The Language Teacher
02 - 2003
A Chapter in Your Life
Alan Mackenzie & David McMurray
This month, Alan Mackenzie, Director of Programs, and David McMurray, 2002/3 International Liaison for JALT and cofounder of PAC, report on two important conferences held this fall. The coeditors warmly encourage 800-word reports of chapter interest in English, Japanese, or a combination of both.
HELP!
With deep foreboding, I accepted the job of organizing the JALT2002 conference this year: Boy, what a chapter it turned out to be!
Luckily, I had the support of a fantastic conference team: Michael Carroll coordinated the Handout Order Center, LD-SIG staffed the Cloakroom, Goshi Masahiko masterminded student volunteers daily in his office (the piranha trap!), and the rest of the team made it all work in less than half the usual time.
Additionally, Mark Zeid magically found sponsorship from ETS at the last moment for William Grabe's flight. Francis Britto stepped into a very hot seat as program chair, kept warm by Paul Collett. Elaine Gilmour and Paul Lewis coordinated volunteers very efficiently. Frank Berberich dealt very well with all the small equipment problems. Fujio Junko made sure registration was as efficient as possible, and Fujishima Naomi coordinated all food and beverages so that no one starved.
Steve Brown and Kevin Ryan excelled in the site organization, and our VIP and Featured Speaker liaisons, Joyce Cunningham and Kohyama Miki, managed to keep the invited speakers happy. Finally, Paul Riley organized the Oxford Debate and Oxford/Towry Law Classics Party to great acclaim.
Feedback we have received from the conference at this point has been very positive. We knew problems would surface with the schedule as well as minor site-related issues, but because we had expected them, we had a very rapid response time to problems, and almost everyone was satisfied with the outcome. The only other complaint I heard was the conference being for only two days. It seems that the conference was so good, attendees wanted to remain an extra day. This November, we will be in the same place, at the same time for three days, and it will be even better than last year with the same conference team in position. Having a full year to work with means we are going to be even better prepared than last year.
To everybody who helped out at the conference, a big THANK YOU!! And I apologize if your name is not mentioned due to space restrictions.
To everyone who attended, please think about giving a little of your time to help the conference run smoothly in 2003. We need as much help as we can get, and a little help goes a long way.
Reported by Alan Mackenzie, Keisen University, asm@typhoon.co.jp
Exciting Pan-Asian Conference in Taipei
On Nov. 8-10, 2,700 teachers poured into Taipei for PAC4. According to Yiu-nam Leung, president of ETA-ROC, the English Teachers' Association of the Republic of China, this was the largest number of attendees in 11 years of international symposiums and book fairs on teaching English. Sessions began at 8:30 each morning, but many attendees arrived by 7:00 in low-cost buses to beat the rush hour traffic of the sprawling metropolis. Most international guests walked down the nearby hillside location of the Grand Hotel--a huge, red-pillared traditional Chinese structure, and once temple--past the elderly performing tai-chi exercises, onto the conference site. Others came by MRT, a smooth monorail that has become a symbol of Taiwan's high tech goals. And finally, some harried teachers zipped in, just on time, riding some of the ubiquitous motor scooters that zoom along the busiest streets and even sidewalks of the bustling city.
Legions of volunteers met us to hand out brochures and guidebooks. The site was decorated with hundreds of colorful banners. Teachers came from all over the island, most countries in Asia, as well as Australia, Britain, Canada, and the United States to share their stories and research on teaching English in Asian contexts. David Dai, the founding president of ETA-ROC, who organized their first conference of over 1,000 attendees, chose the program focus. Main speakers included Neil Anderson, Andy Curtis, David Nunan, and Jack Richards, who have all supported PAC conferences before. A. O. Aldridge, who regularly attends ETA-ROC conferences, joined Tak-hung Chan and Chin-chuan Cheng as honored speakers. IATEFL was represented by Simon Greenall, and TESOL sent Denise Murray. Greenall and Murray are past-presidents of their organizations and have served as advisors on the founding committee of the Pan Asian series of Conferences. Each PAC partner-organization sponsored a featured speaker and up to 20 locally vetted presenters. JALT's Andy Barfield coached teachers about facing change. Park Joo-kyung gave a popular session on teaching young learners in Korea. I introduced ThaiTESOL's Naraporn Chan-Ocha to a jam-packed room of teachers who wanted to learn more about autonomous learning. In Thailand, as in Taiwan, the majority of foreign language teachers and conference attendees are female. Galina Lovtsevich closed the conference by exploring the question how Asian is the Russian Far East ELT environment. As president of FEELTA, the Far Eastern English Language Teachers' Association, she invited attendees to join her at PAC5 in Vladivostok, Russia, June 24-27, 2004.
Reported by David McMurray, International University of Kagoshima, mcmurray@int.iuk.ac.jp
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