Prof. David Nunan

David Nunan is Vice President for Academic Affairs at Anaheim University, California, Emeritus Professor at the University of Hong Kong, Professor in Education at the University of NSW, and Senior Academic Advisor to Global English Corporation in San Francisco. He has published over 100 scholarly books and articles on teacher education, curriculum development, classroom-based research and the teaching of grammar in the communicative classroom. Recent books include Task-Based Language Teaching (Cambridge University Press), Practical English Language Teaching: Grammar (McGraw-Hill), What is This Thing Called Language? (Palgrave Macmillan), with Phil Benson, Learners’ Stories Difference and Diversity in Language Learning (Cambridge University Press) and with Kathi Bailey, Exploring Second Language Classroom Research (Cengage/Heinle). His latest publication, co-edited with Julie Choi, is Language and Culture: Reflective Narratives and the Emergence of Identity, published by Routledge.


Teaching English to Young Learners: Current Issues and Perspectives
The purpose of this presentation is to explore current issues and perspectives in teaching English to young learners. A key assumption underpinning the presentation is that learning another language is an excellent vehicle for whole child development, catering to the intellectual, emotional, physical, moral and social aspects of the child’s education.

At the beginning of the presentation, I will define what I mean by ‘the young learner’, pointing out that the term covers a large chronological time span from birth to puberty. I will give a brief review of the research into the Teaching English to Young Learners that shows no consistent support for the notion that starting early results in more successful language learning. However, I will also say why I believe that the research is problematic.

I will then turn to the issue of developmental appropriacy.The phrase ‘developmental appropriacy’ refers to the fact that as children grow up, they pass through a series of developmental stages. At each of these stages, they mature cognitively, emotionally, physically and socially. It is very important that the teaching approaches and methods we use in the classroom are appropriate to these different stages.

Teaching English to young learners presents many challenges. In addition to ensuring that instruction is developmentally appropriate, these include motivation, attention, multi-level groups and assessment. I will review these and propose some solutions.

In the last section of the presentation, I will set out some key principles for teaching young learners. I will illustrate these principles with some practical teaching activities and materials. References, suggestions for further reading and some helpful websites will also be suggested.

Mr. Bruce Rogers

Bruce Rogers has taught ESL, EFL, and test preparation since 1979. He was senior instructor and later chair of the English Program at the Economics Institute, University of Colorado, for 20 years. He has taught at the Central Bank of Indonesia,in Jakarta, Indonesia; at the National Economics University in Hanoi,Vietnam;at Yonsei University in Seoul, South Korea andat the Samsung Corporation Training Center in Yung-in, South Korea; and at Charles University in Prague, the Czech Republic. Bruce is the author of The Complete Guide to the TOEFL: iBT Edition and The Complete Guide to the TOEIC, and is a co-author of Reading Explorer 5(all published by Heinle-Cengage). He is also the author or co-author of seven other ESL textbooks. He is a frequent presenter at TESOL and Colorado TESOL, and has been the plenary speaker or featured speakerat international conferences in Japan, Korea, Brazil, Thailand, Dubai, Greece, Indonesia, Mexico, and the Dominican Republic. He is past president of Colorado TESOL and chair-elect of the Material Writers Interest Section of TESOL. He lives in Boulder, Colorado, USA.

Developing Skills for the 21^st Century: A New Perspective
The world is becoming increasingly globalized and linked by Information and Communications Technology (ICT). Rapid changes have placed new demands on knowledge-seekers and education systems. In the twenty-first century, English-language learners need more than the ability to simply comprehend and communicate in English. They require a portfolio of tools and skills enabling them to meet and respond to the demands of the classroom and the workplace. In this plenary, we will examine four of the most important of these skills:

Critical thinking: Critical thinking is “the ability to look at an issue and challenge possible assumptions that may underlie the issue.” Critical thinking, unlike rote learning, involves problem solving and analysis. It asks students to consider their own relationship to a topic and to formulate and express their own opinions about it.

