2024 Events

October 2025 Teacher and Friends Open Mic Meet 'n' Greet

Dear members and friends of Hiroshima JALT,

This month we will be holding an "open mic" meet and greet casual catch up event for Hiroshima teachers and friends at Kemby's Brew Pub in the heart of Hiroshima city from 2pm-4pm on Sunday, 20th October. There will be several musical acts playing throughout the afternoon, but as per the title, this is an open mic event, so if you have an instrument, a song, a poem, some jokes, or an event announcement, you are more than welcome to join in! There will be door prizes on offer!

As a heads up for November's event, keep Wednesday, 20th November at 7:00pm free as next month we look forward to hosting Dr Tan Bee Tin, Associate Professor in Applied Linguistics and Language Teaching at the University of Auckland, New Zealand as she presents on fostering creativity and interest in language classroom. More details coming soon!

Lastly, thanks to those who have submitted proposals in the various categories for the 2024 JALT Conference. Our team is going through them as we speak and will be in contact with presenters in the next week or so.

About the HiJALT conference, the deadline for proposals from teachers has passed, but we will be having a mostly student-represented poster session as part of the conference, and if you are able to, we hope you will encourage some of your students to present at the Linguapax Asia & HiJALT poster session. Information about this is below. 

Looking forward to seeing you at Kemby's!

Jim Ronald

HiJALT President

hiroshimajalt.president@gmail.com

October Teacher and Friends Open Mic Meet 'n' Greet

What

Come together to listen to several local musical acts and try your hand at whatever you want! Play guitar, sing a song, recite poetry, make an event announcement.

Door prizes available!

When

Sunday, October 20th, 2pm - 4pm

Where

Kemby's Brew Pub

2 Chome-9-13 Otemachi, Naka Ward, Hiroshima, 730-0051

https://maps.app.goo.gl/s7Qe5A2awMWtu1Qs7

How much?

2,000円 entry

Hiroshima JALT July 2024 Event

Workshop with Chiyuki Yanase:
Enhancing Educators' and Students' Wellbeing for a Thriving Future in Education

Dear members and friends of Hiroshima JALT,

On Saturday, July 27th, 6:00pm-7:30pm, our guest presenter Chiyuki Yanase will lead a workshop on how we as educators can take steps to look after the wellbeing of ourselves and our students. Given the stresses on everyone during and after COVID, this should be a very useful workshop!

If you would like to present your research, materials, or activities for the classroom, or be involved in any upcoming seminars, workshops or share events, send us a message and we will try and get something organised.

Talking of which, the HiJALT Conference and Book Fair (13-14th December, and possibly an event on the 15th) may be just the place for you to give a presentation - or to encourage your students to! 

More details will be following soon but, for now, plan to join us there! (It will be held at Eikei University of Hiroshima, Nobori-cho, Hiroshima).

 See you at the June event!

Jim Ronald

HiJALT President

hiroshimajalt.president@gmail.com

What

Enhancing Educators' and Students' Wellbeing for a Thriving Future in Education

Chiyuki Yanase

According to Mercer and Gregersen (2020), being a devoted or passionate educator can indeed be a self-sacrificing profession. However, it is essential to emphasize that dedication to teaching should not come at the cost of one's own wellbeing. The ongoing pandemic and the challenges arising from AI development have significantly compounded the stressors faced by educators and learners alike. Hence, it is imperative that we invest time in reassessing how we can better support and improve the physical and mental wellbeing of both teachers and students, ensuring our ability to thrive collectively in the future of education.

In this workshop, I will share and discuss mastery-goal-oriented activities suitable for learners of various ages, as well as sensory and mindful practices for teachers. The first part of the workshop will focus on learner wellbeing, with participants experiencing activities including mindful practices based on yoga for young learners and research-based mindful practices for secondary, as well as university students. The second part of the workshop will introduce emotion-focused coping strategies and activities designed to support teachers in enhancing their resilience to cope with potential drawbacks.

