Plenary Speakers

The Plenary speakers for JALT2013 are (in order of appearance):
Penny Ur (Sponsored by Cambridge University Press)
Keith Folse, University of Central Florida (Sponsored by National Geographic Learning | Cengage Learning)
Caroline Linse, Queen’s University, Belfast (JALT Junior Plenary)
Kristin Sherman, Central Piedmont Community College (Sponsored by Oxford University Press)
JALT2013 Plenary and Featured Speaker articles from the July/August edition of The Language Teacher (Vol. 37, No. 4) are available in PDF format. Use this link to download the PDF from the JALT Publications website.
Penny Ur
A Voyage of Discovery
Sponsored by Cambridge University Press
Learning is indeed a lifelong voyage: a voyage of discovery. As teachers, we learn as we travel on; and the main goal is not to reach a destination, but rather the experience of the voyage itself and the knowledge, insights and skills that we acquire on the way.
This plenary talk provides an opportunity for me to share with the audience my own voyage of discovery as a teacher and teacher educator: some of the key events in my professional life and their learning outcomes.
These events are things like turning-points in my own early teaching career, encounters with memorable personalities, exposure to key books and articles. The learning outcomes are sometimes theoretical–principles that have informed my teaching ever since–and sometimes practical: techniques and procedures that work. I hope these will resonate with the audience and perhaps trigger further discussion and personal learning.
Penny Ur has thirty-five years’ experience as an English teacher in elementary, middle and high schools in Israel. Now retired, she has taught B.A. and M.A. courses at Oranim Academic College of Education and Haifa University. She has presented papers at TESOL, IATEFL and other English teachers’ conferences worldwide.
She was for ten years the editor of the Cambridge Handbooks for Language Teachers series. Her books include Discussions that work (1981), Five minute activities (co authored with Andrew Wright) (1992), Grammar practice activities (2nd Edition) (2009), Vocabulary activities (2012), and A course in English language teaching (2012), all published by Cambridge University Press.
The slides for Penny’s plenary session and other presentation from the conference are available to view online:Plenary: A Voyage of DiscoveryPaper presentation: Higher-order thinking skills in English teaching
Keith Folse
University of Central Florida
If You Are a Teacher Today, Thank Your Teachers
Sponsored by National Geographic Learning | Cengage Learning
You are a teacher today. Certainly you have contemplated why you became a teacher, but have you ever thought about why you became the kind of teacher you are? Perhaps you tell jokes in class. Perhaps you give frequent tests. Perhaps you emphasize grammar, but why do you do these things? Did you learn to do them? Or do you just naturally do these things?
We develop our teacher identify over time. For most of us, the greatest influence has come from our own teachers. We are an accumulation of influences of all the teachers who have taught us. Some teacher behaviors we emulate; others we reject. In this talk, I will share my reflections from a lifelong voyage as language learner and teacher, both in ESL and EFL settings, and hope to nudge you into reflecting on the people who have shaped your current teacher identity
Keith Folse is professor of TESOL at the University of Central Florida, where he teaches in the MATESOL, Ph.D. TESOL, and undergraduate TEFL Certificate programs. He has taught ESL/EFL for more than 35 years in the US, Saudi Arabia, Malaysia, Kuwait, and Japan (Niigata and Gunma Prefectures). His main research areas are best teaching practices in teaching composition, materials development, grammar methods, and vocabulary acquisition. He is the author of 60 ESL books, including the Great Writing series by National Geographic Learning, which is sponsoring Dr. Folse’s trip to JALT this year.
Caroline Linse
Queen’s University, Belfast
Interlingual Families: Raising Bilingual Children
JALT Junior Plenary
Globalization, fueled by advances in travel and communication, has resulted in more people representing different cultural and linguistic backgrounds coming together to create long-term relationships. More and more families possess a variety of linguistic capital with one parent having grown up with one home language and the other parent having grown up with an entirely different home language. These interlingual families face enormous benefits and dilemmas.
This plenary will address questions and dilemmas that interlingual families face. The talk will begin with an overview of the benefits of pluralingualism and multilingualism. This will be followed by a discussion of the challenges that parents face in trying to determine which language use. Next will be a synopsis of the challenges that teachers and parents face when children come to school with extra linguistic capital. Solutions for these challenges will also be presented with examples from different global contexts.
Caroline Linse is a Senior Lecturer in TESOL, School of Education, Queen’s University, Belfast, Northern Ireland. Caroline has worked in ESL and EFL programs in various contexts in the US and UK and in Mexico, Korea, Latvia and Belarus. She holds a doctorate in Education from the Harvard Graduate School of Education. Her current areas of research include the relationships and connections between schools and homes as well as the challenges and benefits of being interlingual families.
Kristin Sherman
Central Piedmont Community College
How Social Media Changes Our Thinking and Learning
Sponsored by Oxford University Press
Social media is already having a drastic effect on the way we communicate and interact with each other; but how is it affecting our learning and thinking processes? Research suggests that the processes happening in our brains due to interaction with technology are rapidly changing. This plenary will discuss the ways in which social media in particular, is transforming how we find and process information and the implications this has for the language learner. It will also review the ways in which using social media can facilitate the language learning process both for students and for educators.
Kristin Sherman has been an ELT teacher, teacher trainer, consultant, and course book author for more than 15 years. Born in Japan and partly raised in the Philippines, Kristin now resides in the US where she teaches English at Central Piedmont Community College in Charlotte, North Carolina. She regularly conducts teacher training workshops throughout Latin America and the US. Kristin is co-author of Q: Skills for Success and Network, both published by Oxford University Press. She holds an M.Ed. TESL from the University of North Carolina.
The references that Kristin Sherman referred to in her plenary are available to download (MS Word document)