I love Japan

So far during my ten years in Japan I have tended to focus on things that annoy me about my life here. Some of them are universal, and some more specific to Japan or Sendai. I'm sure everyone has their own list.

However, recently I have found myself appreciating my life here. I really do feel at home, and enjoy almost everything I do.

Keeping that in mind makes the small annoying things much less important.

I just wanted this on the record in case people had the wrong impression from the amount of moaning I do on debito.org and other websites.


(I took this photo myself earlier this summer, by the way)

Google translate

This video explains how Google translate works. Something for all the corpus linguists out there?

Conference season

I just received the following list of conferences from a JALT newsletter:

PAC 2010 / Korea Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages (KOTESOL)   

October 16-17, 2010   

Seoul, South Korea

http://www.kotesol.org/

English Teaching Association of the Republic of China (ETA-ROC)   

November 12-14, 2010   

Taipei, Taiwan

http://www.eta.org.tw/en/index.html

Thailand TESOL (ThaiTESOL)

January 21-22, 2011

Chiang Mai, Thailand

http://www.thaitesol.org/

CamTESOL Conference (Cambodia)  

February 26-27, 2011  

Phnom Penh, Cambodia

http://www.camtesol.org/

Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL)  

March 16-19, 2011  

New Orleans, Louisiana, USA

http://www.tesol.org/s_tesol/convention2011/

International Association of Teachers of English as a Foreign Language

(IATEFL)  

April 15-19, 2011

Brighton, UK

http://www.iatefl.org/

I have never been to a conference outside of Japan, so I'm really interested in heading to KoTESOL or Thai TESOL (I can't make the others as I have other plans). IATEFL or TESOL would also be nice, but might be outside of my budget for this year ;)

Does anyone have any advice as to which of these would be most interesting?

Japanese in the English classroom

I am going to be doing a presentation at the ETJ Tohoku Expo with Steve Williams about using Japanese in the English classroom (use of L1 in L2 classes).

This seems to be a topic where the research (and publications) seem to be completely out of whack with actual practice. Many ALTs and eikaiwa teachers have restrictions on how much Japanese they are allowed to use in the classroom, and there seems to be a general expectation that native speakers will operate exclusively in their L1 while teaching. However, almost all the academics that write on the topic accept that the students' L1 can be an extremely useful tool in the hands of an experienced teacher.

Steve and I agree that this is something worth talking about with working teachers, so we're going to be presenting about when and how to use Japanese to make classes more effective. We only have 45 minutes, so the biggest problem is going to be fitting all the research Steve has done into such a short timeframe!

Please feel free to comment, especially if you oppose the use of Japanese in English classes in Japan, and if you can come along on the day (October 3rd, in Sendai) we'd love to see you.

Twitter

I have finally bitten the bullet and activated my Twitter account (I bagged the name last year but hadn't started using it). I am not convinced it is going to be anything but a waste of time, but I will give it a shot ;)

I am @sendaiben by the way.

Hiroshima

I just spent a week in Hiroshima on a one-week residential course for my MA. I am doing the distance Birmingham MA TEFL, and the course is an optional part of it.

Aside from the actual content of the sessions, I was struck by how much I got out of spending time with the tutors and the other students. Being able to bounce ideas off people, both in and outside of class, was invigorating.

It really made me realise how important it is to have a peer group. I'll be doing more to stay in touch with mine from now on!

What is more important, the teacher or the system?

I have spent the last six years helping to set up, run, and teach at a small private language school. Most of my energy has been spent on trying to find the right materials, the right activities, and the right curriculum to best help my students.

However, recently there have been a lot of articles and news stories about how the most important factor in whether children learn is not the educational framework but rather the teacher. One example is this article:

"Building a Better Teacher" (NYT Magazine, March 2010)


So, have I been wasting my time in trying to design a good system? I don't think so.

I hope that having great materials and a clear, logical curriculum will make it easier for teachers to do their jobs. It is not a substitute for a good teacher, but rather a complement to one.