Keynote Presenters
We are pleased to welcome Dr Tove Skutnabb-Kangas, Professor Robert Phillipson, Professor Suresh Canagarajah, Dr Tracey Derwing, Gillian Wigglesworth, Jane Simpson, Juanita Sellwood, Brock Brady and Dorothy Hoddinott as keynote and plenary presenters for our 2012 ACTA Conference in Cairns.
Professor Gillian Wigglesworth
Gillian Wigglesworth received her PhD in 1993 from La Trobe University with a thesis entitled "Investigating children's cognitive and linguistic development through narrative".
From 1992 to 1994 she worked at the University of Melbourne in the Department of Applied Linguistics and the Language Testing Research Centre, where she focused particularly on the development of oral language assessments.
She worked in the Department of Linguistics at Macquarie University from 1995-2001 where she was coordinator of the applied linguistics postgraduate programs.
From 2000-2001 she was also a member of the Adult Migrant English Program Research Centre research staff. She returned to the University of Melbourne in 2001 where she has been Head of the School of Languages and Linguistics since 2005.
Gillian Wigglesworth's home page: http://languages.unimelb.edu.au/about/staff/profiles/wigglesworth.html
Dr Jane Simpson
Jane Simpson studies the structure and use of several Australian Aboriginal languages: Warumungu, Kaurna and Warlpiri. She has worked on land claims in the Tennant Creek area, on maintenance of Indigenous languages and establishing electronic archives of text and audio-visual material.
With Gillian Wigglesworth she embarked on ACLA, the Aboriginal Child Language Acquisition project, a major longitudinal study of Aboriginal children in remote communities acquiring creoles, English and traditional languages. She has carried out fieldwork on Indigenous Australian languages since 1979, and received a PhD in linguistics from MIT in 1983 for a study of Warlpiri in the Lexical-Functional Grammar framework. She is Chair of Indigenous Linguistics and head of the School of Language Studies at the Australian National University.
She occasionally blogs at "Endangered languages and cultures" http://www.paradisec.org.au/blog/. Recent publications relating to language and education include:
Simpson, J. and G. Wigglesworth, Eds. (2008). Children’s language and multilingualism: Indigenous language use at home and school. London, Continuum International.
Simpson, J., J. Caffery, and P. McConvell. (2009). "Gaps in Australia's Indigenous Language Policy: Dismantling bilingual education in the Northern Territory." Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies Discussion Paper 24.
Simpson, J., P. McConvell, and J. Caffery (2011). Maintaining languages, maintaining identities: what bilingual education offers. Indigenous language and social identity: papers in honour of Michael Walsh. B. Baker, I. Mushin, M. Harvey and R. Gardner. Canberra, Pacific Linguistics.
Professor Robert Phillipson is a graduate of Cambridge and Leeds Universities, UK, and has a doctorate from the University of Amsterdam. He worked for the British Council in Spain, Algeria, Yugoslavia and London (1964-73) before settling in Denmark, where he has been a Professor at Copenhagen Business School since 2000. From 1973-2000 he was at the University of Roskilde, where student multidisciplinary group-work projects were the main learning system. He has had attachments to universities in Australia (Monash), Hungary (Pec), India (Mysore), and the UK (Cambridge). Robert’s books on language learning, linguistic human rights, and language policy have been published in ten countries.
He is best known for Linguistic Imperialism (Oxford University Press, 1992, also published in China and India, and in Saudi Arabia in Arabic) and English-only Europe? Challenging language policy (Routledge 2003). Published in 2009 were Linguistic imperialism continued , a collection of articles and book reviews over a ten-year period (Routledge, New York and Orient Blackswan in New Delhi, and Social justice through multilingual education, edited with Tove Skutnabb-Kangas, Ajit Mohanty and Minati Panda (Bristol: Multilingual Matters, also published in an expanded form by Orient Blackswan). He has functioned as an expert evaluator for the European Commission of applications for funding in the socio-economic sciences and humanities, and of the progress of ongoing projects. He was awarded the UNESCO Linguapax prize in 2010. For details of CV and publications, see his website, from which several articles can be downloaded.
Dr Tove Skutnabb-Kangas has been actively involved with struggles for language rights for five decades. Research interests: linguistic human rights; linguistic genocide and crimes against humanity in the education of Indigenous/ tribal/ minority/ minoritised children; linguicism (linguistically argued racism); multilingual education; linguistic imperialism and the subtractive spread of English; support for endangered languages; and the relationship between linguistic and cultural diversity and biodiversity.
