Next weekend is the annual KOTESOL international conference. As usual I will be attending and have arranged a dinner out with several people that I only get to see once a year at this conference on Saturday evening.

Are you going? vote in the poll and leave a comment.

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Sean. inscribed these words of wisdom on Thursday Oct 15, 2009 at 07:06 PM
Public_Service_Announcement | Conferences | Random_Ramblings | Polling_Station | |

The KOTESOL International conference 2009 is just around the corner and pre-registration has been open for awhile now. If you’re going you’ll want to pre-register before October 5 in order to avoid line-ups and also save a little money.

Invited speakers included David Nunan, Rod Ellis, Kathleen Bailey and Scott Thornbury among others. I’m not sure why the conference site doesn’t have bios and pics like it has in previous years. This year you get to try and read a conference poster that is only available in low res – good luck with that.

Anyhow I’ll be there and pre-registering shortly.

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Sean. inscribed these words of wisdom on Tuesday Sep 15, 2009 at 07:38 PM
Public_Service_Announcement | Conferences | KOTESOL | |

Call for presentations

The KOTESOL Extensive Reading Special Interest Group (E.R. SIG), would like to invite presentation/workshop proposals for:

The 2009 Symposium on Extensive Reading in Korean EFL

The Symposium is co-hosted by the Korean English Education Society (KEES), and will be held in Sookmyung University in Seoul on November 14th. The Symposium is a day-long event devoted to extensive reading practices and research. This year’s plenary speakers include Dr. Kim Jeongryeol, Marc Helgesen and Dr. Rob Waring.

All presentation-proposals that concern the application of, or research on, extensive reading in the EFL classroom are welcome. Presentations on extensive listening, vocabulary acquisition through reading, and EFL reading in general will also be considered.

The deadline for proposals is September 15. Send a presentation title and 100-200 word abstract to Scott Miles (E.R. SIG Chair) (JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) .
For more details see the E.R. SIG pages on the KOTESOL website, and/or contact Scott Miles (E.R. SIG Chair) (JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) or Aaron Jolly (Event Chair) (JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address).

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Sean. inscribed these words of wisdom on Thursday Aug 6, 2009 at 01:34 PM
Public_Service_Announcement | Conferences | |

So it appears that 30+ EFL teachers in Korea have been quarantined for testing positive for swine flu. One of the teachers is maintaining a blog Under Quarantine The teachers seem rather upbeat:

Last night people smuggled Soju into their rooms. It feels something like Prison Break. I’m sure our value will fluctuate depending on how many cigarettes we have and how many we can trade.

However the American embassy doesn’t seem concerned as we can see in this entry titled Embassy Fail it’s not like embassy’s are here to help their citizens or anything. The Canadian embassy is even more useless in my opinion.

So last night we called the U.S. Embassy just to inform them of the situation. We weren’t asking for help or anything, but just because we felt they should know that, I dunno…30+ OF THEIR CITIZENS ARE BEING DETAINED! It’s not like we’re worried the Korean Health Ministry of Medicine for Make Healthy of Koreans is going to take us out in the woods, shoot us in the back of the head, dump us in a pit and throw lye over our corpses, it’s just that a few of us felt better about our government knowing where we were, which I realize is an irony as I type it.
bq. Anyways, the lady on the phone was very helpful!
bq. Me: “Hiya! I just thought the Embassy should be aware that 30+ U.S citizens have been quarantined right outside Seoul for suspicion of swine flu exposure.”
Operator: “Okay, well it’s a weekend, and we’re closed. Monday’s memorial day, so could you call back on tuesday?”
Me: “You…you’re serious?”
Operator: “Is it an emergency? Cause if it is we have someone we can call.”
Me: “Um…let’s see, there’s 30 americans in quarantine for swine flu exposure. Basically, we’re arrested. It’s totally cool, don’t worry—we’ll call on tuesday—”
Operator: “Okay, thanks for calling.”
Me: “No wait—”
click

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Sean. inscribed these words of wisdom on Monday May 25, 2009 at 07:50 AM
Public_Service_Announcement | ESL_in_the_News | |

The annual Seoul KOTEOSL conference is coming up in a few weeks on March 28. I’m planning on attending and will probably be spending most of my time in the “Research Strand” room – you can see what’s on offer by checking the schedule on the page linked above.

The Extensive Reading SIG is also having a meeting following the conference. here is the email I recieved – I will also be attending this meeting.

