We are pleased to announce the Call for Papers for the 36th Annual Southeastern Association of Teachers of Japanese (SEATJ) Conference hosted by North Carolina State University on Saturday, February 27 (and possibly 28), 2021. This conference was previously scheduled for March 13, 2021, but due to the coronavirus pandemic, we have changed the date to February and the conference will be virtual. This year’s keynote speaker will be Dr. Yuri Kumagai, Senior Lecturer, at Smith College, Northampton, Massachusetts.

The theme of the conference is “Preparing students for self-directed learning beyond the Japanese program”.

Language learning is a valuable lifelong endeavor for our students learning Japanese. It doesn’t end after one semester of a course or after a student leaves a school environment, and it builds valuable skills and perspectives for students beyond language acquisition to build tolerance, empathy, knowledge and civic and global engagement.

But too often, leaving the classroom marks a challenging transition for students as they leave a supported learning environment and face obstacles encountering ‘real’ Japanese as it’s written and spoken in the real world. Especially with the pivot to distance learning during this coronavirus pandemic, it is critical that we as Japanese teachers, prepare and equip our students to develop the motivation and skills to pursue language learning on their own, in non-classroom settings.

SEATJ 2021 will delve into critical questions on this theme:

· What are our long-term linguistic goals for our students at all levels from K-12 through college? How are we building motivation and skills to propel our students to the next levels of their learning?

· How can we prepare students for continuing study beyond our programs (i.e., teaching for the “next stage”)? How can we develop self-directed learning skills in our students, especially in the current context of the coronavirus pandemic where so much student learning has gone online and relies more on self-direction?

· How can we help students engage with texts, media, and other content? What are the best ways to use classroom tools like textbooks to support this learning, and to incorporate important skills like critical thinking and media literacy into this process?

· With our current context of online and distance learning, what new classroom technologies and teaching methods can enhance student’s learning?

SEATJ is an organization serving all levels of Japanese teachers, and we welcome proposals from K-12 educators as well as instructors and graduate students at institutes of higher education, including both native and non-native speakers of Japanese. Proposals are for 30-minute sessions (20-minute presentation + 10-minute Q & A), and presentations can be in either English or Japanese. Please submit your proposals using Google Form SEATJ 2021 Proposal Submission Form

by Sunday, November 22, 2020. Proposals should not exceed 250 words in English or 500 characters in Japanese. Notification of acceptance will be sent via email by December 12. Papers will be published in the conference proceedings on the SEATJ website.