Some books in English (for more, see http://www.tove-skutnabb-kangas.org/en/index-en.html): Bilingualism or Not: the Education of Minorities (1984); Linguistic Human Rights. Overcoming Linguistic Discrimination, ed. with Robert Phillipson (1994); Linguistic Genocide in Education - or Worldwide Diversity and Human Rights? (2000); Sharing a World of Difference. The Earth's Linguistic, Cultural, and Biological Diversity (with Luisa Maffi and David Harmon, 2003), Imagining Multilingual Schools: Language in Education and Glocalization, ed. with Ofelia García and María Torres-Guzmán (2006), Social Justice through Multilingual Education (2009), ed. with Ajit Mohanty, Minati Panda, and Robert Phillipson; Indigenous Children’s Education as Linguistic Genocide and a Crime Against Humanity? A Global View (2010, with Robert Dunbar; Multilingual Education Works: from the Periphery to the Centre, ed. with Kathleen Heugh (2010). Tove lives on a small organic farm in Denmark with husband Robert Phillipson.
Professor Suresh Canagarajah is Edwin Erle Sparks Professor in the Departments of English and Applied Linguistics at the Pennsylvania State University. He had his early education in the war-torn northern region of Sri Lanka, where he later taught English language and literature for students from mostly rural backgrounds at the University of Jaffna. Later, he joined the faculty at the City University of New York (Baruch College and the Graduate Center) where he taught multilingual urban students for a decade. His research on the literacy concerns of African American students has appeared in composition journals. He has also studied issues in bilingualism and English language teaching.
His book Resisting Linguistic Imperialism in English Teaching (OUP 1999) won Modern Language Association’s Mina Shaughnessy Award for the best research publication on the teaching of language and literacy. His subsequent publication Geopolitics of Academic Writing (University of Pittsburgh Press 2002) won the Gary Olson Award for the best book in social and rhetorical theory. Critical Academic Writing and Multilingual Students (University of Michigan Press 2002) applies composition research and scholarship for the needs of multilingual students. His edited collection Reclaiming the Local in Language Policy and Practice (Erlbaum 2005) examines linguistic and literacy constructs in the context of globalization. His study of World Englishes in Composition won the 2007 Braddock Award for the best article in the College Composition and Communication journal. Suresh edited the flagship journal of the international professional organization for English language teachers, TESOL Quarterly, from 2004 to 2009. He is the conference chair and incoming President of the American Association of Applied Linguistics. Please see Professor Canagarajah's home page at http://www.personal.psu.edu/asc16/ for more details.
Juanita Sellwood BEd (JCU), MEd (Hons, JCU) (current)…
Juanita is a lecturer in the School of Education, James Cook University in Cairns and teaches in the field of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Education. Her family heritage links to the Indigenous Australian community of Masig (Yorke Island) in the Torres Strait.
In conjunction with the Indigenous Schooling Support Unit, Juanita recently developed the subject ‘Teaching English as a second language to Indigenous Students’ as part of the core teacher education program at JCU. This subject is the first in the state of Queensland to be initiated as a compulsory part of teacher education that offers ESL pedagogy specifically for ESL Indigenous students.
Juanita experienced first hand the difficulties of navigating a schooling system that did not recognise her home language or that she was an ESL learner. This experience has influenced her teaching and research interests in the areas of cultural diversity, effective teaching practices for ESL Indigenous students and the language situation for Indigenous Australians.
Denise Angelo is an educator and linguist, based at the Far North Queensland Indigenous Schooling Support Unit in Cairns where she manages the Language Perspectives Group (LPG). This group brings together linguists with educators who have teaching experience in primary, secondary, TESOL and LOTE disciplines and methodologies. The LPG works on language projects across Queensland with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students' vernacular language varieties, second language acquisition of Standard Australian English (SAE) and teaching traditional Indigenous languages in schools. Her largest current project, Bridging the Language Gap, funded by the commonwealth Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations involves building capacity of staff in 85 schools for identifying, supporting and monitoring Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children who are learning English as a foreign or second language.
