Teachers as Critical, Reflective and Resilient Educators – Perspectives and Strategies
Prof. Yilin Sun
(Seattle Colleges)
The current COVID-19 pandemic has significantly changed the way we teach and conduct professional development. As we cope with the many pandemic disruptions and fight against Coronavirus fatigue, educators must build confidence, skills, and strategies to face new challenges and continue to become comfortable with the new realities that define our professional and social lives. What are the perspectives and directions for ELT and professional development during and beyond Pandemic Times? What are the critical skills and strategies that we need to effectively serve our students and develop professionally? The speaker, who has a strong research background and extensive teacher education experience in ESL and EFL settings, will share practices and applicable strategies to help attendees broaden their professional horizon and deepen their understanding of those essential teaching strategies and skills during challenging times.
Prof. Yilin Sun
(Seattle Colleges)
The current COVID-19 pandemic has significantly changed the way we teach and conduct professional development. As we cope with the many pandemic disruptions and fight against Coronavirus fatigue, educators must build confidence, skills, and strategies to face new challenges and continue to become comfortable with the new realities that define our professional and social lives. What are the perspectives and directions for ELT and professional development during and beyond Pandemic Times? What are the critical skills and strategies that we need to effectively serve our students and develop professionally? The speaker, who has a strong research background and extensive teacher education experience in ESL and EFL settings, will share practices and applicable strategies to help attendees broaden their professional horizon and deepen their understanding of those essential teaching strategies and skills during challenging times.
English Language Learning and Acquisition in Virtual and Blended Environments
Prof. Utami Widiati
(Universitas Negeri Malang)
Current second and foreign language education appears to remain largely teacher-controlled and text-bound (Li, 2020), which makes students unable to take control over their own learning and to practice identifying learning resources. The disruption to such traditional education during COVID-19 pandemic may yield some unexpected benefits, one of which is that learners have been made to increasingly learn languages online at home. This unavoidable situation may contribute to the development of learner autonomy. In fact, a widely-acknowledged consensus in language teaching suggests that success in language learning is significantly determined by learners’ ability to act on their own learning through actively making use of the language environment. This presentation discusses how teachers can harness the opportunity to teach English during remote learning by focusing on alternative ways of providing massive amount of comprehensible input. Five principles of intentional language instruction by Li (2020) as well as Krashen’s tips for language teaching are used as the basis for the alternative ways to be theoretically justified and practically feasible.
Prof. Utami Widiati
(Universitas Negeri Malang)
Current second and foreign language education appears to remain largely teacher-controlled and text-bound (Li, 2020), which makes students unable to take control over their own learning and to practice identifying learning resources. The disruption to such traditional education during COVID-19 pandemic may yield some unexpected benefits, one of which is that learners have been made to increasingly learn languages online at home. This unavoidable situation may contribute to the development of learner autonomy. In fact, a widely-acknowledged consensus in language teaching suggests that success in language learning is significantly determined by learners’ ability to act on their own learning through actively making use of the language environment. This presentation discusses how teachers can harness the opportunity to teach English during remote learning by focusing on alternative ways of providing massive amount of comprehensible input. Five principles of intentional language instruction by Li (2020) as well as Krashen’s tips for language teaching are used as the basis for the alternative ways to be theoretically justified and practically feasible.
Blended Learning in EFL Classrooms: An E-learning Approach for a Post-COVID-19 Pandemic Era
Dr. Keuk Chan Narith
(Royal University of Phnom Penh)
The Covid-19 pandemic has created a new normal way for teaching and learning. This is not exceptional for teaching and learning English as a foreign language. This paper will present the general landscape of the practices of an e-learning approach, a combination of synchronous and asynchronous e-learning, during the Covid-19 pandemic in one prominent ELT high education institute in Phnom Penh, capital of Cambodia. The presentation will also report the empirical results of the practices of this e-learning approach in teaching and learning the English language in two programs: (1) the undergraduate English major program, comprising sophomores, juniors, and seniors; and (2) the Human Resource Development Scholarship by Japanese Grant Aid (JDS) Pre-departure Training program. One thousand one hundred and forty-eight undergraduate students (76.38%) and 23 JDS candidates (95.33%) were involved in the e-learning program evaluation. The results show that the e-learning approach was rated at a moderate level, which suggests that the e-learning approach could not be totally possible to replace the face-to-face learning approach. The author argues that Blended Learning, a combination of the on-campus and off-campus mode of teaching and learning, could be appropriate for the adoption of English language teaching and learning in an EFL context in the post-COVID-19 pandemic era.
Dr. Keuk Chan Narith
(Royal University of Phnom Penh)
The Covid-19 pandemic has created a new normal way for teaching and learning. This is not exceptional for teaching and learning English as a foreign language. This paper will present the general landscape of the practices of an e-learning approach, a combination of synchronous and asynchronous e-learning, during the Covid-19 pandemic in one prominent ELT high education institute in Phnom Penh, capital of Cambodia. The presentation will also report the empirical results of the practices of this e-learning approach in teaching and learning the English language in two programs: (1) the undergraduate English major program, comprising sophomores, juniors, and seniors; and (2) the Human Resource Development Scholarship by Japanese Grant Aid (JDS) Pre-departure Training program. One thousand one hundred and forty-eight undergraduate students (76.38%) and 23 JDS candidates (95.33%) were involved in the e-learning program evaluation. The results show that the e-learning approach was rated at a moderate level, which suggests that the e-learning approach could not be totally possible to replace the face-to-face learning approach. The author argues that Blended Learning, a combination of the on-campus and off-campus mode of teaching and learning, could be appropriate for the adoption of English language teaching and learning in an EFL context in the post-COVID-19 pandemic era.
