2015 TESOL International Convention in Toronto, Canada, by Kate Nolin-Smith
The International TESOL Convention is one of the biggest events of the year. Many in
the field look forward to attending it for professional development, presenting research,
networking with other professionals, and enjoying the cultural experiences this type of
conference facilitates.
My TESOL International 2015 experience started by researching the city and local
attractions and making commitments to meet with colleagues, previous research collaborators,
and other WITESOL members. The advanced efforts greatly added to my overall convention
experience by allowing me to meet other WITESOL members at a social get-together in Toronto,
explore areas of Toronto’s multicultural city, like Little Italy and Little China, and tour the Casa
Loma Castle. These fantastic personal and cultural highlights added to my conference
experience, while my focus remained on the conference itself.
The International TESOL conference was almost overwhelming with the impressive
number of sessions offered, making it difficult to narrow down which sessions to attend. With
that said, the sessions I chose allowed me to investigate current trends in the field of TESOL and
take away multiple strategies to potentially incorporate into my practice. These wide ranging
sessions included topics in vocabulary acquisition and retention, flipped classrooms,
pronunciation, peer feedback, and corpus linguistics. Each presenter provided a wealth of
information, however, several highlights and practical takeaways stood out for me.
The first two takeaways came from a session on vocabulary acquisition. This session
emphasized teaching students to tie a personal experience or meaning to vocabulary learning.
Often times, the demand for increased vocabulary acquisition is daunting, and students do not
make the distinction between temporarily memorizing vocabulary and actually learning
vocabulary for long-term retention. Studying twenty or so words a week just to pass a test will
not yield long-term retention. As a result of this session, I will be even more vigilant in
facilitating meaningful connections for students with new vocabulary to promote actual learning
aimed at long-term retention. This session also touched on teaching pronunciation, which
reinforced my own practice of pronouncing the syllables of a challenging or new word in reverse
order. I model this strategy for pronouncing difficult words by starting from the last syllable of
the word, then building backwards. Although my students’ success is proof that this strategy
works, as an immerging instructor, it is reassuring to hear other practitioners of TESOL
promoting it.
The next few takeaways from the conference were the feasibility of flipping a classroom
and the approach of a hybrid flipped model. Past experiences with students not doing their
homework led me to believe that a flipped classroom would not work with my students.
However, I learned that flipped classrooms can be done even with a number of students who
don’t typically complete the out-of-class work. One solution for this includes stating the
expectation that students arrive to class prepared. Setting this expectation can be achieved by
assigning a summary or oral report on the outside material. When students know they will be
held accountable for outside work, they are more inclined to complete it. Another solution is
designating a separate area in the classroom for students who do not complete the outside
activities. There, the students can read the assigned homework material or listen to the assigned
lecture on a laptop, while the other students participate in the in-class extended learning
activities. This proposed strategy still provides students who fail to do their homework the same
opportunity to access initial key information in a manner similar to that of a traditional
classroom. This session also addressed the misconception that a flipped classroom has to be an
“all or nothing” approach. On the contrary, it’s possible to create a hybrid approach by “flipping”
the classroom for certain topics or projects, while maintaining traditional classroom routines for
others. Admittedly, learning about the feasibility and flexibility of a flipped classroom made me
reconsider incorporating this design into my future courses.
Another high point from the conference came from a session on pronunciation. This
session focused on fostering independent learning outside of the classroom. The presenters
demonstrated how to accomplish independent pronunciation learning through activities such as
self-diagnosis, drilling, practicing longer discourse, self-monitoring, and noting critical
incidences. The benefits of these strategies seem obvious, but not all instructors specifically
teach these strategies to students. This session was a catalyst for me to reflect on my own
practice and to reconsider my focus. In the future, I will place more emphasis on the above
mentioned strategies in my courses, specifically practicing longer discourse and noting critical
incidence of when the student was misunderstood. Practicing longer discourse will allow
students to improve suprasegmental features, while having students recognize when they are
misunderstood gives them the opportunity to reflect on specific problem areas within their
pronunciation. I believe these two activities will have the greatest impact on my students with
lower degrees of English pronunciation accuracy.
Other practical classroom strategies were offered at a round table session that focused on
the use of peer feedback. Benefits of in-class peer review are recognized for both the writer and
the reviewer, however, it’s imperative to address students’ apprehension to correct peer work.
Instructors should emphasize that students are correcting the text, not the person. Another way to
counter student apprehension is by modeling hedging. These strategies could easily be
incorporated into my own courses to assist students in softening criticism and feeling more
comfortable giving peer feedback.
The last takeaway from the convention came from a corpora linguistics session. The
presenter used will and going to as examples to demonstrate the usefulness of corpus data in
teaching vocabulary. Corpus data supports that going to is more frequently used in spoken
English, while will is more frequently used in written English. This might seem like a minor
point for some, but if instruction is focused on teaching American English academic writing,
instructors should concentrate on vocabulary that is most applicable to this area. I had never
considered the order in which certain text books present vocabulary, verb tenses and form. This
session left me motivated to consult corpus data in making future lesson planning decisions so
that I can focus on the most useful vocabulary for students’ specific academic needs.
Overall, the 2015 International TESOL convention experience provided me with
opportunities to explore local culture, network with other professionals, and take away numerous
strategies to include in a variety of classes. It also reinforced several practices that I currently
employ in my classroom. As an emerging instructor, all four of these are highly valued!
The useful information gained from the conference will be shared with colleagues this
fall over a scheduled Brown Bag Lunch meeting. At that time, I’ll disseminate information from
the conference along with handouts provided by presenters. My hope is that this meeting will not
only facilitate the sharing of detailed information and strategies, but will also spark conversation
about how attending future TESOL conferences can improve the learning experience of our
students.