Tag Archives: TESOL-TFL

Call for Presentation Proposals for Global Education Conference, North Cyprus

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GLOBAL EDUCATION CONFERENCE – GEC-2012June 25-27, 2012

Jasmine Court Hotel, Kyrenia – North Cyprus
We would like to invite you to submit proposals for the Global Education Conference, which aims to provide a platform where latest trends in education are presented and discussed in a friendly and multinational environment. Proposals can be either in Turkish or English and for papers, panels, roundtables, posters/demonstrations, and workshops. Furthermore if  the presenter is unable to attend the oral presentation, the virtual presentations and video presentations are available. The deadline for abstract submission is 01 June 2012 and for full article submission 24 June 2012.GEC’12 conference is supported by Cyprus International University, Sakarya University, Izmir University, Pegem-A publishing and will take place on June 25-27, 2012 at the Jasmine Court Hotel, Kyrenia, North Cyprus. All full paper presentations will be published in an online proceeding book of GEC’12 and the selected papers will be published in:

* The Turkish Online Journal of Educational Technology – TOJET (www.tojet.net) (SSCI),

* International Online Journal of Educational Sciences – (IOJES) (www.iojes.net),

* The Online Journal of New Horizons in Education – TOJNED (www.tojned.net),

* Educational Administration-Theory and Practice- (http://pegemdergi.net/index.php/KU),

For more information please visit the official conference website (www.globeducon.com). If you require further information, please contact us on gec.northcyprus@gmail.com.

We are looking forward to seeing you and sharing ideas with you.

Spring Speaker Series starts off strong!

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Barbara Sawhill gave an engaging two-hour interactive talk last Friday to TESOL/TFL students on the importance of renouncing a “multi-paged, intricately detailed, iron-clad syllabus” and replacing it with a student-centered, participatory class outline with collaborated class goals between the students and teacher. Barbara teaches Spanish at Oberlin College and is the Director of the Cooper International Language Center.

photo from: cogdogblog

Barbara renounces the old Factory Model of Education, which in her opinion lacks a context for students’ learning. This “Fordist” classoom is out of touch with the world around it and sees students as empty vessels who simply absorb and memorize, rather than experience and create.

As an educator, Barbara sees her job as “making this experience [in the classroom] as meaningful for you [the student] as possible”. She insists that as educators, we need to listen and model for students what we expect of them. As learners, we don’t need to simply find all of the answers, but learn how to create “really well-rounded, thoughtful questions”.

Four questions that Barbara asks her students at the beginning of each term are:

How do you learn?

Why are you here?

What do you want to learn?

How can we help you get there?

You can check out her work and ideas at  http://languages.oberlin.edu/lab-info/center-staff/ and http://languagelabunleashed.org/ and typical posts like http://languagelabunleashed.org/2010/03/15/the-backwards-syllabus/ Barbara introduces herself at http://vimeo.com/19050537 .You can read about her Spanish class at http://languages.oberlin.edu/courses/2010/spring/hisp205/ and http://languagelabunleashed.org/tag/hisp205/

Marciel Santos will be the next speaker this Spring, He will be talking on April 14 from 3-5 pm. Stay aware of fliers around campus for more information!

Professor Dai is honored for her innovative CFL Pedagogy

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Professor Dai was invited to conduct another 4 CFL Pedagogy (Chinese as a Foreign Language Pedagogy) workshops on Chinese Grammar Pedagogy and Curriculum Design of Content-based Instruction by National Hsinchu University of Education after completing 3 CFL Pedagogy Workshops for them last year. The workshops ran from December up until April, and the last one is scheduled for April 25th.

The above is a collaboration of Professor Dai’s workshop title pages from the National Hsinchu University of Education. The top left image is from workshop 1 in early December titled “Learning environments and Chinese programs in the U.S.”, the top right image is from workshop 2 in late December titled “Life, Cognition and CFL Pedagogy (Teaching Chinese)”, the bottom left image is from workshop 3 in January titled “Blogging Language Education in the Virtual Environment”, and the bottom right image is from workshops 4 and 5 in March titled “Chinese Grammar Pedagogy: An Introduction and Practicum”.

