Rebecca Oxford

Rebecca Oxford - Featured Speaker @ KOTESOL 2022

Featured Session

Teaching Language, Teaching Peace: Bridges to a Better World

Teaching language and teaching peace are linked because both are bridges to a better world. What do people want most in Daegu, Delhi, and Denver or in Busan, Berlin, and Buenos Aires? What is the greatest hope in Gwangju, Guatemala City, and Gaza or in Mokpo, Manchester, and Mumbai? All over the world, we need and hope for peace. Rebecca Oxford defines peace as harmony and explains that it has at least three broad purposes: (a) to calm our minds and hearts, and give us a sense of well-being (inner peace, or peace with oneself); (b) to develop friendship, loving appreciation, and social justice in relationships with individuals, groups, countries, and cultures (social peace); and (c) to care for and enjoy Mother Nature’s wildlife, water, land, sky, and planets, and realize that nature supports our very lives (ecological peace). In short, peace involves caring for ourselves, others, and our environment. 

How can we do this? Martin Luther King, Jr. said that peace requires working productively to harmonize conflicting perspectives, while Elise Boulding stated that peace demands imagination and love each day. Purposes and methods of peace are part of Oxford’s Language of Peace Approach (LPA). The LPA helps teachers integrate peace activities into teaching EFL or other languages, resulting in students’ greater language practice and competence, increased interest in peace, and stronger peacebuilding abilities. Teachers can benefit by developing their own peacebuilding skills while teaching students! Rebecca illustrates ways to weave inner peace, social peace, and ecological peace into language education, thus creating bridges to a better world. For instance, inner peace can be fostered by affirmations, mindfulness, deep breathing, and listening to music. Social peace depends, in part, on basic verbal communication strategies, nonverbal communication tools, and a simple, nonviolent communication process. Ecological peace is aided by forgetting responsibilities for a moment, walking outside, noticing colors of nature through the Rainbow Walk, and writing about how nature takes care of us and how we can take care of nature (Oxford, Olivero, Harrison, and Gregersen, 2021). The session closes with words from and pictures of important peace role models from many cultures – people who have built bridges to a better world through peace and through language. This session also offers insights to people who are not teaching but are seeking ways to bring peace more fully into their hearts, their relationships, and the environment. All of us can be peacebuilders.

Time: Saturday (April 30) 10:00 a.m. KST (50 min., Synchronous)
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Workshop Session

Exciting EFL-Peace Activities for a Better World: Strengthening EFL Competence and Fostering Peace

In this time of COVID, strife, and confusion, it sometimes seems like the world is shattering. What the world needs now is peace. The workshop leader, Rebecca Oxford, is a peace author, language teacher educator, and former teacher of foreign languages and her home language. The workshop begins with a short process of humor and peace. Rebecca then reminds participants of three kinds of peace: (a) peace of mind and heart (inner peace, or peace with oneself); (b) peace with other individuals, groups, countries, and cultures (social peace, or peace with others); and (c) peace with Mother Earth (ecological peace, or peace with nature). 

Following this, brief activities from at least two of the three kinds of peace will be presented, with workshop participants involved. The group will discuss what they saw and how language and peace worked together in these activities. Next, Rebecca shows how to adapt rather easily part of a textbook chapter to incorporate peacebuilding activities. If you are an EFL teacher, the workshop will show how you can easily integrate exciting, motivating EFL peace activities into your regular teaching without necessarily changing the curriculum in any major way. Weaving peace activities into the language class gives students more language practice, more motivation for communicating, and fresh concepts about developing “peace with a purpose.” If you are not teaching a language but are a teacher educator, supervisor, curriculum developer, administrator, graduate student, or parent, you can participate equally in the workshop from your own perspective. Workshop participants will receive free material: descriptions of many peace activities, some with photos; a list of relevant resources; and contact information for people who would be willing to serve as mentors or guides for you. Come to our peacebuilding workshop for a taste of joy, peace, and new ideas!   

Time: Sunday (May 1) 10:00 a.m. KST (50 min., Synchronous)

  Biosketch

Rebecca Oxford, Professor Emerita and Distinguished Scholar-Teacher, University of Maryland, has written or co-edited 15 books, seven on peacebuilding and transforming education, and eight on language learning and teaching. Her 2021 book is Peacebuilding in Language Education (Multilingual Matters). Language Learning Strategies: What Every Teacher Should Know (1990) is in Korean, Japanese, Arabic, and English. Rebecca visited Korea, her “adopted country,” four times to give conference plenaries and see her beloved Korean doctoral graduates. She taught languages and psychology, and is a long-time language teacher educator. “Rebecca Oxford’s research has changed the way the world teaches languages” [from her Lifetime Achievement Award].

Twitter: @RebeccaOxford1
Facebook: rebecca.oxford.16 // rebecca.oxford.359

Select Sites
Academia.edu: Rebecca Oxford
Rebecca Oxford Interview with The English Connection (Spring, 2022) 

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