2014 JALT NATIONAL LiLT forum
“Literature Across Borders”
Sunday, November 23, 12:25 PM – 1:55 PM (90 minutes)
Room: Rm 304
In this forum Literature across borders, we consider the notion of borders in different ways. International borders, linguistic borders, and geographical borders are crossed, negotiated and interpreted by a range of speakers discussing literature and their teaching. The Literature in Language Teaching SIG invites participants to join the conversation about aspects of literature related to the conference theme of conversations across borders. The LiLT SIG AGM will take place immediately after the forum.
Speakers
Anna Twitchell: Between the Lines: Teaching critical literacy skills to students who don’t read
This presentation will focus on the presenter’s own experiences in teaching inference skills to students of Saudi Arabian educational background. It will examine the difficulties encountered while teaching students who have never read fiction before, and explore how works of short fiction can be used to begin facilitating students’ abilities to interpret authors’ unwritten words. There will be a focus on the short fiction of Neil Gaiman.
Atsushi Iida : Poetry across borders: Haiku in second language education
Nowadays, the use of haiku- a three line Japanese poem with 17 syllables is not restricted to Japanese language in the first language (L1) context. Haiku is written in different languages in various educational settings (Iida, 2012). In this presentation, the presenter- a teacher and researcher of poetry writing in a second language (L2) will discuss different purposes of using haiku and explore the value of haiku writing as a form of literacy practice in the Japanese EFL classroom.
Li-Hsin Tu will present on Learning from the masters: using literature as models during the revision process
“I want to write like my favorite author, but how?” is a question every writer wants to ask. In this section, we will discuss ways to guide students through the revision process by using model texts. Using a published text as model and gleaning writing wisdom from it can help demystify the revision process. It can also help develop students’ independent writing skills, and encourage learning beyond the classroom.
Morten Hunke : Using Japanese cultural formats to foster creativity in the L2 classroom
This presentation hints at how Japanese cultural formats like 俳句 (haiku), 短歌 (tanka),紙芝居 (kamishibai), and 落語 (rakugo) may be employed in the foreign language classroom. The main focus will be on how to foster creativity in students’ use of the L2. However, the approach also encompasses much wider areas and other uses such as e.g. scaffolding, eliciting and practicing aspects of pronunciation/prosody, comparative cultural awareness, and literary awareness.
Tara McIlroy : Using multimedia quote and picture tasks to cross the border between fiction and reality
This presentation will describe a unit of work which tied in literary quotes to personal beliefs using a multimedia quote and picture task. Results from the 2014 class will be shared and some issues around literary understanding, personalizing the reading process and memories from individual reading history will be approached. The central question in this presentation will be: “Where does fiction end and reality begin?”
Neil Addison and Neil Conway: Accessing the Inward Eye: Using Wordsworth’s Poetry in EFL Reading
While reading poetry may yield English students a number of lexical and syntactical benefits, grappling with such texts also requires learners to cross various cultural borders. It is thus important that teachers choose poetic texts carefully, and this presentation focuses on how sonnets by William Wordsworth were taught to Japanese students at several different universities, whilst discussing why these texts are both thematically and lexically suitable for modern learners. The presentation will also discuss how, in the modern age, Wordsworth’s poetry affords benefits additional to language or cultural acquisition, such as training the mind towards the inward eye of contemplation.