TEFL blog » 2007 » September

A couple of upcoming conferences for you this week. The first is TESOL Chile’s 2007 conference, entitled “Winds of Change”, which focuses on the “innovations, changes and developments that are taking place in the teaching and learning of English in Chile and internationally”.

The keynote speakers are Diane Larsen-Freeman and Michael McCarthy, and the conference is being held at the University of La Serena from 5-7 October.

The second is KOTESOL’s International Conference, from 27-28 October at the Sookmyung Women’s University in Seoul. The title is “Challenging Ourselves, Motivating Our Students, and aims for educators to share ideas and experience in a wide range of areas such as classroom management, ESP, CALL, materials design, motivation, and teacher training and development.

Taiwan’s first English language village has opened in Taiwan, where Taiwanese children go twice a week for English immersion classes.

The Happy English Village features themed classrooms: a bank, a hotel, an airport waiting room and a coffee bar amongst others, and attracts 120 students. It was the idea of a non-profit organisation called the King Car Education Foundation.

The idea came to General Director Morgan Sun after visiting similar immersion villages in Korea. Concerned about the relatively poor ranking of Taiwanese students on the IELTS exam, compared to Japanese, South Korean and Vietnamese students, he decided it was time for an immersion village in Taiwan.

He hopes that the emphasis on speaking with the volunteer foreign teachers at the village, will shift the emphasis away from rote-learning and exams in the Taiwanese education system, towards communicative learning through real-life experiences.

CamTESOL is organising its 4th conference from February 23-24 next year. The theme is “Building Bridges to the World”.

The conference is spearheaded by IDP Education, and includes the participation of classroom teachers and future teachers, administrators, publishers and ELT organisations, as well as interested Cambodian residents.  CamTESOL states as its aim to “increase the links between the ELT community in Cambodia and the international ELT community”.

David Nunan is scheduled to be the keynote speaker, and everyone working in ELT is invited to participate.

Sound interesting? Have a look at the CamTESOL website for more information.