Plenary Speaker

 President-elect
 TESOL International Association
 USA

Sponsored by:

Main Conference Plenary Presentation:
A Quest for Excellence in Teaching English for Regional and International Integration - a Non-native English Speaker's  Perspective 

This plenary session will focus on recent major developments in the English language teaching (ELT) field, and issues/challenges that TESOL educators, especially non-native English speaking teachers face in an EFL (Asian) context.  Based on her background as a non-native English speaking educator and her cross-cultural teaching and research experience in China, Canada and the United States, the presenter will address major trends in English language teaching, professional development, and teaching/learning strategies for ELT professionals.  She will also discuss the roles and responsibilities of non-native English speaking ELT professionals in our changing global society. 

Yilin Sun, Ph.D. in Applied Linguistics/Curriculum & Instruction, University of Toronto, Canada, is President-elect of TESOL International Association. www.tesol.org.  She served on the Board of Directors of TESOL-International, 2008 to 2011; Chair of the Affiliate Leadership Council of TESOL in 2007 and President of Washington Association for the Education of Speakers of Other Languages (WAESOL) in 2003 and 2007.

In 2011-2012, Dr. Sun worked as a Fulbright Senior Scholar in Taiwan coordinating the Fulbright English Teaching Assistant (ETA) Education Program and teaching TESOL graduate courses as a Visiting Professor at the National Taiwan Normal University.  She has over 26 years of experience in the field of TESOL as a MA-TESL teacher trainer, a researcher, a classroom teacher, and a program leader with a variety of higher educational institutions in China, Canada and U.S.A. She is the author of books, book chapters and research papers in refereed professional journals including TESOL Quarterly and TESOL Journal. 

She has also presented widely at national and international conferences. Her research interests include curriculum development, program assessment and evaluation, L2 reading, vocabulary learning, classroom-based action research, teacher education, adult education, teaching English to young learners, World Englishes, ESP and non-native English speaking teachers (NNEST) in the ELT field.

Plenary Speaker

 Professor of English & Applied Linguistics
 University of Vienna
 Austria

Sponsored by:

 Main Conference Plenary Presentation:
The 'E' of 'TESOL' in the Age of Globalization

In the light of the CamTESOL 2014 conference theme English for Regional and International Integration, it seems particularly appropriate to consider the all-pervasive role of English in crossing linguistic and cultural borders. But which 'English' is it that fulfils this essential function across the globe, and that is used as a means of communication, predominantly by 'non-native' speakers, in academia, business, diplomacy and many other domains? In addressing this question, it is necessary that we as English language professionals consider how 'English' has traditionally been defined as an object of research and as a subject for teaching. There is now a need for a quite radical re-appraisal of 'English' in the light of its global spread and use.

This talk presents a conceptualization of English as a lingua franca, arguing that in its international uses, English has to be uncoupled from the culture(s) of its origins and appropriated for the expression of the cultures and identities of its international users. This means that the native speakers cannot have exclusive rights in the regulation of the norms that govern the use of English as an international language. It also means that we need to understand just how this lingua franca is put to use by learners and speakers of different first languages, and what implications we might draw for teaching English and for teacher education when the main objective is communication for transcultural international purposes.

Regional Research Symposium Plenary Presentation:
Researching English as a Lingua Franca

Descriptive research into interactions via English as a lingua franca (ELF) has been gathering considerable momentum over the last few years, particularly due to the availability of relevant corpora. VOICE, the Vienna-Oxford International Corpus of English, is a corpus of spoken ELF interactions that is freely available both online and for download. Studies based on VOICE show how people use ELF to communicate and socialize with each other, how they exploit the potential of the language as a resource for the expression of self and the negotiation of mutual understanding without deferring to authorized but irrelevant native speaker code conventions and norms of usage. English is thus appropriated so as to be locally appropriate and communicatively effective. It is this linguistic independence that provides for the expression, interchange and negotiation of diverse socio-cultural values and modes of thinking that owe no allegiance to those associated with native speaking communities. Thus ELF not only challenges the still entrenched belief in the a priori relevance of English as a native language but more generally the validity of established ways of defining languages and the competences of their users, upon which so much research in applied linguistics is conceptually based.

The findings that emerge from research into interactions via English as a lingua franca suggests that the objectives for language learning might be revised to focus attention not on the production of language forms that conform to the norms of native speaker competence and conventions of usage but rather on the communicative process itself, dissociated from such conformity, whereby learners can develop a capability for exploiting the potential of the language.

Barbara Seidlhofer is Professor of English and Applied Linguistics at the University of Vienna, Austria, and currently Head of the English Department. Her teaching and research focus is on English as an international language and intercultural communication and their implications for language teacher education. Her publications include the books Controversies in Applied Linguistics, Understanding English as a Lingua Franca, Foreign Language Communication and Learning (with K. Knapp), and From International to Local English – and Back Again (with R. Facchinetti & D. Crystal). She is a past editor of theInternational Journal of Applied Linguistics and has recently founded the Journal of English as a Lingua Franca.

