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Prof.
Sean Lancaster
Grand Valley State
University in Michigan, USA
Dr. Sean Lancaster is currently an Assistant Vice
President of Academic Affairs and Professor at Grand
Valley State University in Michigan, USA, with about
22,000 students. GVSU is a public university that is
nationally ranked by US News and World Report. Dr.
Lancaster is also a Research Fellow with the
international Michigan Virtual Learning Research
Institute. He began his professor journey 23 years ago
and has taught courses around technology in education,
special education, and English language learning. Prior
to his current administrative position, Dr. Lancaster
served as a Department Chair of Literacy and Technology,
which included a graduate program in English Language
Learning. He earned his Ph.D. from the University of
Kansas, which had the #1 ranked Special Education
program and provided him with a strong focus on phonemic
awareness, phonics, and vocabulary, which has been
beneficial when teaching English language learning
classes. Dr. Lancaster has won three teaching awards
during his tenure as a professor, including a unanimous
selection as Outstanding Teacher from the graduate
students at the university. He has also won many
millions of dollars in National Institutes of Health
(NIH) research funding through the years to develop
educational software. His research has most recently
explored how teaching pedagogies can best make learning
equitable for students who have traditionally been
marginalized.
Title: The Intersection of Technology, Pedagogy, and Learning
Abstract: Research conducted at universities across the world makes vast contributions to the knowledge base in our respective fields and leads to advances that improve our world. An equally important contribution made in universities is in the provision of high-quality education, training, and preparation to students who will become future leaders and problem solvers. The ever-present and rapid-paced access to information insists on the use of instructional pedagogies that promote discernment, critical thinking, and discourse. This talk provides an examination of evidence-based practices focused on such pedagogies. Dr. Sean Lancaster will engage the audience in a discussion of ongoing research on essential pedagogical practices that technology can enhance and that engage all students.
Prof.
Kevin Balchin
Canterbury Christ Church
University, UK
Kevin is currently the Director of the Centre for
Language and Linguistics at Canterbury Christ Church
University. He has been working at the University since
2002 and before that taught English as a Foreign
Language in Spain and Russia for seven years. In recent
years, he has been involved in several international
projects, such as with the British Council in
Bangladesh, as well as contributing to a number of
undergraduate and postgraduate programmes and
supervising doctoral students. He's currently
supervising PhDs relating to different aspects of
teacher education, English language teaching
methodology, and the integration of technology into
language classes. His research interests are in English
language teacher education and incorporating technology
into English language teaching.
Title: Reflection in
English Language Teacher Education
Abstract: This talk
considers student teacher reflection on English Language
teacher training programmes. It discusses the degree to
which student teachers are equipped to reflect
effectively, the purpose(s) of reflection within the
training programme, the depth and scope of the
reflections that take place, and the role of emotions in
the reflection process.
As a student on English Language teacher training
programmes, I was often asked to reflect on my teaching,
and now, as a teacher trainer on similar programmes, I
find myself asking my own student teachers to do the
same. However, I’ve recently begun to question the
reflection process, including whether student teachers
are given enough guidance on reflection in the first
place. Drawing upon the seminal work of Schön (1983,
1987) on reflective practice and more recently the work
of Farrell (2015) on ‘promoting teacher reflection in
second language teacher education’, issues considered in
this talk include:
• the extent to which student English Language teachers
feel equipped to reflect on their teaching;
• the extent to which student teacher reflection should
focus on the ‘here and now’ of teaching;
• the extent to which student teacher reflection helps
to develop the necessary skills to embark upon and
sustain a career in teaching; and
• the impact of emotions on student teacher reflection.
Among the conclusions reached are that student English
Language teachers’ reflections can often be primarily
concerned with solving their surface-level and immediate
problems in the classroom. If student teachers are to be
encouraged to move beyond this, then there is a need for
greater levels of guidance before and during the
reflection process, for the process itself to be more
clearly defined and structured, and for the emotions
involved in reflective process to be recognised.