A few Extensive Reading Special Interest Group announcements and updates:

1. We’d like to have our first ERSIG meeting of the year on March 28th at 5 PM at Soonshil University. This will follow the KOTESOL Seoul Chapter Annual Conference, which will run from 10 AM – 4:45. We were originally planning on having the meeting during the National Conference, but this is a bit late in the year for the things we need to get going.

The agenda for the meeting is as follows:

A. Set the ground work for our two main events of the year, the Extensive Reading Colloquium held during the KOTESOL International Conference, and our own Extensive Reading Symposium (held in Cheonan last year, tentatively planned for Seoul this year).
B. Discuss website issues (see next)
C. Discuss an ER Mentor program to help people set up ER in their schools.
D. Anything else ERSIG members would like to bring up.

Not sure yet what room we’ll be meeting in. More on that soon. We might even make it a dinner-meeting at a nearby restaurant. Please let me know if you plan on attending.

2. Call for a new ERSIG Webmaster
Currently our Webmaster if Tim Dalby, but he’s moved on to a bigger position in KOTESOL and we need someone to fill his shoes. After much discussion with KOTESOL brass, we’ve decided that the ERSIG site should stay on the KOTESOL domain. This means we need someone who can work with the Drupal content management system. I’ve been assured that it is relatively user-friendly. Any volunteers?

Hope to see a lot of you on the 28th!

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Sean. inscribed these words of wisdom on Wednesday Mar 4, 2009 at 08:19 AM
Public_Service_Announcement | Conferences | KOTESOL | |

Looks like Moodle 2.0 is going to have an exciting new feature; Conditional Activities. The following is from the News item that came via RSS.

This feature enables teachers to restrict the availability of any activity according to certain conditions, such as dates, grade obtained, or activity completion.

For further details, including links to two demonstration videos, see the Conditional activities documentation.

I’d really like to check this out, but unless 2.0 is out before the end of the month it’ll have to wait until fall semester as I won’t upgrade mid-semester.

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Sean. inscribed these words of wisdom on Tuesday Feb 3, 2009 at 08:29 AM
Public_Service_Announcement | Moodle | |

New Canadian citizenship rules impact children of Canadian TCKs

If you are Canadian and gave birth or planning to give birth to any of your children while living overseas, please read this and pass the link along to any of your Canadian friends who did likewise.

Not enough for TCKs to wonder who they are, new citizenship rules which go into effect April 17th of this year from Citizenship and Immigration Canada are now going to have their children wondering what nationality they are.

“This means that children born in another country after the new law comes into effect will not be Canadian citizens by birth if they were born outside Canada to a Canadian parent who was also born outside Canada to a Canadian parent.”

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Sean. inscribed these words of wisdom on Friday Jan 30, 2009 at 03:13 PM
Public_Service_Announcement | |

This morning I recieved an email asking if I would post about the upcoming JALT 2008 conference.

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Sean. inscribed these words of wisdom on Thursday Oct 2, 2008 at 01:20 PM
Public_Service_Announcement | Conferences | |

I just recieved the following email from KOTESOL regarding the Seoul Chapter annual conference. If you are intersted in presenting or attending click the link to learn more.

Dear KOTESOL Colleagues,

KOTESOL Seoul Chapter is seeking workshop presenters for the Seoul Chapter annual conference on March 28, 2009.

For more information, please check out the notice on the Seoul Chapter main page (http://www.kotesol.org/?q=Seoul).

The conference offers an opportunity to share your research and teaching insights with like-minded colleagues in a professional yet warm and cordial setting. We urge you to send in your proposals, even if it might be a first for you!

Best wishes,

Grace Wang
KOTESOL Seoul Chapter, Secretary

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Sean. inscribed these words of wisdom on Thursday Sep 25, 2008 at 01:20 PM
Public_Service_Announcement | Conferences | KOTESOL | |

English villages across Korea are losing money and have failed in their purpose. I’m not surprised. Read the whole story at the Joongang Daily.

Regional governments invested heavily in the villages without much consideration for educational demand.

As a result, half of them are concentrated in the Seoul metropolitan area and some are only a two to three minutes’ drive from each other.

Most of them offer short-term programs lasting only a few days, which means they cannot satisfy the original purpose of complementing English education at schools and substituting costly English learning programs abroad.

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Sean. inscribed these words of wisdom on Sunday Sep 7, 2008 at 05:21 PM
Public_Service_Announcement | ESL_in_the_News | |

Charles is conducting research on Korean oral literature and culture as seen by foreigners. If you live or have lived in Korea then go fill out this survey and help him out.

I’m filling it out now and have also added the link to my facebook profile.

