Learning Learning 『学習の学習』 25 (1): GRANT AWARDEE REPORTS

LD SIG 2017 GRANT AWARDEE REPORTS | 研究助成金
JALT2017 International
Conference Report

Imogen Custance, Kyoto Sangyo University
Email: <imogen.custance@gmail.com>
This year, I was fortunate enough toreceive the LD SIG JALT International
Conference Grant, was delighted to attend theevent itself, and now have the opportunity tosit and reflect on what was, as always, aninteresting, informative, and thoroughly
enjoyable event. Given JALT2017 took place inTsukuba, definitely not a short trip fromKansai, where I am based, I had been unsure asto whether I would be able to go. I am very
grateful to the LD SIG for providing me with agrant so that I didn’t have to worry about thatdecision. After a long day of teaching, I headed
up to Tsukuba on Friday, set my alarm forseven, and went to sleep with great
expectations of the following day. I was notdisappointed.
This was my third JALT International
Conference, and I have always found it openand welcoming. It is an easy place to makefriends, reconnect with people, and gain moreideas than you (at least initially) know what todo with. This year was no different. From theenergizing opening ceremony, to enthusiastic
publishers, I doubt that I am the only person
who found a new enthusiasm for all things
teacherly in the midst of a very long term. In
writing this report, I find myself reassessing
and appreciating anew the effort of all those
involved in creating such a productive andinspiring event. I hope that those of you

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reading this are reminded of similar things orinspired to attend future JALT conferences.
Plenaries
Looking back over my notes from the plenariesreally emphasized the importance ofconferences and events like the JALTInternational Conference. Both Gabriel Diaz
Magglioli and Barbara Hoskins-Sakamoto
highlighted the importance of teacher training
and professional development in helping
learners to achieve the best that they can.
Magglioli’s plenary, Shaping the Way We Grow:
Teachers and Development, examined the needfor more focused and effective professional
development, highlighting the often-haphazard
nature of institutional “professionaldevelopment” days, and the frustration ofknowing it is important, but being unsure ofwhere to look to improve independently. Being
no stranger to in-house development days,
many of the comments about professional
development sessions being “unfocused,insufficient, and irrelevant” felt uncomfortably
familiar.
Magglioli said that as professionals, weneed to be aware of changes in the profession,
whether related to innovations in practice,changes in social purposes for teaching, or newdiscoveries. Attending conferences, reading
research, and conducting action research,whether for publication or not, help us toimprove our teaching practice. In addition, hesaid that professional development isimportant because it can interrupt routinesthat might otherwise lead to boredom; it helps
us to re-energize and rediscover the joy ofteaching. It is necessary as meeting people

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Learning Learning 『学習の学習』 25 (1): GRANT AWARDEE REPORTS
who know more than you about something that“keeps you humble.”
Hoskins-Sakamoto’s plenary on Sunday
morning took what felt like a more bottom-up
approach to professional development. Ratherthan looking at the need for professional
development, she examined how effectiveclassroom techniques often necessitate thepresence of teachers who know how toimplement them. She argued that effective
teacher training helps produce instructors whoadapt to what it required of them, rather thanteachers whose functionality diminishes when
educational aims change. She said that themost financially efficacious methods used inclassrooms are collaborative learning, student
use of meta-cognition and self-regulation,
feedback, and peer tutoring. For these things
to be effective, teachers must be trained andaware of how to best organize groups topromote collaboration; how to make students
aware of their own learning; how to provide
good feedback; and how to promote peer
tutoring. The wonderful thing about the JALTInternational Conference is that opportunities
to learn more about all these things abound.
The “myths” section of Hoskins-Sakamoto’s
presentation was also a nice reminder that we
accept some ideas without really thinking
them through. One that I thought particularly
important is the idea that younger children arebetter language learners. Hoskins-Sakamoto
said that they often seem better because theexpectations of what a child should beexpected to do are so much lower than forteenagers or adults. This in turn makes
achieving those expectations easier, and moreof them are achieved, resulting in a somewhat
erroneous belief that young children must
simply be better at learning. Whilst a lot of

