reading from the University of Texas Permian Basin.
KC has written articles on feminism, African American history and culture, and travel. She is currently a contributing writer for BlackPast.org, Medium.com, The English Connection, and the KOTESOL Journal.
She has been the vice president of the Busan-Gyeongnam KOTESOL chapter since 2022. In 2025, she also assumed the role of Director of Communications.

kcwashingtonesl@gmail.com
https://sites.google.com/view/kcwashingtonteachingportfolio

Speakers: KC Washington (BusanGD KOTESOL), Maiah Hollander (KOTESOL), Sarah Slagle

14:40 Kester: Peace Education in Challenging Times (Hybrid)

Peace education faces profound challenges amid accelerating geopolitical instability, economic inequality, environmental crises, and growing critiques of its intellectual foundations. These developments raise urgent questions about the aims, justifications, epistemologies, and methodologies of the field. This presentation examines these challenges through emerging scholarship on affective, critical, decolonial, and posthumanist approaches to peace and peace education. It explores the contributions and limitations of each perspective and their potential to advance more pluralistic forms of peacebuilding education. Affective approaches foreground the emotional and relational dimensions of peace; critical approaches emphasize political inquiry, social critique, and activism; decolonial perspectives challenge enduring structures of coloniality and modernity; and posthumanist perspectives expose the limits of anthropocentric thinking. In response, the presentation proposes a postcritical approach to peace education that integrates these traditions and moves beyond exclusively rational orientations to peacebuilding. It concludes by drawing on empirical studies from China/Taiwan, Cyprus, Korea, Pakistan, and Somalia/Somaliland.

Kevin Kester is Associate Professor of Comparative International Education and Peace/Development Studies and Director of the Education, Conflict and Peace Lab at Seoul National University. His research engages the sociology and politics of education with an emphasis on comparative education, education and conflict, peace education, higher education, and global citizenship education. He is author of the International Handbook on Peace Education (Routledge, 2026), Conflict, Peace and Teaching in Higher Education: Postcritical Praxis in a World of Conflict (Routledge, 2026), A Modern Guide to Education in East Asia: Global and Local Intersections (Edward Elgar, 2026), Common Curriculum Guide for Peace Education in Northeast Asia (UNESCO-APCEIU, 2023), and The United Nations and Higher Education: Peacebuilding, Social Justice, and Global Cooperation for the 21st Century (Emerald, 2020), among many other books and journal articles. He is Editor of the Asia Pacific Education Review, Executive Editor of Teaching in Higher Education, and Associate Editor of Journal of International Cooperation in Education. He is the recipient of the 2024 Noam Chomsky Shining Star Research Award and the 2022 Unju Prize for Research Excellence. Originally from Kentucky, he was commissioned as a Kentucky Colonel by the Governor of Kentucky in 2020.

Speaker: Kevin Kester (Seoul National University)

Kevin Kester

15:20 Ford-Mihashi: Creative Collaboration Across Borders Through Video Haiku

The Reel Voices Language Learning Film Festival is an annual online event in which language learners from Japan, Korea, and all over the world are invited to create short films, and come together virtually to watch, discuss, and celebrate one another’s work. As part of this event, The Reel Challenge, a short-video contest for first-time filmmakers, is held with a special theme. This year's theme is "Video Haiku." Drawing on research in haiku pedagogy (Iida, 2010) and digital multimodal composition (Liang and Lim, 2021), the presenter will share examples of Video Haiku, outline steps for making them, and provide teaching materials, including a storyboard for writing. Afterward, teachers in Japan and Korea will be able to try this activity with their students, encourage their students to enter their films in the Reel Voices Film Festival, and build meaningful cross-border connections through authentic intercultural communication and creative collaboration.
References:

Iida, A. (2010). Developing voice by composing haiku: A social-expressivist approach for teaching haiku writing in EFL contexts. English Teaching Forum, 48(1), 28–34. https://americanenglish.state.gov/files/ae/resource_files/10-48-1-e.pdf

Liang, W. J., & Lim, F. V. (2021). A pedagogical framework for digital multimodal composing in the English Language classroom. Innovation in Language Learning and Teaching, 15(4), 306–320. https://doi.org/10.1080/17501229.2020.1800709

Bio:
Rooted in Applied Linguistics and Computer-Assisted Learning (CALL) and a deep passion for the Arts, Ashley Ford-Mihashi, actively implements Creative Project-Based Learning (PBL) and Performance-Assisted Learning (PAL) in her language classroom, especially through filmmaking, music, art, and drama activities. Her current research examines learner empowerment through filmmaking projects and film festivals. She is a lecturer in the Language for Global Citizenship Program at Nagoya City University and organizes the Reel Voices Language Learning Film Festival.

