Most teachers and students have some form of smartphone, yet these are an underutilized resource in many classrooms. This session will look at using iPhones in the classroom, with a special focus on photography and videography. So we will of course look at the plus points and also the limitations of the device, and how to overcome these with a few key items. I will bring a range of these items for attendees to try out with a select list of iPhone apps I recommend.

This presentation will describe corpus assisted critical analysis of online discourse about assistant language teachers (ALTs) in Japan. This discourse can build awareness of employment issues affecting ALTs, but it may also contribute to ALTs’ perceptions of disempowerment by promoting ideas that ALTs are fundamentally unprofessional and their exploitation is unavoidable. To counter this, it is hoped users of online communities will approach them with a sense of solidarity, not only competitiveness or frustration.

The presenter will discuss solutions to the challenges encountered teaching English for Medical Purposes (EMP), challenges that can be grouped under five headings: needs and wants; teacher expertise; lesson content; classroom management; and assessment. For example, responding to the students’ want for content that is relevant means the EMP teacher cannot remain a layperson. How then can they become sufficiently knowledgeable to teach a lesson on, for example, opioid pharmacology?

This short presentation will present original research that uses a variety of narrative-focused research methods, combined with the framework of intersectionality in order to capture the voices and experiences of female, non-Japanese teachers attempting to make their way as English teachers in Japan. By focusing on personal struggles as well as structural marginalization, the presentation aims to give unique insights into the teachers’ contextual situations as well as giving a voice to teachers seldom heard.