(complete brochure fbsltc-2009-brochure | 6 Mb) 

Submit your abstract online here.

22-23 January 2009

Faculty of Language and Literature & Language Training Center

Satya Wacana Christian University

Salatiga, Indonesia

CALL for Paper/Workshop Proposals

 A 250-300 word abstract with a title not exceeding twelve words and a fifty-word bio-data

Deadline : 19 December 2008                                                                                

Notification: 26 December 2008

Selected full paper deadline: 15 January 2009 (for inclusion in the Proceedings)

Topics

·         Faculty in Language Program Assessment

·         Students in Language Program Assessment

·         Technology in Language Program Assessment

·         Appropriate Ways to Assess the Mastery of Language Skills

·         How to Align Learning Objectives and Learning Outcomes

·         Evaluation Models for Data from Testing

·         Other related subtopics

Criteria for Acceptance

All abstracts will be evaluated by the Seminar Planning Committee. Relevance to the theme of the Seminar and freshness and originality of approach are among the major considerations in the acceptance of papers. The Committee reserves the right to decline paper/workshop proposals without assigning reasons.

Proposals are encouraged within the sub-themes, but are not limited to the topic areas.

Invited Speakers

Prof. Lyle Bachman, UCLA, California, USA

Prof. Hiromi Otaka, Kwansei Gakuin University, Japan

RELO  Jakarta, Indonesia

Conference Fee

Public : Rp 550.000,-

Local Teachers : Rp 300.000,- (for Salatiga primary and secondary school teachers with a letter from the schools) 

The fee includes a certificate of attendance, conference materials, refreshments, lunches, and a conference dinner.

More info and brochure download:

email: fbsltc@gmail.com

web : www.uksw.edu/ltc/events  or http://neny.edublogs.org (temporary)

Contact persons:

ANISIA BUDI PRABAWANI

Phone & Fax: +62 298 313859

TRI SUNARTI

Phone & Fax: +62 298 312120

Registration closes on Monday, 19 January 2009

me and the students of class 2006

One thing that supports my research proposal for PhD application is that it is extremely difficult to teach English when the students do not have enough exposure to the culture of English speaking country.

I was using Cambridge materials for Listening which is highly British. Once, the students were required to listen to a guy leaving a phone message for a girl. He was in a call box and he said he would call again. The comprehension question was “why can’t the girl phone him back?”. If the students could infer what a call box was, it would be no problem at all for them to answer the comprehension question. By the way, a call box is a public telephone booth according to Merriam-Webster dictionary, and one who has seen or read about a call box (either in person, in movies, in novels) knows that a call box usually can’t be called back.

Got it? Well, it’s easy if you have seen or read about it. Even if you don’t know the words, you usually can infer what is a call box from the words call and box: it’s a box to call!

Another aspect of listening skills that I notice is that in order to successfully comprehend what s/he listens, s/he has to have the ability to adjust his/her ‘ears’ to accommodate different accents, dialects and styles. I personally believe that exposure to different accents, dialects, and styles will be beneficial to train one’s ears to adjust his/her hearing. Again, in SoE, where the environment tends to be homogeneous in terms of ethnic groups, media, references, etc., my students struggled to listen to even a sentence because I think they didn’t get used to listening and adjusting to different styles of speech.

So, the keyword is exposure to the culture. The more varied the exposure is, the better adjustment one makes with one’s hearing. The better the adjustment, the better the listening comprehension. What do you think?