Visual literacy: This is “the ability to interpret, negotiate, and make meaning from information presented in the form of an image.” A quick look at textbooks from twenty years ago and then at the textbooks, software, and videos now used to teach language shows how much text has been augmented by visual images. Aristotle once said, “Without images, thinking is impossible.” Today the ability to understand and explain the images around us is key.

Cultural literacy: Cultural literacy rests on the idea that “understanding someone in any meaningful sense requires understanding cultural context.” In other words, for non-native learners to understand language—at least beyond a basic level—they most know more than grammar and vocabulary. They must have some familiarity with the culture in which that language is spoken.

ICT skills: Electronic technology in the classroom is nothing new. Teachers have used tape-recorders and overhead projectors since the 1950’s. But the introduction of digital technology in the last decades has practically revolutionized teaching methodology. Technology can make teachers more creative and learning more enjoyable for students. The dilemma for instructors is to determine when to use technology and to determine which technology truly enhances language-learning.

In this presentation, we will compare these “new” skills with the traditional ones we expected language-learners to have. We will examine whether current exams take these new skills into consideration. We will also discuss the implications of these skills for teachers: for example, how teachers can help students develop their critical thinking skills, and how technology can be most effectively used in the classroom.

TOEFL^© vs. TOEIC^© vs. IELTS^©
The TOEFL^©, TOEIC^©, and IELTS^© are the most important tests of English-language proficiency in Asia and worldwide. Students often ask: Which is the best test? Which one is easiest? Which one should we take? These questions can be difficult to answer, but in this presentation we will take a closer look at all three tests.

For many years, ETS’s TOEFL^© (Test of English as a Foreign Language) exam has served as a gatekeeper for university admission, particularly for schools in North America. It has been taken by more than 27 million people. The standard form of the test is the iBT—Internet Based Test—but the paper-based version of the test is still given for a variety of purposes.

In the UK and Commonwealth countries, the academic form of the IELTS (International English Language Testing System) serves much the same purpose as the TOEFL. In recent years, the academic IELTS^© has competed with TOEFL© more and more successfully.For example, today the admissions departments of many universities around the globe—including those in the United States—accept the results of either TOEFL^©or IELTS^©. Currently available only as a paper-absed test, IELTS will soon be administered on computer.

TOEIC^© (Test of English for International Communication), another ETS test, is often used by corporations and other organizations as a criterion for hiring or promotion. (The general version of IELTS^© is sometimes used for the same purpose.)TOEIC^© is only a paper-based test. TOEIC^© is by far the most commonly-taken test, being administered more than five million times a year—primarily in East Asia.

These three exams have many similarities. For example, all three test listening and reading comprehension. IELTS^© and TOEFL^© also test speaking and writing (and there are separate TOEIC^© tests for writing and speaking). However, the three tests are by no means identical. In this presentation, we will discuss how the tests differ in terms of purpose, content, item-types, scoring, costs, methods of administering, and overall test designs. We will also discuss student perceptions of these tests. Finally, we will look at methods and materials used to prepare candidates for these three important exams.

Ms. Heather Barikmo and Ms. Mary Nance-Tager, LaGuardia Community College, CUNY

Heather Barikmo is the Instructional Technology Coordinator at The English Language Center, an Intensive English Program at LaGuardia Community College, City University of New York. She teaches at various levels in the program, most recently with a focus on reading and oral communications courses that incorporate web-based technologies to enhance student engagement and learning both inside and outside the classroom. She also supports teachers in the use of emerging instructional technologies, and manages The English Language Center’s fully digital Media Center. Ms. Barikmo has previously taught at the Center for Immigrant Education and Training at CUNY, the American Language Institute at NYU, and the American Language Program at Columbia University; she also taught elementary and middle school students in Hamamatsu, Japan. Ms. Barikmo holds a Masters of Arts in Applied Linguistics from Teachers College, Columbia University.

