Thank you to everyone who came to the Advising in Language Learning event on Saturday July 10th on Zoom. This was a joint event by JALT Kyoto and JASAL. There were 34 participants, including some from overseas! If you were unable to attend, you can see the videos on our YouTube channel. More information about the event and links to the YouTube videos can be found here.

The June 2021 edition of JASAL Journal, edited by Bethan Kushida and Umida Ashurova, is published! It is a really full issue with three research papers—one by Satoko Watkins, one by Hilda Freimuth, Joe Dobson, and Ishka Rodriques, and one by Haruka Mukae). There are also three discussions of practice and three conference reports.

Thank you to everyone involved in creating the issue. It is a really rich resource for the JASAL community and beyond. Take a look!

The submissions deadline for the next issue, edited by by Naomi Fujishima and Garold Murray, is August 31 2021. It is scheduled for December 2021. We are looking forward to your submissions.

Make sure to put July 10th in your diary! JASAL and Kyoto JALT are holding a joint event: Advising in Language Learning and Its Application to Classroom Teaching. The event will be held on Zoom from 10 am to 1 pm. There is no charge to participate.

See more details here.

This is a wonderful opportunity, so please let your colleagues know about it, and feel free to display the poster in your workplaces!

Download poster as PDF.

Registration is open for the Independent Learning Association Conference 2021 in Mexico. ILAC2021 are one of JASAL’s partner organizations. The schedule of the conference is 9 to 13 and 17 to 20 Mexico time (23 to 3 and 7 to 10 Japan time).

Registration is now available for the IALLT 2021 Virtual Conference!

IALLT are one of JASAL’s partner organizations, and many JASAL members are likely to be interested in attending.

Here is the information:

Resilience has been indispensable in overcoming extreme challenges in the past academic year. The move to the online/remote teaching environment has forced us to carefully examine what we do, how we do it, and most importantly why we do it. As we look to life and education beyond the pandemic, it is important to reflect on this transformative experience, evaluate where we found success, and learn from our own, as well as each other’s extraordinary experiences. We are entering an exciting time, where the potential to transform teaching and learning is limitless.

Our 2021 conference will be virtual; yet we hope to create programming that recreates (as close as possible) the in-person experience. Conference presenters hail from across the globe, and we look forward to the opportunity that a virtual conference offers for our international colleagues who would normally not be able to attend one of our on-location conferences.

This conference is free for current IALLT members, but registration is required for everyone (including presenters) in order to access conference content.

A limited number of Membership plus Conference Registration grants are available. Please apply by May 1.
More information about IALLT 2021 is available on the conference website. We are looking forward to seeing you there!

On March 25, JASAL held our first ever Online Panel Discussion. Katherine Thornton led the discussion, in which questions and topics suggested by JASAL members were discussed by our three highly knowledgeable panelists, Sarah Toogood (Hong Kong Baptist University), Isra Wongsarnpigoon (Kanda University of International Studies), and Mikiko Fukutomo (Yamanashi Gakuin University), with some contributions by other attendees. It was an evening of really positive discussion and information sharing. Thank you to Katherine for MCing the event, and a big thank you to our panelists and attendees. It was a great evening!

The JASAL2020 post-conference page has been updated to include links to presentation videos. JASAL now has a YouTube channel, and presentation videos can be found there. We would like to ask that you please subscribe to our account. If we can get 100 subscribers, we will be able to give custom names to our channels. Thank you!

Today we held our 2nd JASAL Student Online Forum. The event was largely planned and run by three very capable student volunteers: Chika Yamane (Kanda University of International Studies), Itsuki Takahashi (Gifu Shotoku Gakuen University), and Minhung Lee (Ryutsu Keizai University).

The event began with a presentation from guest speaker Jackson Lee, which was packed full of fun ways for students to make English part of their lives outside the classroom. Then, the participants discussed motivation and other in breakout rooms, and finished with a brainstorming session focused on SAC welcome events for the new school year.

The 14 student participants came from six universities across Japan. There were also two JASAL regular members who came to observe, and Hisako, Katherine, and Clair were also present.

The whole event had a warm and friendly vibe, and there was take-away value for everyone! Thank you to everyone who came and made it a success.

Now the semester is coming to an end for most of us, why not join the lovely Suwako Uehara and Katherine Thornton for the 2nd JASAL Online Social on Tues 9th Feb, 8pm – 10pm! This time we’re going to use Spatial Chat rather than Zoom, as we think it allows for more natural small group interactions and is just a lot more fun.

It also has huge potential as an online self-access space, and I know some people are using it already. See the photo below to get a basic idea. Members will also have received this information in the recent email from JASAL – check your inbox!

If you’re interested in joining the Social, please sign up using the online form below and we’ll send you the link. Spatial Chat has limited capacity so please sign up in advance to help us plan accordingly. Hope to see many of you there!

https://forms.gle/1CNwh9uzMen5AXd66

The deadline to register for the 2nd JASAL Online Student Forum has been extended until January 29th.