Word consciousness: Harnessing technology to train learners to become word detectives
Jonathan Newton
(Victoria University of Wellington)
To meet the demands of using English in schooling, tertiary study and beyond, English language learners need to build an English vocabulary measured in thousands of words, not hundreds (Nation, 2013; Webb, 2020). And yet many users of English as an additional language (EAL) in schooling and tertiary study fall well short of having sufficient English vocabulary knowledge to perform successfully in English, however that performance is defined. It is both unrealistic and impractical to think that teachers might be able to bridge this gap by ‘teaching’ vocabulary. What then can teachers do to help learners bridge the pervasive vocabulary gap? In this talk I will suggest one important answer to this question, and that is to foster learners’ word consciousness. Word consciousness involves understanding general principles of word frequency, knowing how words are formed, being able to access word information efficiently, knowing how to manage encounters with unfamiliar words, and how to make rapid vocabulary learning gains with maximum efficiently. As I will show in the talk, in each of these areas, technology provides access to powerful learning tools and valuable, highly accessible information.
Jonathan Newton
(Victoria University of Wellington)
To meet the demands of using English in schooling, tertiary study and beyond, English language learners need to build an English vocabulary measured in thousands of words, not hundreds (Nation, 2013; Webb, 2020). And yet many users of English as an additional language (EAL) in schooling and tertiary study fall well short of having sufficient English vocabulary knowledge to perform successfully in English, however that performance is defined. It is both unrealistic and impractical to think that teachers might be able to bridge this gap by ‘teaching’ vocabulary. What then can teachers do to help learners bridge the pervasive vocabulary gap? In this talk I will suggest one important answer to this question, and that is to foster learners’ word consciousness. Word consciousness involves understanding general principles of word frequency, knowing how words are formed, being able to access word information efficiently, knowing how to manage encounters with unfamiliar words, and how to make rapid vocabulary learning gains with maximum efficiently. As I will show in the talk, in each of these areas, technology provides access to powerful learning tools and valuable, highly accessible information.
English learning via language learning social network websites: Insight for teachers
Alice Chik
(Macquarie University)
There is an emerging body of literature on exploring the use of technology for English learning beyond the classroom. Remote language teaching has become especially important since the COVID disruption. The recent studies of English learning in informal contexts tend to focus on the re-appropriation of technologies which are not designed for language learning, for instance, digital gaming and media sharing. The rising popularity of language learning social network websites provides a new perspective to examine informal English learning through digital practices. This presentation explores long-term affordances on these websites. Results show that examining the affordances beyond the prescribed lessons might be a productive avenue towards better understanding and utilizing this new technology in the long run. I will also discuss how language teachers can productively employ these language learning social network websites for classroom pedagogies.
Alice Chik
(Macquarie University)
There is an emerging body of literature on exploring the use of technology for English learning beyond the classroom. Remote language teaching has become especially important since the COVID disruption. The recent studies of English learning in informal contexts tend to focus on the re-appropriation of technologies which are not designed for language learning, for instance, digital gaming and media sharing. The rising popularity of language learning social network websites provides a new perspective to examine informal English learning through digital practices. This presentation explores long-term affordances on these websites. Results show that examining the affordances beyond the prescribed lessons might be a productive avenue towards better understanding and utilizing this new technology in the long run. I will also discuss how language teachers can productively employ these language learning social network websites for classroom pedagogies.
Assessing Learning in Online and Digital Contexts/Environments: Opportunities and Challenges
Christine Coombe
(Dubai Men’s College, Higher Colleges of Technology)
The COVID 19 pandemic has already begun to change the nature of assessment in higher education. In fact, education in general and English language teaching in particular has experienced great change through the impact caused by the pandemic. In many areas worldwide, teaching was moved online at a rapid pace with little or no advanced planning. The way educational institutions globally have dealt with both online teaching and assessment issues has differed. Many assessments were simply cancelled, others rescheduled or postponed. Gulf countries for the most part moved forward and implemented an online assessment system.
As we approach the new normal in what I hope will soon be a post-COVID-19 era, there is a need to consider assessment anew in light of the emerging opportunities that have come up and the challenges we face during this time. One such challenge has been how to assess our students validly, reliably and fairly during this era. Another is how to ensure ethical online assessments and ways to mitigate or minimize instances of cheating and academic dishonesty.
Christine Coombe
(Dubai Men’s College, Higher Colleges of Technology)
The COVID 19 pandemic has already begun to change the nature of assessment in higher education. In fact, education in general and English language teaching in particular has experienced great change through the impact caused by the pandemic. In many areas worldwide, teaching was moved online at a rapid pace with little or no advanced planning. The way educational institutions globally have dealt with both online teaching and assessment issues has differed. Many assessments were simply cancelled, others rescheduled or postponed. Gulf countries for the most part moved forward and implemented an online assessment system.
As we approach the new normal in what I hope will soon be a post-COVID-19 era, there is a need to consider assessment anew in light of the emerging opportunities that have come up and the challenges we face during this time. One such challenge has been how to assess our students validly, reliably and fairly during this era. Another is how to ensure ethical online assessments and ways to mitigate or minimize instances of cheating and academic dishonesty.