Mary Nance-Tager, MA in TESOL from Hunter College/CUNY, has been teaching ESOL for over 25 years. She began her teaching career working with aging, semi-literate Cambodian refugees in New York City’s South Bronx, where she quickly discovered the importance of using varied and student-centered teaching practices. After earning her master’s degree, Ms. Nance-Tager moved to Washington, DC to teach business English to Russian entrepreneurs studying at The George Washington University. Before returning to settle in New York City, Ms. Nance-Tager worked in Taipei, Taiwan, where she taught ESOL to space scientists. Most recently she has been teaching academic reading skills to native and non-native English speakers studying to become emergency medical technicians. She specializes in the teaching of reading and pronunciation. In addition to teaching, Ms. Nance-Tager has held administrative positions at LaGuardia Community College/CUNY and worked as a teacher trainer at the New School for Social Research.

Active Reading Strategies: Putting Action into Thought
How can English language instructors be certain that their students are actively engaged during reading lessons? Reading in an ESOL classroom can appear to be a passive activity, but teachers can use strategies to ensure that their students are cognitively and behaviorally active during the learning process. Grounded in their belief that language is best taught through a multi-skill approach that combines careful instruction with deliberate practice of receptive and productive language skills, the presenters will discuss and demonstrate successful reading lessons for the ESOL classroom. They will explore the connection between reading, writing, listening and speaking and help instructors to design lessons that promote active and engaged learning. The need for controlled, guided, and open-ended activities will be discussed, as will the need for effective methods of assessment. Best practices will be modeled so that participants can help their students build vocabulary, improve comprehension, and think critically in order to “go beyond the text” and develop increased autonomy in their reading. Sample texts will include literary essays, graphic novels, news articles, short stories, novels, content-area textbooks, and poems. Sample lessons will address visual, auditory, and kinesthetic learning styles, and the activities presented will include vocabulary building games, note-taking exercises, jigsaw reading passages, cloze paragraphs, graphic organizers, and strip stories. The presenters will also model techniques for setting up and monitoring students in individual, paired, and group activities and demonstrate ways to effectively facilitate class discussions. Though these lessons were created for students at LaGuardia Community College, the techniques presented can be adapted for use in primary and secondary schools.

Ms. Nguyen Thi Anh Dao
Nguyễn Thị Anh Đào has been teaching English at Sai Gon University and some other universities for 27 years. During those years she has enjoyed teaching most of the subjects related to English teaching such as Reading, Speaking, Listening, Writing, Translation, Lexicology, Semantics, Phonetics and Country Study. She attended and completed an off-shore course of MTESOL held by Victoria University in Ho Chi Minh City from 2000 to 2001. Her experience helped her a lot when she started training as a teacher of teaching methodology at SGU 8 years ago. She also acquired further academic knowledge and management skill when she worked for VUS as a Training Quality Manager from 2008 to 2009. She has been taking part in Primary Innovation Project of British Council as one of the key trainers to the primary teachers in Ho Chi Minh City since 2008.

Making It Fun for Young Learners to Learn Grammar
In the process of learning a foreign language, young learners need knowledge of meaning, use and form of the new language items and should be given plenty of opportunities to use the new items themselves in a meaningful and purposeful way. This workshop aims at suggesting some ways to make it fun for young learners to learn grammar which is usually assumed to be boring.

During forty five minutes of the workshop, the participants will get involved in some activities that form the core parts of three grammar lesson plans. In the first lesson plan, a simplified version of the well-known story The Pied Piper by Robert Browning is used to set the context for teaching some prepositions of direction to very young learners (i.e. primary students). The second lesson plan will use a fairy tale background to lead learners to overcome challenges with a prince on the way to rescue a princess and thus complete the assumingly boring exercises in the textbook Tieng Anh 10. The same objectives may be achieved in another version which uses a hot coming event (e.g. Super Junior Tour in Vietnam) to encourage high school students to participate in recruitment for a volunteer job they would love to do. As language focuses are intertwined with stories, exercises are twisted into games and very basic Power Point effects spice up the contents, these lesson plans just follow the trend to combine technology, stories, games and some other CLT techniques to motivate young learners in mainstream classrooms, especially when they learn grammar.

