Kobe JALT - Spring 2009 Newsletter

JALT KOBE NEWSLETTER
Vol. 1. No. 1 Spring 2009

Happy Birthday JALT Kobe Chapter Newsletter
Sonia Sonoko Strain, Himeji Dokkyo University

How exciting it is for JALT Kobe members to celebrate the launching of JALT Kobe Newsletter, our own regional newsletter!  This is in line, I believe, with the expected waves of drastic changes in foreign language education here in Japan.  The news is welcome not only to the Kobe members but also to JALT as a whole.  JALT Kobe Newsletter will underscore the principle of sharing professional insights about language teaching and learning, the goal of JALT and JALT Kobe Chapter.  I would like to congratulate Stuart Cunningham of Himeji Dokkyo University for volunteering as its first Editor, work that will involve a great deal of time, effort and responsibility.  We should also remember that any sustainable newsletter requires not just the commitment of its editor, but also the support of the chapter members to promote and to sustain the standard of the newsletter as well as the quality of its contents.  Let me take this opportunity to give our recent Kobe Chapter members a brief account of the early days of JALT, the birth of Kobe Chapter, and JALT publications.  I would also like to outline the three ways this newsletter will serve the Kobe Chapter membership.
 
KALT (�gKansai Association of Language Teachers�h) dates back to 1976.  After a few years this group of English teachers joined hands with �gKanto Association of Language Teachers�h and �gTokai Association of Language Teachers�h and became JALT (�gJapan Association of Language Teachers�h), which was approved at their Third National Conference.  At that time, JALT had only three chapters – Tokyo, Nagoya and Osaka - with a total membership of some four hundred teachers of English, three-fourths being
native English-speaking teachers teaching English in different teaching situations in Japan; there was no other academic association of language teaching that used English as the medium of communication at that time in Japan.  In 1978, JALT added Sendai, Takamatsu, Hiroshima and Fukuoka Chapters, and the membership ratio became half  Japanese and half non-Japanese.  In 1980, Sapporo, Kyoto, and Okinawa also gained JALT chapter status and JALT finally truly reflected its name �gJapan Association of Language Teachers�h.  With a flourishing Japanese economy that generated the boom to study English for traveling abroad and for doing business internationally, more native-speaker English teachers arrived in Japan and Japanese teachers of English who wanted to exchange views in English also joined JALT.  JALT�fs membership grew year by year to almost four thousand around 1990.  Eventually, the name was changed to �gJapan Association for Language Teaching�h by Shigeru Imamura of Himeji Dokkyo University, to distinguish JALT from being a teachers�f labor union.  By projecting a more academic image, JALT obtained the long-sought Gakkai status.  Two Gakkai benefits were that many teachers could claim conference fees from their institutions and, publishing in JALT publications and presenting at JALT conferences could be comfortably included on a curriculum vitae.  At present, JALT is composed of 34 chapters. 
 
Next, let me focus briefly on how JALT Kobe Chapter came into being.  In the early 1980s, Osaka Chapter had among its members twenty or so teachers who lived and worked in the Kobe area.  In 1983, these teachers led by Jan Visscher (Kwansai Gakuin University) formed Kobe Chapter.  Kobe�fs monthly meetings started at St Michaels�fs International School in Sannomiya, on the second Sunday of every month.  I myself had the honor to serve as Kobe Chapter President for the years 1986 and 1987.  It was a delight to find, in Kobe Chapter�fs committee, Michael Skelton of Seiwa University who played active roles in the first years of Kobe Chapter and who also gave our Himeji Dokkyo teachers an opportunity to hold an EAP Colloquium at Kobe YMCA in October 2006.  Incidentally, Kobe Chapter membership grew rapidly and
Jeri Strain, who noticed that quite a few members were Himeji teachers, formed JALT Himeji Chapter in 1988.  Thus Osaka, Kobe, and Himeji Chapters are closely related.
 
