Hello Critical Thinkers!
We are a little less than a week away from JALT 2017. The biggest conference of its type in Japan!
We are excited to bring you 3 presentations Saturday at 12:40 in Convention Hall 200 with the JALT Critical Thinking SIG Forum. Below, you can find information on the three presentations.
Stick around after the presentations to learn more about the SIG with our AGM which will recap this year’s activities and preview some of the plans we have for 2018!
Yumi Chikamori Gomez – Rikkyo University, Japan
LTD: Deeper Learning Through Collaborative Group Discussions.
Group discussions can propel students to think critically if carefully designed and monitored by the teacher. As Vygotsky’s theory of ZPD suggests, students can co-construct knowledge through interactions by providing support for each other. This presentation will show how LTD (Learning Through Discussion) method can be an effective way to make use of student interactions as a rich resource for deeper learning. The presenter will also talk about concerns need to be addressed when using this method with EFL students.
Todd Hooper – Setsunan University, Japan
The Power of “Why”
Simple prompts such as “why” in response to student answers can have a profound effect on the amount of thinking that occurs in your classes. This presentation will give practical advice on how to incorporate simple prompts into a wide variety of lessons across various areas of language education. This advice will be supported by case studies and student comments from the speaker’s own courses.
Su-Ching Wang and Curtis Chu – National Chung Cheng University, Taiwan
An Experimental Trial on Developing Critical Thinking in an EFL Workplace English Course
We must take many things into account while designing an EFL course for workplace English, and developing students’ critical thinking ability is especially important for it allows one to recognize their situations, find logical methods and apply them to different scenarios skillfully. The authors will present their journey on the implementation of their EFL course, where tudents were exposed to different business contexts, and were required to figure out workable solutions at the workplace as critical thinkers.
See you on Saturday the 18th at 12:40 in Convention Hall 200!
James Dunn – JALT CT SIG Coordinator
