Chia Suan Chong, National Geographic Learning
Helping Students Become Effective International Communicators
Featured Speaker Workshop (60 minutes)
Many of our students will be using English to communicate with people from around the world. Students will need to mediate interactions with people from different cultural backgrounds while accommodating, adapting, and accurately interpreting their conversation partners. This is an interactive workshop with practical lesson ideas that can stimulate reflection and speaking practice through critical thinking activities, storytelling, and a touch of drama to help learners become better international communicators.
Developing Our Students’ Voice in English
Featured Speaker Practice-Oriented Short Workshop (25 minutes)
For many students, English is a tool for international communication. However, how do they feel about their ownership of the English language? How confident do they feel about speaking up in a group conversation? Are they able to express their identity in a conflict situation? This talk explores the importance of helping students develop their relationship with English and considers the strategies and the practical activities we can use to help students make English their own.
Chia Suan Chong has been speaking at ELT conferences since 2009 and is known for her dynamic and interactive style of presentation. Chia believes in the power of storytelling and using scenarios and experiences that her participants can relate to—thought-provoking stories that would generate discussion and reflection. With reference to the conference theme, Chia’s journey as an ELT teacher and teacher trainer has been very much influenced by her interactions with her students. After 12 years of teaching students from all around the world in London, observing their intercultural interactions and listening to their stories of their interactions in English, Chia developed an interest in intercultural communication, interpersonal skills, and identities of second language users of English. These topics will be some of the things that Chia will be speaking about at the JALT2022 International Conference.
Paul Leeming, Kindai University
Tasks and Learner Motivation: Some Necessary Ingredients
Featured Speaker Workshop (60 minutes)
In many EFL contexts, motivation is the most important factor determining learner success. This presentation introduces self-determination theory (SDT) as a framework to understand how task-based language teaching (TBLT) enhances learner motivation. After describing some of the central ideas from SDT, the presenter shows how they can be used to explain the motivational benefits of tasks. Some ideas for future research are discussed, along with practical ways to enhance learner motivation in the classroom.
Real Models for Students: Getting Beyond the Native Speaker
Featured Speaker Practice-Oriented Short Workshop (25 minutes)
Many resources for language learning still rely on the native speaker as a model for learners to emulate. There are numerous problems with this, including the definition of a native speaker in the 21st century and also the almost unattainable goal for many learners: flawless language use. This presentation introduces materials that feature second language learners in order to provide a model for our classrooms and show why this is more motivating for students.
Dr. Paul Leeming is a professor at Kindai University and an adjunct professor at Temple University Japan. His research interests include motivation, TBLT, and group dynamics in the language classroom. He has published widely in journals including Language Learning, TESOL Quarterly, and Language Teaching Research. He is a founding member of the JALT TBL SIG and also the co-author of two textbook series, On Task, and Talking Point.
Alex Sanchez, GALE
Learning From LGBTQ Students to Become Authentic Educators
Featured Speaker Workshop (60 minutes)
This presentation focuses on what educators can learn from Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer students and the value and importance of making LGBTQ-themed texts available to all readers, regardless of sexual orientation or gender identity, as a way to create inclusiveness in classrooms. Through email testimonials we will hear experiences of LGBTQ students and discuss how being our authentic selves as international educators can bring a different and important lens to the classroom.
Promoting Inclusiveness Through LBGTQ Texts
Featured Speaker Practice-Oriented Short Workshop (25 minutes)
The millennium has brought out more and more texts addressing LGBTQ young people’s experiences. We will survey some noteworthy texts and discuss how we can use them to learn from our students and promote inclusiveness, regardless of gender identity or sexual orientation. We will explore how teachers can help foster attitudes of openness and acceptance of gender and sexual difference and be agents of social change. Participants will leave with practical ideas for classroom use.
As a seasoned speaker, Alex Sanchez draws on his own experiences as a Mexican immigrant in the United States, delivering inspiring talks on LGBTQ+ issues, homophobia, and transphobia. As an author of young adult fiction, whose books are read in schools and libraries across Canada and the United States, his expertise intersects the values of not only GALE, but those of both the Teaching Younger Learners and LiLT SIGs. As issues of diversity and inclusion enter the mainstream discourse, helping teachers create a warm and inviting environment for all students will build a welcoming classroom, where students will be free to be themselves.
Joan Saslow, Pearson Education
The Trouble With Chit Chat: What Do Our Learners Tell Us?
Featured Speaker Workshop (60 minutes)
Teachers generally agree that mastery of grammar, or linguistic competence, rarely results in communicative competence. Including chit chat time for speaking practice rarely results in significant improvement in speaking or listening either. Our learners still struggle and make only limited progress. This workshop will demonstrate how techniques can be drawn from our classroom experiences and how systematic attention to achievement of sociolinguistic and pragmatic competence can lead to a speaking pedagogy that enhances social interaction.
Connectivity: A Pragmatic Approach to Improving Social Interaction
Featured Speaker Practice-Oriented Short Workshop (25 minutes)
This new six-level course systematically develops communicative competence and fluency through extensive modeling, social interaction, personalization, and scaffolding activities. Systematic integration and recycling of new and previously learned language ensures memorability and increases confidence in a non-English-speaking environment. Mediation activities prepare learners for interaction with people from diverse backgrounds. Extensive downloadable activities make it easy to customize the material for a variety of settings. The co-authors will demonstrate how Connectivity’s unique speaking pedagogy leads to achievement.
Joan Saslow is a frequent speaker at international teacher’s conferences. She is known for her thought-provoking academic workshops and plenaries that address timely topics that originate from the experiences of teachers and students in the classroom.
Darryl Whetter, Université Sainte-Anne
Hermit Crabs and Dancing Skeletons: Playing With Form in Creative Nonfiction
Featured Speaker Workshop (60 minutes)
Creative nonfiction [CNF] is accessible to and empowering for the additional language learner. While several chapters in Prof. Whetter’s 2021 Routledge anthology, Teaching Creative Writing in Asia, describe Asian students being intimated by the word “creative”, this sub-genre of CNF invites writers to incorporate found or curated text, from family letters to legislation to medical documentation to how-to writing, and so on. This workshop demonstrates how students writing in dialogue with other texts unlocks creativity and self-expression.
Code-Switching and Multilingual Learning in Asian Creative Writing
Featured Speaker Practice-Oriented Short Workshop (25 minutes)
Professor Whetter’s 2021 Routledge anthology, Teaching Creative Writing in Asia, celebrates the ways in which Asian CW education continues yet deepens the Anglo-American pedagogical innovations of the CW workshop. The high concentration of multilingual learners in Asian CW welcomes the creativity of code-switching and anticipates AI translation. With continental Europe still largely disinterested in CW yet Asian CW programs on the rise, contemporary Asia is a vital testing ground for STEM versus STEAM educational debates.
Professor Darryl Whetter is a professor of English Literature and Creative Writing at the University of Sainte Anne in Canada. He is the author of four books of fiction and two poetry collections, including, most recently, the climate-crisis novel Our Sands (2020 from Penguin Random House). He regularly reviews books on national CBC Radio, and nearly 100 of his book reviews have appeared in The Globe and Mail, The Montreal Gazette, The National Post, Detroit’s Metro Times, and more. He is currently editing Best Asian Short Stories 2022 for Singapore’s Kitaab Publishing. More information is available at http://darrylwhetter.ca/
