JALT2023 Featured Speakers

Agnes Bodis

Macquarie University

Sponsored by Macquarie University

Enhancing Learner Autonomy through Systematic Task Design

Featured Speaker Workshop

Saturday, Nov 25, 1:20 pm – 2:20 pm – Room 101

Learner autonomy—the ability to take control of one’s learning—can be viewed as part of a learning ecology: It is developed, situational, and social. This workshop will focus on a systematic design of learning activities through learning-oriented assessment (LOA), integrating formal and informal assessment for language learning and enhancing learner autonomy. After demonstrating how LOA is used in language teacher education, the workshop will provide hands-on activities for language learning task design integrating technology.

A Future-Oriented View of Teacher Development

Research-Oriented Short Presentation

Sunday, Nov 26, 11:35 am – 12:00 pm – Room 101

It has become evident recently that the focus in teacher development should shift from quick upskilling to a longer-term view of adaptability to an ever-changing environment. This presentation outlines how the concept of sustainability, developed by our research team, has been unpacked and used in a language teacher training course. Adapting an ecological approach to language teacher training, the talk outlines and provides examples for the concepts of adaptability, critical collaborative reflection, and teacher autonomy.

Agnes Bodis has worked in a wide range of teaching contexts as an ESL and EFL teacher in Europe and Australia. She has extensive experience in English language teacher education on a post-graduate level. She is the Course Lead of the Graduate Certificate of TESOL course at Macquarie University in the Department of Linguistics, which is ranked 27th globally in the QS rankings and ranked as one of the top three linguistics departments in Australia. Agnes coordinates and mentors trainee teachers on their teaching practice and specializes in curriculum and assessment-focused units in the Master of Applied Linguistics and TESOL course. Agnes has published in the fields of TESOL, applied linguistics, and applied sociolinguistics. Her research topics include English language and teacher training curriculum design, language assessment, and beliefs and ideologies attached to language proficiency and language use.

Watch an interview with our featured speaker Agnes Bodis on YouTube

Shannon Sauro

University of Maryland

Sponsored by Literature in Language Teaching SIG

Getting Started with Fanfiction in the Classroom

Featured Speaker Workshop [Online]

Sunday, Nov 26, 9:15 am – 10:15 am

This workshop models for language teachers how to get started with fanfiction in their classes. It includes a learning-through-doing short, collaborative in-class fanfiction activity that can be done either in person or online. Participants will also be introduced to fanfiction writing and resources for using fanfiction to support language learning using teacher training materials developed by FanTALES, a team of secondary school teachers and teacher trainers from Belgium, Germany, and Sweden.

Fanfiction from the Digital Wilds to the Language Classroom

Practice-Orientated Short Workshop [Online]

Sunday, Nov 26, 10:25 am – 10:50 am

Fanfiction, a type of transformative storytelling found in fan communities in the digital wilds, represents a type of writing that can be brought into the classroom to support second language literacy. This talk provides an overview of research on fanfiction and the kind of language learning it supports in the digital wilds and formal classroom contexts.

Shannon Sauro is a specialist in technologically-mediated language teaching and learning and second language literacy. Her university teaching experience includes courses in academic writing for US and international students at community colleges and universities in Iowa and Pennsylvania and courses in TESOL/Applied Linguistics for future English teachers in both Sweden (at Malmö University) and the United States (at the University of Texas at San Antonio). She has supervised and examined doctoral research on the use of technology or telecollaboration/virtual exchange for learning languages and intercultural competence or fan practices among second language users in the Netherlands, Spain, Sweden, and the United States.

Watch an interview with our featured speaker Shannon Sauro on YouTube