Drop by with your morning coffee and/or bagel and hang out with conference goers, to chat about upcoming sessions. A casual, come when you want, leave when you want social zone.

The red carpet rolls out and trumpets herald the opening of this spectacular event! Meet the People behind the conference! Learn more about how to navigate the conference site, hear a break down of the rules for the gamification, and find out about films! EASTER EGG 1

Videogames have evolved from an emerging fad of the Super Mario Bros. era to perhaps the dominant media past time. Yet with this colossal growth videogames have not seen the classroom adoption we might expect. The challenge for educators is in how to incorporate videogames into the classroom when they are fundamentally different from the traditional media we use such as film, books, and music.

In this session we explore that difference and how we can structure and scaffold our classroom activities to best support the interactivity, and choices that videogames provide. Along the way we will investigate the research on how videogames can support language learning, how gaming culture can provide career opportunities for our students, and the ways educators can more effectively support students hoping to enter the US$150 billion-a-year videogame industry.

During the first 20 minutes, participants will gain an introductory understanding of the basic theory behind the current form of TPRS as of its developments this past year, 2020, originally created by Blaine Ray in the late 1980s - early 1990s. Participants will also receive technical explanations of the main ingredients of a TPRS lesson: adding a detail or character, circling, triangling, and "Describe the Situation". The next 40 minutes will be devoted to a student experience of a TPRS German lesson in which participants will gain microfluency in German through interaction with the presenter by answering questions in German and retelling the story in German using their own words, supported and scaffolded every step of the way. The final 15 minutes will include a debriefing period for reflections as well as Q&A to deepen the experience from both the student and teacher perspectives. MYSTERY EASTER EGG

Envision a classroom where rich, compelling, fun content captivates students who effortlessly develop language skills while expanding their cultural awareness. Could these ideals become realities? This workshop proclaims: Yes! For five years as a university professor in S. Korea, I have been developing ways to infuse music into ELT. Music content is often transformative as students seamlessly enrich their cultural appreciation while concurrently improving their L2. Considering Stephen Krashen’s Compelling Input Hypothesis framework, music and movies together may provide content so compelling, some students will improve their L2 automatically, without giving conscious effort. Beyond compelling content, this workshop will introduce the most effective content delivery strategies -- including OST-centered formative tasks -- I have conducted, fully online, over the past three semesters. I will also summarize a 'History of Rock' course I taught twice, from 2017-2018. During multiple small and whole group discussions, attendee participation is highly encouraged. MYSTERY EASTER EGG

It is widely understood that 'positive' feelings like enjoyment and curiosity can motivate language learning. However, motivation also emerges from 'negative' feelings, like shame, frustration, and antagonism. Some people learn languages to resist, to prove others wrong, and to transform an unjust situation. This presentation is about such 'negative' motivation, and how and why it manifested for one learner of Korean.

This presentation is based on a narrative study of the experiences of a Korean adoptee from the US learning Korean. With illustrative examples from this learner's narrative, the presenter will demonstrate the power of painful emotions and unwelcome social pressures to foster and sustain a long-term commitment to language learning. At issue are the ways that the Korean language and the Korean ethnicity are discursively related, the ways that society pressures individuals to conform, and the ways that language learning decisions can be a response to this pressure. EASTER EGG 2

Anyone who's taught long enough has been forced to teach lessons using materials that are at least less than ideal for their students. Sometimes we have the options of choosing our own textbooks, and other materials; other times... not so much. Sometimes administrators or superiors demand that we teach with the materials they want rather than what would be best for the students overall. Even if the materials themselves are good, administrators may demand we teach it at a rate faster than our students can even absorb! In this presentation, I will give a basic overview of the most common types of bad materials, and will offer tips and tricks for how to make each of them into the best lesson for your classrooms! MYSTERY EASTER EGG

Despite being taught the English language all throughout their education, many students in South Korea struggle to grasp a basic command in conversational English. In addition, the worldwide pandemic has virtually shifted most learning to remote settings which adds to the complexity of pedagogy and effective practice. This presentation (literature review) will address a span of current and longstanding scholarly sources regarding L2 fluency with additional insights from personal practice. It will critically examine the main pedagogies used in South Korea in respect to building L2 oral fluency. Also, it will demonstrate key components for developing L2 oral fluency and how it may complement within a Korean EFL online context. Lastly, the presentation will offer recommendations and implications that can better serve Korean EFL learners of multiple age groups. MYSTERY EASTER EGG

When asked what the hardest part of a live presentation is, whether face-to-face or online, a reply I regularly receive from presenters is: the audience and their feedback. The reasons vary from anxieties surrounding public speaking to how the audience will receive and react to the contents and design of their presentations.

