TEFL blog » Conferences & events

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.

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.

First of all, our apologies to all our readers for the long absence. But the TEFL blog is back…

The phrase “you know” is the 57^th most frequently used word or phrase in English. In fact, 60% of all use of the word “know” is in this phrase. That’s according to Professor Ronald Carter of Nottingham University, speaking at a session of the 5^th Asia TEFL Conference, which took place last week in Malaysia.

Another talk to make an impact, reports the Malaysia Star Online, was “Learning English with a Mobile Phone”. Dr Timothy Collins said that “a mobile phone can support many kinds of learning… where learners can see, hear and touch as they press buttons to express their understanding”.

Do you agree with Dr Collins? Or do you see mobile phones as a menace to English language classrooms, with teenage students spending whole lessons texting their friends under the table?

If you attended the 5^th Asia TEFL Conference this year, tell us what you thought. Next year’s conference will be in August in Bali, Indonesia, with the theme “Globalising Asia: The Role of ELT”.

Here are some more conference dates for your diary:

April 18-22, IATEFL Annual Conference and Exhibition
The IATEFL Conference attracts 1500 ELT professionals from over 70 countries, and includes a programme of over 300 talks, workshops and symposiums. This year’s conference is being held in the Scottish city of Aberdeen.

June 8-10, Asia TEFL International Conference
Billed as the “biggest and most widely participated English Language Teaching Event in Asia”, the Asia TEFL International Conference is this year being held in Malaysia.

October 27-28, Korea TESOL International Conference
The theme of the 15th Korea TESOL Conference is “Energizing ELT: Challenging Ourselves, Motivating Our Students”, and is being held at Sookmyung Women’s University in Seoul.

Best Practices in English Language Teaching is the theme of this year’s TESOL Arabia Conference, which gets underway tomorrow in Dubai. The conference features 250 speakers and over 200 sessions, including “Students’ Attention Span- Where Has It Gone?”, “The Learner as “Customer”, What’s to Know?” and “A Bag of Tricks for Vocabulary Teaching”.

Have a look at the TESOL Arabia website for more.

TESOL (Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages Inc.) is planning its 41st annual convention in Seattle, Washington, from March 21-24, 2007.

The theme of this year’s convention is “Spanning the Globe: Tides of Change”.

To register or for more information, visit the TESOL convention website.

Do you hold debates in your ESL classes? With a motivated and imaginative group of students, debates can be a very good method of improving communication skills.If your students are good enough, they might even follow in the footsteps of a group of students from the International Islamic University in Malaysia, who have won the ESL category at the 27th World Universities Debating Championship in Vancouver, Canada, seeing off a challenge from university teams from India, Sweden and Israel.

A member of the winning team, Suhaib Hassan, is quoted as saying that the university “understand[s] the importance of debate in sharpening a student’s skills in critical thinking and communication”.

If you’ve held debates in your classes, what have your students debated about? Post a comment below…

If you’ve ever thought about using technology in your English classes, but are not quite sure how to go about it, you might want to sign up for the Electronic Village Online Sessions. These online discussion sessions and virtual workshops are being run as an extension to the 2007 TESOL Annual Convention, taking place in Seattle in March.

The online sessions run from January 15 to February 25 and are free and open to everyone. There are 13 sessions available, including:

• Beginning Internet Activities
• ESL/EFL Student Video Production
• Teaching with PowerPoint
• Becoming a Webhead
• Blogging for Beginners
• Digital Gaming and Language Learning

Sound interesting? Click on the link above to join the sessions.