ABSTRACT
Lai Ping is a PhD candidate in Australia. She taught high school English in Hong Kong and in a university EAP program in Australia. She is undertaking the PhD so she can teach in a university TESOL program. She recently attended her first international conferences held in the U.S.—the conventions of the American Association of Applied Linguistics (AAAL) and of Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL), giving presentations at each conference. She says of her conference experience, “Apart from gaining more experience in conference presentations, presenting my papers in these two prestigious international conferences enabled me to disseminate my research findings and receive insightful feedback and valuable advice from informed audiences.” As well as presenting, she attended paper presentations, colloquia, plenary sessions, and poster and discussion sessions related to her PhD research or of interest to her. She says, “Such exposure greatly broadened my horizons as a researcher and helped me to keep abreast of the recent developments in my sub-field.” She found particularly helpful the sessions on how to get published, which she will need to do to pursue an academic career. She also used the opportunity to meet new people from around the world: “I had opportunities to network with many academics and this may enable collaborations in some future research projects. I also met many other researchers working in my research area.” Because her area of research is nonnative English speaker teachers (NNESTs) in schools in Hong Kong, at the TESOL convention she volunteered to staff the Interest Section table for NNESTs and so was able to meet those who both publish in her area and who advocate on behalf of such teachers. She visited a middle school and a high school in the conference region, which “helped me to better understand how English language support was provided for ESL students in these schools.” [L.P.F. Ma unpublished conference report 2009]
Task: Reflect
1. What follow-up activities might Lai Ping engage in to build on what she learned at the AAAL and TESOL conventions?
