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Presented by McGill’s School of Continuing Studies, Looking at Language Teaching 2023 - Speaker Series will showcase experts on various subjects relevant to language teaching today.
This series will:
- Present talks that will focus on current topics in language teaching with a view to understanding how language teachers both shape and are shaped by language learning theory.
- Encourage participants to critically examine current theory, reflect on their own teaching practices, and grow professionally as language teachers.
Looking at Language Teaching 2023 - Speaker Series is an opportunity for:
- Those with an interest in and passion for all things language teaching
- Anyone looking to share perspectives, techniques, and information
- Those looking to make meaningful connections and exchange best practices
Past events
Judgement as a professional act in teaching
Time: 2:30 to 4:00 pm
Online
Judgement is a key step in educational assessment, consisting in issuing an opinion on the progress or the state of learning based on gathered information. This professional act is the responsibility of the assessor and cannot be fully objective or be reduced to a simple algorithm. Assessment has always been a sore point for teachers, in that it determines placement and influences orientation. Judging can therefore become a significant source of insecurity. In this presentation, Emine Ince, Ph.D., will discuss the two main objectives of assessment and discuss the ways in which judgement is a complex process. Ince will explain the various biases that can emerge during assessments and how to ensure and promote more objective judgement.
Emine Ince, Ph.D., Course lecturer
Emine Ince is a course lecturer in French as a second language and learning assessment at a number of universities in Montreal. She has a doctoral degree in education science specializing in assessment and evaluation. Her thesis focused on the judgment of examiners in the oral expression portion of the Test d’évaluation de français (TEF), which is used in the immigration process in Quebec. Her field of expertise is primarily second language assessment. She has contributed to research on improving benchmarks and skills assessment tools in francization classes, and she has done research on cultural biases in official tests by professional orders. She has also been the keynote speaker at many national and international conferences.
Narratives of Language Learning and Identity Construction of Plurilingual Well-Educated Immigrants in Quebec: Pedagogical Implications
Time: 2:30 to 4:00 pm
Online
This talk is based on a study that explores the trajectories of skilled and well-educated immigrants, and their investment in language learning, identity construction, and integration in Montreal. Many immigrants to Quebec are well-educated and know multiple languages. Their plurilingual repertoires are further developed when they learn French and English in Quebec. The study investigated the experiences of ten plurilingual immigrants as regards their expectations and concerns through their investment in language and integration.
The findings revealed that participants perceived plurilingualism (after migration to Quebec) as cultural capital, providing a sense of empowerment and resulting in the privilege of gaining easy acceptance in the new society and its labour market. Their unsuccessful employment scenarios and social adaptation, however, disproved (or challenged) an earlier assumption.
Overall, examining participants’ narratives brought out three themes which principally guided data collection:
- Investing in language learning strategies and cultural capital
- Re-negotiating multiple identities in mobility
- Expressing a desire for greater social receptiveness.
The study has elucidated how immigrants’ linguistic and social integration into the economic and sociocultural fabric of Quebec can be more seamlessly achieved. The implications of the study for language teaching and learning will be discussed.
About Mehdi Babaei, PhD Faculty Lecturer McGill Writing Centre
Mehdi Babaei is a Faculty Lecturer at the McGill Writing Centre. Since 2014, Mehdi has taught undergraduate and graduate academic writing and various language courses at McGill's Faculty of Education, School of Continuing Studies, and the McGill Writing Centre. With a PhD in Educational Studies, Second Language Education, Mehdi has contributed to research on prior learning and assessment recognition, language and identity issues amongst plurilingual immigrants, and reflective teaching practices. Mehdi has been an active member of a Montreal research group called BILD (Belonging, Identity, Language and Diversity), to which he has been a regular contributor through publishing blog posts.
Plurilingual Pedagogies in University Language Programs: Rethinking How We Teach to Empower the Language Learner
Time: 1:30 to 3:00 pm
Online
Scholars in Applied Linguistics and Language Education research have urgently called for the development of inclusive language pedagogies that embrace the linguistically and culturally diverse repertoires of language learners. In multilingual contexts, such as Montreal, embracing learners’ repertoires and diverse identities is not only important but fundamental to address social and ethical issues of equity, diversity, inclusion and decoloniality in education.
In this talk, Angelica Galante will explain the theoretical framework of plurilingualism and provide examples of research-informed pedagogical applications in language programs. She will then present results of classroom research she has conducted in the past 10 years with language teachers and learners of different languages (English, French, Spanish, Arabic) experimenting with plurilingual pedagogies in three different settings: Toronto, Montreal and São Paulo.
Results consistently show that plurilingual pedagogies provide a non-hierarchical model of language teaching which facilitates bottom-up approaches, and learner and teacher agency. Results also show student empowerment, development of vocabulary and plurilingual and pluricultural competence, criticality, and empathy, among many other affordances.
She will conclude the presentation by discussing the affordances of plurilingual pedagogies in university language programs, and how the theoretical framework of plurilingualism requires language teachers to rethink their pedagogical practices and beliefs when teaching in superdiverse educational settings.
About Angelica Galante, PhD, Assistant Professor at McGill University
Angelica Galante is an Assistant Professor in Language Education at McGill University, Director of the Plurilingual Lab, and President of the Canadian Association of Applied Linguistics. Her research examines language pedagogy in multilingual and superdiverse settings, affordances of plurilingual pedagogies, social and emotional factors in language development, plurilingual and pluricultural competence development, and language teacher education. She is the recipient of the prestigious 2019 Pat Clifford Awar for Excellence in Educational Research by the EdCan Network, and the 2021 Heather Reisman and Gerald Schwartz Award for Excellence in Teaching. Her work can be found in journals such as Applied Linguistics, TESOL Quarterly, International Journal of Multilingualism, and Applied Linguistics Review.
Moving Beyond Traditional Peer Feedback to Build Intellectual Communities: A Contribution to the ChatGPT Debate
Time: 2:30 to 4:00 pm
Online
Reporting findings from an ethnographic study of the literate lives of a group of multilingual writers, this presentation will highlight the significance of discursive collaborations formed in organic writing communities. Collaboration in writing can be understood as two different phenomena. First, teachers can invite students to write together, edit each other’s work, and provide peer feedback. Alternatively, collaborative writing could be understood as building writing communities motivated by certain social, cultural, and/or political agendas.
Whereas in the former approach what is emphasized is the physical act of co-writing, in the latter the focus is on creating an intellectual community that aims to support its members discursively as well as linguistically. Such intellectual partnerships can be formal and structured (for instance, membership in a poetry club), but they could also be less regulated or less visible (for example, learning from a relative-mentor or occasional encounters with local artists and writers). Although in most forms of collaborative writing discursive and linguistic interactions are interwoven, a change in emphasis can lead to writing pedagogies with different characteristics.
In this talk, Amir Kalan, PhD, Assistant Professor at McGill University, will illustrate examples of how his research participants benefited from intellectual alliances and discuss the implications of his findings for teaching writing in the age AI and with the availability of ChatGPT and similar programs and applications.
This talk will be delivered in English.
About Amir Kalan, PhD, Assistant Professor at McGill University
Amir Kalan is Assistant Professor in the Department of Integrated Studies in Education (DISE) at McGill University. In his work, he attempts to create a sociology of writing that can help educators and researchers better understand sociocultural, political, and power-relational aspects of writing. He is particularly interested in learning about the experiences of minoritized and racialized students in multicultural and multilingual contexts.