First of all, there was no study that dealt with CALL. This is so not only that this is a small conference but also that it is typical in the studies of SLS as can be seen in the small number of studies related to CALL in such a large conference as AAAL. Related to my research agenda, because I did a few studies on gesture, Solene's study was interesting. The fact that iconic gesture is the most common type of gesture was in line with previous studies; in addition, it is also documented in the previous studies that metaphoric is one of the most common types of gesture (however, metaphoric is a vague term, and it tends to include various kinds of gestures). In my study, although it did not specifically focus on lexicon, but general FonF, deictic was also used quite frequently; however, in Solene's study, it was the least common. I think this discrepancy comes from the different style of teaching. My teacher used the blackboard to refer to some unknown words to his students. In contrast, judging from the video clip that she showed us, the teacher just talked while sitting on his chair. So I see that there is a variation among teachers in terms of gesture, as predicted.
2. Summarize a study that impressed you and explain why.
This is not a study, but the talk by Dr. Ohta was impressive. I have known ZPD and I know it has been used in many studies. The school that I worked for in Japan also used ZPD. But I did not know there are three different approaches to ZPD. What impressed me the most was that we can basically name anything related to learning as ZPD. For instance, she mentioned that even using a dictionary can be called ZPD. In this sense, one can call any kinds of learning using tools as ZPD. So ZPD is everywhere. Then, what does it mean to use the term, ZPD?
Furthermore, I did not know that Vygotsky originally used it for cognitive development of children because I have seen it used only in education field in light of learning. I see that we are expanding its horizon and interpretation, possibly in contrast/ contrary to his expectation.
3. Select one topic or one study and explain what you would have done differently and why.
Apart from Solene, Luke's presentation was interesting. One of the main reasons was the large number of studies that he collected so far (and it is still ongoing). He collected all the quantitative studies published in two renowned journals, and analyzed how detail their statistics report was. This is a study that I have never seen or heard so far; so it was something new to me.
But as some people mentioned, in many cased, the researchers did not delete the statistical information on purpose. I am sure most of them wanted to include as much numbers as possible; however, due to the limit of pages or words, or the order by the editors, they had no choice but to omit them. If all the studies include all the information that Luke wished, some other parts need to be omitted. But then, which part?
So as Dr. Ohta mentioned, qualitative data derived from interviewing editors/ reviewers of journals, and authors themselves is enlightening in this regard. How did they decide which part to omit and retain? What forced them to make a decision? In this way, this study will be so much useful for editors to facilitate discussion on what to include and not to include in publications.
4. You saw both experienced and inexperienced presenters, what have you learned about conference presentations that can be helpful for the next time you present at a conference?
Dr. Ohta was truly good at presentation. I see there are a few notable points.
a) She scattered jokes in her presentation, not only in her talk, but also in her slides. This prevented the audience from being bored.
b) Her slides did not have many words. Often slides have a lot of words written in a small font, which I can not read from far, and the presenter cannot read as there are too many words. So slides flooded with too much information for the presenter to handle or for the audience to digest. Her slides often had only a few pictures representing the concept of the slide; this also makes it easier for me to recall the topic of the slide.
c) She managed time really well. Her presentation finished just on time. At SLRF that I went last year, one presenter talked for 30 minutes using all the time for Q&A, assuming that no one has any questions while I was charing. I thought it impolite. Also, she talked really fast. So not many people were following her. Dr. Ohta talked slowly so that we were able to understand her.
These points convinced me that she was a good presenter. I will keep these points in mind for my next presentation at AAAL.
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