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Sean. inscribed these words of wisdom on Saturday Jul 12, 2008 at 06:59 AM
Public_Service_Announcement | Random_Ramblings | |

Dealing with racism in hagwon (language institutes) is an article in Susan Kim in the Expat Living section of the Korea Herald. This is the same section that I write for.
The article is interesting and since it will go to subscription shortly I will include it in full in the extended entry.

I’m very interested in hearing comments from readers in Korea and outside of Korea about their experiences with this issue.

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Sean. inscribed these words of wisdom on Sunday Jun 15, 2008 at 05:05 PM
Public_Service_Announcement | ESL_in_the_News | |

The 31 day comment challenge is something that I’ve been meaning to write about and participate in since it started but I’m already 7 days behind. I first heard about it from Langwitches where there are already numerous posts about the activity.

The challenge is to essentially widen the range of comments and discussion in the edublogger arena - one of the keys to keeping your posts known is to tag them for technocrati with comment08 or include a link to that feed in your entry. There is also a list of participants on the wiki which will be a great source to find new blogs to follow - I’ll be adding my blog there and trying to participate as much as possible.

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Sean. inscribed these words of wisdom on Wednesday May 7, 2008 at 09:08 AM
Public_Service_Announcement | useful_web_sites | |

Brandon Carr writes a lengthy post about where English teachers in Korea can go for legal help.

Korea Law Blog’s advice to English teachers is this: Stop trying to “sue” your scummy hagwon owner with a $500/hour big law firm. Talk your case over with Gerald Staruiala, then pay Mr. Bong-Soo Jung his fee to file your complaint with the District Labor Office. This starts a process of administrative tribunal backed by criminal prosecution (i.e., the power of the State)—the most effective implement to deal with a snake.

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Sean. inscribed these words of wisdom on Friday Apr 11, 2008 at 06:05 AM
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Secrets of Those that Do the TEFL Hiring is both a thread on the ELT World forums and a post on the ELT World blog summarizing the thread. This is an informative read with perspectives from various people involved in hiring from around the globe.

I’ve been going to ELT World for a while now. The forums have a good mix of people from various countries and it doesn’t seem to be quite so vitriolic as Dave’s Cafe. There is also a little more professional talk, though that is not all - there’s still the chatty threads and fun things that one would expect from a message board.

The downside is that there are not enough regular posters. there are 3-5 new posts/threads a day in the busiest forums, but other forums haven’t seen a post since I started there. I really think that this forum has potential to be an excellent community and for ELT instructors world wide. However the admin has tried to copy Dave’s cafe by have forums for each specific country or region when there isn’t the user base to support this. If there were only 2-3 forums to start the users that are there would be more concentrated resulting in more new threads in the area of high traffic. This would draw in more users and eventually there would be a large enough user base to diversify and add more forums.

Despite the lack of focus, I am an active member there and will continue to be so for the foreseeable future. If you are looking for a community with potential for growth and that is not over moderated and filled with negativity like Dave’s Cafe then I suggest you head over to the ELT World Forums and give them a boost. Also check out the affiliated blog.

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Sean. inscribed these words of wisdom on Saturday Apr 5, 2008 at 07:35 AM
Public_Service_Announcement | Teaching | useful_web_sites | |

For the past few months I haven’t been commenting on or linking to other blogs very much. I’m not sure why, but instead of saving posts in order to comment/link to them later I’m going to try and get on it right away.

First off, Larry Ferlazzo has been doing some serious high quality ELT blogging for some time now and there are so many posts that i have failed to comment on or link to it’s a shame. Be sure to check out his archives. I submitted an entry to the Fourth ELL/ESL/EFL Carnival that Larry posted including this comment EFL Geek from Korea, who might be the “dean” of ESL/EFL bloggers. I don’t know about that, but I like the sound of it. Thanks Larry. Another recent entry is The Best Websites for Learning English Pronunciation

The Marmot (47 comments and counting) also links to an op/ed piece in the Korea times - Foreign Teachers need to be given a Stake in the System. I agree with the basic premise that foreign instructors need to be given a stake in the system, but the author shoots himself in the foot when he writes:

Candidates should be selected from the top 50 universities of English-speaking nations with a demonstrated ability to deliver knowledge in a confident, meticulous, and courteous manner.

The author has a B.A. in Sociology and an M.A. in Asian Studies, how does that qualify one to be a language teacher? Sure it meets the visa qualifications, but I would take a teacher with education and linguistics degree from an unknown university over a teacher with an unrelated degree from Harvard.

The Marmot (9 comments and counting) also links to an article stating that SMOE will send foreign instructors to a 2 month training program.

