November JALT Event in Fukuoka
-	TITLE	Motivating Japanese Students to be Active Communicators
-	SPEAKER	David Paul
	DATE	Sunday, November 7, 1999
	TIME	2:00 to 5:00
	PLACE	Aso Foreign Language Travel College Hakataekiminami 2-12-24 (10 minutes from Hakata Station on foot - see the map in English or see the map in Japanese for details)
	FEE	Free for JALT members. Also free for non-members because this event is underwritten by David English House, Hiroshima. (If you are interested in becoming a JALT member, you can join at the meeting. Check out the benefits of JALT membership by reading our "joining JALT" page.)
	INFO	Kevin O'Leary, 0942-22-2221 (tel/fax), oleary@oleary.net

Why is it that so many Japanese students fail to learn to communicate in English, even after studying for many years? What have we been doing wrong? As teachers of these students we must take a lot of responsibility for this failure.

This presentation will be on teaching East Asian children, teenagers and adults. The presenter will suggest two main reasons why we are failing with these students. The first is that we cling to traditional methods which only work for a small percentage of learners. The second is that we use imported ideas which were developed for completely different learning situations.

He will suggest that we have to cross the barrier between the classroom world where students learn English, and the world outside the classroom where these students live their daily lives and have their own daily emotions. To cross this barrier, we have to do much more than just personalize language targets. The presenter will suggest that by placing emphasis on the psychological aspects of learning, respecting the individual learning processes of our students, and by keeping the students fully emotionally involved in all stages of a lesson, we can train them to communicate naturally and effectively.

The presentation will be full of activities that illustrate each of the main points.

ABOUT THE PRESENTER
David Paul is Principal of David English House, and author of 'Finding Out' (Macmillan/Heinemann), 'Communicate' (Macmillan/Heinemann), 'Songs and Games for Children' (Macmillan/Heinemann), and 'Discover English' (GEOS).

He is the East Asian representative for the University of Birmingham Cert/Dip/MA in TEFL/TESL, and the Japan representative for the University of Sheffield Cert/Dist/MA in Japanese Language and Society, and MA in Advanced Japanese Studies.

He spends much of his time travelling around the region training teachers in student-initiated methods that are appropriate for East Asian classrooms, and is consultant to the Thai Ministry of Education on child-centered learning.