Here are the slides from Dr. Kyra Garson
PDF: BC Teal
The live stream is on YouTube: https://youtu.be/s4mt6_3L3ew
conference
Upcoming Plenary for Interior Conference – October 27, 2018
StandardDeveloping Intercultural Capacity: What are Students Learning in Class?
The demographics of our classrooms and campuses are rapidly changing. In the last decade, there has been a 119% increase in international student enrolment nationally. For 84% of institutions surveyed, “preparing internationally and interculturally competent students” is a top reason for internationalization efforts (UNIVCAN, 2014); yet, there does not appear to be much formal assessment or evidence of such outcomes beyond assumptions that structural diversity will simply result in intercultural learning. Kyra will share research findings from a BC study that explored students’ intercultural development and their perceptions of pedagogy and curriculum as influencers of their inter-cultural learning (Garson, 2017). The results demonstrate that merely inviting cultural diversity to our campuses may not result in substantive intercultural learning without intentional pedagogical and curricular considerations. Based on her research, Kyra will share strategies for planning and facilitating multi-cultural group work in ways that prepare students to develop the knowledge, skills, and attitudes to work effectively and reflectively with culturally diverse peers (Reid & Garson, 2016).
Dr. Kyra Garson is a member of the Faculty of Student Development at Thompson Rivers University. She is also an inter-cultural trainer and researcher who has developed and delivered professional development programs to educational institutions across the Canada and internationally. Her research interests include intercultural and global learning in higher education; her study “Are We Graduating Global Citizens?” received the Canadian Association for the Study of Higher Education’s dissertation of the year award in 2014. In 2011 she received the Canadian Bureau for International Education’s Internationalization Award for her work supporting faculty in interculturalizing the curriculum and in 2017 was awarded the British Columbia Council for International Education’s Distinguished Leadership Award.
Haven’t registered yet? You still can! Click here: https://www.bcteal.org/bcteal_event/2018-interior-conference-at-okanagan-college/
BC TEAL 2018 Conference Keynote Videos Available
StandardIf you were unable to come to the BC TEAL annual conference or if you want to watch the keynote speakers again, you are in luck!
Click below to find the keynote speeches from Nicky Hockly, Greg Kessler, and Ahmar Mahboob.
Nicky Hockly – BC TEAL 2018 Conference
BC TEAL Lower Mainland Regional Conference Highlights
Standard
For a BC TEAL member and supporter like me who has often benefited from the PD events organized by the association, the decision to attend this year’s BC TEAL Lower Mainland Regional Conference was an easy one. The theme, “Rethinking Communication: Trends, Tools and Strategies”, also held great promise, since as language professionals we need to keep pace with the ways language itself changes and evolves and stay informed about the realities of our learners and their communicative needs. The Conference took place on Saturday, November 18th, at Columbia College. My choice of presentations to attend was clearly guided by my interest in the impact of technology on the ways we communicate and teach. It was a great learning experience, and I would like to share some of the highlights here.
My morning started on a high note, with Nathan Hall’s “Unscripted: Releasing the Potential of Authentic Listening in ELT”, delivered with his usual contagious enthusiasm. Nathan is a teacher trainer and EAP instructor for Douglas College and a Community Coordinator for Tutela, to mention just a few of the many roles he fulfills. As expected, I left with a list of technology tools and practical suggestions to put to good use in my class. The issue of using authentic listening input with language learners has always been controversial, even though both teachers and linguists will agree that comprehending “natural, real-time language use…is the target of virtually all language learners”(Michael Rost, 2011). When opting for purpose-written materials that are graded and scripted, however, teachers need to remember that these usually simplify syntactic structures and vocabulary, and sometimes use a reduced speech rate(Field, 2008). Authentic material can be used though, even with lower level learners, if the right task is used. Nathan introduced nine types of listening tasks(Vandergrift & Goh, 2012) that teachers can choose from when using authentic material: Restoration, Sorting(use information in a text to sequence, categorize, or rank items such as jumbled up texts and pictures), Comparison, Matching(listen to a number of short texts and match each one with the most appropriate theme given), Jigsaw Task, Narrative Completion, Embellishment, Evaluation, and Reconstruction. As promised, tech tools were also introduced and reviewed. VLC for example, is a free and reliable multimedia player that you might want to install on your computer. If you are tired of ads when watching videos, you have the choice of SafeShare.tv Are you a MAC user who wants to record a screencast video? All you have to do is open Quick Time. I encourage you to explore all of them here nathanghall.wordpress.com
