KOTESOL 2008 is just around the corner and presenters need to register by this Friday. I took a look at the site and presenters/members no longer get a discount on conference fees. The last 3 years that I attended/presented I paid my membership fee of 40,000 + 25,000 conference fees for a grand total of 65,000won. Well this year membership fees are the same, but now I have to pay 50,000 for conference fees (double) - all this for the priveledge of speaking.

I’m not sure it’s worth it especially since the list of invited speakers is a bunch of nobodys - the only ones I’m familiar with are David Graddol (definitely would want to see him) and Curtis Kelly (somewhat intersted). I do know who John Linton is, but he’s not worth seeing if your attending this conference to learn about teaching - He’s a doctor who’s lived his entire life in Korea. I didn’t find his patient interaction to be particularly pleasant and consequently I go to Korean doctors instead.

Anyhow I’ll make my decision tomorrow, but I’m definitely leaning to skipping this time around.

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Sean. inscribed these words of wisdom on Tuesday Sep 2, 2008 at 07:44 PM
Conferences | (9) | |

the JALT CALL 2008 conference is just around the corner. There’s more info on the site if you are interested. Wish I could go, but unfortunately I won’t be able to make it.

Title
* New Frontiers in CALL: Negotiating Diversity

Venue and Dates
* Saturday, 31st May - Sunday, 1st June, 2008
* Faculty of Foreign Languages and Asian Studies
* Nagoya University of Commerce & Business
* 4-4 Sagamine, Komenoki-cho, Nisshin-shi, Aichi-ken, 470-0193 Japan

Keynote Speaker
* Phil Hubbard Ph.D.
Director, English for Foreign Students
Senior Lecturer in Linguistics, Stanford University, USA

Plenary Speaker
* Gavin Dudeney
Project Director, The Consultants-E
* The Internet and the Language Classroom (Cambridge University Press, 2000)
* How to Teach English with Technology (Longman, 2007)

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Sean. inscribed these words of wisdom on Sunday Apr 27, 2008 at 08:01 PM
Conferences | |

I just received an email indicating that I will be presenting later this year at the KOTESOL 2008 International Conference. I’ll be presenting in an Extensive Reading Colloquium and my topic will be: Supplementing a general English course with graded readers.

I first mentioned this last month when I was invited to participate - it’s good to hear it’s been confirmed. Now looking forward to October.

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Sean. inscribed these words of wisdom on Sunday Apr 13, 2008 at 09:56 AM
KOTESOL | Conferences | |

Oxford Day is tomorrow November 17th at Ewha Womens University. Speakers include:
Rod Ellis
Lyle Bachman
Ritsuko Nakata
Ken Wilson
Richard R. Day
Patrick Jackson

I’ll be there and if I have some time over the weekend, unlikely, I’ll write up a review of the presentations.

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Sean. inscribed these words of wisdom on Friday Nov 16, 2007 at 09:33 AM
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On day two of the conference I ended up seeing a lot less presentations. The first presentation that I saw was on Extending Speaking Opportunities in the EFL context. This presentation focused on a Japanese universities use of something similar to an English Club, but with NS facilitators with the meetings set up at lunch time. It was interesting but not something that I would want to try. I saw the same speaker in the next hour talking about Book Report Forms for Graded Readers. This was a much more interesting presentation and I will be taking some of the ideas away and using them this semester with my Advanced class as they are about due to be finished their novels (not graded readers but the principle is still the same) During the discussion time I was asked by the OUP rep for my email and it looks like he’s interested in something I do with graded readers (regular freshmen and moodle). I also talked to him about the possibility of materials review and development - hope that pans out.

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Sean. inscribed these words of wisdom on Monday Oct 29, 2007 at 04:19 PM
KOTESOL | Conferences | |

I just got back from the KOTESOL conference today. I had a good run of presentations with no technical problems as has been this case in years past. However I did talk to one presenter who had loads of trouble so clearly KOTESOL still hasn’t ironed out all thier tech issues yet.

I started off the day by attending an Extensive Reading Colloquim with six speakers. I had time to listen to two of them; Marc Helgelson (who just happens to be one of the best presenters I have ever seen and always enjoy his presentations) and Tracy Waring. One other presenter I am friends with and didn’t need to see his presentation though it would have been worth going to. Hegelson gave an overview of extensive reading (ER) and various approaches to using graded readers in the EFL classroom. This was a good presentation especially if you are new to ER. Even though I know some I came away enriched. I then listened to Tracy Waring talk about how to choose extensive readers for your class. This was an interesting discussion and I especialy liked the chart that he provided that listed all the publishers and the how many books available and at what headword level they are available.

