JALT photo album 38
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AKITA JALT meetings in 2005
picture album page 8 of 2005

December











Guest speaker: Alastair Graham-Marr of ABAX Publishers
Date: December 10, 2005
Title: 1) Teaching Listening to Low Level Learners:
The Importance of Script and of Suprasegmental Phonology
2) Teaching the Strategies of Speaking:
Helping Students with Fluency, Involvement and Clarification strategies
Time: 2:00 PM - 4:00 PM
Place: AIU (Akita International University)
Room: B-103

15 people attended the meeting.

Chapter Report (to be printed in The Language Teacher) Guest speaker: Alastair Graham (ABAX) Akita December 2005-Teaching the Strategies of Listening and Teaching the Strategies of Speaking by Alastair Graham-Marr from Abax Publishing. This was a low pressure publisher's presentation. The presenter went through the theoretical rationale used for his companies listening and speaking texts. He was very entertaining as he presented this somewhat complicated information. He used examples commonly found in Japanese classrooms and society to make his points. He says that we must provide both top-down and bottom-up decoding processes for listening. He says that if we teach the students suprasegmental phonology or natural English speech then the students will be able to understand normal speech better. The participants were able to experiment doing this with various sentences. He also said that listening tasks are not just "models of production' to introduce a speaking activity but are important tasks on their own. If the listening tasks are interesting and have something to do with the students' lives then they will also motivate the students in the difficult task of listening. In the second hour he emphasized that there is no evidence or studies to show that we can teach grammar so speaking texts need not be organized around grammar points. He reports there is evidence that students will learn grammar when they are ready to learn it and not before. When they are ready then we can teach them. Strategies can be taught he says. He advocates the teaching of communication strategies in a speaking class and the organization of a speaking text or class around these strategies. He says to deal with the grammar as the student is ready to learn it. He suggested teaching the asking of various kinds of questions, paraphrasing, echoing, hesitation devices, shadowing and others. I would highly recommend this speaker and these topics. He did a good job of presenting his point of view with sources, examples, research and humor. Agree or disagree, these were thought provoking presentations. The texts on display were worth a look as well though he did not focus on those in the presentations. Reported by Jarrett Ragan

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Akita JALT

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