She was also invited to join a team of teacher training STARTALK program and will teach for a 2-week intensive STARTALK Program for non-native teachers of Chinese this summer at ACC/ Hamilton College.

In addition to the workshop invitation (National Hsinchu University and Education) and StarTalk Teacher-Training Program (Hamilton College), Professor Dai was invited to give a 2-hour talk on CFL Pedagogy on April 19th at the National Pingtong University of Education.

Participants in Professor Dai’s workshop are able to view her PPTs via GoogleDoc sharing.

Hsinchu Teaching Chinese 2011

https://sites.google.com/site/hsinchuteachingchinese2011/

PCMI student in Kazakhstan

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Christina Baldarelli is currently serving as a Peace Corps Masters International (PCMI) candidate in Kazakhstan.  She recently sent an update back to her colleagues at MIIS along with her thanks for a PCMI care package.  She writes,

Christina Baldarelli, PCMI in the field

Christina Baldarelli, PCMI in the field

I have to tell you … having spent two semesters at MIIS prior to joining the Peace Corps has basically made me a rock star over here. I live and work in a small city surrounded by different villages that are home to 8 other volunteers who are first-time teachers right out of various non-education related undergraduate programs. Not a weekend goes by without one of them coming in to the city to talk about lesson plans or vent about administrative frustrations, and I feel so equipped and empowered to listen to them and try to help. Sometimes I get frustrated that I’m not living the typical ‘Peace Corps’ life (i.e. there are BMWs on the streets and all of my students have expensive cell phones, etc), but I feel like some of the best work that I’m doing is actually just helping the other volunteers be more effective, which feels good.

You can read further about her adventures via her personal blog.

Corpus linguistics and concordancing

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This past weekend GSTILE students, faculty and staff attended a five-hour workshop on corpus linguistics and concordancing, presented by Susan Conrad, an alumna of the MIIS TESOL program, and now a faculty member in the Department of Applied Linguistics at Portland State University.

Susan Conrad, corpora and concordancing workshop

Susan Conrad, corpora and concordancing workshop

Susan’s workshop focused on the use of corpora for language teachers, and covered both software programs and web-based resources.

Materials from Susan’s workshop — as well as those from other GSTILE lecture series events — are available in the GSTILE >> TESOL/TFL section of Moodle:  Materials from TESOL/TFL Speaker Series.

Alum to be published in CATESOL Journal

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MIIS TESOL alumna Janine Poreba recently received news that her Applied Linguistics Research (ALR) project will be published in the Winter 2010 issue of the CATESOL Journal.  She writes,

CATESOL

CATESOL

Recently, I dusted off my ALR project (“Negotiation Strategies in Two-Way Conversation Partnerships: Their Use and Usefulness”) and re-read it. I’m working at Santa Monica College, and some colleagues and I are starting a Conversation Exchange Program here, so I wanted to see if I’d uncovered any useful information back in my grad school days. Sure enough, I had, and what’s more, the paper was still interesting to read. I made some changes and submitted it to the CATESOL Journal, and I just found out that it’ll be published in their Winter 2010 issue.

Congratulations, Janine!  And thanks to Kathi Bailey for passing along the news.

Beverly Derewianka, Friday, Feb 19

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Who: TESOL/TFL students & all others with an interest in languages
What: Guest speaker Beverly Derewianka
When: Friday, February 19, 2010, 2:00-4:00 PM
Where: Morse, Room B104

Getting Personal: Using language to engage with readers to express feelings, persuade others to our point of view, judge peoples’ behavior, and moderate our expression of attitude.

A major function of language is to enable the expression of interpersonal meanings – feelings, opinions, judgments, humor, sarcasm, and so on. Often, however, this important aspect of language competency is not taught explicitly, possibly because such meanings are so deeply embedded in the culture that even native speakers are not consciously aware of how they employ these subtle resources. This paper will draw on Appraisal Theory (Martin & White 2005) for a model to help language teachers think about such issues as:

  • how is language used to express feelings, persuade others to our point of view, judge peoples’ behavior, and so on?
  • how can we moderate our expression of attitude?
  • how can we use language to engage with the reader in various ways?

GSTILE welcomes everyone and hopes to see you there.