During the presentation design process, presenters find varying ways to represent their ideas using presentation software. A key component to effective presentation design is designing the presentation with the audience in mind. In these audience-centred presentations, there is deliberate movement away from presenter-centred presentations, in which the focus is solely on what the presenter has to say, and toward the audience –students and professionals alike– and how well the information can be relayed to them for maximal impact and understanding.

In this presentation, we will explore how we can design more effective audience-centred presentations.

This talk will be a self-reflective and autoethnographic account of the speaker’s experience guiding filmmaking projects with English language learners and the evolution of these projects over 10 years, in 3 different institutions, as well during the COVID-19 pandemic. The speaker will talk about the early days when she first began doing these projects, important lessons learned along the way, and identify and highlight changes made in her approach based on experiences, institutional and environmental factors, as well as changing student demographics. Participants will see the history of a filmmaking project with English language learners from the beginning, it’s adaptations and transformations over time, and the project’s current incarnation today. Participants can also engage in an open QnA and discussion by sharing their own experiences filmmaking with second language learners. MYSTERY EASTER EGG

This session explains the MA TESOL, MA Applied Linguistics, and the Micro-credential currently offered by the University of Birmingham. The programs are part-time, asynchronous learning so that your studies can fit into your schedule. The presenter, Joanne McCuaig is a graduate of the MA Applied Linguistics and a current Doctoral Researcher in the department. She will present the information about the programs and explain her personal experience as a distance based learner. She is also able to answer questions about the PhD application process and her experience as a PhD student.   Click here for details about the program: https://canvas.bham.ac.uk/courses/11732   Alternatively you can send your questions to the department using this email address: ELALpg@contacts.bham.ac.uk MYSTERY EASTER EGG

Many teachers overestimate the difficulty of creating personalized videos for their classes. It can be fun and easy to build up a library of videos on a wide range of topics applicable to ESL, EFL, and other subject-based courses. This workshop will take participants through a few basic strategies designed to kickstart the creative process. For one, we will be looking at some lesson types that can be enhanced by personalized videos. We will also discuss the ways in which videos can allow for leveling. Most importantly, we will discuss the reality that making "perfect videos" is not the goal. The value of the videos is not their production value, it is the personal touch it will allow you to give your lessons. Small investments of time, compounded over a few years, will pay off a vast dividend of fun and useful videos that are very "you!" This workshop is an opportunity for teachers who want to try bringing more modern technology into their lesson planning, but don't know where to start. MYSTERY EASTER EGG

Pixton is a web-based cartoon-making site. It is used to let all levels of students make more from their writings. Low-Level students can express more with a cartoon than they can with just words and higher-level students can expand their thoughts. Pixton makes it interesting and fun for the students. In return, your students try harder, are more passionate about their writings, and learning in general.

I will show you how to use this to help advance your student's creativity and confidence in their Language abilities. As well as creating a "class" for us to play around with. My knowledge comes from practical use of the program. MYSTERY EASTER EGG

A newcomer to the Onion Society brings a mysterious onion to the annual meeting. The president, secretary, and treasurer attempt to figure out what it is and what they should do with it. Four English teachers gathered to make this Korean-language film with English subtitles. MYSTERY EASTER EGG

For many years, academics, psychologists, teacher trainers and teachers have been trying to define how to motivate students. We read about these techniques every day but we never find out if they are finally implemented or work out.

The assumption that, maybe, instead of trying to find out how we motivate “students”, we first try to find out how to motivate “people” will be primarily discussed. The speaker will also try to demonstrate that the motivation we are seeking for learning a language is the same that we need in our everyday lives. We also need to be aware of the “dark side of motivation” as a pitfall that teachers may be falling into often without realizing it. All these assumptions and ideas will be accompanied by suggestions on how they can be positively transferred through ELT tasks.