Having served on the JALT Publications Board (from 1991 to1994), here is what I recall about JALT publication efforts.  The first JALT publication was the KALT Newsletter (from 1976 to 1977).  From 1978 to 1984, JALT Newsletter was issued. 
Then it was upgraded to become a monthly magazine, the Language Teacher (named by Tom Robb of Kyoto Sangyo University).  In 1988, JALT SIGs (Special Interest Groups) began to be formed while I served as the National Membership Chairperson (from mid 1988 to 1990), and SIG newsletters (e.g. Global Issues in Language Education edited by Kip Cates of Tottori University was the first SIG newsletter); later journals too were added.  Some chapters also published, though unfortunately not all publications were sustainable due to personnel and financing reasons.  
 
To conclude, Kobe Chapter Newsletter is a welcome addition to JALT publications, and especially to the Kobe Chapter members.  Small but important insights concerning language teaching and learning that have not yet been developed into a full academic paper will now have a venue for publishing and sharing with other teachers.  New teachers in the field will appreciate having a friendly local newsletter to publish in as their first step into academic publishing and before they start submitting their papers to
the Language Teacher or JALT Journal.  Moreover, when teachers are not able to attend monthly meetings, the new Kobe Chapter Newsletter will serve as an effective vehicle for keeping Kobe Chapter members connected with each other, and for sharing and promoting their professional aspirations.
 
With the birth of the Kobe Chapter Newsletter catering to Kobe Chapter members, Stuart Cunningham and the Kobe Chapter committee deserve a big hand and sustained support from each one of us.  Congratulations!

Academic Speaking for Intermediate and Lower-Intermediate Students
Maggie Lieb,  Meiji University

Background
As increasing numbers of Japanese students strive to study in overseas, English-medium universities, many universities have developed and implemented English for Academic Purposes (EAP) programs, geared towards high proficiency EFL students. It is regrettable, however, that EAP programs for intermediate and lower level students are rare, despite the fact that these students are often equally motivated to study and excel in an English medium university, but simply lack the necessary skills and self confidence. 
This article will briefly describe how one small, private university in Western Japan attempted to address this problem by designing and implementing an EAP program for intermediate and lower-intermediate students.  Although students in the program did not have the high levels of proficiency necessary to achieve high-test scores, they were hardworking, diligent, and highly motivated to spend their junior year studying abroad.     
 
The EAP Program
A basic tenet of the program was that introducing intermediate students to EAP before going abroad to study would boost their confidence and subsequently increase their chances of success.  It was determined that a "mechanistic model" of instruction, defined by Nunan and Lamb (1996) as �gplanning equals teaching equals learning�h would be ineffective (Strain, 2006).  Instead, Nunan and Lamb's  "garden model" was chosen as the model for the program as it centers on the idea of sowing seeds of learning that will later sprout, grow, and flourish in an English-medium setting. Thus,
all aspects of the program were designed and coordinated to offer level-appropriate, student-friendly EAP, that followed a carefully crafted scaffolding approach to accommodate the development of key academic skills (Strain, 2006). Designed as a two-year program, students were introduced to the basics of EAP, while simultaneously receiving instruction in English for General Purposes (EGP).  In their first year, students received instruction in a six- module core seminar taught by the director of the program in order to lay the foundation for more extensive EAP instruction in the second year from native English speaking teachers.
 
Academic Speaking
The purpose of the 2nd year Academic Speaking course designed by this author was to build upon and nurture the EAP �gseeds�h sown in the first year core seminar.  Therefore, the guiding principle was to make Academic Speaking accessible to intermediate and lower-level students by building upon what they had learned in the core seminar.  This included the small-group discussion skills of starting and ending discussions, soliciting and giving opinions, and agreeing and disagreeing.  To ensure consistency between the
first and second year programs, the method employed was contrastive model-discourse analysis (Strain, 2006).  With this in mind, the following goals were developed for the 2nd year Academic Speaking course:
1) Review and expand on topics covered in the core seminar
2) Improve students' linguistic competence
3) Improve students' strategic competence
4) Develop students' ability to evaluate spoken discourse

5) Increase students' confidence in academic discussions      
(Adapted from Anderson, Maclean, & Lynch, 2004)
 
The course centered around three core modules: Small group discussions;
Seminar/Tutorial skills; and Presentation skills.  Each of these modules, in turn, incorporated training in both linguistic and strategic skills.  To accomplish the goal of providing level-appropriate EAP, this author utilized a four-step framework adapted from Fujimori & Houck, 2004 for teaching speech acts.  The following is a description of how this framework was put to use in the teaching of disagreeing.
 