Ms. Nguyen Thi Hoai An

Nguyen thi Hoai An is a freelance lecturer in HCMC at different universities and colleges. She has a Master Degree in TESOL (University of Canberra). Since the beginning of her EFL teaching and teacher training career, An has focused on helping her students create and increase their intrinsic motivation in learning. She believes that students should be allowed to enjoy autonomy that can lead to the development of their creative intelligence. She is a member of the Asian Creative Writing Group with a number of short stories and poems published. Through the activities of this group, she has gained a better insight of the importance of recognising students as different individuals and advocated for more respect for students’ interests.

Humanism in Language Teaching - Students’ Faces & Voices
Teaching English as a second language, teachers always need to look for appropriate approaches to ensure their lesson delivery is effective. This is not simple and easy, especially when class heterogeneity is not uncommon and students do not often have opportunities to use English outside the classroom.

Learner-centredness has been advocated and along with this concept, humanism has also been mentioned in language teaching. The advertising for humanistic approaches has raised the awareness that the teacher should focus more on individual students, who are thought to play an essential role in deciding how successful teaching outcomes can be. When applying humanistic approach, the teacher shows respect to the integrity of learners and acts as a facilitator to help with their development. In other words, the teacher lets his or her students take responsibility of their own learning and in the process of learning, these students have the right to state their interests as well as give voice to their feelings and opinions.

In our local teaching environment, students need a lot of training to familiarize themselves with these concepts and on the other hand, training, mentoring and practising should be provided to teachers so that they can conduct suitable learner-centred activities, which focus on humanism in teaching, in their classrooms.

The presentation will look at the possibility of applying these teaching concepts and provide some food for thought for teachers to modify their teaching styles and adapt teaching materials for their students’ benefits.

Dr. Le Thi Anh Phuong

Fulbright scholar at University of South Florida (USA); Ed.D., LaTrobe University (Australia); M.A. in Applied Linguistics, Macquarie University (Australia); Graduate Diploma in TESOL, Deakin University (Australia); B.A.in TESOL, Hue University.
Based at Nha Trang Education College for many years, Dr. Phuong has been an educator of TESOL teachers for various projects in Vietnam. She has also taught a variety of courses, including CLT, British and American cultures, intercultural communication, TOEFL and IELTS. Dr. Phuong has published extensively on ESL teaching and teacher education and has given many conference presentations in Vietnam, Australia, USA, Korea, Thailand and Nepal. She is supervising various M.A. theses on ESL teaching, textbook evaluation, material adaptation and contrastive linguistics. Dr. Phuong major research interests include syllabus design, assessment, intercultural communciation and discourse analysis.

Turn Frowns into Smiles: Maximizing the Fun in Learning
Anxiety experienced by language students in the language classroom has been extensively reported in the literature (i.e. Awan et al. 2010; Fang-peng & Dong 2010; Khan & Zafar 2010). Since anxiety can hinder the students' performance and achievement (i.e. Awan et al. 2010; Horwitz 2001; Schroeder 2004), it is important for teachers to create a motivating learning atmosphere and to break the monotony of teaching and learning in class (Dornyei 2001). Towards these aims, this presentation describes an attempt to employ a variety of videos, films (i.e. Tudor 2009), music (i.e. Tissington & LaCour 2010), poetry (i.e. Hall 2003; Tran 2003), stories (i.e. Moon 2010) and pictures (i.e. Wong 2004) as warmers in each lesson for the English major college students.

Also, activities such as mini dramas, story telling, presentations, quizzes and portfolios were increasingly adopted as assessment tasks (i.e. Le 2001; 2004), with the additional employment of non-assessment tasks like poetry writing, music performance and English clubs. Encouragement, recognition and rewards were often granted to the students for fulfilling these non-assessment tasks as a way to maximize the students' involvement in the learning process.