Both ER presentations gave some ideas of how to confirm that students have read the books. These ranged from the traditional book report to drawing a picture of a scene in the book, to how would you change the book if you were the author. Everything was excellent. One thing that I found interesting is that for extensive reading it is best for students to be reading at or below their current ability. I always thought it was best to be on target. But it was suggested that rather than Krashen’s approach of i+1 with extensive reading it should actually be i-1. The best part of the colloquim though were the tons of free samples available. participants were asked several times to go to the books and take copies. I walked away with six more graded readers for my personal library that I make available to students to borrow. I would have gotten more but the majority of the readers were for young learners.

There is more in the extended entry.

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Sean. inscribed these words of wisdom on Saturday Oct 27, 2007 at 09:15 PM
Teaching | KOTESOL | Conferences | |

I’m off to Cambridge Day 2007 in about 30 minutes. Sorry I didn’t blog this earlier, I’ve been swamped with grading and in a bit of a blogging slump. The four featured speakers are: Charles Talcott, Leo Jones, Hugo Loyola, & Andy Kirkpatrick. I’ve only heard of Leo Jones and that was because he wrote one of the worst textbooks I ever had the pleasure of using - Let’s Talk.

I’m actually more interested in going to Oxford Day in November, but due to other commitments that weekend have to pass.

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Sean. inscribed these words of wisdom on Saturday Oct 20, 2007 at 07:46 AM
Conferences | |

The KOTESOL national conference is coming up and early registration is almost over. For some reason I haven’t been recieving the KOTESOL emails lately so I forgot about the deadline. Anyhow if you are planning on going, you might want to register early in order to save a little money.

Plenary Speakers: Jeremy Harmer (The Practice of English Language Teaching)
Dr. Jun Liu (TESOL President, 2006-07)
Featured Speakers: Dr. Thomas S.C. Farrell, Dr. Mike Levy,
Dr. Tim Murphey, Dr. Neil Anderson,
Dr. Elka Todeva, Dr. Rob Waring,
Dr. Bill Snyder, Steven Gershon, Gary C. Rector

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Sean. inscribed these words of wisdom on Thursday Sep 20, 2007 at 06:10 AM
Public_Service_Announcement | Conferences | KOTESOL | |

2007 International Conference on Convergence Information Technology (ICCIT’07)

November 21-23, 2007 in Gyeongju

ICCIT’07 will focus on theories, technologies, architecture and applications re: the various aspects of advances in convergence and hybrid Information Technology. ICCIT’07 welcomes all research results on the traditional and convergence areas of information technologies and next generation information technologies.

ICCIT’07 is a refereed, multidisciplinary international conference for bridging the latest advances in convergence and hybrid Information Technology research. It provides an international forum for presenting authoritative references, academically rigorous research and case studies. The conference publishes well-written and academically validated manuscripts in both theoretical development and application research.

Visit the conference website for more information:

http://nms.dongguk.ac.kr/iccit

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Sean. inscribed these words of wisdom on Sunday Jun 10, 2007 at 05:03 PM
Public_Service_Announcement | Conferences | |

Aaron has posted a review of the JALTCALL 2007 - Conference Report. Go give it a read. Aaron doesn’t blog often, but when he does it is always worth reading.

Just a reminder that guest entry submissions are always welcome here. If you attend a conference, write a review. If you have some thoughts on current issues in ELT, a great lesson plan or comments on a journal you read, please write something here. I think that this is a great idea for people who would like to post thier thougths, but don’t want to maintain a blog or if you have a blog, but it’s not ELT centred. 

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Sean. inscribed these words of wisdom on Monday Jun 4, 2007 at 09:39 AM
Conferences | Guest Author | |

The 1st Annual Global EIL Congress was held at Korea University on May 26, 2007. The motto of the Global EIL Conference, “Bringing the World Together,” was entirely appropriate; the conference attendees had the opportunity to meet and converse with distinguished speakers and educators from all over the world. Presenters arrived from nations such as Iran, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, China, Kazakhstan, Japan, Malaysia, and many of the “Western Countries.” The range of cultures, accents, and perspectives were all an integral part of the modest, but well-deserved success of this conference. The light attendance was a bit disappointing, but not surprising, for reasons which will be mentioned later.

The theme of the conference was “English as an International Language: Setting the Standards.” Lecturers focused heavily on the premise that EFL/ESL should be renamed EIL (English as an International Language) due to the rapid expansion of English as the language of commerce and education. The presenters lectured on themes such the effects of globalization (“The Question of Global English Language Teaching: A Turkish Perspective” by Rana Yildarim and Zuhal Okhan), international language prospectus (“English as an International Lingua Franca” (Matthew Waterson), and practical teaching and/or theory “Assessing Students’ Reading Competencies: Setting Global Standards” by Prof. Reima Al-Jarf).