Barbara Seidlhofer has been conducting research within the European Union project DYLAN (Language dynamics and management of diversity) into the relationship between English as a Lingua Franca and multilingualism. She is the founding director of the freely available Vienna-Oxford International Corpus of English (VOICE), which provides an empirical basis for the description of English as a Lingua Franca talk.

Plenary Speaker

 Professor of TESOL
 University of Sydney
 Australia

Sponsored by:

Regional Research Symposium Plenary Presentation:
Current and future directions in English for specific purposes research

This presentation will commence with a review of current research in the area of English for specific purposes (ESP). This will include a discussion of genre and corpus studies in ESP research, as well as research into the use of English as a lingua franca in ESP settings. Other topics will include advanced academic literacies research, ESP and identity, and the insights that ethnographic studies can provide into the teaching and learning of English for specific purposes. The presentation will then discuss future directions in English for specific purposes research. In particular, it will discuss research needs in the area of ESP teaching and learning, the description of specific purpose genres, the nature of ESP teachers’ expertise, and learner needs in ESP settings.

Brian Paltridge is Professor of TESOL at the University of Sydney. His publications include Teaching Academic Writing (with colleagues at the University of Sydney, University of Michigan Press 2009), Continuum Companion to Research Methods in Applied Linguistics (edited with Aek Phakiti, Continuum 2010), Continuum Companion to Discourse Analysis (edited with Ken Hyland, Continuum 2011), New Directions in English for Specific Purposes Research (edited with Ann Johns and Diane Belcher, University of Michigan Press 2011) and the Handbook of English for Specific Purposes (edited with Sue Starfield, Wiley-Blackwell 2013). The second edition of his book Discourse Analysis was published by Bloomsbury in 2012.

He is an editor emeritus of English for specific purposes and, from 2014, will be co-editor of TESOL Quarterly.

Featured Speaker

 Lecturer of English,
 Royal University of Phnom Penh,
 Cambodia

Sponsored by:

Main Conference Featured Presentation:
A focus group study on professional identity transformation among post probation Cambodian teachers of English

Featured Speaker

 Research Scholar,
 University of Adelaide,
 Australia

Sponsored by:

 Main Conference Featured Presentation:
Writing expressive life narratives through digital poetry

A literary approach (poetry) to teaching English as a Second Language (ESL) and English as a Foreign Language (EFL) has been much discussed in the literature. On the other hand, the use of digital poetry in life narrative writing remains under-practiced in the language classroom. To fill this void, this paper presentation will address how digital poetry can mediate life narrative writing in the classroom where digital photographs serve as the source of input for writing expressive poems, emanating from students’ lived experiences. These poems can represent students’ life narratives. The presentation will start by discussing relevant concepts such as creative writing, expressive life narratives, and digital poetry in tandem. It will move on to address step-by-step pedagogical procedures for the implementation of digital poetry-mediated life narrative writing in the classroom. Thirdly, the presentation will highlight tasks and texts, which exemplify life narrative writing through digital poetry. Thus, digital poetry can be a tool for creating students’ life narratives where the students can construct their own narratives through real-life photographs digitally taken.

HANDOYO Puji Widodo is a research scholar at the Discipline of Linguistics, University of Adelaide. He has published extensively in the areas of language teaching methodology and language materials development. He is currently on the editorial board of several international journals (e.g., Asian ESP, English Australia, IJIELTR, TESL-EJ).

including:

• Closing Plenary Speaker (Prof. Barbara Seidlhofer )
• CamTESOL Outreach Program
• CamTESOL Research Grants
• CamTESOL Cambodian Provincial Teachers

Opening Plenary Speaker
(Dr Yilin Sun)

Presenters' Warm-up
Reception

CamTESOL Regional Research
Symposium and Plenary Speaker
(Prof Brian Paltridge)

CamTESOL Regional ELT Quality Assurance Forum

Social Functions

Conference Venue
(Institute of Technology of Cambodia)

 
Bronze Sponsors

Ms Marion Bagot

Mr Greg Rounalt

Dr Luanga Kasanga

Al Muntanabbi Bookshop
Cam-Active Co., Ltd
Cambridge University Press
National Geographic Learning
Clue&Key, An Imprint of Edubox, Inc
Compass Media
Eli Publishing
IDP Education (Cambodia)
IELTS
Institute of International Education Southeast Asia
Japan Association for Language Teaching
Kids City Asia
Long Learning Co., Ltd
MacMillan Education
McGraw Hill International Enterprises, Inc.
Monument Books
Oxford University Press
Scholastic
University English Centres Australia
University of Arizona