The keynote speech, “Language and Social Media: Opportunities for the EAL Classroom” was delivered by Dr. Maite Taboada, Professor of Linguistics at Simon Fraser University. Her research areas are discourse analysis and computational linguistics. The speech started with the question, “Is the internet ruining the English language?”, followed by a resounding NO. We were reminded that language is creative and ever-evolving and, also, that understanding and being able to function in different registers is part of language learning and use. For a register approach in the classroom, which is a well established teaching approach, Dr. Taboada recommended a few resources, her favourite one being, “Discourse in English Language Education”, by John Flowerdew. It was explained that the online registers have developed to reflect the realities of a new form of communication brought about by the online medium, and they often display characteristics from both oral and written language. Interestingly enough, some of the language features they display and which people often point to as proof of “ruined language” are nothing new. Take alternative spelling, for example. To our surprise, we learned that OMG was first used by Winston Churchill, in 1917. LOL. In terms of opportunities to include social media in our EAL classrooms, Dr. Taboada believes there are quite a few: social media can be presented as a tool to communicate or can be used to introduce language activities, such as lower-stakes writing, with an emphasis on intelligibility over accuracy. Students can be asked to rewrite the same content in different media (write a blog post, a tweet, a Facebook status update), for example. They could also practice writing or speaking in different registers by writing a wiki entry or producing a podcast. Another very interesting point was made about the fact that social media users seem to interact differently across various social platforms, and people often wonder why we are “so nice on Facebook, so nasty on Twitter, and so ‘braggy’ on Instagram”. An analysis of the interactions taking place on these social media platforms using mainly the concept of register as defined by Systemic Functional Linguistics seems to provide a valid explanation. The last part of the speech was an introduction to Dr. Taboada’s research. We learned how sentiment analysis, which is automatic classification of texts based on subjective content, can help determine if online reviews and comments are positive or negative. One of the goals is to build a tool that can identify constructive comments and filter out toxic ones, especially hate speech. You can watch the recorded keynote speech here:
Anything that has to do with collocations is of great interest to me, so, attending “Using Online Tools to Improve EAL Students’ Written Communication”, delivered by Deogratias Nizonkiza, instructor at Douglas College, was a must. How many times have we heard our students say, “do a mistake” instead of “make a mistake”? Teaching collocations explicitly could be the answer to this type of problem. If I were to choose just one of the definitions shared by Deo, I would probably go with the one from the Oxford Collocations Dictionary for Students of English, “the way words combine in a language to produce natural-sounding speech and writing”. Their importance is widely accepted in EAL contexts, and students trained to focus on collocations instead of individual words have a higher chance to fluently produce native-like utterances that are grammatically correct (Nation & Chung 2009). A number of typical language exercises can be used to raise awareness and help students practice collocation use, such as matching(verbs & nouns), underlining the verb(do/give/make me a favour), or inserting the collocation to complete the sentence. It is also useful to teach students the most common collocation types, such as adjective+noun, verb+noun, verb+adverb, etc. However, if we want the students to develop routines in their work with collocations, especially in the case of students with intermediate or advanced knowledge of English, we should probably teach them how to use corpora and online tools. Here are the tools Deo recommended: COCA; Word and phrase; Ozdic; Lextutor. Some of these tools, but not all, are rather sophisticated and can only be used by students with advanced knowledge of English. Ozdic, however, was rather enjoyed by my LINC 6 students. In the second part of the presentation, Deo shared the research he conducted at McGill University to investigate to what extent ESL students perceived corpora and online tools as useful for improving their academic vocabulary and for editing texts. The results were positive, which will hopefully encourage more teachers to give the deserved attention to collocations.
The decision to attend the conference came with the full reward of learning new things, having a chance to reflect on my own practices, and, not in the least, connecting with other passionate professionals and being energized by it. I am sure others felt the same; one lucky teacher even went home with the big prize, an iPad!
Augusta AvramEAL Educator
ATESL conference and joint BC TEAL / ATESL Educational Technology Summit (ETS) – October 20-21, 2017
StandardBookmark this page! We will be posting videos from the keynote speakers of the joint ATESL / BCTEAL Educational Technology Summit.
