Conference Review

The 2015 JALT CUE Conference
Jamie Taylor
Chubu University
The 2015 JALT CUE Conference with the theme “Diversity: Communicationand Education” was held at Sugiyama Jogakuen University in Nagoya on
September 26 and 27. With the help of a dedicated group of student interns, thetwo plenaries, eighteen paper presentations, and five workshops flowed smoothly.
As a new CUE SIG member and first-time conference attendee, I was pleased
to find the atmosphere warm and welcoming even from the beginning. All thepresenters seemed eager to interact with the audience, and it was easy to get toknow people during breaks and mealtimes.
Sugiyama University was a good choice for this conference. Located nearseveral cafes and restaurants, the campus was just a short walk from Nagoya’s
subway system. The facilities were just right for the number of attendees andthe types of presentations being given. The helpful “Green Team” interns,
all students at the host institution, were especially notable. They were present
throughout the campus to guide attendees, and they provided helpful tips about
the surrounding neighborhood.
After a brief address by the organizers, the conference got underway withconcurrent paper presentations. Talks were mainly practitioner-oriented andcovered a variety of topics such as vocabulary acquisition, students’ pedagogicalpreferences, and incorporating distance learning into on-site courses. The rangeof topics covered gave me a well-rounded view of what other university educators
in Japan are doing in various types of classes. I took away a number of ideas that
I was immediately able to put into use in my own classroom, such as how to best
incorporate smartphones into classes and how to help students focus on theirindividual language learning goals. All of the presentations I attended were met416

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with thought-provoking discussions and comments from the audience members.
The two invited plenary talks complemented each other well and tiedin closely to the conference theme of diversity. Saturday’s speaker, James
D’Angelo of Chukyo University, gave a talk entitled, “World Englishes, EIL,and English as a Lingua Franca: Incorporating a Pluralistic View of English
into our Teaching.” D’Angelo explored the history and evolution of English asa lingua franca (ELF) and outlined a number of actions teachers in Japan cantake to better prepare students to communicate in English in an international
context. He recommended we educate ourselves on ELF by reading research on
the topic and attending ELF-focused international conferences. Furthermore,teachers should help students communicate as educated speakers of their own
local English variety instead of prioritizing accuracy. Doing these things would
help us better understand the needs of our learners and thus make our courses
more useful for them. D’Angelo also suggested we help students forge links
with the ELF-speaking world as much as possible by using non-native English
varieties as examples, setting up Skype communication partners, and using otherreal-world tasks. The practical ideas D’Angleo gave are helpful for teachers whoare interested in forging closer links between the classroom and the real world.
Shortly after the conference, I started to integrate more non-native speakers’
English as examples during lessons, which students seemed to enjoy.
On Sunday afternoon, Tadashi Shiozawa of Chubu University gave thesecond plenary talk. Continuing with the theme of World Englishes, Shiozawa
discussed the diversity of English teaching and learning in Japan from theviewpoint of a non-native speaker. With a variety of both native and non-native
speaker teachers, an array of student motivation and proficiency levels, and arange of facilities, teaching methods, and resources being used, many challenges
can arise in English teaching in Japan. He asserted that these difficulties, however,can be considered an advantage in teaching because it compels us to think andsolve problems in new ways.
Shiozawa stated that we should not only accept the use of different Englishes
by students and teachers, but we should expect that they speak as users of theirown international variety. He echoed D’Angelo’s recommendation of focusing
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Tayloron overall intelligibility over native-like accuracy, and he suggested we create
programs where students can interact with proficient World English speakers.
Using a textbook he co-authored as an example, Shiozawa showed how teachers
can expose students to other English varieties in the classroom by using nonnative speaker models. It was interesting to hear the array of voices used in thelistening sections in his textbook. As nearly all of my current textbooks use only
native speaker models, I found this to be especially refreshing.
Five hour-long workshops ran simultaneously with the presentations. In
the interest of attending as many short talks as possible, I chose to attend only
one workshop. On Sunday, Jenell Rae of Sugiyama University led us throughan exploration of written corrective feedback methods, which is one of my own
areas of interest. After a short overview, participants had a chance to evaluate astudent’s writing sample and discuss the techniques they used. I was surprised
to find that seemingly small differences in approach led to big discrepancies inscoring. I greatly appreciated this chance to examine feedback practices withcolleagues. The workshop provided a good opportunity to discuss and challenge
our beliefs about what is best when evaluating student work.
The CUE SIG Annual General Meeting followed Saturday’s plenary. SIG
Coordinator Wendy Gough reminded us of upcoming group events, namely the4th CUE ESP Symposium in 2016 and the 25th anniversary conference in 2018.
As she pointed out, the CUE SIG is JALT’s largest special interest group, but
member involvement in recent years has been low. She thus suggested several
ways to get involved with the planning of these events and with the SIG ingeneral. OnCUE Journal editor Glen Hill and others urged us also to consider
contributing to or working on the CUE Circular newsletter (the newest additionto the SIG’s publications) or the OnCUE Journal.
Overall, this was an enjoyable conference to attend. I left the conference witha number of practical ideas to implement in my teaching, and there were ampleopportunities for networking. The positive attitude of the organizers inspired meto get more involved in the SIG by writing this review. I have also kept in contact
with a number of teachers that I met at this conference. Because the CUE SIG
is JALT’s largest group, I was surprised to find that only 38 members were in418

The 2015 JALT CUE Conference, OnCUE Journal, 9(4), pages 416-419

attendance. The smaller group, however, made it easy to get to know most ofthe people present. In several of the sessions I attended, most if not all of theaudience members were able to contribute to post-presentation discussions.
While there were clear benefits to having a smaller number of attendees
present, it would be wonderful to have a larger number of SIG members to shareteaching tips and research ideas at future conferences. I urge other college anduniversity teachers to consider attending or presenting at upcoming CUE events.
The comfortable atmosphere makes it a great place to get feedback on researchand share teaching ideas. The conference is also a valuable opportunity to forge
new relationships with teachers from institutions around Japan and to become
more active in the CUE community.

Author bio

Jamie Taylor is a lecturer in the Chubu University Language Center. Her researchinterests include crosslinguistic effects on second language processing and individual
differences in language learning. She has taught EFL and ESL in France, Japan,
and the US. taylorjamiec@gmail.com
Received: October 15, 2015
Accepted: February 1, 2016

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