KUCHING – A two-day public lecture and workshop on “Teaching English through tasks” will be held at Swinburne University of Technology Sarawak Campus on 22 and 23 June.
It will be delivered by Senior Lecturer and Director of the BEd (TESOL) program at Victoria University of Wellington in New Zealand, Dr Jonathan Newton, from 2pm to 4pm.
The complimentary event is tailored for university lecturers, school teachers and students pursuing degrees in English from a bachelor’s to PhD degree, and individuals interested in implementing task-based language teaching and academic vocabulary into their pedagogy.
On the first day, Newton will explore the question of what task-based language teaching can offer Malaysian English teachers in a lecture entitled “Pie-in-the-sky or meat-on-a-plate?”. He will identify the key challenges teachers face when teaching through tasks and the factors that teachers report as constraining their willingness to adopt task-based teaching.
On the second day, Newton will look into practical principles that can help teachers transform vocabulary teaching and ensure that rich vocabulary learning opportunities are present in every part of the program, including in the areas of listening, speaking, reading and writing in the lecture entitled, “Using best practice in teaching academic vocabulary to raise learning outcomes in college/university EAP programs”.
In demand internationally as a conference speaker and workshop facilitator, Newton has worked in language teaching and teacher education for 30 years in New Zealand, Malaysia and China.
His research explores classroom teaching and learning with a focus on four main areas: L2 vocabulary learning, task-based teaching, intercultural language teaching, and communication training for the multicultural workplace.
Newton has published more than 45 book chapters and articles in leading journals and has co-authored two books, one with Paul Nation, Teaching ESL/EFL Listening and Speaking (2009), and a second with Nicky Riddiford, Workplace Talk in Action: An ESOL Resource (2010).
The upcoming public lecture and workshop is organized by the Faculty of Language and Communication of Swinburne Sarawak.
As seats are limited, those interested are advised to secure a place by emailing to Nora Talhata atntalhata@swinburne.edu.my by 15 June.