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The specific stages of development leading up to the acquirement of skills required for literacy (reading and writing) is known as emergent literacy. A diverse range of early childhood experiences that positively encourage and contribute to the use of oral, visual and written language provides the foundation for literacy. Research has shown that children need to be sufficiently and positively involved and immersed in language and literacy rich environments from birth, if not beforehand. This paper considers recent research into emergent literacy which can be applied to a first language emergent literacy program, along with EFL and ESL courses. With English language classes being brought forward to earlier grades we hope that teacher training programs such as Sapporo Gakuin University's Kodomo Hatatsu classes find the paper useful., 研究ノート, Research Note

Students using presentation software is a new computer-aided language learning (CALL) approach for the teaching of EFL speech-making. This paper documents a two-semester study of an initial trial of teaching presentation skills to 194 Japanese university students, the majority being first year non-English majors in a required general education, foreign language course. Three instructors taught PowerPoint-based speech-making in seven different classes, using a variety of instructional approaches. In six classes a presentation assignment was a major project (20-40% of grade) and in one class presentation-making was the sole focus of the lessons. Technical problems were listed concerning software and hardware adaptation. Finally, a 25-item student questionnaire elicited the students' assessment of the program. The authors conclude that technically-inexperienced instructors should expect time consuming adjustments compared with traditional speech-making instructional approaches. Student responses, however, were fairly positive and indicated that presentation software is not only feasible for EFL instruction, but also carries a number of promising advantages., 論文, Article

Sharing materials and online activities among teachers,and CALL teachers in particular, can be a complicated adventure.This is especially problematic for multi-media activities with embedded video,audio and images into interactive questions categorized by themes and permissions. This workshop demonstrates how to easily share learning resources and activities in a JALTCALL-supported global repository for CALL materials. In addition,Moodle LMS-using teachers can use the Sharing Cart to streamline connections to this repository.First, the Sharing Cart is a plug-in serving two purposes: 1) to copy and move one's own activities, and 2) to collect and copy other teachers' activities.The Sharing Cart also serves as a personal library of frequently used activities that can be inserted into any course and allows a teacher to roam within a Moodle site to pick and choose individual learning objects (resources or activities).In addition, various generic, non-Moodle handouts, booklets and multimedia can be shared with other teachers for use both in and out of Moodle.Five aspects of the design of the repository will be discussed: 1) uploading ordinary pdf,doc,and open source documents 2) searching strategies, 3) learning object metadata, 4) rating,editing,and reviewing features, 5) contribution and incentive systems In this workshop, all participants will see a demonstration of the repository and sharing cart,and receive a screen-shot manual for using them after the workshop.We conclude with a short discussion on the implications for peer-to-peer content exchange within the JALTCALL community.

Sharing materials and online activities among teachers in Moodle can be a complicated adventure. This workshop demonstrates how to easily share learning resources and activities in a single Moodle site and across multiple Moodle sites using three newly developed tools. First, the Sharing Cart is a plug-in serving two purposes: 1) to copy and move one's own activities and 2) to collect and copy other teachers' activities. It also serves as a library of frequently used activities that can be inserted into any course. When the Sharing Cart is turned on, it will follow a teacher anywhere he or she roams within the Moodle site. While this tool is designed to handle individual learning objects(resources or activities), a second tool, the Project Course Format, is able to handle a group of learning objects. This format allows a teacher to move whole collections of quizzes, resources and other activities to another section of a Moodle site. Finally a third tool is a central repository(located at http://moodlelang.org) designed for sharing both 1) Moodle learning objects and 2) various documents and multimedia for use both in and out of Moodle. Five aspects of the design of the repository will be discussed: 1) searching strategies, 2) learning object meta data, 3) rating, editing, and reviewing features, 4) contribution and incentive systems, and 5) inter-site strategies. In this workshop, all participants will see a demonstration of the repository and sharing cart, and then have a chance to experience transferring Moodle activities across sites using the newly opened global Moodle for Language Teaching Repository.