Step 1:  Deciding to Teach a Speech Act 
The decision to incorporate disagreeing into the course syllabus was based on the fact that it was a natural extension of the small group discussion strategies to which students were exposed in the core seminar, and also one of the "most likely types of speaking activity...students would find themselves participating in during their junior year abroad" (Strain, 2006).  Another reason is that disagreeing encourages critical thinking which can pose a challenge for Japanese students, as it can be perceived as imposing "an individualistic, often adversarial type of thinking onto students ... that are
group-oriented and non-adversarial, often seeking harmony rather than conflict" (Day, 2003).  Finally, inherent difficulties lie in transferring L1 pragmatic rules into L2 without causing offense.  Carefully equipping students with polite disagreement skills enables them to avoid these problems.  
 
 
Step 2:  Determining What Students Already Know (Needs Analysis)
Designing an EAP syllabus necessitates "needs analysis [which offers] indications of students' difficulties" (Jordan, 2006).  In the case of disagreement, students were presented with pairs of opposing opinions.  They responded in verbal and written form to those opinions they disagreed with.  
 
Step 3:  Presenting New Material
This step is subdivided into three distinct sub steps:
A) Consciousness-Raising
B) Knowledge-Building
C) Production Development

A) Consciousness-Raising:
Krashen (2003) claims that conscious learning is simply an output monitor or editor and does not contribute to fluency, while Lewis (2000) underscores the Noticing Hypothesis in which "conscious noticing of features of the language ... does facilitate acquisition".  Therefore, in this step, students were first presented with disagreeing phrase banks and asked to identify "soft" vs. "hard" and "polite vs. impolite" forms of disagreement (Price, 1978, in Jordan, 2006).  Students were then asked to identify (or notice) types of
disagreement in the context of short dialogues.    
B) Knowledge-building:
In this stage, students compared successful and unsuccessful dialogues, and discussed reasons for their success or failure.  This required them to employ the contrastive model discourse analysis skills to which they were exposed in the core seminar (Strain, 2006).  Students were then given tips for disagreeing appropriately in academic discussions, with particular emphasis on disagreeing with concession.  
C) Production Development:
As with every stage in the process, production development followed a step-by-step scaffolding approach from controlled to spontaneous production.  Controlled production began when students were given opinions and asked to use their phrase banks to write appropriate disagreeing phrases.  This was followed by oral practice and revisions if necessary.  The final step was spontaneous production where students received role-play cards containing opinions.  In pairs or in small groups, students read the opinions while their classmates practiced disagreeing politely.
 
Step 4:  Assessment
Lastly, students were presented with the same pairs of opposing opinions as in Step 2 (Needs Analysis) and asked to formulate their disagreement with one opinion in each pair.  Comparisons were made between their pre- and post- instruction answers to determine the effectiveness of the instruction.  
Conclusion 
Fujimori & Houck's (2004) framework can potentially be adapted to teach a variety of linguistic and strategic skills for intermediate and lower level EAP students.  Key elements of this framework that make it student-friendly are that it incorporates task-recycling and is multi-layered as many skills are integrated into each step. 
Furthermore, Jordan (2006) stresses the value of training students "to be self-critical and to monitor themselves" (p.205) The needs analysis and assessment steps are key to encouraging self-evaluation, which in turn enhances students' confidence to take charge of their own progress, confidence that is especially critical for intermediate and lower level students.  
 
References
Anderson, K., Maclean, J., & Lynch, T.  (2004).  Study speaking:  A course in
spoken  English for academic purposes. New York, Cambridge University Press.
Day, R.R., (2003).  Teaching critical thinking and discussion.  The Language Teacher 27(7), Retrieved June 19, 2006 from
http://www.jalt-publications.org/tlt/articles/2003/07/day 
Fujimori, J. & Houck, N. (2004). Practical criteria for teaching speech acts.  The  Language Teacher, 28(5), 3-8
 Jordan, R. R. (1997). English for academic purposes, A guide and resource book for teachers (8th printing, 2006).  Cambridge University Press.
Krashen (2003).  Explorations in language acquisition and use.  Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann
Lewis, M. (2000).  Language in the lexical approach.  In Michael Lewis (Ed.),
Teaching Collocation.  Hove, England: Language Teaching Publications
Lewis, M. & Reinders, H. (2003).  Study skills for speakers of English as a second language.  New York, Palgrave Macmillan.
Nunan, D. & Lamb, C. (1996).  The self-directed teacher, Managing the learning  process.  Cambridge University Press.
Strain, S.S. (2006).  A friendly approach to English for academic purposes.  Tokyo: Shohakusha.

