Random Quote
As soon as I buy the moose head, I have to go pick up some KY jelly.
---- Mary Roninette Kowal
"It was on my fifth birthday that Papa put his hand on my shoulder and said, 'Remember, my son, if you ever need a helping hand, you'll find one at the end of your arm.'"
---- Sam Levenson
There are painters who transform the sun to a yellow spot, but there are others who with the help of their art and their intelligence, transform a yellow spot into the sun.
---- Pablo Picasso
Education is the ability to listen to almost anything without losing your temper or your self-confidence.
---- Robert Frost
America believes in education: the average professor earns more money in a year than a professional athlete earns in a whole week.
---- Evan Esar
Isn't it interesting that the same people who laugh at science fiction listen to weather forecasts and economists?"
---- Kelvin Throop III
Tact is the knack of making a point without making an enemy.
---- Isaac Newton
Always be wary of any helpful item that weighs less than its operating manual.
---- Terry Pratchett
Technology will not replace teachers...teachers who use technology will
probably replace teachers who do not.
---- Ray Clifford
Man invented language to satisfy his deep need to complain.
---- Lily Tomlin
Hanging is too good for a man who makes puns; he should be drawn and quoted.
---- Fred Allen
Books to the ceiling,
Books to the sky,
My pile of books is a mile high.
How I love them! How I need them!
I'll have a long beard by the time I read them.
---- Arnold Lobel
I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work.
---- Thomas A. Edison
The important thing is not to stop questioning.
---- Albert Einstein
Education's purpose is to replace an empty mind with an open one.
---- Malcom Forbes
Learning is not attained by chance, it must be sought for with ardor and attended to with diligence.
---- Abigail Adams (1744 - 1818)
Human history becomes more and more a race between education and catastrophe.
---- H. G. Wells
It is a paradoxical but profoundly true and important principle of life that the most likely way to reach a goal is to be aiming not at that goal itself but at some more ambitious goal beyond it.
---- Arnold Toynbee
Any man whose errors take ten years to correct is quite a man.
---- J. Robert Oppenheimer
I have never met a man so ignorant that I couldn't learn something from him.
---- Galileo Galilei
The great enemy of clear language is insincerity. When there is a gap between one's real and one's declared aims, one turns as it were instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms, like a cuttlefish spurting out ink.
---- George Orwell
A magician pulls rabbits out of hats. An experimental psychologist pulls habits out of rats.
---- anonymous
This may be the most interesting blog theme I've ever seen. http://eflgeek.com/index.php Definitely in my top 5 at least.
---- Steve Dembo
To have another language is to possess a second soul.
---- Charlemagne
Arguments over grammar and style are often as fierce as those over IBM versus Mac, and as fruitless as Coke versus Pepsi and boxers versus briefs.
---- Jack Lynch
KOTESOL 2009 - going?
Next weekend is the annual KOTESOL international conference. As usual I will be attending and have arranged a dinner out with several people that I only get to see once a year at this conference on Saturday evening.
Are you going? vote in the poll and leave a comment.
Sean. inscribed these words of wisdom on Thursday Oct 15, 2009 at 07:06 PM
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KOTESOL Int’l conference 2009 pre-registration
The KOTESOL International conference 2009 is just around the corner and pre-registration has been open for awhile now. If you’re going you’ll want to pre-register before October 5 in order to avoid line-ups and also save a little money.
Invited speakers included David Nunan, Rod Ellis, Kathleen Bailey and Scott Thornbury among others. I’m not sure why the conference site doesn’t have bios and pics like it has in previous years. This year you get to try and read a conference poster that is only available in low res – good luck with that.
Anyhow I’ll be there and pre-registering shortly.
Sean. inscribed these words of wisdom on Tuesday Sep 15, 2009 at 07:38 PM
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ER Sig call for presentations
Call for presentations
The KOTESOL Extensive Reading Special Interest Group (E.R. SIG), would like to invite presentation/workshop proposals for:
The 2009 Symposium on Extensive Reading in Korean EFL
The Symposium is co-hosted by the Korean English Education Society (KEES), and will be held in Sookmyung University in Seoul on November 14th. The Symposium is a day-long event devoted to extensive reading practices and research. This year’s plenary speakers include Dr. Kim Jeongryeol, Marc Helgesen and Dr. Rob Waring.
All presentation-proposals that concern the application of, or research on, extensive reading in the EFL classroom are welcome. Presentations on extensive listening, vocabulary acquisition through reading, and EFL reading in general will also be considered.
The deadline for proposals is September 15. Send a presentation title and 100-200 word abstract to Scott Miles (E.R. SIG Chair) (JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) .