Speaker: Ashley Ford (Nagoya City University)

Images Ashley Ford-Mihashi Reel Voices Film Fest - Video Haiku by Firefly

16:00 Kudaibergenov: Who Gets to Teach? Identity, Power, and Legitimacy in Korean ELT

Who gets to teach English in South Korea, and what determines who is viewed as a legitimate English teacher? This presentation synthesizes findings from a program of research on transnational English teachers in Korean ELT. It examines how teachers negotiate professional identity and legitimacy within a system shaped by native-speaker ideologies, racialized hiring practices, and institutional and regulatory constraints. Drawing on multiple case studies of practicing and pre-service teachers, the findings show that legitimacy is shaped not only by qualifications and teaching ability but also by nationality, race, legal status, and institutional policies. Participants' narratives illustrate how structural inequalities influence access to employment, professional recognition, and career development while requiring teachers to negotiate tensions between their identities and dominant expectations of who counts as a "legitimate" English teacher. The presentation argues for more equitable hiring practices, inclusive teacher education, and policy reforms that recognize the diverse expertise of English teachers across national and linguistic boundaries.

Dr. Meerbek Kudaibergenov serves as an Assistant Professor at the Institute for Language Education & Research, Seoul National University of Science & Technology (SeoulTech), South Korea. With a keen focus on Eastern and Central Asian contexts, his research explores various dimensions of ELT, student and teacher identity, higher education, and country image. Apart from SeoulTech, he also serves the Journal of International Students as a Senior Editor. https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7717-9473

Speaker: Dr Meerbek Kudaibergenov (Seoul National University of Science and Technology)

11:10 → 16:50 Room 3: Student Showcase

Convener: Darcy de Lint (Fukuoka)

11:50 Hirayama: The most effective method of learning foreign languages in different age groups

In recent years, the issue of Japanese learners acquiring English skills has been said to be very low. In fact, Japanese cannot get high scores on the TOEFL test, which rank at the bottom class in Asian countries. The Critical Period Hypothesis theory indicates that a language learner’s ability to acquire a language naturally and perfectly is limited to the certain age of early stages of life, the age around 6 years. Therefore, the role of English education in school is significant for children to acquire English. On the other hand, the native accent is very difficult to acquire as the period goes further. How do the adults who go past the period learn a second language? The purpose of this study is to examine which foreign language learning methods are most effective for different age groups and to provide useful suggestions for learners and teachers.

12:30 Shin: AI-supported Comprehensible Input For Japanese EFL Learners

Japanese learners study English for many years through school education. However, many of them still struggle to understand English without relying on Japanese translation. This issue suggests that more effective learning approaches are needed. The purpose of this study is to examine how comprehensible input activities help Japanese learners understand English in meaningful contexts. In addition, this study explores the potential of generative AI as a tool to support comprehensible input. Unlike traditional textbooks, generative AI can provide personalized learning materials that match learner’s proficiency and interests. It can also generate comprehension questions and provide immediate feedback on learner’s answers. A questionnaire will be conducted for Japanese learners to investigate their English learning experience and their attitudes toward generative AI for English learning. This study aims to discuss how combining comprehensible input with generative AI may help Japanese leaders understand English in meaningful contexts.

14:00 Hara: The Importance of English Language Education for Hospitality in the Age of AI

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is widely used in the hotel industry through self-check-in systems, chatbots, and service robots. These technologies improve efficiency and support multilingual communication. However, hotels also require omotenashi, which includes empathy, flexible responses, and personalized service. Therefore, English language education remains important for future hotel staff.This study examines the role of English language education in hospitality in the age of AI. It compares AI services with human services and investigates guests' opinions through a questionnaire survey. The study is expected to show that AI can support basic communication but cannot replace human interaction. Therefore, English education should develop not only language skills but also intercultural understanding, communication skills, and hospitality. Combining AI technology with well-trained staff will provide better service for international guests.

14:40 Fukumoto: The Role of ChatGPT and Gemini in English Language Education

This study examines the role of ChatGPT and Gemini in English language education. As artificial intelligence (AI) becomes more common, many students use AI tools to support their English learning. This study reviews previous research to explore how ChatGPT and Gemini can be used in English education. It also compares the two tools by focusing on their strengths, weaknesses, and possible challenges. The study discusses both the benefits, such as personalized learning and immediate feedback, and the concerns, including overdependence on AI and inaccurate information. By comparing ChatGPT and Gemini, this study aims to provide a better understanding of how AI can support English language learning and how it may influence the future of English education.

15:20 Sasaki: The value of studying abroad

This research is about the value of studying abroad. Through the presenter's experience of 3 weeks studying abroad in the USA, regardless of the high expenses, much valuable experience was gained. Therefore, I would like to explore the value of studying abroad by investigating what students can gain from the experiences of studying abroad and what kind of experiences are provided. As a research method, anonymous participants are surveyed who have had a studying abroad experience. What have they gained? What are the negative and positive influences from studying abroad, and so on. Also, conduct research on how we can improve English without studying abroad and how studying abroad impacts our future career to find value in studying abroad. Through this study, I hope it can provide useful information for students who are considering studying abroad and making informed decisions .