Portable CALL - Shawn R. White & William R. White

This short article discusses 3 issues concerning the management of IT resources that can detract from the CALL experience - for the student and the instructor. (1) Concern with the variety and complexity of CALL labs and software.  (2) Restrictions on IT resources that limit lab usability.  
(3) The lack of English operating systems  - which means the students work largely in their native language rather than the target language.
Firstly the great variety of CALL software systems and hardware configurations are a burden on instructors and students. These can distract from the real purpose of the class, learning language. What is the burden? For a full time instructor, with regular access to facilities, the initial time and effort committed to becoming familiar with a lab is worth it. However, students do not have that access. Moreover, a part time instructor is likely
to move from lab to lab, year to year, assigned different classes. The result of multiple systems is a considerable loss of class time while everyone becomes familiar with equipment and the interface. A standard set of applications means users only need master one set of tools.
In order to simplify the process of familiarization and preparation we have chosen the simplest software and hardware. These are portable applications running on a USB device. This allows both instructor and student to use the applications outside the lab, at home, in a library, anywhere. Homework can be assigned to be done outside the class. 
Preparation is more flexible, a definite advantage for an instructor working at multiple locations.  It can be hard for a part time instructor to arrive ahead of class to load materials into a CALL system. Having them ready to go on the USB is a real advantage.
The second serious issue is that institutions tend to lock things down to a point that the CALL lab becomes difficult to use.  Each department, each system or lab has its own rules. None are standardized.  Access to the Internet may require permission, saving files on the desktop disallowed, and other such security measures. The software needed in some cases is often not installed. Having applications installed for you requires red tape.  An example: subtitle capability on media players.  The portable VLC player
has that capability without installation in the PC required. 
The third point here is that we should always be working towards an English immersion environment. Using an English browser (Firefox) means the students work in the target language, the instructor is not required to have a high level of Japanese and very important - the websites load in English as they should, not the Os default language.
Many institutions do not have English operating systems for instructors. Even if there are, the PCs may not be configured properly and can result in �gmojibake�h, a scrambling of the coding that renders some text unreadable.  This is minimized by portable apps that do not depend as much on the OS.  
Proprietary software provides a certain kind of �gcontrol" but is it beneficial? This would be an interesting theme for further research. Is such an environment conducive to constructivist learning models favored in ESL? The authors have collected a group of portable applications1 that are working well in every CALL lab we use. The use of these applications returns a degree of freedom to the instructor and student facilitating a richer class experience for all. For a more in-depth review visit: www.kansaitech.com/blog
(1) Portableapps.com: Firefox, OpenOffice, Audacity, VLC, Kompozer

Contacts and Calender

Contacts:
Chapter President: Ando, Shirley. kobejalt@gmail.com 
Membership Chair: Heywood, David
Program Chair: Jones, Brent
Publicity Chair: Cunningham, Stuart
Treasurer: Torbert, Anthony
Web Site  http://jalt.org/groups/kobe
Editor, Newsletter: Cunningham, Stuart. stuart71cunningham@yahoo.co.uk
When e-mailing the editor please include �gKobe JALT Newsletter�h in the subject field.
 
Calendar
Conferences (Japan only)
May 23-24 Eighth Annual JALT Pan-SIG Conference: Infinite Possibilities:
Expanding Limited Opportunities in Language Education. Location: Toyo Gakuen U., Nagareyama, Chiba. Contact: <pansig.org/2009/>
 
May 30 N.E.A.R. Language Education Conference. Learning and Teaching
Languages in the North East Asian Regional Context. Location: U. of Niigata
Prefecture. Contact: www.iuj.ac.jp/language/conference/near/ or nearconf@iuj.ac.jp 
 
June 5-7 JALTCALL 2009. Location: Toyo Gakuen U., Tokyo. Contact:
<jaltcall.org/news/index.php> 
 
June 27 JACET Kansai Chapter Spring Conference 2009. Location: Kyoto Junior
College of Foreign Languages. Contact: www.jacet-kansai.org 
 
September 18-20. 15th IAICS International Conference on Cross-Cultural
Communication: International Communication and Collaboration Within and Across
Sociolinguistic Environments. Location: Kumamoto Gakuen U. Contact:
www.uri.edu/iaics/ or iaics2009@kumagaku.ac.jp

Top Ten Tips -Paul Moritoshi�fs tips for writing a persuasive EFL textbook publishing proposal. 