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Sean. inscribed these words of wisdom on Wednesday Apr 2, 2008 at 12:43 PM
Public_Service_Announcement | useful_web_sites | ESL_in_the_News | |

I’ve recently had an epiphany. I’m going back to the root of language teaching. The traditional method of grammar translation is the best way to teach English. Clearly if students cannot use grammar correctly they will never be able to use the language.

Over the last 15 years it has truly become apparent that Communicative Language Teaching is just another fad that is quickly fading away just like The Silent Way and TPR. The only truly effective way to learn a language is to translate word for word classical works of prose.

I know this is true because over the last 6 months I’ve been doing this for my Korean study and now I am fluent in Korean with native like command of the language. I’m considering taking on part time work teaching other foreigners Korean since Korean language teaching has also been suckered into the belief that CLT is the way. Practitioners of CLT should be burned at the stake like the witches of the 17th century.

Come join me in returning to the roots of language teaching by focusing on grammar translation.

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Sean. inscribed these words of wisdom on Tuesday Apr 1, 2008 at 05:02 PM
Public_Service_Announcement | Teaching | |

Alex Case is reporting on some (il)legal troubles that bloggers are encountering with one individual on the internet. It seems that this individual is threatening to sue owners of blogs even when said blogs have written nothing about this individual on their own blogs.

It also appears that he has been somewhat successful in shutting down two bloggers already. He is currently targeting Alex - go read Alex’s post and offer your support.

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Sean. inscribed these words of wisdom on Thursday Mar 13, 2008 at 03:35 PM
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According to this article in the Korea Times foreign teachers are starting an association. The organization is called The Association of English Teachers in Korea (ATEK) see also this thread on Dave’s cafe for further commentary.

This has been definitely been needed for sometime, but has always met with the response that this type of organization/union is illegal for foreigners in Korea to participate in. I’m not sure about this as ATEK may not be a union. In any case I am 100% in support of this. Below is a quote from the Korea Times article.

ATEK aims to solve difficulties and troubles that many foreign teachers now face. He enumerated the issues; unpaid salaries, pensions, taxes and health insurance, unsafe and inadequate housing arrangements, arbitrary changes to employment contracts and employers’ refusal to provide letters of release as well as unfair banking practices.

Rainey-Smith, serving as a media relations officer for the association, said it will also encourage cultural diversity by campaigning against sexual, racial and other forms of discrimination such as advertisements of hagwon that say they only want ``white teachers.’’

In the long run, ATEK will pursue ``visa flexibility.’’ The Japanese government allows visa flexibility whereby teachers can enter the country and work for any employer unlike Korea where educators must remain with their sponsors and are not allowed to transfer to other workplaces.

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Sean. inscribed these words of wisdom on Wednesday Mar 12, 2008 at 08:25 AM
Public_Service_Announcement | ESL_in_the_News | |

I’ve been invited to participate in an extensive reading colloquim at the KOTESOL international conference in October. This is a room with 5-6 different presenters at their own individual stations where they speak and answer questions for about 20 minutes three or four times. attendees move from one station to the next and thus get several different points of view and experiences with Extensive reading in an intensive and personal manner.

Coincidentally March is Reading Month, at least in North America. My next column for the Korea Herald will be an introduction to Extensive Reading.

Additionally KOTESOL has started an Extensive Reading SIG. I’ve copied and pasted the information below including contact information for Scott Miles (he’s in charge). I’m not sure why there isn’t a spot on the KOTESOL web page for the SIG. I guess it’s coming soon.

We are very happy to announce the formation of the Extensive Reading Special Interest Group (ERSIG). Extensive reading is a great way to develop reading and overall language skills, and we’d like to do what we can to promote in further in Korea. Some of the purposes of ERSIG are as follows:
1. Promote extensive reading as a viable approach to reading and general language development in Korea.
2. Share ideas on how to apply extensive reading in the language classroom in Korea
3. Promote and disseminate research related to extensive reading practices
This spring we hope to recruit a number of people to join as officers and members and then hold our first meeting to define ERSIG’s structure, policies and goals. We will also try to get some time to speak in local KOTESOL chapter meetings to drum up some interest. Finally, to get ERSIG started off with a big bang, we plan to hold a symposium focused on extensive reading in the early fall. We hope to draw in some of the bigger names in the field of extensive reading.
We encourage anyone interested in joining ERSIG or just getting more information to contact us:
Scott Miles: (JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)
Aaron Jolly: (JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)

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Sean. inscribed these words of wisdom on Sunday Mar 9, 2008 at 08:24 AM
Public_Service_Announcement | KOTESOL | |