5th Asiatefl Conference, KL

Secuil catatan dari partisipasi aktif dalam konferensi Asiatefl, di KL tahun lalu:

My participation in the conference Asiatefl Conference KL, 7-12 June 2007, as a presenter was full-financially sponsored by the Alumni Grant of the US embassy Jakarta.

Day 1: I flew Garuda Indonesia at 11.00 a.m. and landed in KL around 1 p.m. local time. Kuala Lumpur International Airport is a really spectacular airport. It is very modern, comfortable and very well-organized. I am very astonished by the modern architecture it displays. After getting my luggage, I took the KLIA Express train to the city. From the city, I got a taxi to the hotel where I stayed in. In the evening, I went to the conference venue for registration and collecting the materials of the conference.

Day 2: I joined the conference. It was a great opening and opened by the minister of higher education Malaysia. I met new people. One of them was Mr. Too. He is Malaysian and works for the dept. of education Malaysia. He supervises Malaysian public schools in KL. I think it is a good network. Also, I met Ibu Suwarsih Madya who is the Chair of Asiatefl Indonesia and the Professor of Linguistic of UNY, Yogyakarta. Knowing that I work for SF, she expected and welcomed SF to participate in the next conference such as sponsoring great teacher presenters. A number of workshops, demonstrations, presentations, and Plenary sessions by great Int’l speakers take places on the first day. Some that I joined were:

1. Incorporating CALL into communicative language teaching (Mr. Abdul Hadi)
2. Using Project as a springboard to writing in primary classroom (Ms. Allison Lyall, Malaysia)
3. Introducing a Teacher Certification Renewal System in Japan: Problem and Prospects (Hisamura Ken, et. All, Japan)
4. Motivating the reluctant language learners (Mr. T. Nava, Malaysia)
5. Online support for teaching English through English in EFL Teacher Education (Hoo-Dong Kang, South Korea)
6. Using technology in EFL writing classrooms (Seo Yoonsuk, Malaysia)

Day 3: I presented my paper this day. As it was an addendum to the conference, unfortunately my paper presentation was not printed in the programme book. So, I thought that many didn’t know the revised schedule. Poorly, the committee did not announce publicly the changes. There were about 15 audiences coming to my presentation. I talked about “Encouraging students to write through collaborative int’l project. I shared my experience during my teaching years on how to motivate students to write: hook them with people from other country and assign them to write letters each other for a period of one year. Here, I introduced as well how to apply ICT in the classroom for the primary students. Good welcome from the audience and they hoped to work collaboratively in EFL throughout Asia and the globe.

Besides presenting, I also joined some workshops and presentations:

1. Using blogs to develop interest among ESL students (Nadzar Abu Bakar, Malaysia)
2. Preparing pre-service teachers for teaching science using English as the medium of instruction (Peter Hudson, Australia)
3. How Global English is changing the world (Plenary Speaker: David Graddol, England)
4. Elementary teacher English Education programme in South Korea (Im Yong Suk, Korea)
5. The English teacher is on fire: Wearing Edward De Bono’s Six Thinking Hats, Koh Soo Ling, Malaysia)

Day 4: Paper Presentations and Workshops that I entered:

1. Movies in ESL writing classrooms (Fariza or, Malaysia)
2. Spoken Grammar, Written Grammar: From Corpus to Classroom (Ronald Carter, UK)
3. Recycling Junk emails (Sheba Doray, Malaysia)
4. Establishing an Intercultural Communication Class Project: Case Study between TaiwanJapan (Joshua Borden, Taiwan & Fumiko Kurihara, japan) and
5. The Power Point as an interactive tool for classroom use (Michael Hughes, Malaysia)
6. Injecting HOPE into the Profession (Michael Rudder, Indonesia)

Day 5: I met some Indonesian students studying in KL and they toured me around the city of KL in the afternoon. I also met an old online friend that I used to correspond via emails. He is Mr. Zait Isa. He organizes school networks and welcomes Indonesian schools to participate in the projects with Malaysian schools. Now, he is running “Independence Day Celebration” for Malaysian schools and asks me to invite Indonesian schools to work collaboratively. At the peak event, the schools will be invited to Malaysia to perform the projects.

Day 6: In the morning, I summarize my stay in KL preparing the report outline. And at 11.00, I departed to the airport to fly back to Jakarta.

Conclusion:
I have gained a lot of learning experience from this Asiatefl conference. Some were very inspiring to excel my teaching performance and I could adopt a lot of new technological applications for my skills. I also learned from other countries such as Japan, Korea, Malaysia and Indonesian fellows from the speakers about some researches and teacher training and education in EFL frameworks.

The next Asiatefl conference will be in Bali, 8-10 August, 2008. Everyone hopes to come again next year.