1. When you access a publisher�fs website to check their publishing proposal requirements, don�ft be intimidated by the apparent sheer volume or complexity of what they are asking for. It is simply a series of approximately nine tasks that can be completed in a specific sequence or in tandem. 
2. Decide the rationale, target group, level and title for your textbook. Who is this book for? Which level, institution type, country or region is it aimed at? Why do they need it and why do other books currently servicing that market not provide what is needed?
3. Choose and analyse two or three competing texts. Choose texts that would likely compete most directly with your own book, then compare them with yours with regard to approach, method, content, sequencing, relevance, illustrations, use of examples or models, course duration and supporting components. 
4. Think of innovations to make your textbook more appealing. Weaknesses in the competing texts can be exploited as the basis for innovations in your own book. 
5. Decide which, if any, supporting components to have with your book. A teacher�fs manual, CD, video / DVD and a workbook are standard preparation.
6. Decide the pedagogic approach your book will use, e.g. the type of syllabus. This is often guided by the textbook�fs content and aims. Approaches for consideration include: grammatical, lexical, functional, situational, discourse skills based, TBL and communicative language teaching, among others.
7. Design the book�fs methodology. This for me was the hardest part of the proposal writing process as it required continual fine-tuning as I wrote more and more units until I had come up with a method that worked regardless of a particular unit�fs topical content. I started with a list of assumptions I�fd made about first and second language teaching and learning, then I designed a generic �eunit format�f that would realise each necessary part of the learning
process.  This format is the standardised sequence of tasks that the units will have and which you commonly see in EFL textbooks these days.

8. Decide the content and sequencing. What do you want to teach and in what order? How often will this content be recycled? 
9. Choose and write at least three sample units. Submit sample units which reflect well on your concept, methodology and writing style. They should represent your best work. 
10. Field test the materials with students as similar to those in the target group as possible and adapt the materials or content if necessary. Working out the kinks prior to publication makes the book more user-friendly and appealing.

Web Review - Julian Thomas

Dave�fs ESL Café -  http://www.eslcafe.com/ 
Billed as �gDave Sperling presents the One and Only Dave�fs ESL Cafe�h, it�fs the most popular ESL website in the world.  Basic in appearance, the site�fs roots as one of the web�fs first amateur ESL sites are still evident.  The material available is also amateur in nature, provided by the site�fs readers
and seemingly not vetted for quality or relevancy.  If you click around, some gems can be found, but it really does take a bit of clicking as the organisation leaves a lot to be desired.  You might end up with an entire lesson plan, or (for example) one meagre sentence recommending Billy Joel�fs �gYou May Be Right", due to the fact that it contains modals. It�fs unfair however to judge the ESL Café on its content for teachers alone, as the site, at its heart is really a series of message boards, connecting teachers with each other and with potential employers.  With a vibrant community of many members, there are message boards for many different locations, as well as a general discussion
board.  If you have a burning desire to learn (for example) whether ALTs in Korea wear suits or not, the large number of users makes this the place to ask. Be warned however, if you�fre joining the message boards to share some pressing concerns, you may have to wait a week or two for your membership to be approved. The job boards are divided into Korea, China, and International sections. While you can search by country, the postings are arranged with the most recent first.
Being one of the early pioneers of ESL job postings, it has an impressive amount of postings compared with other sites. Competition is great however, so respond quickly.
Eigotown - http://www.eigotown.com/corporate/welcome/welcome_e.shtml 
In contrast to Dave�fs ESL Cafe, Eigotown is clearly a business product made by professionals aimed at selling products and services to the students that use the site.  Its appearance is anything but amateurish, clearly constructed by professional web designers. It�fs almost entirely in Japanese, and even when English does appear it is often in conjunction with a full Japanese language
translation.  Appealing to a broad catchment of ability, the sites potential audience is large, but perhaps at a cost.   Eschewing the hard work associated with studying English, its focus is on light, novelty based content that highlights cultural differences and popular culture.  Rather than providing any real depth of study, Eigotown seems (to this reviewer) to mostly be an eye-catching place holder for the products and services that the company is hoping to sell. Eigotown isn�ft really targeted at the likes of this reviewer however, its content clearly has a younger, perhaps less cynical, and clearly an altogether more Japanese user in mind. So I set some Japanese students on the site to see how they would fare.  They enjoyed the free content available which included recipes with bilingual instructions, blogs of famous Japanese people living abroad, and culture difference trivia explaining the likes of St. Valentines and Christmas. They also thought the pay to view content looked interesting, but not quite interesting enough to actually pay for it.  This included podcasts, audio books, soap operas, and the like. Tempered by the positive experiences of my students, I�fm inclined to say that Eigotown is actually a site with merit even if it isn�ft very academically challenging, but really only to those who are willing to pay for premium content.

