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The image of classroom EFL learners sharing a common L1 but attempting to communicate meaningfully with each other in an L2 suggests there is a substantial need to increase the opportunities for authentic and meaningful communication in EFL classrooms. Otherwise known as online intercultural exchange, telecollaboration requires learners to communicate, either orally or graphically, with learners located in foreign countries or cultures. This presentation reports on the trials, tribulations and successes experienced in a task-based telecollaboration project conducted between an EFL writing class (n=36) at a Japanese university and an EFL class (n=36) in a Chilean university. The 6-week project used the ePals.com platform as a conduit and consisted of a series of outcome-seeking tasks which engaged beginner level students in asynchronous email exchanges with partners who did not share their L1.

This workshop shall demonstrate how an EFL writing class (n=36) at Osaka Shoin Women's University conducted a telecollaborative task project with an EFL class (n=36) in a Chilean university. The 6-week project consisted of a series of outcome-seeking tasks which engaged beginner level students in asynchronous email exchanges with partners who did not share their L1, demonstrating how suitably designed telecollaborative task projects can bring authenticity into beginner level EFL classrooms.

Videopaper builder is free, downloadable video editing software specifically designed by teachers for teachers who wish to record, reflect on and improve their teaching. This presentation shall train teachers how to best access and use the software when embarking on collaborative teacher professional development (PD) projects with like-minded colleagues. It shall also detail the procedures followed and insights gained through both presenters' own PD project.

This workshop contends that the next great pedagogical leap in EFL development in EFL teaching will be the widespread implementation of task-based telecollaboration. To date, telecollaboration has been viewed in EFL circles as a resource almost exclusively appropriate for advanced language learners. In reaction to the needs of beginner-level learners, this workshop firstly, outlines the telecollaboration program between students at Osaka Shoin Women's University and Universidad de Los Lagos, Chile.

This presentation reports on the synergised teacher development project conducted by two teachers at Osaka Shoin Women's Universiy. The project design required each teacher to videotape each other’s lessons before engaging in critical self-reflection and peer feedback. In addition to the dual input that varied perspectives provide, this two-pronged approach enabled not merely a means for reflection on each teacher’s classroom performance but also a means for each teacher to raise his own awareness regarding his ability to competently self-reflect. The lessons themselves were grounded in a task-based learning (TBL) framework, which subsequently became the point of departure for each critique.

This presentation aims to alleviate some of the discomfort and apprehension that educators have with video recording their EFL classes. In addition, it highlights the preliminary findings of an ongoing, truly synergised teacher development project that promotes professional development. The project required participating teachers to videotape each other’s university English lessons before engaging in critical self-reflection and peer feedback. In essence, the varied perspectives enabled the teacher to raise his/her own self-reflective awareness. Preliminary observations from the study report; i) differences between how each teacher initially perceived his/her lesson regarding achievement of objectives, student participation/performance, teacher/student rapport, and issues regarding learning environment; and ii) how collaborative feedback examined these issues through inter-teacher reflection.

This presentation reports the preliminary findings of an ongoing, truly synergised teacher development project intended to promote professional development via critical reflective teaching. Participating teachers videotaped each other’s English lessons at Osaka Shoin Women's University before engaging in critical self-reflection and peer feedback. Preliminary observations report; i) differences between how each teacher initially perceived his lesson regarding achievement of objectives, student participation/performance, teacher adherence to TBL principles, teacher/student rapport, and issues regarding learning environment; and ii) how collaborative feedback subsequently resolved these differences through inter-teacher reflection.

This short presentation will inform language teachers how their students can improve their editing between first and second drafts of written assignments. The moodle online facilities act as sites where teachers can upload quizzes and other activities customised to have students focus more closely on their most common errors in their writing.

This presentation demonstrates how teachers can combine the use Moodle's quiz feature with its 'assignment submission' feature to provide timely feedback for students. The statistical data and findings of my study into the improved accuracy displayed by students at Osaka Shoin Women's University underpins the recommended procedures of this presentation.

This presentation constitutes a demonstrative overview of the role that Moodle plays in the English language program at Osaka Shoin Women's University. This online homework is a mandatory component of each course. The students may access the system on campus, from home or from any remote site in order to complete their homework.

This presentation examines the implementation of Moodle as a medium for online submission of writing assignments by 1st year students at Osaka Shoin Women's University. The inclusion of supplementary 'Grammar Help' text pages were uploaded to the Moodle course page (ELSAT) as 'resource' files. This study found a positive correlation between students accessing the customised 'Grammar Help' pages and a reduction in the frequency of common writing errors made by the students at Osaka Shoin Women's University.

In an environment whereby definitions and perceptions of CALL have somewhat shifted from prioritising “applications of the computer” to prioritising “learners learning language but also broadening the potential types of relationships between computer technologies and language learning” (Kern, 2006:184), it seems appropriate to remember i) the potential of video and ii) the potential of the teacher. This presentation is intended to extend common teacher notions that merely regard ‘video’ as the in-class viewing of ‘globally intended’ movie scenes, to the creation of teaching and teacher training tools ‘locally prescribed and produced’ by teachers in accordance with their curricula. After demonstrating the range of purposes that teacher produced DVDs can be used for, this presentation will outline the equipment, level of computer literacy, and temporal requirements needed to get started in desktop DVD production.

Considering the lack of priority given to oral and aural skill development by Japanese secondary schools, a high percentage of universities and colleges aim to redress this imbalance through the implementation of English speaking and listening programs. The popularity of such programs has failed to realise popular incorporation of reliable and valid testing methodologies appropriate to the course objectives. An exception to this trend exists with the communicative English program at Niigata University of International and Information Studies which has been employing and refining conversation style speaking tests since 2000. Although the scoring of student performance on each speaking test maintains highly desirable levels of inter-rater reliability, measuring the degree by which the students’ conversational proficiency develops throughout the duration of the program has proven much more challenging than merely comparing individual scores on the first and last speaking tests conducted. This presentation reported the bouquets and bugbears of our endeavours to control for the inevitable extraneous variables that can corrupt the measurement of the development of EFL students’

A quantitative analysis of quiz-taker responses to 5-option multiple-choice items was conducted in order to elucidate the guessing strategies that quiz-takers most commonly employ when they do not know the correct answers in English grammar quizzes. Enough key words were blanked out in 8 question stems, each pertaining to a different grammatical concept, to ensure the correct answers became indiscernible to the 154 Japanese university students taking part in the study. Statistical evidence confirmed up to three strategies to be more common than the unsophisticated ‘when in doubt, choose option c’ notion with the data most strongly supporting a quiz-taker tendency to select the option representing the most positive concept. In the absence of ‘positive options’ quiz-takers appeared to next prefer selection of familiar, easy to understand options.

Despite most teachers frequently using and /or composing multiple choice (MC) tests as instruments for measuring student progress, too many teachers remain misinformed regarding how to design valid MC items. Specifically, it was hypothesized that overzealous, misinformed teachers / test designers would be unaware of how a fifth option could lower validity by breaking the symmetry that 4-options offer. Guessing strategies by parallel groups of 154 students responding to both 4 and 5-option quizzes revealed items testing grammar knowledge of ‘negatives’ and ‘tag questions’ to have higher validity when using the 4-option format.