Featured Sessions

The 2009 conference had three featured speakers. Professor Alan Maley from Leeds Metroplitan University (UK) delivered a session on the subject of “Global English? Implications for the Teacher”. Mrs Gwyneth Fox from University of Aston (UK) delivered a session on the subject of “Using Dictionaries to Enhance Vocabulary Skills”. Mr Om Soryong from Institute of Foreign Languages, Royal University of Phnom Penh (Cambodia) delivered the Featured Session on the subject of “Using Humour: The Spice of Effective Teaching”.

Alan Maley

“Global English? Implications for the Teacher”

Debate about the role and status of English as an International Language (EIL) continues to rage. Proponents of ELF (English as a lingua franca) make claims about its viability as a model for the future. In this talk I shall question those claims. There are serious issues to do with the relevance of research for practical classroom teaching, of the nature of ELF encounters, and of the relationships between L1-users and L2-users. I shall suggest that the reality of EIL is far more complex than the proponents of ELF allow, and that we need to look in a different direction for future curriculam and materials design. Above all, we need to consider the implications of EIL for the teacher's own English and for what is taught in classrooms.

Alan Maley has worked in ELT for over 40 years. He has lived and worked in 10 countries, including the People's Republic of China, India, Singapore and Thailand. He has published many articles, reviews and books in the field and is series editor for the Oxford Resource Books for Teachers. He now lives in the UK but travels widely, especially in Asia, his second home!

   
Gwyneth Fox

“Using Dictionaries to Enhance Vocabulary Skills”

Dictionaries, particularly monolingual learners’ dictionaries, are full of up-to-date information about how language works.  Unfortunately, many students – and even some teachers – do not realize what a valuable language resource they are and so do not use them as well as they might. Corpora have given us valuable insights into English, and many of these insights are found in learners’ dictionaries, where information about frequency, collocation, pragmatics, discourse and so on is explained.  By using dictionaries well, students can improve their vocabulary, both by using better the most frequent words and also knowing when to use the more infrequent ones.  In this talk I shall illustrate a number of simple activities designed to show students what they can find in their learners’ dictionary, and also how they can use the dictionary to help build up their vocabulary and improve their exam skills. 

Gwyneth Fox started her career as an EFL teacher in Rome.  She returned to UK, where she lectured in Applied Linguistics at Birmingham Polytechnic, and ran teacher-training courses.  She then returned to the classroom, and taught ESL at all levels in Birmingham schools, whilst continuing to train teachers.  She was recruited to the Cobuild project at the University of Birmingham as a part-time researcher when it began in 1981.  She continued to work with the project, taking over as Publishing Director in 1993, being responsible for all the dictionaries, grammars, and other EFL materials that were produced.  During that time and since then she has travelled extensively, and has run courses, given seminars, and attended conferences around the world, giving plenary talks in Brazil, Spain, Poland, Mexico, UK and many other countries.  

Gwyneth left Cobuild in 1997, and  lectured in linguistics at the University of Birmingham. She is now a Visiting Fellow at the University of Aston. Until the end of 2007 she was also Dictionaries’ Publisher for Macmillan, and is now Consultant to the Dictionaries Publishing Team.

Om Soryong

“Using Humour: The Spice of Effective Teaching”

“The students didn’t seem to be interested in my lesson at all.” Such a comment is often heard among teachers during their discussions after class. Most teachers who have taken a course in Teaching Methodology are probably still aware of one of the qualities of a good teacher, which is having a sense of humour. Although teaching and learning may be a serious business, that does not mean there is no room for fun during the learning process. In this regard, humour is a valuable teaching tool for creating an encouraging classroom atmosphere. This paper therefore identifies the importance of using humour, the opportunities for incorporating it in the classroom and suggests its appropriate use.

Om Soryong is currently a Deputy Head of the English Department at the Institute of Foreign Languages (IFL), Royal University of Phnom Penh (RUPP). He holds a Master's Degree of Science in Instructional Design from Southern Illinois University, USA, and a Graduate Diploma in TESOL from the University of Canberra, Australia. He has been involved in curriculum/syllabus design and development and teaching English as a foreign language in the Bachelor of Education in TEFL and Bachelor of Arts in English courses at the Institute of Foreign Languages for more than ten years. His areas of expertise include teaching methodology, translation, curriculum development, and instructional design. He has a special interest in learner motivation and the use of humour in the classroom. He is also a member of the CamTESOL Steering Committee and was Editor-in-Chief of the publication arising from the first CamTESOL conference: CamTESOL Selected Papers (2005).