Call For Papers

The Conference Committee invites submissions of abstracts for presentations at CLESOL 2010. The theme of the conference is Context and Communication: Mediating Language Learning, Te Horopaki me te Tuku: He Rongoā i te Ako Reo. Presentations, workshops, and colloquia that relate to the conference theme are especially welcome, but all topics relevant to language teaching and learning will be considered. Presentations may include:

Research-based inquiry into topics relevant to the conference theme and language teaching and learning
Theory-based inquiry into topics relevant to the conference theme
Practice-based ideas, approaches, and strategies for teaching and learning language

The committee encourages first-time presenters, especially those from the primary and secondary sectors, and hopes to establish support from more experienced ones.

Please follow the prompts to sign up for an account and to submit documents for CLESOL 2010.

Click here to submit your submission using the online submission form.

Full instructions on how to use the online submission form can be found here.

Call for papers closes in April 2010.

Call for papers acceptance letters will be sent out in May 2010.

Conference Programme

The conference programme will run from Friday 1 October through to Monday 4 October 2010.

Pre-conference workshops will be held on Friday 1 October with keynote speakers.

The conference programme will be confirmed in April 2010.

Pre-conference Workshops

Further information regarding the Pre-Conference Workshops, including registration fees, will be available in December 2009.

Pauline Gibbons
Building Bridges to Text
This workshop focuses on some of the ways that teachers can support ESL learners to be successful and effective readers. It will explore how carefully planned ‘before-reading’ and ‘during-reading’ activities allow even lower-level ESL learners to be ‘scaffolded-up’ to read texts that are age-appropriate.

Well-designed activities ‘build bridges’ between what learners bring to a text, and the text itself. In addition, they not only help learners to access the meaning of the particular text they are reading, but can also model the processes and strategies that effective readers use as they read. These activities therefore aim at teaching learners about reading, rather than on testing their comprehension of reading.

Participants will have opportunities to participate in some of the reading activities, and to share ideas from their own practice.

Jill and Charlie Hadfield
Teaching Grammar Creatively
This practical workshop will focus on techniques and activities for practising grammar structures in speaking and writing. Grammar practice activities are too often decontextualised and uncommunicative, relying either on mechanical repetition or on intellectual analysis of grammatical structures. The focus in this workshop will be on activities that practise grammar in a different way: exploring activities that establish a context for grammar, provide opportunities for meaningful communication, and draw on students’ creativity and sense of play. Engaging students in this way, we would argue, provides a more profound learning experience than either rote-learning or intellectual analysis.

David Nunan
Empowerment through action research
I have been an enthusiastic practitioner of and advocate for action research for many years. I believe that AR is one of the most effective ways through which teachers can take greater control of their own teaching and their own ongoing professional development. While taking part in action research involves teachers in additional work, it also gives them greater power over their professional workplace, and is the ideal mechanism for professional growth and development. Involving learners as collaborators in action research (doing research with them rather than on them) can also contribute to the growth of learner autonomy and give learners greater power over their own learning.

In this workshop, participants will work through the steps involved in planning and implementing classroom-based action research. Following an initial input and discussion session, the bulk of the workshop will be given over to a small group task in which participants will work collaboratively to create an action research plan.

Merrill Swain
Humour in the ESL Classroom
OISE/UT
During this workshop, we will explore the use of humour in the language classroom. The literature on humour discusses three types: universal or reality-based humour; culture-based humour; and linguistic or word-based humour. We will focus on the third type which includes riddles and puns. We will look at examples of students’ languaging (collaborative dialogue and private speech) in which learners use language to solve the linguistically and cognitively complex problems evoked by riddles and puns. The students’ languaging is a source of second language learning.

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