Upcoming ELT conferences in Taiwan 2011 and 2012

There will be quite a few ELT conferences this year in Taiwan.

One of the best known is the ETA - ROC International Symposium on Language Teaching which will take place in November. This year's symposium contains a number of "big names", including Stephen Krashen, Rod Ellis, Paul Nation, Ken Hyland and Tim Murphey.

Another conference that looks promising is the 2011 NTUT International Conference on Applied Linguistics, also in November. Michael Hoey and Susan M. Gass will be presenting.

For more information about these two conferences, as well as several others in 2011, go to the list of conferences on the Forumosa website:

ELT Conferences 2011

In addition, take a look at this list of conferences in 2012:

ELT Conferences 2012

5 books I'm looking forward to reading in 2011

Since last week I shared a few books I'm familiar with, this week I'd like to preview a few titles I want to read in 2011.

I've been reading up on the receptive skills recently (reading and listening), so I was glad to hear that the books from the Applied Linguistics in Action series covering these two skills were being revised. If you're not familiar with this series, these books give a thorough overview of research in applied linguistics in a number of different areas including the four skills, motivation, autonomous learning, and more.

Teaching and Researching Reading by William Grabe and Fredericka Stoller looks quite interesting. I spoke to Professor Grabe last month when he was presenting at the ETA-ROC conference in Taipei, Taiwan last month. He said that there have been some major changes from the earlier edition, and mentioned that there would be a new chapter which explains how the two authors think reading should be taught.

One more title in this series, Teaching and Researching Listening by Michael Rost, is another book I definitely want to read. Michael Rost is well-known for many books and articles on teaching listening, and this one should provide a comprehensive summary of the latest research.

Another book with a new edition coming out is Learning Teaching, a classic introduction to teaching English. This is one of my favorite ELT books, and I can't wait to see the changes in the third edition. According to the information on the publisher's website, this new edition will contain a DVD with a sample lesson and demonstrations of several teaching techniques.

Two more books I'd like to have on my shelf are The Company Words Keep and Digital Play, new titles in Delta Publishing's Delta Teacher Development Series. (Sorry, no book cover images for these two books as of today.)

The Company Words Keep by Paul Davis and Hania Kryszeweska is a book of activities for teaching lexical chunks. There's not much information on the publisher's page, but I'm sure this will be updated soon, as the book will come out in Spring 2011. Having read several books by both authors, I think this one should be brilliant.

Digital Play by Kyle Mawer and Graham Stanley, provides teachers with lots of information about using computer games and other ICTs in the classroom. In light of the fact that Taiwan (where I live and teach) has one of the world's largest markets for computer games, I'm sure I will get a lot of use out of Digital Play.

Do you know of any new books coming out in 2011 that I didn't mention? Please post your reading list here. (Authors are most welcome to tell us about your new books.)

upcoming conferences in Taiwan

For any readers who are in Taiwan, you might be interested in hearing about two upcoming conferences.

The first is at National Cheng Chi University (Taipei), on October 16th, 2010. You can read more about the conference on the NCCU website:

4th Conference on College English - College English Programs: Design and implementation

Scott Sommers, a university instructor and blogger in Taiwan, had this to say about the conference:

I attended this conference last year. It was excellent - easily the best conference I have attended in Taiwan. If you are curious about the conference scene or interested in presenting, this is the number one ELT conference I recommend.

Another conference worth attending is the ETA - ROC 19th International Symposium on Language Teaching (Taipei) on November 12-14, 2010. This year, some familiar names (David Nunan, William Grabe, Stephen Krashen, Neil Anderson, Fredricka Stoller) will be presenting. You can see a complete program for the conference here:

ETA - ROC 19th International Symposium on Language Teaching

On the subject of conferences, Alex Case has some unbeatable advice for making it worthwhile:

Attending TESOL Conferences by Alex Case

Jeremy Harmer has some similar suggestions on his blog:

What Makes a Good Conference? by Jeremy Harmer

Finally, if you're giving a talk, Andrew Wright has some good ideas here:

Some notes on giving talks at conferences by Andrew Wright

odd moments in ELT history

One of the more unusual efforts to promote the learning of EFL appeared in Tainan City, Taiwan about 8 years ago. The city's mayor had the idea that getting the garbage trucks to blare out phrases such as "HOW ARE YOU?" at top volume was a fantastic way to help the Taiwanese develop their English. You can read more about this revolutionary new teaching method here:

http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/feat/archives/2002/09/07/167223

Inspiring Creativity

Brian David Phillips, a professor in Taiwan, recently did a presentation on creativity at the Taipei First Girls High School. Here you can read more about the presentation and see a short clip:

http://briandavidphillips.typepad.com/brian/2008/04/inspiring-creat.html