Lessons That Worked - Brent A. Jones

ENVELOPES for Brainstorming and Problem-Solving
 
Introduction: I began using ENVELOPES in my language classes after reading Framegames by Sivasailam Thiagarajan (aka Thiagi). In short, this activity involves two or more teams offering a solution to the same problem, and then having another team evaluate these solutions. I have used ENVELOPES in a freshman orientation class (brainstorming for class rules), Business English classes (setting course objectives) and FD meetings (curriculum development). Here I will explain the generic procedure for a class of 30 students. The activity will require 30 to 60 minutes.
 
Materials needed: 10 or more A3 size envelopes (120mm x 235mm), 30 index cards, and markers
 
Preparation: Write the problems/prompts on the envelopes. These examples are from the freshman orientation class mentioned above: (a) write 5 rules for students in this class, (b) write 5 rules for the teacher, (c) write 5 pieces of advice for succeeding in this class, and (d) write 5 pieces of advice for
succeeding at university. With these prompts, I would write the first two on three envelopes and the second two on two envelopes (for a total of 10). Put three blank index cards in each envelope.
 
In-class Procedure: 
(1) Explain the theme or topic for the activity.
(2) Divide the class into groups of three and pass out one envelope and one marker to each group.
(3) Explain that the groups should read the problem/prompt on their envelope, discuss possible solutions amongst themselves and write their collaborative response on one of the index cards.
(4) After the set time limit (usually 5 minutes), groups place their response back in the envelope and pass the envelope to another group. Care needs to be taken that each group gets a new prompt. 
(5) Each group then discusses the new problem and writes their response (without looking at the previous group�fs response). 
(6) After three groups have had a chance to write their response to each problem, the next group to get the envelope takes out all of the index cards and evaluates the responses. I tell the students to distribute a total of one hundred points among the cards based on the relative merits of each
response (e.g. 40, 40 & 20 for three responses).
(7) Conclude by debriefing participants and reflecting on what was learned, what was missing, etc.
 
The versatility of this activity makes it a useful addition to any language teacher�fs toolbox. It can be used in almost any context for almost any content. It gets participants talking right away and requires very little preparation time. What more can we ask for?

L1 Interference - John Campbell-Larsson

This section is designed to help non-native speakers of Japanese who teach
English to understand some of the causes of confusion in their classroom
caused by students imposing rules from their first language, Japanese, onto
their second language, English.
 
Conditional sentences.  
 
English and Japanese exhibit major differences in how conditional concepts are constructed and expressed in the respective languages, leading to persistent problems for many Japanese students in forming well-constructed conditional sentences in English. One basic difference is the way that English treats conditions separately depending on whether they are factual or counterfactual, whereas the distinction is not made explicitly in Japanese, but left to context or common sense, as in the following examples; (Taken from �e A Dictionary of Basic Japanese Grammar�f Makino and
Tsutsui, 1989.)
 
