Language-Literature Conference 2018
Theme: Celebrating the Senses
28.03.2018
Programme
1200 Lunch & registration
1300 Opening Address
1310 Keynote Address
1350 Plenary Session
1420 Tea
1500 Concurrent Workshops I
1610 Concurrent Workshops II
1710 End of conference
About
Date:
28 March 2018 (Wed)
Time:
12PM to 5PM
Venue:
Methodist Girls School
11 Blackmore Drive Singapore 599986
The focus of the conference is on exploring diverse ways that literature and language work to sensitize students to creative, aesthetic, and purposeful forms of communicating and making meaning in our world. Through keynote and workshop sessions, English Language and Literature teachers will be introduced to various ways literature can be infused in language learning. They will also explore a range of innovative strategies to infuse language analysis in the Literature class or literary analysis in the Language class.
This conference is jointly organized by National Institute of Education and Methodist Girls School, Centre of Excellence for Language Arts.
Organizing Committee
Chairpersons: Dr Suzanne Choo (NIE) & Ms Fiona Ngiam (MGS)
NIE Team: Dr Dennis Yeo, Dr Ng Chiew Hong, Dr Loh Chin Ee, Mr Ken Mizusawa
MGS Team: Ms Monica Bong, Ms Tan Choon Gan, Ms Catherine Choo, Ms Thory Chew, Ms Sarah Poon
Keynote Address
A road not yet taken? Challenges and opportunities of literature in the language classroom
In this opening keynote I wish to address some of the understandable anxieties and insecurities some teachers still feel concerning uses of literature in language learning contexts and to offer some responses and solutions. An important component of my response will involve consideration of the inextricable literariness of non-literary language and the ordinariness of much literary language as well as questions of linguistic creativity, pleasure and involvement. Such considerations lead in turn to the relations of all these to learning in both narrower linguistic senses but also extensions to cultural, ethical and much wider educational objectives of teachers. By the end of the keynote I would hope to have built in teachers more confidence in using literature in language teaching as well as giving some initial ideas for the day for materials, strategies and resources to deploy and develop.
By Prof. Geoff Hall
About the speaker: Geoff Hall is Professor and Dean of Humanities and Social Sciences, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences at the University of Nottingham Ningbo, China. At Swansea University, Wales, from 2000- 2011, he led the MA TEFL, BA English Language Studies and was Head of Applied Linguistics from 2007- 2009. His current research interests are literary stylistics, intercultural communication and lobal Englishes and China while his future research focuses on intercultural research and research on uses of English in China, Free Indirect Discourse and emotions in literary reception. His research has been published in various international peer-reviewed journals and he has published book chapters with Routledge, Cambridge University Press, Benjamins, Palgrave Macmillan and Bloomsbury.
Plenary Session
The speakers will provide brief reflections on the keynote talk and offer their thoughts on its applicability to the Singapore school context.
Dr Loh Chin Ee is Assistant Professor at the English Language and Literature Academic Group, NIE. She is the co-editor of Little Things: An Anthology of Poetry (Ethos, 2013), Teaching Literature in Singapore Secondary Schools (Pearson, 2013), Literature in the Asia-Pacific: Policies, Practices and Perspectives in Global Times (Routledge, 2018), co-author of Teaching Poetry to Adolescents (Ethos, 2013) and author of The Space and Practice of Reading: A Case Study of Reading and Social Class in Singapore. Her current research focuses on reading and school libraries, and she hopes to discover new ways of helping students find joy in reading and learning (https://www.readingculturesg.org/).
Ms Ann Ang is a literature teacher and a published writer of prose and poetry. She has taught A-Level and O-Level literature but finds greatest fulfillment in working with N-Level students. Ann's poetry has appeared in Softblow and most recently in Lines Spark Code. She is also the author of Bang My Car, a Singlish-English collection of short stories. Ann is the Head of English Language and Literature at CHIJ St. Theresa's Convent.
Mrs Beatrice Leong has been an English Language and Literature teacher for more than 25 years and enjoys her students’ ‘aha’ moments in the classroom. She was formerly the Head of Department of English Language and Literature, and of the Sophia Blackmore Class (the school-based talent programme) at Methodist Girls’ School. Presently a Senior Teacher, she enjoys working with teachers in her pet interests of curriculum development and teaching.
Workshops
Teachers will participate in 2 out of 8 workshops.
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Workshop 1: Encouraging digital natives to read (Venue: Auditorium)
Choosing reading texts for a generation weaned on social media platforms that celebrate brevity can be a Herculean task. How do we select texts that are simultaneously authentic, engaging, and relevant to digital natives accustomed to reading no more than 280 characters per tweet? This workshop explores how texts, videos, and cartoons are used in the classroom to pique students’ interest in linguistic development and real-world knowledge while preparing them for the demands of the English Language GCE ‘O’ level examination.