Denise has worked with teams teaching traditional Aboriginal languages across northern Australia; training Aboriginal interpreters and translators; researching contact language varieties; and developing teaching approaches to support classroom learning in SAE for Indigenous students with complex "contact language" backgrounds. Contact language varieties - their historical and present day development, their role for communities, families and individuals, the recognition and attitudes assigned to them, and their impact in education - are her main interest.
Featured Speakers
Dr Tracey Derwing is a professor of TESL in the Department of Educational Psychology at the University of Alberta, and a Co-Director of the Prairie Metropolis Centre for Research on Immigration, Integration and Diversity.
Professor Derwing prepares teachers who plan to teach English as a second or foreign language. In collaboration with Dr Murray Munro, she has carried out extensive research on issues of second language learners' oral fluency and pronunciation, particularly the extent to which accent interferes with intelligibility. They have also studied native speaker reactions to second language-accented speech. In addition, Dr. Derwing has focused on the effects of modifications native speakers make when addressing low proficiency speakers of English. She has also conducted large studies on the settlement experiences of refugees in Canada together with Drs. Baha Abu-Laban and Harvey Krahn. Dr. Derwing's publications appear in journals such as Language Learning, Studies in Second Language Acquisition, Applied Linguistics, and TESOL Quarterly. Dr. Derwing has served as an editor of the TESL Canada Journal and more recently of the Canadian Modern Language Review.
Please see Professor Derwing's home page at: http://www.edpsychology.ualberta.ca/en/People/AcademicStaff/TraceyMDerwing.aspx for more details.
Brock Brady is the Programming and Training Education Specialist for the U.S. Peace Corps and the current Past-President of the TESOL International Association. Before coming to Peace Corps, Brady served as Coordinator then Co Director of the American University TESOL Program in Washington, DC for 12 years, developing and enhancing academic programs and designing and teaching graduate level teacher education courses. Prior to coming to American University, Brady directed English Language Programs for the State Department in Burkina Faso and Benin, lectured at a science and technical university for two years in Korea, served as a Fulbright Scholar in France, and as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Togo, W. Africa. Brady matriculated at Reed College and Portland State University in Oregon.
Brady’s research interests include English language planning and policy, program and course design, cross-cultural discourse analysis, pronunciation, teacher education, and strategies for strengthening grassroots teacher associations. He has also taught English or engaged in educational consulting in the U.S., Angola, China, Costa Rica, Egypt, France, Gambia, Guatemala, Israel, Mali, Mexico, Moldova, Panama, the Philippines, Portugal, Sierra Leone, Singapore, South Africa, and Spain.
Dorothy Hoddinott, Principal of Holroyd High School in South-Western Sydney, was made an Officer of the Order of Australia in 2008. Dorothy's career has encompassed many roles, including her current one of Fellow of Senate of the University of Sydney, and member of the Board of Studies NSW, but she has been professionally defined by her compassion and tireless advocacy for disadvantaged migrant and refugee students. This was amply demonstrated by the trust fund Friends of Zainab which Dorothy set up to support refugee students at school and university.
In the course of her career, she was also president of ATESOL NSW and was instrumental in founding ACTA, which has provided ESL teachers from all states and territories with a voice at the national level, never so important as in the recent development of a national curriculum.
Pre-Conference Pronunciation Symposium, July 2, 2012
Teaching and learning pronunciation: Local and global perspectives on research and practice
'Monday 2 July 2012' at the 'Cairns Convention Centre'
We are pleased to announce a one-day symposium on teaching and learning English pronunciation to be held in conjunction with the Australian Council of TESOL Associations (ACTA) conference in Cairns in July 2012. This symposium will bring together invited experts in different aspects of research and practice in the field and will explore a range of topics related to teaching and learning pronunciation in both local and global contexts. It will feature a half-day colloquium (morning session) followed in the afternoon by concurrent sessions in two streams: one targeting classroom teachers and one targeting researchers and teacher educators.
This symposium represents an exciting opportunity to explore this crucial part of learning English and will be of great benefit to researchers, teachers and teacher educators. Indeed, for symposium registrants who desire further opportunity to explore pronunciation research and practice, the ACTA conference will follow with a dedicated pronunciation stream and plenary speaker (Dr Tracey Derwing).
The symposium has already generated considerable interest both in Australia and internationally, and we are delighted to have the involvement of speakers who are experts in different aspects of research and practice in the field.
For further details see the Pronunciation Symposium website
http://www.pronunciationsymposium.org
