ATJ Seminar 2009: Call for Proposals

The Association of Teachers of Japanese (ATJ) 2009 Seminar will take place at the Sheraton Hotel in Chicago, on Thursday, March 26, 2009, in conjunction with the annual meeting of the Association for Asian Studies (AAS). The Seminar will feature a full day of concurrent sessions with presentations on various aspects of Japanese language and literature.

ATJ invites proposals for individual papers and panels. A proposal must be in one of the following areas: 1) linguistics, 2) literature, 3) pedagogy, or 4) second language acquisition. ATJ also welcomes session proposals from the ATJ Special Interest Groups (SIGs). Individual papers are 20 minutes long with an additional 5 minutes for discussion. Organized panels are 100 minutes long and are limited to four active participants (four paper presenters, or three presenters with one discussant). An abstract for an individual paper should be no more than 300 words in English or 700 characters in Japanese. For organized panels, a maximum 300-word or 700-character abstract is required from each participant, in addition to a maximum 300-word or 700-character abstract for the panel itself. The submission deadline is Friday, October 31, 2008.

Abstracts should be submitted online at www.aatj.org/seminar.html. Only ATJ members may submit proposals; if your membership is not up to date, you will be contacted by the ATJ office and asked to renew. Questions regarding submission should be addressed to Dan Dewey, Seminar Committee: dan_dewey@byu.edu. For technical support, contact atj@colorado.edu.

New Occasional Papers Published

Issue No. 8 in ATJ's Occasional Papers series has just been published. A copy is being sent to members together with this issue of the Newsletter. (Members who read the Newsletter electronically will receive the Occasional Papers by separate postal mail.) The topic of the publication is "Reemerging Articulation Initiatives in Japanese Language Education in the U.S." Written by Sufumi So (George Mason University) and seven collaborating authors, it reports on a forum held in Washington, DC, earlier this year, at which Japanese language educators at all levels of instruction, from elementary to university, shared perspectives on articulation and curriculum design. While the special focus was on students advancing from high school to college-level programs and the role of the Advanced Placement program in that process, we feel that the publication will be useful for all those involved with Japanese education. It is also available as a PDF file, which contains working links to all of the online resources and references that are cited by the authors. Please contact the ATJ office if you would like to received an electronic copy of this issue of the Occasional Papers (atj@colorado.edu).