English Language Teachers shared insights at the English as Second Language Conference

The ESL (English as a Second Language) Conference was held on 17 May 2011 (Tue), with 100 teachers from local and international schools, universities and language organisations attended.  The conference had provided a rare occasion for language teachers from different backgrounds to come together and discuss the challenges of English language teaching within Hong Kong. 

 

At the conference, English language specialist Dr David Nunan, Emeritus Professor at the University of Hong Kong, shared a number of learners’ stories over his 40 years’ teaching career.  “Learning a language is like growing a garden rather than constructing a building,” he said.  He thinks that English should be learnt both inside and outside of the classroom, and communicative knowledge is very important in addition to the acquisition of grammatical knowledge.  Dr Nunan also shared the seven hypotheses of how learning of English can be enhanced, which have suggested directions for future research, curriculum development, pedagogies and classroom management.

       

The teachers participated in a number of workshops in many topics, such as “All Aboard the wiki-wiki: collaborative writing and Web 2.0”, “Distinguishing the difference: EAL or SEN?”, “Designing tasks to motivate and engage Hong Kong senior secondary students”, “Tracking student successes”, and so on.  In the afternoon, all teachers attended a plenary discussion where they shared ideas on the major challenges and opportunities for developing and improving current support for students of English as a second language within Hong Kong schools, with regards to the Education Bureau’s aims of the English Language Education Curriculum. 

 

The event was hosted by ESF Educational Services (ESL), with the theme “Best Practice in Teaching and Testing English in primary and secondary Schools and Language Centres in Hong Kong”.  “We are delighted to be able to facilitate this event.  It is our hope that it will provide a platform from which we can build bridges amongst all of us within the ESL community - strengthening old support networks and developing new ones as we are joined in our common goal of furthering the provision of English in Hong Kong through our various teaching backgrounds,” said Marie Murphy, Head of Languages for ESF Educational Services.

 

Dr. David Nunan is Emeritus Professor at the University of Hong Kong, Vice President for Academic Affairs at Anaheim University, and Professor in Education at the University of New South Wales. He has published over 100 scholarly books and articles on teacher education, curriculum development and classroom-based research. His series Go For It is the largest selling textbook series in the world with total sales of over two billion copies. Honours and awards include a 2003 citation by the United States Congress for services to English language education, and the 2003 Heinle TESOL Lifetime Achievement Award.