Featured Speakers

		Practical Classroom Techniques for Teaching Pronunciation Brock Brady A grab bag of tried and true classroom practices for teaching pronunciation, both "on the fly," when pronunciation issues come up in classes devoted to other language skills, as well as more extensive activities that teachers can use in classes with an explicit emphasis on speaking and oral skills. Brock Brady is currently a Director on the Board of TESOL, Inc and serves as the association's representative to the United Nations Non Governmental Organization program. From 2002- to 2004, he served as a national evaluator for Fulbright English Teaching Assistant candidates. From 2000 to 2003, Brady was President for the Washington Area TESOL (WATESOL) Association. A frequent guest expert on teaching methodology for State Department International Visitors programs, Brady also gives regular presentations at the Foreign Service Institute's Overseas Briefing Center. A former Fulbright Scholar and former Peace Corps Volunteer, Prof. Brady has taught in Korea, Paris, France and Togo, W. Africa and Panama. In the United States he directed short-term intensive ESL programs for several universities and taught community college ESL classes for refugees. From 1993 to 1997, he managed English Teaching Programs for the State Department at American Cultural Centers in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso and Cotonou, Benin.
		Everyone Has a Story to Tell Diane Carter, Indiana Public Schools, USA The more we teach, the more we learn that everyone has a story to tell. EFL students can use English to tell their stories. In his book, The Doors of Perception, Aldous Huxley tells us that "when we learn a new language, we are the inheritors of the knowledge of a people who have gone before us." In this same spirit, we believe that the wisdom of a culture is imbedded in its literature and that by sharing our stories we can learn to understand and live in harmony with each other. Animal tales are a good choice for traditional stories both because the animals themselves can help to define the values of the society, and their inherent touch of magic appeals to our rational and irrational instincts; to our visions and dreams. The EFL storytellers will first find their animal tales either by talking with family and friends or by locating native folktales, myths or legends in library books. After reading or hearing the stories, they will write them in their own words, both in English and their native languages. To bring the stories to life, the students can sculpt their animal characters from clay with the help of their teachers. The dried clay figures can then be fired and painted to accompany their written versions of the native tales. Finally, each of the students can tell his or her story on videotape. The writing, sculpting, and painting part of the project can also be recorded in photographs or on videotape. Diane Carter teaches ESL at two high schools for the Indianapolis Public Schools in Indianapolis, IN, USA. She has worked with ESL students in K-12 for over 20 years. Additionally, she wrote and taught a speech class for international students at the university level, taught and supervised an adult ESL program for learners in the workplace, taught ESL composition, listening, speaking, and reading comprehension on the university level, and currently is a part-time lecturer of technical communication in courses that include many international students for the School of Engineering and Technology at Indiana University/Purdue University at Indianapolis. Diane is the Program Co-Chair for TESOL 2007 and has served as the team leader for Protocol for TESOL conferences for the past five years.
		Teaching and Learning English through Service Learning Elaine Jarchow, Northern Kentucky University, USA Service learning will be defined and applied to ESL/EFL settings. Implementation issues such as site selection, curriculum integration, and evaluation will be discussed. Results from a current partnership with Northern Kentucky University, Yale University, Saint Joseph College, the United Arab Emirates University, and Sultan Qaboos University will be shared. Elaine Jarchow, PhD, is Dean of the College of Education at Northern Kentucky University. She holds degrees from Ohio University and Kent State University. Prior to her arrival at Northern Kentucky University, she served as Dean of the College of Education at Zayed University, United Arab Emirates, as Dean of Academic Affairs, Dar Al Hekma Private College, Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, and as Dean of the College of Education at Texas Tech University. Her major research area is international education, specifically curriculum decision making in emerging democracies, service learning and teaching English as a foreign language, and cultural awareness in international student teach¬ing and faculty exchange settings. She has served as a consultant in China, Thailand, Egypt, Ghana, New Zealand, Australia, Mexico, Belize, Poland, and Honduras. She is the author of more than 50 manuscripts, more than 70 con¬ference presentations, and 18 funded grants. She chaired the American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education's Committee on International Education and was a member of the Association of Teacher Educators' International Affairs Committee, Global Education Task Force, and Publications Committee. She was the treasurer of the World Council for Curriculum and Instruction and is a member of the International Council on Education for Teaching's Board of Directors.