When

Saturday, July 27th, 2024, 6:00pm - 7:30pm

Where

"Big Front" Building,

Hiroshima City Furishiki Center

5F, Meeting Room 2

5-1 Matsubarachō, Minami Ward, Hiroshima, 732-0822

https://maps.app.goo.gl/Ydo3e2zor3x2L3nZ8

How much?

Free for JALT members and students

500円 for non-members

About Our Presenter

Chiyuki Yanase

Chiyuki Yanase is a lecturer at several universities in Tokyo. She holds an MSc in TESOL from Aston University and has over 30 years of experience teaching English at various institutions. She has presented at numerous international conferences and published several articles on team-teaching, literacy development, and collaborative learning. Her current research interests focus on teacher and learner wellbeing, and she continues to explore the science of happiness. 

Kojiro Hozawa - An investigation of language ideologies in discourses on English education in present-day Japan

This study conducted a thematic analysis of the discourses on English language education in Japan produced by the Group of Four (Erikawa, Otsu, Torikai, and Saito), four academics who are critical to the current course of study for foreign language education (English), to explore language ideologies expressed in them. The analysis of seven books written by the Group of Four (1145 pages in total) was examined, focused on whether translanguaging ideology existed in their discourses and if not, what language ideologies they have. “Translanguaging” refers to the deployment of full linguistic repertoire often seen in language use by bilinguals and multilinguals (Otheguy, García & Reid, 2015). It is a concept developed to empower vulnerable population to learn language and other subjects. The analysis revealed that the Group of Four put emphasis on developing Cognitive Academic Language Proficiency through utilizing Japanese as a scaffolding while belittling Basic Interpersonal Communicative Skills. In their discourses, they expressed highly static, idealized, homogenous, and prescriptive standard language ideology based on native-speakerism, leaving no room for hybridity and multimodal creativity that the translanguaging theory proposes. As a result of this prescriptive view of language education, the deficit ideology was found in their discourses.

Alexander Hay - Understanding English learners' laughter

Laughter is part of many conversations, but rarely do we stop and analyse why laughter is present in a conversation. Of course, humour is what most people would think of, but that is not the only reason to be found. That is why this research was conducted, to see if laughter was present in communication, specifically when speaking in a second language, and the reasons for this laughter.

The study reported in this presentation sought to explore the reasons for laughter that could be found in L2 communication, specifically in the English conversations of Japanese native speakers. To do this, 10 pairs of participants had conversations on topics that were judged likely to cause laughter. These conversations were conducted online and were recorded, followed by a Verbal Analysis Protocol, where the participants retroactively identified and explained their reasons for each point at which they laughed. The conversation data was then analysed through the use of Conversation Analysis, using simple transcriptions of the conversations. A total of 14 separate causes for laughter were given by the participants, which were then sorted into four categories by the researcher. The presentation will demonstrate how the research was conducted, report the findings from the study, and suggest both implications of this study and possible avenues for future research into laughter in conversation. 

Yui Miura - English prosody instruction for second language learners — Mirroring and Channeling

Before the Audiolingual Method became a mainstream method in 1940s–1960s, not much attention had not been paid to teaching pronunciation in foreign-language education and the focus was on accurate pronunciation of segmental phonemes. However, after the Audiolingual Method declined in late 1960s–1970s, teaching began to become oriented toward more communicative approaches. Accordingly, the focus shifted from segmental phonemes to suprasegmental features, such as rhythm and intonation, which play important roles in promoting intelligibility. Mirroring and Channeling are one of the teaching methods for improving second language learners’ intelligibility and delivery, which includes the convergence of pragmatic meaning such as speaker’s confidence and emotion. The current study examined how intelligibility and delivery improved in the speech of a Japanese learner of English through Mirroring and Channeling in which the participant transferred the model of Mirroring to her own self-introduction and reading a textbook. This presentation will provide a demonstration of these two methods and report the results of the study.