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LadySapphire inscribed these words of wisdom on Thursday May 31, 2007 at 09:45 AM
Public_Service_Announcement | Conferences | Teaching | Guest Author | |

The Seoul Chapter of KOTESOL is having an annual conference on March 31. I found out yesterday when I receievd a postcard in the mail. I’ve scanned it and removed my address in order to post it here. The direct link to the conference without much information is here. The postcard I received has more info including a map. click image for bigger size.

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Sean. inscribed these words of wisdom on Friday Mar 9, 2007 at 09:48 AM
Public_Service_Announcement | Conferences | KOTESOL | |

Today was the second and final day of the annual KOTESOL conference. I got there early to see a presentation only find out that it had moved to another room. Once I got to that room I found out that I had the wrong info, went back to the information booth where they then told me that in addition to the room change the time had changed as well. I ended up attending a presentation on CBI (content based instruction) which included alot of information I was aware from several years of having taught CBI.  THere was some new information as well and it was well worth attending.

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Sean. inscribed these words of wisdom on Sunday Oct 29, 2006 at 09:16 PM
KOTESOL | Conferences | |

Day one is over. I got there very early Saturday morning to avoid line ups and to have enough time to look through the program guide in order to choose my first presentation. This year I was watching the presentations with more of a critical eye since I am teaching a presentation skills class. It was interesting to note that the first presentation I saw was a textbook example of what not to do. The final one I attended, on the other hand, was a textbook example of how to conduct a presentation. Wish I had a camcorder available during both of those so my students could see them.

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Sean. inscribed these words of wisdom on Saturday Oct 28, 2006 at 06:49 PM
KOTESOL | Conferences | |

update
Temporarily making this a sticky. Tomorrow is cambridge day and I should be there, though a little late due to a breakfast appointment. Hope to see you there. Here is the link to details.

In one of the regular emails I get from KOTESOL there is notice that Cambridge day is coming up.

Nov. 11 Cambridge Day 6. Academic presentations by Jack Richards, Ron Carter, Steven Brown. Sookmyung Women’s University, Seoul. Admission free; lunch provided. Pre-registration required. (Email)

Pre-registration required? They say that everytime, but it doesn’t really matter (never has so far) and besides there is no link to register. I’ll probably be there.

Just a reminder that the KOTESOL national conference is only a couple of weeks away, October 28 & 29.

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Sean. inscribed these words of wisdom on Thursday Oct 12, 2006 at 02:39 PM
Public_Service_Announcement | Conferences | |

I checked my mailbox this morning and had a postcard from KOTESOL informing me about the upcoming Spring 2006 Conference on May 13. The conference has mostly local speakers but there are a number of published authors that I am unfamiliar with giving presentations including David Paul, Dr. Caroline Linse, & Tomas Santos.

There are two keynote speakers, Professor Sei-Kyung Cho and Dr. Paul Nation, whom I have seen speak before and enjoyed thoroughly. I’ll probably go just to see Nation.

Interestingly the postcard tells me that early registration is from April 10-21, but today is April 19. I looked at the postmark and saw that it wasn’t even sent until April 14 - Way to be on top of things KOTESOL. But KOTESOL has a history of incompetence so I’m not surprised.

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Sean. inscribed these words of wisdom on Wednesday Apr 19, 2006 at 11:06 AM
Public_Service_Announcement | Conferences | KOTESOL | |

A friend just told me about the ALAK conference this coming Saturday at Chung-Ang University. You can see the preliminary schedule here.

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Sean. inscribed these words of wisdom on Monday Nov 14, 2005 at 04:17 PM
Public_Service_Announcement | Conferences | |

Cambridge day 2005 is coming November 13 at Sookmyung Womens university (same place as last months KOTESOL conference). Michael McCarthy will be presenting twice (one time with Jeanne McCarten), Curtis Kelly will also be presenting. I’ve seen McCarthy before and found his presentation informative and entertaining. I’m looking forward to this for his presentation as well as the 20% discount off of books.

I’m also going to take advantage of this opportunity to make a contact at Cambridge in order to discuss possible bulk deals on graded readers as well as complimentary teachers materials. I should have my extensive reading course & library proposal completed by that time and will be properly prepared to ask questions.

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Sean. inscribed these words of wisdom on Tuesday Nov 1, 2005 at 03:37 PM
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