Observation and casual conversations showed that the students truly enjoyed these materials and activities and the classroom had become a more pleasant and supportive environment for learning. Students' performance in the different learning tasks manifested their improved autonomy, creativity and confidence, in addition to their language and academic skill development. Suggestions were provided for the use of these materials and activities in other EFL learning contexts.

Mr. David Kaye

David’s journey to here began in 2002, teaching Primary English at local schools in small-town Japan. Along the way, he passed through schools of all sizes, working with learners of all ages, in India, England and Hong Kong, before joining Pearson Hong Kong as an Editor. Not content with office life, longing for a return to the classroom, David decided he wanted to work with teachers. He recently moved to Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam.

David is Regional Teacher Development Manager, Emerging Markets for Pearson Asia Pacific.

Revitalising Resources: A Re-Examination of Video in the Language Class
While the focus in ELT is increasingly on 21st century learning, how, by turning the focus to 21st century teaching, can we use established media, such as video, in ways suited to today's learners?

Even for the avowed teaching 'technophobe' video provides reliable content both as input and output, with countless ways for implementation in the classroom. As an authentic resource it has an intrinsic educational value, with the added possibility of placing learners as co-producers of content.

Just as teaching and learning is constantly evolving in new and innovative ways, so is technology constantly changing and developing, providing us with new teaching opportunities. These include one-stop resources such as ActiveTeach, which enable us to present a range of content, including video, quickly, easily, and in an interactive way, and video podcasts that allow 'on-demand' learning outside the classroom.

This session will focus on the classroom potential of using video, while suggesting practical ways to successfully integrate video content, using new technology, into our daily teaching practice.

Mr. Paul Grainger

Paul Grainger is excited to learn more about how teachers motivate their learners. He spent sixteen years working as an instructor, trainer, and consultant. For the past 6 years, he has been working as an ELT Product Specialist for CENGAGE Learning, a large international publisher. He highly enjoys his role, which allows him to travel throughout Asia working with schools and instructors to design curriculum and implement language learning programs.

A New Perspective on Motivating Today’s Students
Have you ever wondered why students are not learning effectively in our classes? Marc Prensky is an internationally acclaimed speaker, writer, consultant, and designer in the critical areas of education and learning. In one of his journals, Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants (2001), he observed:

“Our students have changed radically. Today’s students are no longer the people our educational system was designed to teach. Today’ students think and process information fundamentally differently from previous generations.”

How do today’s students process information?

What are the most effective techniques to both motivate and facilitate learning?

Should teachers completely abandon traditional teaching methods?

How can teachers help students maximize their potential?

This interactive workshop will attempt to offer some solutions for the above questions as well as provide practical teaching tips that instructors can start implementing in their classes immediately. Participants will leave this workshop with a multitude of ideas to make their classes fun, motivating, relevant, interactive and above all, more memorable for their students.

This workshop will be of particular interest to teachers who are struggling for ideas to motivate their primary and secondary school students.

Mr. Grant Trew

Grant Trew has over 20 years experience as a teacher, trainer and materials developer in the UK, Middle East, SE Asia, and Japan. He has designed and run training courses, and has written materials for a number of corporate and academic institutions. He is the series advisor for Business Venture 3rd Ed, and is the author of the Tactics for TOEIC^® books published by Oxford University Press.

Technology in the Classroom: All the Fun, None of the Fear
For many teachers the idea of introducing new technology into their lessons is exciting, but also a little scary.

On the one hand is the feeling that new approaches can make our classes more interesting and attractive, and that technology can unlock new possibilities for learning.

On the other hand, however, there is the fear that new technology may be difficult for teachers to learn, that it is expensive and can be unreliable.

This presentation will attempt to show new technology isn’t overly complex or frightening, and that it can allow us to do many of the great things we already do, but in an easier and more personalized way.

The presenter will focus on a number of easy to use ways of using already common technology such as laptops, projectors, digital cameras and even cell phones to help our students improve their language ability.