Would you like to give a presentation or have a display at one of the Expos?

August 18, 2010

The ETJ English language teaching Expos will be held in six cities between October and November:

• Sunday October 3 - Tohoku Expo (Sendai)

• Sunday October 10 - Aichi Expo (Nagoya)

• Sunday October 24 - Chugoku Expo (Hiroshima)

• Saturday/Sunday November 6/7 - Tokyo Expo and
Tokyo English Language Teaching Book Fair

• Sunday November 28 - Kansai Expo (Osaka)

• Sunday December 5, - Kyushu Expo (Fukuoka)

Would you like to give a presentation at one of the Expos?
There are many presentations at each Expo. Some are by famous writers or academics, and many are by local teachers. Each presentation is 45 mins. If you would like to give a presentation, please click here to send an e-mail. You need to include the following information:

Name of presenter
Title of presentation
Presentation outline (max 50 words)
Information on the presenter (max 30 words)
Types of teachers aimed at (e.g. university teachers) Topic area: (e.g. reading)
Please also state if a presentation is in Japanese.

Please state any commercial connection you have which might be relevant*

*Local teachers who have no relevant commercial connection are very welcome to give a presentation free of charge. The ETJ group organising each Expo will decide on which presentations to accept.

Those with a relevant commercial connection need to reserve a display at the Expo.

Would you like to have a display?
Please click here to send an e-mail and say what type of display you are interested in - you will be sent more information. There are three types of displays:

Commercial displays
The fee varies according to the size of the display and the number of Expos attended.

Displays for individuals or small companies
There are cheap one-table displays available at all Expos.

Free displays
For charities, associations for teachers, unions, support groups for foreigners in Japan.....

The three plenary speakers at this year's JALT conference intend to lead conference-goers outside the box

August 01, 2010

The three headliners at JALT2010, which will be held in Nagoya from November 19th to the 22nd, intend to lead conference-goers outside… “outside the box”, that is. All three plenary speeches acknowledge new directions and approaches for design and implementation of language teaching.

Alan Maley, Visiting Professor at Leeds Metropolitan University, UK, will give a talked called “The art and artistry of language teaching”. The speech will center on Maley’s notion of an “alternative paradigm based on an aesthetic view of education”. Learn more about Alan through his blog, which includes a video interview from the British Council.

Nicky Hockly, Director of Pedagogy for The Consultants-E, is an expert in the field of teaching with technology. This expanding niche in the field of language teaching will be on display during Nicky’s talk titled “Five ways to integrate technology into language teaching”. Teachers will take away practical examples of technology use in the language classroom. Nicky has lots of innovative tech ideas on her blog

.Tim Murphey, Professor at Kanda University of International Studies, will deliver a plenary speech focusing on ways teachers organize, support and scaffold activities and materials in order to empower students. Murphey refers to this as “agencying…creatively scaffolding students’ languaging abilities”. Several academic articles and teacher training videos are available at Tim’s website.

Japan to invite 4,334 JET teachers

July 25, 2010

Despite speculation that the JET program may be soon be stopped, the Ministry of Internal Affairs has announced that there will be 4,334 JET teachers in the coming year. This is down from the 6,273 teachers when the JET program was at its peak in 2002, but it is still a large number of teachers.

The teachers will come from 36 different different countries - teachers from Latvia will be included for the first time. 3,974 of the teachers will be assistant teachers in elementary and secondary schools, and 354 will be assigned to the international exchange units of local governments.

It still seems to be quite likely that the JET program will be reviewed some time soon, but plans for this year are clearly going ahead without many changes.

Click here for the article in the Mainichi.