For more details see the E.R. SIG pages on the KOTESOL website, and/or contact Scott Miles (E.R. SIG Chair) (JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) or Aaron Jolly (Event Chair) (JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address).
Sean. inscribed these words of wisdom on Thursday Aug 6, 2009 at 01:34 PM
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KOTESOL: Selecting a Research Topic
Yesterday was the KOTESOL National conference. The first session I attended was by Jake Kimball on the topic of Breaking into Research. Jake gave an excellent presentation which was well recieved by the audience. Several people asked for his powerpoints, but Jake didn’t have a place to upload his powerpoint to so I volunteered my blog.
Here is Jakes powerpoint – Breaking into Research: Selecting a Research Topic.
——
To the woman I talked to in the hallway about blogging, my apologies for not remembering your name. The blog that I recommended to you was Larry Ferlazzo, check his blog and blogs he links to and I can guarantee that you will find something of interest.
Also had a good chat with Joe while waiting in line for the lunch that never materialized. We got to lunch a little late, waited 10 minutes to get a small bowl of rice and some wilted salad. Mmm tasty, not.
Seoul KOTESOL Conference 2009
The annual Seoul KOTEOSL conference is coming up in a few weeks on March 28. I’m planning on attending and will probably be spending most of my time in the “Research Strand” room – you can see what’s on offer by checking the schedule on the page linked above.
The Extensive Reading SIG is also having a meeting following the conference. here is the email I recieved – I will also be attending this meeting.
A few Extensive Reading Special Interest Group announcements and updates:1. We’d like to have our first ERSIG meeting of the year on March 28th at 5 PM at Soonshil University. This will follow the KOTESOL Seoul Chapter Annual Conference, which will run from 10 AM – 4:45. We were originally planning on having the meeting during the National Conference, but this is a bit late in the year for the things we need to get going.
The agenda for the meeting is as follows:
A. Set the ground work for our two main events of the year, the Extensive Reading Colloquium held during the KOTESOL International Conference, and our own Extensive Reading Symposium (held in Cheonan last year, tentatively planned for Seoul this year).
B. Discuss website issues (see next)
C. Discuss an ER Mentor program to help people set up ER in their schools.
D. Anything else ERSIG members would like to bring up.Not sure yet what room we’ll be meeting in. More on that soon. We might even make it a dinner-meeting at a nearby restaurant. Please let me know if you plan on attending.
2. Call for a new ERSIG Webmaster
Currently our Webmaster if Tim Dalby, but he’s moved on to a bigger position in KOTESOL and we need someone to fill his shoes. After much discussion with KOTESOL brass, we’ve decided that the ERSIG site should stay on the KOTESOL domain. This means we need someone who can work with the Drupal content management system. I’ve been assured that it is relatively user-friendly. Any volunteers?Hope to see a lot of you on the 28th!
Sean. inscribed these words of wisdom on Wednesday Mar 4, 2009 at 08:19 AM
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ER Symposium
The 1st Annual Extensive Reading Symposium
Co-hosted by Daejeon-Chungcheong KOTESOL at the 5th Annual SIG Symposium-Thanksgiving Dinner Event.
The KOTESOL Extensive Reading Special Interest Group is proud to announce the first annual Extensive Reading Symposium, to be held November 22nd in the Korea Nazarene University in Cheonan.
More Details here. The line up of presenters looks interesting as do the presentation titles of local teachers. I’m not sure I’ll be able to go, but if i can I will.
following the conference is a Thanksgiving Turkey Dinner
The Daejeon-Chungnam Chapter of KOTESOL is proud to announce it’s Fifth Annual Symposium and Turkey Dinner on Saturday, November 22, 2008 at Korea Nazarene University in Choenan. Pre-Registration is available on our website and will be open until November 17, 2008. If you want to participate in the dinner you must pre-register and pay before the 17th. There will be no dinners sold at the door as we have to order the dinners in advance.
Oxford Day 2008
Oxford Day is coming up on November 15th or may November 7th - email said the 7th, but the poster says the 15th - a second email has confirmed the 15th. For some reason Oxford has decided to promote the even by making all the info as one giant image thus preventing copy & paste. Stupid Stupid Stupid.
Anyhow it’s at Ewha. I can’t be bothered to type more nor provide a link to the idiocy that is this promotion. google it for details.
See you there if you guess the correct day.
