Sessions

The evolution of a four-dimensional EFL classroom

Teaching students only English is not enough these days. While students do need to master the four skills of reading, writing, speaking, and listening, they also need the skills known as the 4Cs: critical thinking, creativity, collaboration, and communication. Additionally, there is a need to foster students' character and metacognitive abilities. The Center for Curriculum Redesign’s Four-Dimensional Education Framework (Fadel, Bialik, & Trilling, 2015) is designed to foster all of those traits in students. The framework emphasizes the importance of four dimensions that are essential to learners in the 21st century: knowledge, skills, character, and metacognition. A flipped learning approach was used to assign the grammar drills as homework and class time was spent participating in group tasks and projects that utilized the homework and integrated various dimensions of the framework. This study examines student perceptions about their growth as English language learners over a semester-long, first-year required EFL course with a focus on grammar. The course was held in the spring semester each year. Data were collected over three consecutive years from three different groups of students by analyzing the instructor’s syllabi, student reflection sheets and a voluntary post-course survey. How the tasks and projects were designed and implemented over each semester to engage students with the traits from the framework will be discussed. Additionally, ways that other educators can implement the framework and the various tasks and projects will be shared.

JALT's Got Talent Showcase and Networking Social

*Doors open at 1900 if you want to come and practice your talent! All you can eat and drink social for all attendees. Please come and share your talent and hobbies with us. We hope to have a series of special presentations to break the ice and then open up breakout rooms to continue networking and socializing. This will also be a great way to welcome new members to our organization and show them that we too are human! So please come, laugh, and enjoy the evening with your PanSIG family.

Friday Night PanSIG Kick Off Social

All you can eat and drink social.

Creating and Implementing an Online Placement Test

This short presentation will describe the experience of moving from a third-party, paper-based English proficiency placement test to an original online version created by the presenters. We will discuss practical approaches to designing a placement test for first and second year undergraduate English language learners that aligns with CEFR bands (A1-B2/C1) and its implementation using Google Forms. The test consisted of 60 multiple choice questions covering listening skills (true/false statements, specific/global comprehension), vocabulary and grammar understanding (sentence completion, word definitions, synonyms, etc) and reading comprehension skills (analyzing content of an advertisement, short and long passage comprehension and interpretation). Students were instructed to complete the test within 90 minutes. Because our test included listening, vocabulary, grammar, and reading items, we will be able to give a comprehensive overview of the process for creating audio content and including appropriate target language. We will describe the collaborative challenges of creating a test entirely online and give advice for others who are interested in creating their own placement tests. This presentation will be of particular interest to anyone who wishes to learn about creating an online CEFR-aligned placement test. It will also be valuable for educators who are interested in conducting online testing using Google Forms.

Opening

Welcome to PanSIG2021!