		The Narrative Context of Language Teaching: Three Stories Gary Barkhuizen, University of Auckland, New Zealand In recent years there have been calls for language teachers to explore their teaching contexts in order to become more aware of them and to understand them. Doing so would enable them to make more informed decisions about their practice and their students’ learning. The reasoning behind such an aim is that teachers teach best and learners learn best in situations that are compatible with their backgrounds, beliefs and expectations. This presentation will outline a narrative approach for exploring context. Central to such an approach are the stories which teachers live and tell. A narrative inquiry case will be presented to provide a framework for what follows. Emerging from this narrative case are three levels of story applicable to the participant teachers’ lives. A brief description of these levels will be provided, and will be followed by an illustration of each using extracts from the written story of one of the participating teachers. Gary Barkhuizen is Associate Professor in the Department of Applied Language Studies and Linguistics at the University of Auckland, New Zealand. He has worked as an English teacher and teacher educator in the United States, South Africa and New Zealand. His research interests are in the areas of language teacher education, sociolinguistics and narrative inquiry. He has published widely in journals such as TESOL Quarterly, International Journal of Bilingualism, System, and Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development. He is the author of Analysing Learner Language (2005, Oxford University Press) with Rod Ellis.
		Developing Learner Autonomy — Why, How and With What Results Leni Dam, University College, Copenhagen, Denmark Based on more than 30 years of classroom practice as well as research results the talk will start out by defining the concept of learner autonomy. It will then look at important factors for developing learner autonomy in the world of today as well as mention important factors when developing learner autonomy. Finally the talk will give examples of some results — linguistically as well as socially — from autonomous classes. From 1967, Leni Dam was a teacher of English and Mathematics at a comprehensive school south of Copenhagen where the first steps towards developing learner autonomy in foreign language learning and teaching started in 1973 with a group of 14-year-old mixed ability students. During this time and whilst in this post, Dr. Dam worked on the research project, Language Acquisition in an Autonomous Learning Environment jointly with Prof. L. Legenhausen, Münster University, Germany. Since 1979 she has been an educational adviser and in-service teacher trainer at University College, Copenhagen. She was awarded an honourable doctor degree in pedagogy at Karlstad University, Sweden, in 2004. Leni is a producer of materials for language teaching, a renowned speaker in as well as outside Denmark. Her areas of interest are closely connected to the development of learner autonomy, differentiated teaching and learning, internal evaluation and the use of portfolios.
		Best Practice in ELT: 10 Traits of a Highly Effective Teacher Lisa Barlow, United Arab Emirates University, Al Ain, UAE Christine Coombe, Dubai Men’s College, Dubai, UAE As ELT practitioners face the pressures of an increased workload, institutional accountability and continual change in curricula and assessment, the need for effective teachers in the Arabian Gulf has never been more important. In this presentation, TESOL Arabia President, Lisa Barlow and Conference Co-chair, Christine Coombe, explore the 10 characteristics that they find essential for success in the classroom and in their academic institutions. With a combined experience of more than 30 years of teaching and leading in the Arabian Gulf, Lisa Barlow and Christine Coombe work at the UAE University and Dubai Men’s College respectively. During their tenure in the Gulf, they have served in various positions on the TESOL Arabia Executive Council including President and Conference Chair. Their forthcoming publication, Language Teacher Research in the Middle East (2007, TESOL Publications) highlights some of the excellent teacher inquiry taking place in the Arab world. Both have been recognized for their scholarly activity and teaching achievements.
		Learner Strategies: The How of Language Learning Sara Cotterall, Akita International University In order to succeed in learning a language, learners need to know how to learn effectively. The challenge for language teachers is to raise learners’ awareness of their strategies and expand their strategic repertoire, without diverting attention from language practice. This presentation will suggest three ways in which language teachers can integrate learner strategies in their teaching. The presenter will illustrate her talk with examples of activities she has developed and trialed with university learners of English in Japan. Sara Cotterall has been working in language education since 1980. She began her career teaching English in Europe, then worked in Australia and China before taking up a position at Victoria University of Wellington (VUW) New Zealand, where she worked for 18 years. At VUW she was involved in language teacher education, academic writing and English for Academic Purposes programmes. Since April 2005 Sara has been teaching courses in Speech Communication and Independent Language Learning at Akita International University in Japan. Her research interest is in learner autonomy as a means of promoting effective language learning.
