TESOL... what's there to talk about?

As you know, I'm in the field of TESOL (Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages). Those of us who work directly with ELL's (English Language Learners) teach ESL (English as a Second Langauge) or EFL (English as a Foreign Language)-- a distinction that rides on whether we're teaching in an English speaking country like the USA (where it's ESL) or in a country where English is not widely spoken in everyday life (where it's EFL), like Mexico, Thailand, France, Chile, Mongolia, Uzbekistan, and... you get the idea.

Every year, ESL and EFL teachers, teacher educators (that's me), and administrators from all over the world come together for the International TESOL Convention. This past weekend, some 4,000 teachers from about 180 different countries attended up to seven days of workshops, presentations and social-professional events in Tampa, Florida.

(Social-professional events would include the excellent breakfast I had with colleagues on Friday morning. We caught up on each others' lives and then talked at length about plagiarism and the teaching of writing-- as valuable or better than many of the formal presentations I attended. Same goes for the afternoon I spent drinking mojitos, but I digress...)

Anyway, I arrived in Tampa on Wednesday night ready to dig in. On the way from the airport to my hotel, I chatted with my cab driver, himself an adult ELL studying toward his MBA. Having already ferried several other TESOL folks to the convention center and surrounding hotels, his curiousity finally got the better of him as he asked:

What do you talk about, anyway... I mean... besides English?

I think this is a perfectly reasonable question. In fact, imagining that some of my own readership might be wondering the same thing, I thought I'd share with you a few representative topics-- keeping mind these are but a smattering of the 500+ presentations that took place this year. Here's goes:

The Basics:

• Tips and Techniques for Developing Better Readers
• Improving Speaking and Listening Through Audio Journals
• Effective Student-Centered Vocabulary Activities

Hold on... no, wait... you did not just mumble the word "boring" to yourself, did you? Seriously, this stuff is exciting to us!

But lest you think that we're only about the two of the R's (readin' and [w]ritin'), we've also got:

• The Language-Math Connection
• Teaching ESOL through Science Fair Projects
• Leading Best Practice in Business English

In other words, we're practical people; we like to make connections between language and what one does with it.

Hmm... but maybe we sound a bit too practical. We're plenty capable of sounding super-academic, too:

• Expert and Novice Processes in Revision Tasks
• The Sociopolitical Genesis of EFL Attitudes and Motivation
• Building Legal English Corpora for Classroom Purposes

Indeed, the use of corpora and the application of corpus linguistics in language teaching continue to be hot topics in TESOL. (For more info on corpus linguistics, read this article.)

Then there's the tech-related stuff, which we call CALL (Computer Assisted Language Learning), with such topics as:

• Using Wikis to Advance Narrative Writing Fluency
• Automating Distribution of Listening lessons via Podcasting
• Using the Webcam for Pronunciation Practice

...not to mention a gaggle of presentations on the use of weblogs for teaching writing.

Finally, just in case you haven't yet formed a clear idea of what we talk about at a TESOL conference, we have these to offer:

• Second Language Learning is Not Doomed To Failure
• Am I Just Teaching English?

and my personal favorite:

• There Was Deviations But There Was Rules!

Are you still here? Let's play!

If you've read this far, I think you deserve to have some fun. Therefore, I'll wrap things up with a brain teaser:

Each year, TESOL identifies a theme for our conference. Presenters often allude to the theme by weaving key words of the theme into their presentation titles. So-- Based on the titles below, what do you think the theme was for this year's conference?

• Daring to use Corpus Activities in Classrooms
• Leading Best Practice in Business English
• Daring to Enter the Blogosphere
• Leading With Action Research for Content Teachers
• Dare to Moodle
• Leading with Persuasive Speech

Hint: The theme consists of three words, at least one of which appears in each of the six titles listed above.

That should be enough for you to make a decent guess or a wild fabrication. Post your guess in the "comments" section under this posting, then check back in a few days to see the results. Prizes will be awarded for the most imaginative answer and the most humorous answer, as well as for the right answer.

(Note: No cheating! TESOL people who already know the answer are not eligible-- though you're welcome to post creative answers. The rest of you can have at it, but no Googling allowed.)