ELT Calendar

Saturday, October 25th, 2003

Conference on Language Learning and Testing: The Role of Testing for Language Learning
Time: 8:50 AM - 7:30 PM
Speaker: Terry Laskowski, MIZUMOTO Atsushi, John Paul Loucky, Paul Westrick, J. Lake, KATAGIRI Kazuhiko, Oryang Kwon, more
Organization: The Japan Language Testing Association
Location: Kumamoto City, Kumamoto Prefecture
Short description: For more details about The Japan Language Testing Association (JLTA) conference, see their program of Japanese and English presentations at http://www.

State of the Art in Computer-Assisted Language Learning
Time: 10:00 AM - 4:30 PM
Speaker: various speakers
Organization: English Education Study Group of Sapporo Gakuin University
Location: Sapporo City, Hokkaido Prefecture
Short description: This is a practical forum for all high school and university foreign language teachers interested in state-of-the-art teaching via the internet and computers.

Creative and Productive Testing
Time: 1:00 PM - 3:30 PM
Speaker: Mike Guest
Organization: Miyazaki Chapter of the Japan Association for Language Teaching
Location: Miyazaki City, Miyazaki Prefecture
Short description: Many people think of classroom tests in merely as a measure of student performance, something to be done in order to satisfy the administrators' demands to assign grades to students.

Materials Writers Weekend Workshop (Day 1 of 2)
Time: 1:00 PM - 10:00 PM
Speaker: Workshop Participants
Organization: Materials Writers Special Interest Group, Japan Association for Language Teaching
Location: Yufuin City, Oita Prefecture
Short description: The Materials Writers SIG's first-ever outside-of-conference-time get-together will be a gathering of people, SIG members and non SIG members, who are interested in creating materials, for the purpose of talking together about what is involved in materials creation.

Current Trends in Teaching Vocabulary
Time: 2:00 PM - 5:00 PM
Speaker: Paul Nation (Victoria University, New Zealand)
Organization: Temple University Japan
Location: Tokyo, Tokyo Metropolis
Short description: The seminar will look at the teaching and learning of vocabulary including recent research on technical vocabulary and idioms. The focus will be on how teachers can develop a well-balanced vocabulary program and the principles that should lie behind such a program.

From Phonetics to Phonics and Back Again
Time: 7:00 PM - 8:30 PM
Speaker: Joseph Tomei, Kumamoto Gakuen
Organization: Kumamoto Chapter of the Japan Association for Language Teaching
Location: Kumamoto City, Kumamoto Prefecture
Short description: In this presentation, Joe Tomei will try to present the basic principles of phonetics and show how they relate to the teaching of phonics. While Tomei says he is not advocating teaching students about phonetics, he does think that the phonics-teaching teacher needs to have a basic grasp of phonetic concepts.