Persuasive speeches seek to balance the expression of the speaker's ideas in a manner that is convincing to an audience. Japanese students orating in English must further accommodate their beliefs about performing their identities in the language—particularly the often-held conception that English is a more direct, more emotional language than Japanese. This in turn can lead to overcompensation and speeches that are overwrought and unpersuasive. The presenter will draw on ideas from classical and contrastive rhetoric, and a decade coaching and judging speech contests at the high school and university levels, to discuss how this tendency to over-emoting comes about and can be addressed. Practical advice will be offered on improving the balance, writing, and delivery of persuasive speeches.

Introducing the Cambridge One online learning platform - The all-in-one online English Language Learning platform for easy access to all teaching and learning materials across multiple devices including smartphones and tablets as well as on PCs for all age groups. This session will look at how Cambridge One lets you plan, present and assess student performance, all in the same place whilst also demonstrating the online learning components learners can fully access on their smartphones.

Are you teaching in-class, online, or a mixture of both? What will happen in the next few months? In an unpredictable situation, many educators are looking for agile ideas which can be applied to a variety of contexts. This workshop will focus on effective materials and techniques for developing students’ speaking skills which can be used for face-to-face, remote or hybrid learning and for independent study.

EFL learners must use their second language to learn but are often unwilling to communicate. Do learner autonomy, self-efficacy, and student preferences for instructional language influence student willingness to communicate (WTC)? Teachers promoted autonomous study with language-learning strategies and self-reports (Ochi, 2018) and self-efficacy with mind maps and translation, with debates as the communication goal. Participants (n=100) from first- and second-year EFL university classes in Western Japan completed questionnaires at the beginning, middle, and end of two 15-week terms. Findings revealed autonomy and self-efficacy were positively correlated with WTC throughout each term. Alternatively, student preferences for Japanese support were negatively correlated with, but later ceased to interfere with learner autonomy, self-efficacy, and WTC. The researchers will discuss findings and teaching recommendations.

Videos can be fun for students of all ages to make and are a great way to show off their English. Most video software is complex and has a steep learning curve. However, Adobe Spark Video is a simple, free application that can be used on any device to easily create videos. Teachers and students can focus on content and language without spending a lot of time on how to use the software. In this workshop, the presenter will discuss different ways to use the software and show how to create a video. Bring a device with Spark Video installed to start creating your own video, or come and join the discussion and see how to use it.

This presentation reports on an investigation of ESL/EFL learning motivation focusing on two factors: instrumental motivation and integrative motivation. The research design followed a mixed-method, two-phase exploratory approach to collect data from students at 4-year universities (private and public) in Hiroshima, Japan. For the quantitative data, this study utilized a 14-item questionnaire that was adapted from Gardner (see Zanghar, 2012). For the qualitative analysis, semi-structured interviews were conducted, which asked 17 open questions (designed by the author) to elicit more details on their ESL/EFL experiences. The presenter will explain the results and discuss the Japanese attitudes towards ESL/EFL learning and motivation.