Due to network issues, live streaming for this session will not be available. We will be recording the session and uploading it as soon as we can. Sorry for any inconvenience this may cause.
Friday, October 20th, 7:15-8:15am PDT / 8:15-9:15am MDT – Dr. Bonny Norton, “Identity, Investment, and English Language Learning in an Unequal Digital World.”
Due to restrictions, we are unable to provide live streaming or recording of this session.
Friday, October 20th, 12:15-1:15pm PDT / 1:15-2:15pm MDT – Dr. Darren Lund, “Becoming a Better Advocate for All Learners: Infusing Social Justice in our Practice.”
Saturday, October 21st, 7:15-8:15am PDT / 8:15-9:15am MDT – Dr. Greg Kessler, “Preparing Teachers for the Future: Designing Instruction with Automated and Intelligent Tools.”
“Embarking on Adventure: Planning, Proposing and Executing Your Conference Presentation” – a BC TEAL Webinars session
StandardDo you have an innovative classroom idea you would like to share with your peers? Perhaps you have an interest in replying to a BC TEAL conference call for presenters and would like some tried and true tips to get started.
Thank you to seasoned presenters Jennifer and Tanya for an informative session that took us through the steps. Participants were encouraged to request a mentor to review their draft proposal and offer comments and support prior to submission. Online options for connecting with a mentor will be made available, so regional participation is encouraged. This mentorship opportunity will only be available for three weeks from the date of the webinar. (Disclaimer: Mentoring process is a support function and does not guarantee acceptance of a conference proposal.)
Byte-Sized PD: 2017 BC TEAL Annual Conference
Standard
At the 2017 BC TEAL Annual Conference, we gave people a simple task: video record a short summary of what they were presenting. Over the past few months, we have been sharing these videos through Twitter and Facebook. If you haven’t seen them or have missed some along the way, here are all eight videos in no particular order.
Penny Ur
Andy Curtis
Vesna Radivojevic
Taslim Damji
Seonaigh MacPherson
Ken Beatty
Nathan Hall
Jill Hadfield
Finding your way at #BCTEAL50
Standard
You arrive at the conference, ready for a day of learning, connecting, and having fun, …but wait! Where do you begin? The choices in the conference booklet you just received are overwhelming you. What if you miss something you really wanted to attend? Do you spend time during the keynote mapping out the rest of the day?
Take heart, my friends! You don’t have to wait until the morning of the conference to plan out your day. Thanks to Sched, the online scheduler for the 2017 BC TEAL Annual Conference, you can start planning right now and create a personalized schedule you take with you on your phone or print at work home.
There are a number of benefits to using Sched including:
- getting up to the second changes to room numbers, cancellations, and even additions!
- saving paper by using your tablet or phone as your conference guide.
- sending the sessions you have chosen to the calendar app on your phone or computer.
- helping organizers know what sessions are popular so they can change locations, making more room for even more people to attend.
- finding resources for a session that you attended or even from one you missed (dependent on speakers making them available).
- getting full session descriptions (not available any other way).
- sharing sessions and resources through social media (don’t forget to use the official hashtag: #BCTEAL50).
Sched has a number of visual guides on setting up an account and personalizing your schedule.
So stop whatever you are doing right now and go to schedule.bctealcarnival.com, create a free account, and start planning!
Top 10 Reasons to Attend the 2017 BC TEAL Annual Conference
Standard
Are you looking for an excuse to attend this year’s conference (and carnival!) May 4-6, 2017? We have ten.
- Amazing Keynotes from Penny Ur, Andy Curtis and Jill Hadfield.
- 50th Anniversary Carnival. Tickets are only $10.
- An amazing array of presenters from BC and beyond.
- The inspiring, creative and fun Pecha Kucha presentations.
- The celebration dinner catered by Tayybeh, a group of Syrian refugees who have started a catering company. Tickets are $50 and can be added to conference registration. Space is limited.
- Networking with the largest gathering of BC EAL professionals in the province.
- The latest textbooks, resources and more at the Exhibitor Showcase.
- Thursday’s 3-hour Pre-Conference sessions give you an opportunity to delve deeply into key questions.
- 2nd Annual Ed Tech Jam featuring accessible and meaningful ways to incorporate tech in your teaching.
- Inspiration, information, connection.
Now go and register. The early bird deadline is April 8th!
BC TEAL Blog 