Prof.
Yizhong Xu
Nanjing University of
Aeronautics and Astronautics, China
Dr. Yizhong Xu is professor and associate director of
College of Foreign Languages at Nanjing University of
Aeronautics and Astronautics. His research interests
include contrastive studies on Chinese between Foreign
languages and cultures, theoretical linguistics,
cognitive linguistics and experimental phonetics. He was
a visiting scholar at the Institute for Electronic
Science, Hokkaido University and the Department of
Psychology, Lancaster University, UK. He won the second
Prize of Project of Social Science Foundation of Jiangsu
Province in 2021 and was the training subject of “333
high-level Talent Project” of Jiangsu Province. He has
published more than 20 papers in the prestigious
journals, including Contemporary Linguistics, Journal of
Foreign Languages, Chinese Scientific Journal of Hearing
and Speech Rehabilitation, Language Sciences, Studies in
Language and Linguistics, Applied Linguistics, Foreign
Languages and Their Teaching, Journal of Zhejiang
University Science. He was in charge of two projects of
the National Social Science Foundation of China. He is
the assessor and reviewer of the National Social Science
Foundation, the reviewer of Humanities and Social
Science Foundation Projects of the Ministry of
Education, and reviewer of Chinese Teaching in the World
and Language Sciences as well as communication expert in
the graduate dissertation evaluation of China Academic
Degree Center.
Title: Language or
Culture: Which Determines Kinship Terminology?
Abstract:
Are differences in kinship terms among different
countries determined by cultural or linguistic factors?
This talk provides an empirical examination of how
native speakers of different languages introduce their
relatives through surveys and corpora analysis. The
results show that the linguistic system in kinship
exerts an influence on the way people address their
relatives, providing strong evidence for the theory that
language structure influences cognition. Furthermore,
this talk also discusses the reasons why language
systems influence kinship terminology from the
perspective of linguistic features and human cognitive
tendencies, and explores the interrelationship and
interaction between language and culture, revealing the
influence of language on culture and emphasizing the
important role of language in the progress of human
civilization. nb
Keywords: Kinship Terminology;
Language; Culture; Cognition
Prof.
Donghui He
Whitman College, USA
Professor He received a Ph.D. in comparative literature from the University of British Columbia. Before joining the Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures at Whitman College in 2008, she had taught at Peking University, Vassar College, and the University of Tennessee, where she also served as the Chinese Program Coordinator. Her expertise is in modern and contemporary Chinese culture (literature, cinema, spoken drama, and the Chinese cultural diaspora), comparative literature, eco-criticism, sociolinguistics, and language pedagogy. Professor He has written on Chinese eco-cinema, Sino-Soviet cultural connections, avant-garde theatre, the contemporary Chinese intellectual mainstream, and constructions of the countryside in modern Chinese and English fiction. She is currently completing a book project that explores representations of the natural landscape in Chinese public culture.
Title: Community of
Practice in the Service of Continuous Professional
Development
Abstract: This presentation discusses communities of
practice for continuous professional development among
foreign language instructors. It uses the largest online
group for Chinese language instructors at Canadian
Universities as a case study. In Canada, Chinese
language instruction is a new field of study, which is
marginally represented in periodical workshops. Most of
major events - such as the annual conferences for the
Modern Language Association and the American Council on
the Teaching of Foreign Languages - are in America. At
the same time, most Canadian Universities are spread out
across large distances, making it challenging for their
faculties to come together to exchange information and
best practices regularly. The formation of this online
community was initially spurred by a shared desire to
equip its members with tools for online classes during
COVID-19. Yet, the online consortium has not only
survived the pandemic; it has also grown into a
permanent fixture with weekly meetings and a membership
that continues to grow. This paper tracks the
community’s evolution in three dimensions including 1)
charting the domain; 2) building a community; and 3)
supporting collaboration. In offering the Canadian case,
I hope to call attention to the existence of many
possible localities in the globalized understanding of
second language acquisition.