		Approaching IELTS as a Lower Level Learner Sue O’Connell The IELTS test has been a phenomenal success, with candidate figures rising year-on-year to a current total of over half a million. One result of this success has been an increase in the demand for IELTS training for lower level students. In the past, these students have usually followed an intermediate (or even a pre-intermediate) general English course until they reached an appropriate starting point for IELTS preparation, after which they turned their attention to exam skills. More recently, however, there has been a growth in IELTS courses catering specifically for lower level students. Such courses present considerable challenges for syllabus designers and teachers because of the gulf between where many of these students are in terms of language skills, and where they need to get to. There is certainly a requirement to address students’ basic language needs as well as providing exam training, but it’s important to set a realistic goal in order to avoid overload and confusion. What is needed is a limited range of language which is manageable and flexible, and which gives lower level students a chance of achieving reasonable accuracy. So how do we decide which grammar and vocabulary items to include? And how do we ensure that these key items are successfully learnt? This talk will look at a no-frills approach to language syllabus design, which aims to provide lower level students with a reliable repertoire of essential basic language needed for success in the IELTS exam, and will demonstrate some effective practice activities. Sue O'Connell has taught in Portugal, Greece and Hong Kong as well as the UK, where she worked on general English and EAP programmes in the state sector. She has a long-standing interest in testing and was involved with the Cambridge Main Suite exams as an item writer and examiner for many years, also helping in the development of the CAE. More recently she has taught and examined candidates for the IELTS test. As a teacher trainer, she has been closely involved with the Cambridge CELTA scheme since its inception, as a trainer and senior assessor. She is a regular IATEFL presenter and has given seminars and workshops for teachers at training events in many countries. Sue is the author of the Longman Focus series and her most recent publication is Focus on IELTS Foundation.
		How can we really teach listening for academic purposes? Terry Phillips Most experts accept that the skill of listening to formal spoken language involves an interaction of top down and bottom up processing. But translating this theory into classroom activity means ensuring that materials teach transferable skills, knowledge and strategies that can actually be employed by students in future to attack similar kinds of spoken text. Participants will be shown the "top down bottom up" model of receptive skills as it applies to listening. They will be shown the separate elements and, in each case, invited to consider the implications for teaching, and how teaching materials for each element could be constructed to present or practise each element in class. The elements include activating schemata, making use of real world knowledge, predicting content in general and specific terms, hypothesising about discourse structure, breaking down the stream of speech into meaningful units, decoding grammatical meaning, comparing grammatical meaning to hypotheses and recovering pragmatic meaning. The implications for materials and classroom teaching include ensuring that students have a range of relevant academic schemata and a breadth of relevant real world knowledge, know a range of relevant discourse structures and syntactic structures in academic spoken English, have a good grasp of common form and function relationships, and can make the ‘effort after meaning’ described by Bartlett. Each element will then be unpacked into examples of specific subskills which can be presented in teaching materials. Participants will be shown how some of these subskills are genuinely used in real-world listening. Terry Phillips has worked in ELT for more than 30 years as a teacher, teaching supervisor, manager and language school owner. As a consultant, he has worked in more than 20 countries in all parts of the world, advising state and private language institutions on all aspects of school management. For the last 10 years, he has been a full time freelance writer with his wife Anna, producing more than 160 published books in ELT, including the multi-level EAP course, Skills in English, for Garnet Education. The course was highly commended in The Duke of Edinburgh’s English Speaking Union Award for 2004. It is taught in over 80 universities in the UK and around the world. A special version, entitled UAE English Skills, has been adopted by the state secondary schools in the UAE.
		Assessing Writing Skills — What Makes a Good Exam? Wayne Trotman, Izmir Institute of Technology, Turkey This presentation will look at the practical application of the principles underlying a good exam and what constitutes best practice, with specific reference to writing. The presenter will investigate issues affecting performance, and discuss assessment with reference to the assessment criteria used in Cambridge ESOL Examinations, and the Common European Framework of Reference (CEFR) descriptors. There will also be discussion of the rationale for the format of the examinations, and discussion of establishing levels. A special focus of this talk will be the analysis of, and preparation for, examination writing tasks for pre-intermediate and intermediate classes. The presenter will also discuss how careful response based on current classroom research will lead to improved performance in the development of both overall writing skills, and thus much greater opportunities for candidates’ exam success on written papers. Wayne Trotman has been involved in language teaching since 1981 and has experience in Turkey, the UK, the USA and Portugal. Wayne began his involvement with Cambridge ESOL as an oral examiner in 1990 and continues to assess speaking, mainly at KET, PET, and FCE levels. He was awarded a Master's degree in ELT by Aston University in 1997, and shortly after began a career that currently involves teaching EAP writing, teacher-training, plus giving exams-related presentations, and inspecting examination centres on behalf of Cambridge ESOL. Wayne's current doctoral research area is on feedback on EAP writing.