Upcoming talks and conferences

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I have been busy lately. So busy in fact that I still have not written up my report of the lecture I went to see by Jenny Jenkins at Waseda University’s 3rd English as a Lingua Franca (ELF) International Workshop. Coming soon

One of the reasons I have been busy it that I recently completed a proposal for a large writing project which has been accepted to my great astonishment and delight. Again, I will post up more details at a later date when things are confirmed. I have also been sending proposals to international conferences and conferences here in Japan and I just wanted to share some of those here since I am hoping to meet the rare and wonderful people who read this blog and thank them for their support.

I am very excited to announce that I will be attending this year’s EFL Teachers Journey’s Conference which will be held in the historical city of Kyoto on June 22nd. My presentation will be in the category of  Narratives of teacher development and change in which I will talk about my professional development and how this has shaped and evolved with my beliefs about teaching and learning. I am especially excited about this conference because here in Japan I feel sometimes out of touch with the wider EFL community, and this conference seems to share some of my passions for narratives and research which focuses on individuals and their beliefs.  You can view the abstract here.

I will also be presenting at the British Association of Applied Linguists (BAAL) Conference in September. This conference is being hosted by the University of Warwick where I am a PhD student at the moment, so I am glad to be able to participate and present. My piece will be about a research project I conducted last year. I took the data from a teacher training session which is part of the Ministry of Education’s teaching licence renewal. I worked with Japanese high school teachers in Osaka and Tokyo and the research focuses on reactions to authenticity and an attempt to move away from the dominant culture of native speakerism by shifting the focus of authenticity into the realm of English as an international language. This will also be a published article which will come out later in the year:

Pinner, R. S. (forthcoming). The Authenticity Continuum: Empowering international voices English Language Teacher Education and Development, 16(1).

Finally, I will also be presenting at the JALT conference in Tsukuba in November. This presentation will be similar to the one I’m giving at BAAL – I’m too busy to do three completely different presentations. Having said that, I have already given two presentations this year which I failed to mention on my blog. I spoke at the fantastic LiberLit conference (click here for the full schedule) and I also participated as a speaker and panel member at the International CLIL Research Journal Symposium in April.

So, I’ve been busy. The PhD, the teaching and being a father is taking its toll on my hair colour and sanity, but at least I’m still passionate and enthusiastic about my work and my professional identity. If you have any comments please feel free to share and also, let me know if you will be attending any of these events or can recommend ones I am missing!