research shows that starting to learn younger
does often result in higher overall proficiency(e.g., DeKeyser, Alfi-Shabtay, & Ravid, 2010), it
is important to remember that this is notnecessarily useful or practical information
when considering the classroom – we cannotchange the age at which our students startlearning.
Hugh Starkey’s presentation on
cosmopolitan citizenship and language learning
on Saturday, and Nick Saville’s about changes
in teaching as technology develops on Sunday
were also very interesting, though theyexamined very different things. I learnt quite a
lot more about the initial reasons foreducation as a whole (to benefit the state),
how a great deal of education was centred on
creating good citizens (who would support andidentify more strongly with the state), and how
these ideas are increasingly less relevant, orperhaps (as I see it) harmful, in a progressively
more cosmopolitan and globalized world.
Starkey suggested that language learning andinternational citizenship education are a good
fit to help motivate greater awareness of andinterest in both subjects.
Saville’s presentation included a joyful
romp through his time working on English
proficiency testing in Japan thirty years ago(it’s always fun to hear what working here waslike in the bubble era – money being thrownaround, figuring out how to use these new“computer” things effectively, and very large
suits), and raised a number of questions about
the effect of technology on teacher roles. One
that particularly struck me was the increasing
difficulty in determining whether students
have written something on their own, or asked
Google-sensei for quite a lot of assistance.
Students produce better work as a result ofNewsletter of the JALT Learner Development SIG <ld-sig.org/>

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Learning Learning 『学習の学習』 25 (1): GRANT AWARDEE REPORTS
becoming more resourceful and technologicallysavvy, but are they improving their language
abilities? I really feel that finding ways to get
students to use technology responsibly will be
one of the biggest hurdles to overcome astranslation software, in particular, becomes
more sophisticated.

Presentations
Being interested in extensive reading (ER),come Saturday afternoon I was somewhat
conflicted as to whether to go to David
Beglar’s presentation on reading fluency, orPaul Nation’s on the use of simplified
materials. I decided to go with Dr. Beglar’s forthree main reasons – I could go to one of
Nation’s other ones; I am very interested in thecognitive benefits of ER; and nostalgia (Dr.
Beglar was one of my teachers for my Master’sprogram). I was very happy with the decision. I
have recently felt that greater focus on how ER
helps to increase the rate at which individuals
process texts, rather than its motivational
potential, is necessary. Beglar’s presentation
gave an excellent rundown of various theories
relating to fluency development, e.g. ACT(Adaptive Control of Thought) Theory(Anderson, 1983), and Instance Theory (Logan,1988) and how extensive reading fits in withthem. As I start to think about teaching fornext year, I find myself wondering how best tosynthesise these arguments to present them tostudents and get more of them to take theopportunity that ER presents for language
development more seriously.
I never doubted that the Paul Nation
presentation that I went to, How Important areFluency Development Activities? was going tobe fun. I first saw him speak at JALT2015, andthis presentation was similarly well-attended
学習者ディベロプメント研究部会 <ld-sig.org/>

and lively. Just as his books are very
accessible, so too are Nation’s presentations.
His use of easy-to-remember acronyms also
continued with LIST (language; ideas; skills;text) taking the floor this time around. Hesuggested LIST as a useful way to check theextent to which an activity is truly operating asa fluency activity. Fluency is a skill, so it isimportant to keep L, I, & T easy, so that theskill itself can be worked on. He suggested an
example of a good fluency activity that bears
this in mind is “best recording.” Students
record themselves, listen to the recording, anddecide whether they think that it is goodenough or not. By re-recording until they aresatisfied they have done the best that theycan, the language needed is made easier, newideas are not being introduced, and the text
difficulty is controlled, thus making it a clearlyskill development-orientated activity.
Later in the presentation, Nation also
spoke more specifically about reading fluency
and the need for learners to improve theirword recognition skills. He said that withfaster word recognition comes a better ability
to predict subsequent words and phrases. Thisin turn helps learners to become better
readers as they can move through a text fasterand can devote more time to any unknown
words that they encounter. Nation also
reiterated his suggestion that learning
collocations, and getting used to seeing words
that frequently occur together, are effective
ways to increase fluency. This meshed very
well with what Beglar said about how language
is processed, and how these processes become
faster.
But I wasn’t solely devoted to ER during
the conference. Another presentation thatpiqued my interest was Robert Dormer’s

