Plenary Sessions
The 2009 conference had two plenary speakers. Professor Jun Liu from the University of Arizona (USA) delivered the opening plenary on the subject of “Complexities and Challenges in Training Non-native English Speaking Teachers: State-of-the-Art”. Professor Anne Burns from Macquarie University (Australia) delivered the closing plenary on the subject of “Grammar and Communicative Language Teaching - Why, When and How to Teach it?”.
Jun Liu
Non-native English Speaking Teachers (NNESTs) constitute the majority of the language teaching population in EFL settings. Methods and strategies that are usually considered efficient and effective for training Native English Speaking Teachers (NESTs) could be totally different for NNESTs. By drawing heavily from earlier work of Robert Phillipson (1992), Peter Medgyes (1994), George Braine (1999), and Liu (1999, 2001 and 2007) Professor Liu will review the state-of-the-art in this area of research, and discuss the challenges, difficulties, advantages and disadvantages of NNESTs, and how culturally sensitive training models can be uniquely developed catering to NNESTs in EFL contexts in general, and in China in particular. Professor Liu will also suggest ways that NNESTs and NESTs can mutually benefit from working together through collaboration.
Jun Liu received his PhD from the Foreign and Second Language Education Program in the College of Education at Ohio State University in 1996, after teaching English in China as a university language educator for over ten years. Dr Liu is Professor and Head in the Department of English at the University of Arizona. His research interests include curriculum and standards development and syllabus design, teacher education, classroom-based second language learning and teaching, and second language reading and writing. He has published in TESOL Quarterly, ELT Journal, Journal of English for Academic Purposes, Journal of Asian Pacific Communication, Asian Journal of English Language Teaching, Language and Intercultural Communication, and Educational Research Quarterly, among others.
His recent publications include: Teaching English in China: New Perspectives, Approaches and Standards by Continuum Publishing (2007), Peer Response in Second Language Writing Classrooms (co-authored), by University of Michigan Press (2002), and Asian students’ classroom communication patterns in US universities by the Greenwood Publishing Group (2001). He is editor of the peer-refereed journal “Review of Applied Linguistics in China”, and also co-editor of the Michigan Series on Teaching Multilingual Writers.
A recipient of the 1999 TESOL (Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages) Newbury House Award for Excellence in Teaching, and co-founder and Past Chair of Non-native English Speakers in TESOL Caucus (NNEST), he served on the TESOL Board of Directors serving as Director at Large (2001-2004), and was appointed as TESOL Representative in China in 2004. As the first Asian TESOL President (2006-2007) in TESOL’s 41-year history, Dr Liu has always been engaged in empowering Non-native English Speakers in the field of TESOL.
Click here to download Jun Liu's presentation file.
Anne Burns
“Grammar and Communicative Language Teaching - Why, When and How to Teach it?”
Do you teach grammar in your classroom and if so what approaches do you take to teaching grammar? What are your views about the place of grammar in your teaching program?
Communicative language teaching has raised the issue of the role of grammar in English language teaching. Over the last two decades there have been different views of whether to teach grammar, what kind of grammar to teach, and how to teach it as part of a communicative syllabus. In this talk I will look at some of these different viewpoints and consider what different approaches to grammar have to offer the language teacher. I will also describe a recent study which looked at the beliefs of teachers across 18 countries about the effective integration of grammar into their teaching. The study included short case studies grammar of teaching in EFL and ESL classrooms which will also be highlighted.
Anne Burns began her career in TESOL and Applied Linguistics working as an English teacher in France, Kenya and Mauritius, where she lived for five years. In the 1970s she set up her own primary and junior high school with another colleague in Mauritius. That school, Alexandra House School, still continues today.
After she moved from the UK to Australia with her family in the early 1980s, she worked in the New South Wales Adult Migrant English Service, teaching newly arrived immigrants and refugees to Australia for eight years as a teacher, assistant principal and teacher educator. The NSW AMES is part of a national program, the Adult Migrant English Program (AMEP) funded by the Australian Government to assist new arrivals to learn English for settlement.
In 1990 she joined the Department of Linguistics at Macquarie University, Sydney, and worked in the National Centre for English Language Teaching and Research (NCELTR) as a Lecturer and Senior Lecturer. There, she coordinated the Professional Development and Research Section (1992-1998) and then became the Associate Director (1998-2003). At the same time she taught in the Department of Linguistics as a Senior Lecturer in the Applied Linguistics programs.
Anne was appointed as Chair and Professor in the Department of Linguistics in 2003 and was the Dean of the Division of Linguistics and Psychology from 2000-2005. She has also held Adjunct Professor positions in the School of Educational Studies at La Trobe University (2000-2003) and in the School of English and Applied Linguistics at UNITEC, Auckland (2003-2005). She was appointed an Adjunct Professor at the Macquarie Graduate School of Management (MGSM) at Macquarie University in 2006.
Click here to download Anne Burns' presentation file.