Tri-TESOL Conference keynote speakers
Sponsored by Oxford University Press)
Dr. Keith Folse is Professor of TESOL at the University of Central Florida where he teaches in the MA, PhD, and undergraduate certificate programs. He has taught ESL/EFL for thirty years in the U.S., Saudi Arabia, Malaysia, Japan, and Kuwait. In addition, he has taught French in the US and Spanish in Japan. He is the author of more than 55 textbooks on a variety of subjects from writing to grammar to vocabulary. Dr. Folse is a frequent presenter at conferences worldwide, especially on the topic of best teaching practices for vocabulary and grammar.
Keynote topic: Teaching Vocabulary in 2012: Research Findings and Practical Classroom Considerations
Abstract: In the last two decades, we have seen a great deal of research on the teaching and learning of vocabulary in a second language. This research has important practical implications for our classes in terms of how our curriculum is arranged, what our textbooks could look like, and what teachers should (and should not) do in class with regard to new vocabulary. In this talk, we will consider three concrete research findings and three practical classroom limitations. Vocabulary is so important for our students’ success that we really need to give a great deal of thought to our current practices and how we can improve them for 2012 and beyond.
Saturday morning keynote -- Dr. Lee Gunderson
Sponsored by Tri-TESOL
Dr. Lee Gunderson is a Professor and former Head of the Department of Language and Literacy Education at the University of British Columbia where he teaches both undergraduate and graduate courses in second language reading, language acquisition, literacy acquisition, and teacher education. He has served as a pre-school teacher, a primary-level elementary teacher, a reading specialist, a principal and vice-principal in a bilingual school, and a teacher of the learning disabled. He received the David Russell Award for Research, the Killam Teaching Prize at the University of British Columbia and has been awarded the Kingston Prize for contributions to the National Reading Conference. He has served as Chair of the Publications Committee of the International Reading Association and is founding Chair of the Pippin Teacher's Professional Library. He is a Past President of the National Reading Conference. He has conducted long-term research that explores the achievement of approximately 25,000 immigrant students.
Keynote title: Achieving the “Nearly” Impossible: Teaching ESL (ELL) Students to Read in Classrooms with 0-Level to Fluent Speakers
Abstract: The number of students enrolled in K-12 classrooms across the continent who speak a language at home other than English continues to increase. One of the most difficult tasks is to design instruction that is appropriate for all students; and in today’s mainstream classrooms one size does not fit all. The backgrounds and skills of ESL(ELL) students are incredibly complex and varied. Instructional matrices based on research designed for use with elementary and secondary students will be described and discussed. The matrices identify instructional strategies appropriate for students with varied L1 literacy backgrounds and different levels of English proficiency. They are classroom tested.
Saturday afternoon keynote -- Dr. Douglas Biber
Sponsored by Pearson
Douglas Biber is Regents' Professor of English (Applied Linguistics) at Northern Arizona University. Beginning with his involvement in adult education programs in Kenya and Somalia, followed by faculty appointments at USC and NAU, he has been actively training language teachers and professionals for over 30 years. Over the past few decades, Biber has focused especially on the question of how corpus linguistic research can be applied to the description of everyday language varieties (‘registers’), and how those research findings can in turn be applied in English Language Teaching. These research efforts have resulted in several major publications that are of immediate relevance to ELT professionals, including a textbook on Register, Genre, and Style (Cambridge, 2009), the co-authored Longman Grammar of Spoken and Written English (1999), the college-level Longman Student Grammar of Spoken and Written English (2002), and a recent ESL grammar textbook published by Longman: Real Grammar (Conrad and Biber 2009).
Presentation Description:
Textbook authors make numerous decisions during the creation of an ESL grammar book, such as what grammatical topics (or words) to include; what sequence of topics; and how to describe patterns of variation and use in real-world contexts (in addition to structural descriptions). Traditionally, these decisions are made based on the author’s intuitions. However, it turns out that corpus research can provide information that will help guide such decisions.
In addition, corpus research often uncovers unexpected patterns of use. In many cases, the most frequent uses of a structure are the ones that authors and teachers are the least likely to notice. However, such uses are at least as important for learners as the uses that are traditionally taught.
Using case studies taken from the author’s own previous research, this talk will illustrate how corpus research can inform ESL teaching and be transformed into teaching materials, with a focus on how corpus-based materials differ from traditional treatments.