the lives of teachers

An Interview with Diane Hawley Nagatomo from darren elliott on Vimeo.

At the JALT National conference in Hamamatsu last month, I had a great time talking to Diane Hawley Nagatomo. Diane is a teacher, researcher and materials writer working in Japan. Some of her most recent research has been published by Multilingual Matters in the book “Exploring Japanese University English Teachers’ Professional Identity”, which we discussed in detail. We also talked about materials writing, gender in language education (Diane is currently co-coordinator for the JALT GALE SIG) and plenty more. If you want to read more several of Diane’s articles are available online and definitely worth looking at. Thanks for watching!

An Interview with Alan Firth from darren elliott on Vimeo.

I recently met Dr. Alan Firth at the JALT National Conference in Hamamatsu, Japan. If you are not familiar with his work you should probably start with his articles on reconceptualizing SLA, written with Johannes Wagner and published (and critiqued) in the Modern Language Journal. Dr. Firth has a background in conversation analysis, which he still employs as a tool to research communication between English as Lingua Franca users in non-classroom based settings. Amongst other things, we also discussed the development of SLA as a field and the relationships between research and teaching. Please watch and enjoy!

I was fortunate to meet Junko Yamanaka at the 5th Annual Extensive Reading Seminar in Nagoya, Japan. She is a well known figure in extensive reading circles, especially in Nagoya, and I have used several of her textbooks very successfully. We talked about her experience as a teacher, teacher trainer and materials writer, about education in Japan, and many other things. It was great to finally meet her!

Thanks also to the JALT ER SIG for putting on such a great event and doing such great work all year round promoting Extensive Reading in Japan.

I was very pleased to spend some time with Dr. Stephen Krashen at the 5th Annual Extensive Reading Seminar in Nagoya, Japan. Dr. Krashen is a man so well known that even my wife was impressed when I set this one up. We talked about some of his hundreds of publications, about his groundbreaking hypotheses, and about learning to read in first and second languages.

If you would like to know more, Dr. Krashen makes plenty of his work available online. Scott Thornbury’s blog post ‘K is for Krashen’ is interesting as ever, but the comments (including those from Stephen Krashen himself) add value. Finally, thanks to the JALT ER SIG for putting on such a great event and doing such great work all year round promoting Extensive Reading in Japan.

I was fortunate to meet Dr. Stephen Bax at the JALTCALL conference in Nishinomiya, Japan recently. This is the third conference I have attended and, as usual, it was well worth the trip. Dr. Bax gave a keynote talk about ‘normalisation’ in educational technology, which was informative, engaging and relevant. We talked about his keynote as well as other work he has been involved in throughout his career. If you can, seek out his articles on ‘normalisation’ if you are at all interested in educational technology.

I met with Phil Benson at the JALT national conference in Tokyo, Japan at the end of November 2011. He had just given an excellent plenary entitled Autonomy in Language Teaching and Learning: How to Do it “Here”, ‘Here’ being wherever you are….acknowledging the commonly heard complaint levelled at promoters of Learner Autonomy – “Yes that sounds lovely, but it wouldn’t work here”

If you want to know more, I am currently working of a review of Phil’s second edition of Teaching and Researching: Autonomy, and it tells you pretty much everything you need to know.

I very much enjoyed meeting Keith Johnson at the JALT conference in Tokyo last week. We discussed a few aspects of what adds up to a very distinguished career in language teaching. More recently, Professor Johnson has focussed on expertise studies, wrestling with the difficult question of what makes an expert teacher…. and you might want to reconsider the pop-science of Malcolm Gladwell’s 10,000 hours. We also had time to discuss the groundbreaking book ‘The Communicative Approach to Language Teaching’, which he co-edited, and CLT’s impact on the profession as a whole. Many thanks to Keith Johnson for his well-considered replies to all my questions.

I was very happy to finally meet Ken Wilson, at the JALT conference in Tokyo last week. Ken gave several presentations, including a fantastic closing plenary. I’ve seen him speak before, and I can’t stress this enough – if you get a chance, get to one of his talks! His theme this time around was motivation, and I certainly left feeling refreshed and energised. That’s pretty much what I want from a plenary!

Straight afterwards, we sat down for a chat about materials writing, motivation and online community. Ken answered all my questions, even the slightly unfair ones, thoughtfully, honestly and expansively… so please enjoy.

(If you are interested in the Dick Allwright article we mention, in relation to the difference and deficiency views of textbooks, you can see it here)

An Interview with Kaz Hagiwara from darren elliott on Vimeo.

Kaz Hagiwara is a teacher of Japanese working in Australia, and a leading exponent of (de) suggestopedia. It’s a method you have probably heard of, but in seeing Kaz’s presentations and spending some time talking to him I realised that there was more to it than I had imagined….

We may be living in a ‘post methods era’ but it is still worth looking at teaching theories developed in the past. I recommend a look at these links if you are interested in exploring further. Thanks to Kaz for giving up his time at the JALT conference 2010.

An Interview with Nicky Hockly from darren elliott on Vimeo.

I was very happy to talk to Nicky Hockly at the JALT National Conference in Nagoya, Japan in November 2010. She gave a fantastic plenary – well-paced, useful and pertinent – and if you get a chance, see her talk! If not, then this fifteen minute interview will have to do ; D

We talked about the online teacher training company Consulants-E, the obstacles teachers face in implementing technology, mobile learning and all manner of other geeky stuff.

You can follow Nicky on twitter at @TheConsultantsE , and I also recommend How to Teach English with Technology and Teaching Online