Presenters: Mrs Janey Sim & Ms Chuah Cheng Kim (Methodist Girls' School)
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Workshop 2: Infusing Literature and rich texts for Normal Technical students (Venue: Classroom 4D)
Bouncing off a book suggests the approach in which the teachers use novels and poetry in the development and delivery of lessons. At Bedok North Secondary School, the Normal Technical EL curriculum infused the use of novels and poetry for teachers to generate ideas for lesson materials. It also provided a natural platform for book talk and discussion on topics and issues that may not be explored otherwise. The approach of infusing novels into resource planning unleashed teachers’ creativity and offered a plethora of learning opportunities for both teachers and students. In this workshop, participants will get to understand the framework and intent of the Bedok North Secondary School Normal Technical EL curriculum as well as to have a hands-on experience in bouncing ideas off a book and developing resources that are suitable for any course and that are aligned to the syllabus requirements.
Presenters: Ms Lorraine Ng & Ms Anne Yong (Bedok North Secondary School)
Workshop 3: The Subject of Human Emotions: Developing Sense and Sensitivity in the EL Classroom (Venue: Mindspace 1)
A student once said to me, “when you put yourself in another person’s shoes, you leave your own shoes empty.” While our students are far more exposed to ongoings around the world through the news, social media and classes in school, they are ironically becoming more and more detached from these events. How then do we help them engage emotionally with the texts that they read, so that they will truly care and not just cognitively convince themselves they do, about the bigger issues that they read about in EL classes? This workshop presentation will aim to show how Literature (and Drama) combined with the use of Media can enrich the teaching of EL through the heightening of the students’ senses, and the building of that sensitivity and connect between the students and the texts, the students and the world outside their classrooms
Presenter: Ms Valane Tnee (Clementi Town Secondary)
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Workshop 4: Developing Language Skills through Drama (Venue: Mindspace 2)
Drama is both an art form and learning medium that research has consistently demonstrated to develop language skills and enhance student engagement. In this workshop, we will examine ways in which drama strategies, conventions and activities can be utilised to advance Paper 2 skills in the English Language classroom. It will explore how drama can sensitise students to the principles of effective communication via collective meaning-making processes.
Presenter: Mr Ken Mizusawa (NIE)
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Workshop 5: Creative Writing in the Classroom (Venue: Think Tank)
This workshop will deal with how the teaching of language and literature can be infused with creative elements. These creative elements include how voice—the use of and the hearing of that voice—can be employed to better effect, particularly in the projection of emotional intent.
Presenter: Dr Patricia Wong (NIE)
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Workshop 6: Globalising the EL Curriculum (Venue: Conference Room)
Youths today are constantly exposed to news about terrorist attacks, refugees attempting to cross border, climate change, modern-day slavery and other instances of conflict in the world. In the first part of this workshop, participants will be introduced to the features of transnational literature particularly short stories and poems exploring global issues. They will explore how they can tap on such literature to develop students’ understand of aesthetic uses of language as well as students’ capacity to engage in ethical reasoning. Participants will also explore how literary and non-literary texts can complement each other and be used to develop global sensitivities in the English classroom. In the second part of the workshop, participants will be introduced to a global issues curriculum that was implemented in secondary three EL classes at Queensway Secondary School. This curriculum utilized a range of short stories, poems, documentaries, news and opinion articles and other texts. The principles of designing such a curriculum, its learning outcomes and effects on students’ learning will be discussed.
Presenters: Dr Suzanne Choo (NIE), Ms Buganeish Squires (Queensway Secondary), Ms Lau Bee Juan, (Queensway Secondary)
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Workshop 7: Wherefore Visual Texts in the Language Classroom (Venue: Classroom 4O)
In schools and universities across the world, film and graphic novels are studied as texts in language classrooms. Despite the urgency for media and visual literacy, this dichotomy of image and word continues to confound us as language teachers. On one hand, our students are growing up in a rich multimodal world of visual and interactive texts. On the other, we want them to focus on the power of language and the written word. Given the ready availability of graphics, short films, viral videos and feature films on the internet, it would be foolish of us not to reconcile our differences with the image and use such resources in our pedagogy. This session is a sharing of ideas that may transform the way your students manipulate language in your classroom.
Presenter: Dr Dennis Yeo (NIE)
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Workshop 8: The Underlying Structure of the Listening Test of the GCE ‘O’ level examination (Venue: Classroom 4I)
This talk, which will be presented in a workshop format, aims to shed some light on the underlying structure of the listening test of the GCE ‘O’ level exam. I will present an overview of listening comprehension and the relevant assessment techniques and discuss what the “underlying structure of tests (USoF)” means. Three methods for determining USoF will be introduced, comprising cognitive interviews with test takers, expert judgements, and quantitative data analysis. The audience will be engaged in a series of item-coding hands-on activities to identify the USoF of the GCE listening test. Next, the results of an on-going study of the GCE listening test will be presented to the audience as a way to confirm or amend their codes. Subsequently, a group of quantitative techniques called cognitive diagnostic assessment (CDA) models will be presented and their applications to listening assessment will be discussed. Through model-comparisons, a nine-subskill model will be shown to possess the optimal “fit” for the test, meaning that the USoT comprises nine major listening and test-specific subskills. The difficulty of each subskill alongside students’ mastery of the subskills will be further presented. The validated list of the listening subskills can be employed as a useful guideline to prepare students for the GCE listening test at schools.
Presenter: Dr Vahid Aryadoust (NIE)