KOTESOL 2008 - impressions
Yesterday was the first day of the KOTESOL 2008 International Conference. I can’t link directly to the conference site as the KOTESOL site is down and I can’t navigate to the conference section. The problem here being that KOTESOL relies on donated server space rather than spending the $100 to $150 a year to get hosting that they should. I heard a rumor that this might change - I guess when your web site is down on the most important event of the year it’s pretty good motivation to spend the money that you should’ve done years ago.
Day One
One thing that KOTESOL definitely needs to be given credit for this year is the introduction of the brown bag presentation. Immediately following the plenary address attendees were able to pick up a free lunch (western or Korean) and either scarf it down quickly or bring into the next session and eat. Everyone that I talked to thought this was a big improvement on previous years where you had to go off site to get a lunch and this inevitably resulted in many people walking into presentations late. I definitely want to see this continue in the future.
Back to the topic at hand - the conference. This year the presentations so far have not been as good as they have been in the past. I’m not sure if this is due to lack of topics of interest, poor presenters, or that I’ve been attending conferences for several years and have seen it all before. In any case there was 2 hours that I skipped yesterday due to lack of interesting presentations and one presentation that I quietly & discretely walked out on after 20 minutes.
The presentations I did see felt like I could have been the presenter except for the plenary address by David Graddol, which was excellent. Didn’t take notes and it’s 5:30am right now so my memory isn’t particularly great - no summary, sorry. I was, however, surprised and extremely annoyed by all the people in the balconey who noisily left with 20 minutes to go.
The presentation by Merton Bland on the Ten Commandments for Teaching English in a Changing World was rather entertaining. A little google search found a 2001 article with the complete list and notes. I don’t agree with them all, but it was definitely entertaining to listen to him.
(1) Do not teach English. Teach something, anything, IN English, using English as a vehicle of communication rather than an object of study. This is sometimes called the content-based curriculum.
(2) Do not teach grammar. Ingesting rules can be counterproductive: We are all familiar with students who are unable to apply rules learned through rote memorization. Instead, the grammar of English is best acquired inductively by the students formulating their own hypotheses. (This reflects Krashen’s acquisition vs. learning.)
(3) Do not teach vocabulary. The schema, the concept pods which constitute the lexigraphical units of language, vary from language to language, even from person to person. No language is a direct translation of any other. Thus, vocabulary must be forged within the target language itself in a manner not unlike that of first language acquisition. To do otherwise is to risk forging the chains which prevent the bifurcation of the native and target languages and forever making your students translate in their heads word for word.
(4) Do not teach pronunciation. There is no longer any standard English. Well over two-thirds of the world’s 1.5 billion English speakers are non-native speakers. Their English is certainly as acceptable as the Received Pronunciation (RP) of a tiny fraction of the British or the Broad Midwestern of Hollywood—as long as their English is comprehensible to the greatest number of persons who do not share that particular accent.
(5) Do not give tests. While testing is well embedded in many parts of the world, scaling is to be preferred to testing. Usually tests only require the regurgitation of knowledge. Scaling, placing people on a scale from beginner to educated native, has much more validity.
(6) Do not use lesson plans. Teach students, not lesson plans. Many teachers come away from their teacher training institutions with a mandated compulsion to spend hours writing lesson plans. Such planning is quite counterproductive since in an actual teaching situation the teacher must be alert to the reactions of the students—stressing pragmatic considerations, putting more time and effort where the lesson needs it and shortening or eliminating parts where the students seem to be in command of the concept being stressed. Yes, the teacher should have a general idea of the objectives of the lesson. Certainly the teacher should have available any materials which will be needed. Most importantly the teacher should leave time after the lesson to reflect on it and evaluate its strengths and weaknesses. But the focus of any teaching should be on the students, not on the constraints imposed by any preconceived lesson plan.
(7) Do not use the native language in the classroom: Never, never, never! If our aim is the successful bifurcation of the native and target languages, any use of the native language is by definition counterproductive. Draw a chalkline on the doorsill and proudly use the native language outside the classroom, but create an immersion situation inside.
(8) Do not use textbooks. You know your own students better than any textbook author. Authentic materials are all around you. For example: Record the news from the VOA or the BBC. Videotape CNN or Australian TV. Bring in any expatriate Anglophone in town and have him chat with the students. Have your school subscribe to the “International Herald Tribune” or “Time” or “Newsweek.” Borrow English language videos. If they have subtitles put a book in front of the bottom of the monitor to cover up those subtitles. Buy, with your own money if necessary, paperbacks. After you read them they can be the nucleus of an individualized reading program (each student reads his own book and then reports on it to the class). Have your class keep journals in English, and write their own English to English vocabulary lists. Have the class write their own book.
