Happy New Year! Welcome to Term 1 and the JLTAV Summer Newsletter. I hope everyone had an enjoyable holiday break and you are refreshed and energised to start the new school year.
In 2025, we have a range of exciting events planned for teachers and students. We will promote our events through the JLTAV website, JLTAV member email list, Nihongo Victoria email group, the JLTAV and Japanese Language Teachers of Australia Facebook pages, as well as through the Department of Education and Training’s Access, Resource, Collaborate (ARC).
Event Report: Term 4 Online Professional Learning
On Thursday 24 October, Monique Francis presented a one-hour session titled ‘Boost Engagement with the Special Person Interview’. This session explored how the Special Person Interview can transform your language classroom. Participants learnt how to use the Comprehensible Input strategy to build community, encourage natural conversation, and help students acquire language effortlessly. Many thanks to Monique for her generosity in sharing her wealth of knowledge with us.
Calligraphy Competition Results
Thank you to the students and schools who supported our 2024 Calligraphy Competition. The ability for students to draw the Japanese scripts in both the brush and pencil categories is most impressive. Please click here for the results of this competition.
In 2024 we had the following number of entries:
Brush: 186 in total
Primary – 85
Secondary – 101
Pencil: 167 in total
Primary – 145
Secondary – 22
2025 JLTAV Annual Conference
We look forward to welcoming colleagues to our 2025 Annual Conference to be held on Friday 21 and Saturday 22 March at a new venue, the Jasper Hotel, 489 Elizabeth Street, Melbourne. Please find HERE the program for the conference and the registration form HERE. Many thanks to our amazing colleagues for offering to present sessions at the conference. Through the generosity of our colleagues, we have been able to put together another exciting program for the two days.
Our Annual General Meeting will be held on Friday 21 March from 4.30pm to 5.00pm at the Jasper Hotel. We encourage members to nominate themselves to join the JLTAV committee in 2025. One gains a lot of satisfaction from being involved in the Association and ensuring Japanese language education continues to flourish in Victoria. Please contact me at nlane@mackillopsh.vic.edu.au if you would like further information or you would like to join the committee in 2025.
Sincere thanks to the Department of Education for their great support and for providing a yearly grant to enable us to organise student events and professional learning for teachers. We look forward to the ongoing support from the Department of Education in 2025.
In 2020, we saw a new format for the external examinations for Year 12 Japanese Second Language. To support VCE teachers, the JLTAV produced practice exams from 2020 to 2024. These practice exams are still available for purchase. Please click on the information in this newsletter to place an order. We will be creating and selling practice exams for 2025 and will let colleagues know when orders are open. Later in the year we will also update our Year 12 Morning resources and make these available to JLTAV members. We wish all our VCE students great success in their Japanese studies in 2025.
Last year we successfully organised some online professional learning sessions for our colleagues. We welcome colleagues with an interest in presenting an online session this year to contact me at nlane@mackillopsh.vic.edu.au with details of the session you would like to present.
As we start another school year, it is timely to remind colleagues of the best way to contact the JLTAV. The best email addresses are nlane@mackillopsh.vic.edu.au or jltav@jltav.org.au. Unfortunately the JLTAV Facebook Messenger account isn’t monitored often.
On behalf of the committee, I thank you all for your support of the JLTAV throughout 2024. We wish everyone all the very best for the start of the 2025 school year. Take care and stay safe.
Nathan Lane
President
JLTAV Inc. (Reg. No. A0024691U)