Let’s help any teacher transform from an educator into a motivator. MYSTERY EASTER EGG

World communication has shifted to more visual content and consumption. As ELL educators, embracing this shift with the use of graphic novels is crucial to developing engaged readers and contextual thinkers. The visual nature of graphic novels results in a familiar format for readers to acquire information, which engages reluctant readers. In addition, graphic novels combine images and text to convey critical and contextual storytelling elements, supporting and strengthening ELLs’ comprehension. This workshop explores a variety of graphic novels and how they act as a medium for literacy development by appealing to visual learners. Participants will examine graphic novel adaptation of traditional literature texts and experience how to apply them in the EFL classroom. In addition, participants will discuss their students' needs and make connections to practical classroom application of graphic novels. MYSTERY EASTER EGG

This workshop will introduce educators to the powerful and easy-to-use program OBS Studio. OBS Studio is a free, open-source streaming and recording program with hundreds of user-created plugins available for users to customize their content. There are versions available for Windows, macOS, and Linux.

This hands-on workshop will cover how to simply install and set up OBS Studio, find and use plugins to enhance a user’s video and audio, and how to use OBS Studio in conjunction with popular online teaching platforms such as Zoom and MS Teams. OBS Studio can capture any program, image, audio, or video source on your computer and integrate them together in one video. We will discuss how to use OBS Studio to record videos of any length for use as asynchronous teaching materials as well as using it to enhance live online teaching.

Attendees of all levels of technical expertise are encouraged to participate. MYSTERY EASTER EGG

This year is the tenth anniversary of the birth of the Performance in Education (PIE) SIG of the Japan Association for Language Teaching (JALT). The presenter, the founder of the SIG, will describe its founding, purpose, structure, highlights of its history, its present situation and its possible future. The purpose is to show that a performance in education SIG would be a valuable addition to KOTESOL. The presentation also serves as an invitation for collaborative efforts between the two language organizations and to encourage individual KOTESOL members to participate in our conferences. Popular venues have been Okinawa and Sapporo where we have annual conferences, and Kyoto, Kobe, and hot springs resort towns like Gero. There will be a Q&A session at the end. MYSTERY EASTER EGG

Acting and teaching how do they go hand in hand? How can one help the other and vice versa? Learn the pros and cons and dos and don’ts of both, from one who has been through it all. Explore how teaching can open up the door to finding your calling, and finding yourself. MYSTERY EASTER EGG

Since the emergence of Covid-19 in 2020, the use and necessity for education settings to adapt to an online format has led to the creation of many exciting and innovative teaching and learning tools. It has encouraged educators to make the online classroom more engaging by using innovative technology tools to benefit the learner. In this panel, we aim to showcase some English learning applications and websites that we feel have benefitted both communication channels and English language acquisition with students at the tertiary level such as Screencast-O-Matic and BAND. We will include a 5-minute window at the end of this panel to welcome the audience to share further online language learning tools or websites that others have found beneficial. We are looking forward to meeting you all and sharing ideas on how to improve the online classroom for both students and educators. MYSTERY EASTER EGG

In this seminar, I will give shortcuts to graduate students, recent graduates, and developing professionals on how to design research and publish quickly. My talking points will emanate from personal experience, literature review, and interviews with research associates. To this end, I hope to provide strategies to help others graduate and publish on time. Attaining a graduate degree is an early step in starting a professional career in academics. However, graduate supervisors cannot always find time to help students with research designs and write-ups. Further, graduate degree programs often focus more on coursework than writing which creates an abundance of graduate degree holders ill-prepared for publishing in their careers. To remedy this, my presentation will explore solutions to research and academic writing challenges reported by graduate students and early professionals, including issues related to work-life balance, the co-author relationship, the write-up, and the strategies to publish in academic journals. The interactive component of this workshop entails voluntary participation in designing your own moc (or real) research projects which we can critique together. MYSTERY EASTER EGG

Filmmaking has never been easier thanks to the widespread use of social media and mobile devices. While its educational value has been widely acknowledged, its role in the language classroom is rather underexplored. However, in a world where communication is becoming increasingly multimodal, short film creation can offer tremendous learning opportunities for students of almost any age.

Informed by the PPR framework (Mavridi, 2019) and digital literacy pedagogies, this session will explore the role of filmmaking in supporting the development of language skills and digital literacies. We will also look at how teachers can guide students through the process of planning, drafting, editing and revising short films and how they can embed this process in a student-centred and engaging way.

