Here are the slides for a webinar given on Friday, October 27, 2023 — for goFLUENT.

Synopsis:

Students, teachers, and business people often suffer a special kind of stress and frustration. What is it? They have to endure long, boring, overly-complex, and forgettable presentations. What’s the solution to this global problem?!

One solution comes from the power of story. Story works as the most powerful way to put information in human brains. And we can use the power and pattern of story to transform the way we communicate. Stories always follow a universal pattern. (1) A hero faces troubles and problems. (2) Our hero struggles to overcome these troubles and problems. (3) Our hero succeeds (or fails) to overcome their troubles and problems.

We can use this pattern when we communicate any kind of information. We can simplify the story pattern like this: (1) problem, (2) solution, (3) result. The audience stands as our hero. (1) We set our facts and data inside a problem they face. (2) Then we present our solutions to the problem. (3) Lastly, we present the result (the happy ending) that comes by following the solution.

In this webinar series, we will learn how to use tools and techniques to create presentations using story style. We’ll also learn how to use story style to clarify our written communication and the way we manage meetings. But most of all, we will learn to make our presentations more effective, impactful, and memorable.

A talk for The Japanese Association for Studies in English Communication (JASEC), The Twenty-ninth Annual Convention (online Zoom convention), October 17, 2020.

In this talk, I claim that humans are naturally wired for story. We find story more comprehensible, memorable, and compelling than non-story. And though story may be the language teacher’s oldest tool, we can clarify and simplify how we define story. And with the clear and simple sense of story, we can work to weave it more deeply into every strand of language education — making all our language teaching — more story-centric.

Language teachers may easily weave story into input, output, and fluency activities, but grammar and form-focused activities present a more difficult challenge because we usually teach grammar simply by focusing on the nuts and bolts of language. Thus, in this talk I introduce a few ways that we can infuse story into the teaching of linguistics forms.

Click here for a PDF of the talk.

Nudges encourage behaviors without mandating them. Using nudge theory, teachers can create a “choice architecture” to encourage students to read more and more honestly. Presenters compare nudges versus mandates in ER. We give numerous examples of ER nudges and suggest ways to research nudge theory to promote extensive reading.

A Paper Presented at The Fifth World Congress on Extensive Reading, Feng Chia University August 9-12, 2019. By Joseph Poulshock, Senshu University; Douglas Forster, Japan Women’s University

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AI may solve problems we face when doing extensive listening. The cloud service Amazon Polly “converts text into life-like speech.” We show how teachers can use Amazon Polly, and we summarize a pilot research project that compares student responses to a human voice and Amazon Polly’s AI voice.

A Paper Presented at The Fifth World Congress on Extensive Reading, Feng Chia University August 9-12, 2019. By Joseph Poulshock, Senshu University; Douglas Forster, Japan Women’s University

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We gave a brief panel talk about ReadOasis at the The Sixth Annual Conference on Global Higher Education at Lakeland University, Japan. It’s a great conference! We enjoyed the presentations by the other panel members: Mark Feeley, from Lakeland University, gave a talk entitled “Improving Academic Literacy.” And Christopher Tempest, from Sojo University, talked about: “Implementing Quizlet in a Japanese EFL University.” We also enjoyed the atmosphere at Lakeland — very friendly and pleasant!

We wish to thank everyone who attended our talk. — Joseph Poulshock & Douglas Forster