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Learning Learning 『学習の学習』 25 (1): GRANT AWARDEE REPORTS
presentation examining how what has come tobe known as nudge theory can be used in thelanguage classroom. The tiny room was overly
stuffed to the point that people were spillingout into the corridor (I think I got the last seat
– lucky me). Nudge theory is generally
associated with behavioural economics andrelates to encouraging positive behaviour
through suggestion rather than specificinstruction. An example of this is when a hotel
uses a notice suggesting that reusing towels is
beneficial to the environment, and that otherguests tend to use the same towels overmultiple days.
Dormer’s presentation explored how
nudges might be employed to encouragelearners to write more in fluency development
activities. He included notes including
information about how previous students felt
their writing had improved, with some notes
including details of by how much students’words per minute had increased in theprevious year. Though very much a preliminary
investigation, Dormer was cautiously optimistic
about the effect that nudges could have. Evenif overall effect size is small, the low cost,both monetarily and time-wise, and simplicityof the idea makes use of nudges somethingthat warrants further investigation. I mighteven look into it myself.
On Sunday morning I went to Yo Hamada’s
presentation comparing haptic and IPA
shadowing. This was partly because I wasintrigued by how a full, 15-week course
devoted to shadowing worked in practice, andalso to find out what on earth “hapticshadowing” was (punching the air with stressedsyllables as it turned out; IPA shadowing
involved coding the text to be shadowed using
the IPA). Hamada’s results showed that bothprocedures had a positive effect on students’abilities to produce segmentals accurately, andsome improvement in comprehensibility, but
only the haptic group improved on
suprasegmentals. While there were issues withthe research (which Hamada highlightedhimself) it was nevertheless an interestingpresentation, not least because we could see aclass full of students all punching the air while
reading/shadowing.
Posters
I’ve largely missed the poster presentation
sessions at other conferences so I made sure togo this time. I don’t think that I spent enoughtime there, but it was time well-spent. I
focused mainly on presentations related towriting instruction, a genre that, having been
to “regular” presentations about writing,seems ideally suited to the poster presentationformat. I say this because you have the chanceand time to actually read what students haveproduced, something that you don’t really geta chance to do in a 25-minute presentation. It
was also a great opportunity to share ideas for
similar writing courses and experiences withissues relating to writing instruction.
I also went to the LD SIG Forum which involved
a mini-poster session (how could I not?). This
was a great way to meet members of the SIG(very lovely people) and see what people are
getting up to. I was quite sad to have to leaveearly on (the forum clashed with mypresentation), but left with some good ideas,
especially relating to how we examine whatskills and language that students need in theirprofessional, post-university life. This issomething that I have felt increasingly uneasy
with in recent years, and one of the reasonsthat I joined the LD SIG. The rapid

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Learning Learning 『学習の学習』 25 (1): GRANT AWARDEE REPORTS
development of new industries and types of
employment have in turn led to individuals
needing different skill sets and foreign
language expertise. Identifying and adapting
teaching to these new realities is no easy task
and can seem daunting given the rate at whichchange seems to be occurring. However,helping students to become lifelong learners,
with an awareness of how they can help
themselves to further their language abilities
as necessary, will never be a wasted effort.
Hoskins-Sakamoto highlighted the need forteachers to be adaptable, and I feel the sameis true for our students.
Conclusion
Due to teaching obligations, I was unable tostay for the presentations on Sunday afternoonor Monday (Tsukuba really is a LONG way awayfrom Kansai), but I don’t doubt the quality ofpresentations and interesting nature of thetopics discussed continued. I am alreadylooking forward to what next year’s conference
will hold and have my eyes very much open forother JALT-sponsored events in the meantime.
References
Anderson, J. R. (1983). The architecture ofcognition. Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press.
DeKeyser, R., Alfi-Shabtay, I., & Ravid, D.
(2010). Cross-linguistic evidence for thenature of age effects in second language
acquisition. Applied Linguistics, 31(3),413-438.
Logan, G. D. (1988). Toward an instance theoryof automatization. Psychological Review,
95(4), 492-527.

学習者ディベロプメント研究部会 <ld-sig.org/>

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