We are living in unprecedented times, education is in upheaval, educators are key role models for the future. One of the major quests of the educator is as Curtis says to “relieve the suffering of the classroom,” and the more we understand the brain and emotional triggers, the more we can help our learners. Making learning more suited to individuals, making learner focused and centered upon the learners is absolutely key, to make sure that "Anyone can learn how to learn easier, better, faster, and that learning to learn is the most important skill a person can acquire." As a panel we will discover how the speakers added dimension that neuroscience and psychology can add to enhance the learning process and in all disciplines, not only language learning. Join us in a LIVE panel discussion forming a triangle spanning the earth - Argentina, Spain, Greece, Japan to Korea. We will also be responding to your questions and comments regarding this topic, so do send in your questions and on the day we will try and address as many as we can. MYSTERY EASTER EGG

If you’re struggling with online teaching, or thinking about how to improve it, reflective practice is for you! Among the best reflective tools are tasks, particularly observation tasks. However, most of these were designed with the traditional classroom in mind. Can we still use these tasks? How? The purpose of this session is to address these questions.

This workshop will be in two parts. After briefly rehearsing some terminology, the facilitators will present tasks from some of the standard resources categorised according to their applicability to ‘the new normal’: tasks that can be used, those that can’t, and those that require adaptation. The bulk of the time will be spent in the second, highly interactive, section. Participants will work in small groups to create tasks for their own contexts. The takeaways will be tasks participants can either use or adapt as, as well as ideas for self-designed tasks. MYSTERY EASTER EGG

This workshop is intended for teachers who use online techniques but encounter passive (or not-so-passive) pushback from students or administrators. While teachers have learned much about online education in the past two years, journal entries and interviews with university students show that they have not yet fully integrated online methodologies into their learner identities, causing a gap between our expectations and their expectations. For the same reason, administrators may have overly-inflated or outright inaccurate ideas about online learning. (We can double the size of our classes!) During this workshop, we’ll describe and discuss the changing role of classroom (face-to-face) time from both pedagogical and personal perspectives, and examine common problems of online learning from the viewpoint of our students. Participants will be invited to share relevant experiences, and will leave with two or three specific plans (“I will…” statements) for increasing awareness of both the potential and the limitations of online learning among students and, if applicable, administrators. MYSTERY EASTER EGG

How do students feel about the seemingly inescapable role of English learning in 21st century education? This panel will center student voices in the discussion, as we consider the effect of English learning on the students’ education, culture, identities, and more. Panelists include students from the Affiliated High School of Peking University’s international program (Grades 10-12). Their high school experience has included the COVID-19 pandemic and the subsequent forced move to online learning, as well as a heavy focus on successfully learning English. Panelists will reflect on their ELL journeys past and future, discussing issues such as nativism, accent bias, code switching, and economic factors as time and interest allows. EASTER EGG 3

The industrialization of South Korea and other developed economies has enabled a higher standard of living for most citizens, but not everyone benefits equally, and, some pay more by having to live or work nearer sources of industrial pollution, or areas of higher climate incident risk. This is the challenge of environmental justice. How can we best prepare our students to tackle these enormous interrelated issues? Questions will be focused on motivation and practical outcomes in terms of language acquisition, awareness raising and behavioural change, and will include wider environmental themes. Participants will have the opportunity to contribute information, ideas, experiences, and questions. MYSTERY EASTER EGG

In this presentation, we describe online materials designed for groups of sixth and seventh graders with diverse social, racial, and cultural roots. To help children depressed in times of loss, disease, and social distancing during the pandemic, we turned to Asian, African, and Native Brazilian stories of characters who faced hardships and made their dreams come true. The objective is to widen students’ reading repertoire and promote multimodal analysis. After storytelling sessions and discussions about songs, tales, poems, historical documents, and myths from different parts of the world, learners were invited to write back to such narratives, criticizing the texts and reconfiguring them in different discourse genres. Therefore, they had the opportunity of interacting with the stories, reacting to them, and acting socially (or even dramatically) according to the themes tackled. EASTER EGG 5

When remote teaching comes unexpectedly, some teachers and some students might find it challenging to adapt to it. Switching suddenly from one educational model to another might entail overwhelming situations that, undoubtedly, affect teachers and students' performance in the distance. So, how to nurture physical and mental well-being in remote teaching times at basic and higher education levels? This presentation intends to share with attendees both, the results that an action-research study carried out at teacher training college and secondary education levels provided during the pandemic of COVID-19, and some practical ideas to be replicated in different contexts. This study was done, first, by applying some actions to pre-service teachers and some educators at Escuela Normal de Amecameca in the State of Mexico, Mexico, and then, by having volunteer teachers from some secondary schools in the area apply some to themselves as well as to their students. EASTER EGG 4

Celebrate Saturday night with us! A mixer for any and all to join for chatting, networking, and sharing the highlights of the day. A casual, come when you want, leave when you want social zone.