Thai TESOL 2011
Well, this was my first time attending (and presenting!) at Thai TESOL. This year’s conference was in Chiang Mai, a beautiful historic city in the north of Thailand, and one that is often featured in top-10 lists of places to visit or live. It’s winter here, so the temperature is a freezing (for Thailand) 15-25 degrees Celcius.
I had a great slot for my presentation, first thing on the first day, but unfortunately my room was in a separate building, hidden away behind the hotel pool! I guess they had checked out my reputation as a presenter 😉
As I only had 30 minutes, I started on time with five people in the audience, and finished on time with about 30. Sadly most of them arrived after the half-way mark, so I am not sure how much they will have gotten out of the presentation.
My criticisms so far:
1. the venue is not appropriate, because we have two sites that require at least five minutes to walk between
2. there are only five minutes between presentations but presenters need at least ten to wrap up, pack their stuff away, and allow the next presenter to set up (I would recommend fifteen to allow for audience questions)
3. the plenaries have been vague, common-sensical, and dull
These three things aside, the location is fantastic, many of the attendees are friendly and interesting, and Thailand is a great place to spend a few days.
In terms of the value of the conference itself, I am going to withhold judgement for now.
Leaving…
for Chiang Mai tonight, to attend Thai TESOL. It will be my first conference outside of Japan, and I am looking forward to presenting to a completely new crowd.
I’ll be talking about “General English Education in North-East Asia”, based on observations from my visits to universities in Hong Kong and Seoul.
I saw an interesting Youtube mashup of people apologising for not updating their video blogs. The fascinating thing was that everyone, men and women, seven-year-olds and seventy-year-olds, Â pretty much said exactly the same thing: “I’m sorry I haven’t posted for a while, things have been really busy…”.
I hope to have more for you as we move into 2011.
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by sendaiben
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Power Seminar in Nagoya
I went to the latest Power Seminar in Nagoya last Sunday. It was a really long day (10-19:30) and studying for so long with short breaks really took its toll, but I really enjoyed the day and got a lot out of it. There were four presenters, each presenting for 90-120 minutes on their area of expertise.
Kim Horne, on Creating a Culture of Character in the Classroom;
Kaj Schwermer, on Teaching Children with Games and Activities;
Jeffrey Scott, on Dramaturgy and the Art of Classroom Management;
and Peter Warner, on The Four Stages of the English Alphabetic Code.
Overall, it was a great and well-organised event, and well worth the time and money.
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by sendaiben
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My favourite conference in Japan
The call for papers for my favourite conference in Japan just came out -you can see more here.
The 2011 JALT Pan-SIG Conference will be held in May in Nagano. I really recommend it. Smaller, more relaxed, and friendlier than the national conference, the real selling point is the distilled value.
The Pan-SIG is made up of all the special interest groups in JALT, groups that specialize in things like computer assisted language learning, extensive reading, teacher training, pragmatics, teaching adult learners, and many others. These specialised groups then choose the presenters they want to represent them. In practice this means that the quality of presentations tends to be very high. I seldom feel I am wasting my time at the Pan-SIG.
I will hopefully be presenting on extensive reading (that idea that Eleanor told me to develop). I hope to see a lot of friends there too!
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by sendaiben
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Phonics Readers for Children
My final presentation was on teaching children (and beginners) how to read. Starting with phonics and moving on to phonics readers. I also introduced my favourite reader series, Jelly and Bean (now renamed Follifoot Farm).