(9) Do not teach the microskills: reading, writing, speaking, listening. English is one language, indivisible. And English is a living language; one only dissects the dead.
(10) Do not teach. Empower your students to take responsibility for their own learning. This reflects a general trend, especially in North American education, to deemphasize the role of the teacher as the font of all knowledge and provide the students with the means to further their own educative process beyond the classroom. This is called the student-centered classroom (as opposed to the teacher-centered classroom).
I may or may not post more about the conference after I return home this evening.
Dinner
After the presentations I went out to On The Border for dinner with a couple of friends.
Day 2
Day 2 summary in the extended entry.
Read the rest of this post
Are you Attending KOTESOL 2008?
Will you be attending the KOTESOL 2008 International Conference this coming weekend?
I’ve added a poll for you to vote and/or you could leave a comment.
Sean. inscribed these words of wisdom on Sunday Oct 19, 2008 at 11:30 AM
Polling_Station | KOTESOL | Conferences |
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JALT 2008
This morning I recieved an email asking if I would post about the upcoming JALT 2008 conference.
Sean. inscribed these words of wisdom on Thursday Oct 2, 2008 at 01:20 PM
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KOTESOL Seoul Chapter Conference 2009
I just recieved the following email from KOTESOL regarding the Seoul Chapter annual conference. If you are intersted in presenting or attending click the link to learn more.
Dear KOTESOL Colleagues,
KOTESOL Seoul Chapter is seeking workshop presenters for the Seoul Chapter annual conference on March 28, 2009.
For more information, please check out the notice on the Seoul Chapter main page (http://www.kotesol.org/?q=Seoul).
The conference offers an opportunity to share your research and teaching insights with like-minded colleagues in a professional yet warm and cordial setting. We urge you to send in your proposals, even if it might be a first for you!
Best wishes,
Grace Wang
KOTESOL Seoul Chapter, Secretary
Sean. inscribed these words of wisdom on Thursday Sep 25, 2008 at 01:20 PM
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KOTESOL 2008 - might skip
update
check the extended entry for a response that I received from KOTESOL
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KOTESOL 2008 is just around the corner and presenters need to register by this Friday. I took a look at the site and presenters/members no longer get a discount on conference fees. The last 3 years that I attended/presented I paid my membership fee of 40,000 + 25,000 conference fees for a grand total of 65,000won. Well this year membership fees are the same, but now I have to pay 50,000 for conference fees (double) - all this for the priveledge of speaking.
I’m not sure it’s worth it especially since the list of invited speakers is a bunch of nobodys - the only ones I’m familiar with are David Graddol (definitely would want to see him) and Curtis Kelly (somewhat intersted). I do know who John Linton is, but he’s not worth seeing if your attending this conference to learn about teaching - He’s a doctor who’s lived his entire life in Korea. I didn’t find his patient interaction to be particularly pleasant and consequently I go to Korean doctors instead.
Anyhow I’ll make my decision tomorrow, but I’m definitely leaning to skipping this time around.
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JALT CALL 2008 conference
the JALT CALL 2008 conference is just around the corner. There’s more info on the site if you are interested. Wish I could go, but unfortunately I won’t be able to make it.
Title
* New Frontiers in CALL: Negotiating DiversityVenue and Dates
* Saturday, 31st May - Sunday, 1st June, 2008
* Faculty of Foreign Languages and Asian Studies
* Nagoya University of Commerce & Business
* 4-4 Sagamine, Komenoki-cho, Nisshin-shi, Aichi-ken, 470-0193 JapanKeynote Speaker
* Phil Hubbard Ph.D.
Director, English for Foreign Students
Senior Lecturer in Linguistics, Stanford University, USAPlenary Speaker
* Gavin Dudeney
Project Director, The Consultants-E
* The Internet and the Language Classroom (Cambridge University Press, 2000)
* How to Teach English with Technology (Longman, 2007)
Presentation on ER
I just received an email indicating that I will be presenting later this year at the KOTESOL 2008 International Conference. I’ll be presenting in an Extensive Reading Colloquium and my topic will be: Supplementing a general English course with graded readers.
I first mentioned this last month when I was invited to participate - it’s good to hear it’s been confirmed. Now looking forward to October.
Oxford Day 2007
Oxford Day is tomorrow November 17th at Ewha Womens University. Speakers include:
Rod Ellis
Lyle Bachman
Ritsuko Nakata
Ken Wilson
Richard R. Day
Patrick Jackson
I’ll be there and if I have some time over the weekend, unlikely, I’ll write up a review of the presentations.
