Date: 11th February 2023 (Saturday), 10:00 - 12:30 GMT
Location: Online seminar using Zoom software
Speaker: Professor Kei Ishiguro (Director of The Center for the Promotion of Collaborative Research, the National Institute for Japanese Language and Linguistics; Collaborative Professor, Graduate School of Language and Society, Hitotsubashi University) <profile>
Maximum number of participants: 80
Spoken language: Japanese
Target audience:
Japanese language educators and post-graduate university students in the United Kingdom and Europe. (Applications from those in other regions will also be accepted if places are available).

Registration and payment (Eventbrite): To register, please go to our Eventbrite page.
*Please note the cancellation is not possible once the ticket has been ordered.
Application deadline: 6th February 2023 (Monday), 10:00 GMT
* Once the number of places has been filled, applications will close.

<Outline of the seminar>

Learners nowadays do not bring paper dictionaries to the classroom, but instead use smartphones. Even students who do not use a smartphone tend to use a computer or a tablet to look up words using dictionaries, search engines and applications on the internet.

But when, where, what, and how are learners using these devices to look things up? Are they getting to the information they need as a result? The reality is that Japanese language teachers do not know the answers to these questions.

Therefore, with the cooperation of teachers from the British Association for Teaching Japanese as a foreign language (BATJ), we asked learners enrolled in British universities to record screenshots as they looked up Japanese expressions using digital tools. Based on this data, we will examine learners' behaviour in a workshop style and consider how dictionary use can be appropriate in the age of AI.

Event Information

Organisers:
The British Association for Teaching Japanese as a Foreign Language (BATJ) and the Japan Foundation, London

Professor Kei Ishiguro

Director of The Center for the Promotion of Collaborative Research, the National Institute for Japanese Language and Linguistics; Collaborative Professor, Graduate School of Language and Society, Hitotsubashi University

B.A. (Sociology), Hitotsubashi University, completed PhD coursework at Graduate School of Letters, Arts and Sciences, Waseda University in 1999, and obtained a PhD in Literature in 2008.

In 1999, Professor Ishiguro joined The Center for International Student Education (now The Center for Global Education and Exchange) at Hitotsubashi University, where he taught Japanese for sixteen years. In 2013, he became a professor at The Centre for Global Education and Exchange and The Graduate School of Language and Society at Hitotsubashi University. In 2015, he moved to The National Institute for Japanese Language and Linguistics (NINJAL), where he concentrated on research in the field of Japanese language education, while also supervising post-graduate students at Hitotsubashi University, with which he is affiliated.

Professor Ishiguro’s fields of specialisation are text theory and discourse analysis (Japanese linguistics), and composition and reading education (Japanese language education). He researches the overall process of language processing of the four skills of reading, writing, listening and speaking.

He has authored twenty-three books as the sole author and forty-two books in total if including co-edited works. His best-known works include: 『よくわかる文章表現の技術（全五巻）』明治書院、『文章は接続詞で決まる』『「読む」技術』『日本語は「空気」が決める』『語彙力を鍛える』『段落論』光文社、『論文・レポートの基本』『形容詞を使わない大人の文章表現力』日本実業出版社、『大人のための言い換え力』NHK出版.