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| TESL students and teachers attend the TESOL International Conference in Shanghai |
It rained heavily on Friday, 15 May, the second day of this year’s TESOL (Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages) International Conference held at Shanghai University. However, the participants were all comfortable and dry inside listening to a number of important speakers, watching presentations and attending workshops.
The theme of the conference was “TESOL in the Global Age: New Theories and Methodologies.” More than 300 scholars, teachers and graduate students attended including ten senior students from UIC’s Teaching English as a Second Language (TESL) Programme. AO Shuang (Ann), GAN Yingmei (Koni), GUO Ruiyan (Rhea), LAN Chen (Sapphire), LUO Jingxin (Iris), LIN Xiaodan (Alva), MA Yunqi (Yuki), WANG Cong (Alina), WEI Danchun (Zoe) and ZHANG Xinyi (Xindy) all attended. Dr Terry Shortall and Dr Gary Linebarger, also from the TESL programme, accompanied the UIC students.
Topics presented by the TESL students dealt with corpus studies of word frequency lists, ideologies and adverbs of frequency. In addition, other studies on phonetics, politeness strategies, contrastive rhetoric, language proficiency development, frequency of language exposure, collocation and semantic prosody and English learning motivation, strategies, and achievement were also presented.
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| GUO Ruiyan (Rhea) discusses politeness theory |
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| Dr Terry Shortall presents a paper on grammar and how we store and acquire it |
Many of the three-day conference participants were quite surprised upon hearing that the UIC students were still undergraduates. Dr Shortall said, “Some of the professors remarked that the UIC students’ methodology and techniques in their presentations were very good.”
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| From left to right are MA Yunqi (Yuki), LIN Xiaodan (Alva), WANG Cong (Alina), Dr Shortall and Dr Linebarger listening intently to a presentation |
Before attending the conference the UIC students rehearsed their presentations in front of their faculty advisors, classmates as well as other students and faculty. They received valuable feedback which obviously helped them.
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| The TESL girls rehearse their presentations at UIC on 6 May |
Speaking at the conference were two big names. Firstly was Professor Stephen Krashen, who is one of the foremost authorities in second language acquisition and bilingual education. Joining him was Professor Rod Ellis, who is a leading theorist of task-based language learning. The lecture hall was almost full for both of their talks.
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| Professors Krashen, Ellis and Wen Qiufang |
The conference was sponsored by Shanghai University’s School of Foreign Languages, TESOL Asia, and TESOL International Journal.
Reporter: Dr Gary Linebarger
Photo by TESL and Zhou Wenxuan (IJ, Year 1)
(from TESL, with special thanks to Samuel Burgess)
