Grace Wang, Conference Chair
Hello and welcome to the website of The 27th Annual Korea TESOL International Conference!
I am very excited about the theme of the conference this year―Advancing ELT: Blending Disciplines, Approaches, and Technologies.
We are increasingly recognizing the very multifaceted characteristic of ELT. Applied linguistics is a diverse field in its own right, but no longer can some of the challenges faced by teachers in local contexts be met by scholarship limited to the applied linguistics field.
More and more, we’re learning that the best ways to engage students in English language learning are informed also by fields outside the traditional domains of applied linguistics, for example, culture, identity, education, and communication.
We’re also entering a post-post-methods era in English language teaching, when, not only is there a move away from any single ‘method’ of ELT that is considered best for any given situation, but there is also an increasing move away from viewing top-down, West-centred theories and approaches as providing the best guidance to teaching the English language in a global context.
We are, therefore, entering an era where teachers at the grassroots level, rather than researchers in ivory towers, are being recognized as the best authorities on what constitutes ‘best’ in ELT for their local contexts.
In order for ELT to advance in this post-post-methods era, however, more of the burden for that advancement must shift from researchers to teachers.
We need more teachers to recognize the increasingly crucial role they play in advancing the profession.
We need more teachers to become increasingly invested in their own professional development and venture out to explore unknown territories within their own practice domains through reflective and exploratory practice, and action research activities.
We need teachers to become less comfortable with being directed on how to teach via an over-reliance on textbooks produced in the west, for example, and more comfortable with engaging a path to their own discovery of how best to teach within their own local contexts. And then share what they are learning.
This is an exciting time for the field of ELT.
And it is with great pleasure that we offer this year’s Korea TESOL International Conference, with a focus on inspiring local teachers to think outside the box and challenge traditional boundaries, so that they may be empowered to create teaching strategies that may uniquely suit the particular teaching contexts and students that they serve.
I am also very excited to announce that Rod Ellis, author of numerous books and who needs no introduction, is a plenary speaker at our international conference this year.
We’ll also have Andrew D. Cohen as a plenary speaker, who has published extensively on learner styles and strategies, second language acquisition, and language assessment.
In addition, we will have a diverse set of invited speakers and panelists, many of whom will be familiar names and others whom you will be glad to have come to know. In particular, we will have two featured panels: “Women in Leadership in ELT,” and “Women in Leadership in Korea.”
And of course, there will be hundreds of other sessions by teachers and researchers from Korea, across Asia, and beyond.
The truly international flavour of the conference will not be missed!
The conference will be held on October 12 and 13 (Saturday and Sunday) at Sookmyung Women’s University in Seoul.
Pre-registration will be open online from August 1 through September 30. I strongly suggest pre-registering. It will save you time and money, and help us accommodate you as well.
We will be using the Whova conference app again this year; more information will be available later on how you can benefit most from it.
I look forward to seeing you there!
Grace H. Wang, Chair
Grace Wang recently retired from teaching English at Yonsei University, and, her first career being in pharmacy before moving to Korea 20+ years ago, she’s completing the Doctor of Pharmacy program at the University of Toronto in preparation for her return to Canada in a few years. And one of the very highlights of her time in Korea has been Korea TESOL. So with heartfelt gratitude and affection, she’d like to thank Korea TESOL for all that the organization has given to her over the years.