1) Yasukereba kaimasu. 
(I�fll buy it if it�fs cheap/ I would buy it if it were cheap) 
 
2) Jikan ga areba Kyoto e mo ikitai. 
(If I have time, I want to go to Kyoto, too. / If I had time, I would want to go to Kyoto, too.) 
The �eba�f suffix (underlined) indicates conditionality, but as the translations show, it is not explicit whether the speaker conceives of the condition as factual or counterfactual, which is a key distinction in English conditional expressions explicitly indicating the speaker�fs stance on a condition. �g If I have time...�h and �gIf I had time...�h are unambiguously different in English and students should be aware of this fine-grained distinction that is absent in Japanese. Although some conditionals are clearly unreal or impossible, such as time travel or becoming an animal, many depend on the opinion of the speaker. �gIf I pay you back...�h and �gIf I paid you back...�h reveal a choice on the part of the speaker that may be of key importance in the discourse. Moreover, it is a choice that cannot be avoided.

BOOK REVIEW

Freestanding by Maurice Jamall
Tokyo & Vancouver: ABAX Ltd. 1998. pp. 95
ISBN 1-896942-02-4 
Many of us who have been teaching ESL/EFL in either an Eikaiwa setting or an early evening business English class have been faced with the challenge to come up with a successful, high quality and motivating lesson in a limited amount of time. Jamall�fs Freestanding is the perfect remedy for planning effective theme based lessons that focus primarily on speaking and listening skills through a student-centered approach. 
Freestanding consists of thirty six lessons covering topics from travel and culture to job hunting and advertising.  Units are organized according to the level of the student. Units 1 through 15 are for elementary or low intermediate students, units 16 through 31 are targeted for low intermediate and intermediate students, and the final five units are intended for intermediate and above students.  The efficient layout of each lesson clearly illustrates the purpose or aim of the lesson. In the Aims section, the instructor can easily find out what the grammar point or language feature is for each lesson, and in Getting Ready, can quickly look at what materials, if any, are needed to conduct the lesson. Several lessons require no materials, while others
require easily obtainable materials such blank paper, adhesive tape, or dice. In the procedure section, the instructor will find a Warmer, which is a simple and usually fun ice-breaking activity or game to help students build a schema on a particular theme.
In unit 26, �gCustoms and Culture�h, the aims are for students to practice using modal verbs (should(n�ft); have to/don�ft have to, etc.), to develop vocabulary for describing customs and cultures, and to practice giving advice and information about their countries. This particular lesson requires no preparation. For the Warmer, students discuss similar, quite similar, and totally different cultures from their own.
Freestanding is a well-organized, easily implemented, and is filled with interesting activities.  The main criticism of this must-have book is that it only has thirty-six units. Freestanding would be even more practical if the final section, �gintermediate and above�h consisted of more than five lessons.
Reviewed by Jonathan Aleles.  Himeji Dokkyo University
 

BACK PAGE

Usually The Back Page is for comments on previous editions but this being the first edition I thought I would try something else.
 
As this is the first issue of our Newsletter, let me take this opportunity to thank
everybody who contributed to this maiden voyage; you have helped make this a first issue of which we can be proud. Also, and it is worth doing, let me thank the people who nearly contributed and the people who felt they may contribute at some point in the future; not one person ever said �gNo, I have better things to do with my time�h. Even the �gnearly�h or �elater�f responses were accompanied with encouragement and for that I am grateful.
 
This newsletter is designed to give the teachers of Kobe a chance to read some ideas from their peers and to take something into the classroom on Monday morning. It is also designed to give people the chance to publish, whether as a sounding board for future publications or as a low-key first publication. This is not �gThe Journal of Applied Linguistics�h and any contributions will be welcomed.
 
Do not be put off by the number of university publishers in this first issue. It is hoped that gradually, more teachers of children, high schools, business English classes and Eikaiwa classes will contribute lesson plans, ideas and comments.
 
We are looking for articles related to the teaching experience, especially in Kobe. The format that this first issue has taken will be roughly the same format in the future, so if submitting an article use this as your guide. The font is �gTimes New Roman�h and the font size is �g12�h. So put something in the next edition or the edition after that, if nothing else you get to see your name in print.
 
Editor
Stuart Cunningham

Call for Volunteers

Finally, we would like to encourage more Kobe Chapter members to get involved. Getting involved can be as easy as coming to our meetings or contributing something to our newsletter. The strength of JALT depends greatly on volunteers like you willing to share their time and energy. Hope to see and/or hear from you soon.