Sean. inscribed these words of wisdom on Friday Nov 16, 2007 at 08:33 AM
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KOTESOL 2007 - day two
On day two of the conference I ended up seeing a lot less presentations. The first presentation that I saw was on Extending Speaking Opportunities in the EFL context. This presentation focused on a Japanese universities use of something similar to an English Club, but with NS facilitators with the meetings set up at lunch time. It was interesting but not something that I would want to try. I saw the same speaker in the next hour talking about Book Report Forms for Graded Readers. This was a much more interesting presentation and I will be taking some of the ideas away and using them this semester with my Advanced class as they are about due to be finished their novels (not graded readers but the principle is still the same) During the discussion time I was asked by the OUP rep for my email and it looks like he’s interested in something I do with graded readers (regular freshmen and moodle). I also talked to him about the possibility of materials review and development - hope that pans out.
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KOTESOL 2007 - day one
I just got back from the KOTESOL conference today. I had a good run of presentations with no technical problems as has been this case in years past. However I did talk to one presenter who had loads of trouble so clearly KOTESOL still hasn’t ironed out all thier tech issues yet.
I started off the day by attending an Extensive Reading Colloquim with six speakers. I had time to listen to two of them; Marc Helgelson (who just happens to be one of the best presenters I have ever seen and always enjoy his presentations) and Tracy Waring. One other presenter I am friends with and didn’t need to see his presentation though it would have been worth going to. Hegelson gave an overview of extensive reading (ER) and various approaches to using graded readers in the EFL classroom. This was a good presentation especially if you are new to ER. Even though I know some I came away enriched. I then listened to Tracy Waring talk about how to choose extensive readers for your class. This was an interesting discussion and I especialy liked the chart that he provided that listed all the publishers and the how many books available and at what headword level they are available.
Both ER presentations gave some ideas of how to confirm that students have read the books. These ranged from the traditional book report to drawing a picture of a scene in the book, to how would you change the book if you were the author. Everything was excellent. One thing that I found interesting is that for extensive reading it is best for students to be reading at or below their current ability. I always thought it was best to be on target. But it was suggested that rather than Krashen’s approach of i+1 with extensive reading it should actually be i-1. The best part of the colloquim though were the tons of free samples available. participants were asked several times to go to the books and take copies. I walked away with six more graded readers for my personal library that I make available to students to borrow. I would have gotten more but the majority of the readers were for young learners.
There is more in the extended entry.
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Sean. inscribed these words of wisdom on Saturday Oct 27, 2007 at 08:15 PM
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Cambridge Day 2007
I’m off to Cambridge Day 2007 in about 30 minutes. Sorry I didn’t blog this earlier, I’ve been swamped with grading and in a bit of a blogging slump. The four featured speakers are: Charles Talcott, Leo Jones, Hugo Loyola, & Andy Kirkpatrick. I’ve only heard of Leo Jones and that was because he wrote one of the worst textbooks I ever had the pleasure of using - Let’s Talk.
I’m actually more interested in going to Oxford Day in November, but due to other commitments that weekend have to pass.
KOTESOL 2007 - national conference
The KOTESOL national conference is coming up and early registration is almost over. For some reason I haven’t been recieving the KOTESOL emails lately so I forgot about the deadline. Anyhow if you are planning on going, you might want to register early in order to save a little money.
Plenary Speakers: Jeremy Harmer (The Practice of English Language Teaching)
Dr. Jun Liu (TESOL President, 2006-07)
Featured Speakers: Dr. Thomas S.C. Farrell, Dr. Mike Levy,
Dr. Tim Murphey, Dr. Neil Anderson,
Dr. Elka Todeva, Dr. Rob Waring,
Dr. Bill Snyder, Steven Gershon, Gary C. Rector
Sean. inscribed these words of wisdom on Thursday Sep 20, 2007 at 05:10 AM
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ICCIT’07: Call for Papers and Workshops
2007 International Conference on Convergence Information Technology (ICCIT’07)
November 21-23, 2007 in Gyeongju
ICCIT’07 will focus on theories, technologies, architecture and applications re: the various aspects of advances in convergence and hybrid Information Technology. ICCIT’07 welcomes all research results on the traditional and convergence areas of information technologies and next generation information technologies.
ICCIT’07 is a refereed, multidisciplinary international conference for bridging the latest advances in convergence and hybrid Information Technology research. It provides an international forum for presenting authoritative references, academically rigorous research and case studies. The conference publishes well-written and academically validated manuscripts in both theoretical development and application research.
Visit the conference website for more information:
http://nms.dongguk.ac.kr/iccit
Sean. inscribed these words of wisdom on Sunday Jun 10, 2007 at 04:03 PM
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