Review
TESOL 2007: The View From Seattle
Gerard Marchesseau
Naruto University of Education
The 41st annual TESOL convention was held last spring in Seattle,
Washington. TESOL is one of the world’s largest applied linguistics
associations, with several major publications and approximately 13000 members located around the world. Recognized as an (NGO)by the United Nations, its mission is to “ensure excellence in English
language teaching to speakers of other languages.”
The convention spanned the week of March 19th, with preconvention
ticketed events being held on Monday and Tuesday and regularconcurrent sessions extending from Wednesday through Saturday. The
concurrent sessions included academic sessions, paper presentations,workshops, exhibitor sessions and discussion sessions. Poster sessions
and other types of discussion meetings were also held through thelunch break and into the afternoon. It might suffice to say that theevent was really big. You may be familiar with annual JALT conferences
held in Japan. The general orientation was similar to JALT, with several
keynote speeches, an array of sessions to choose from, a large exhibitor
hall, and so on. Inevitably though, the TESOL conference draws moreparticipants and attracts leading linguists from around the world.
However, as the majority of participants are from the U.S. and Canada,
there is a slant towards Teaching English as a Second Language (TESL).
The theme this year was “Tides of Change,” which recurred in some of
the keynote speeches and sessions to a limited extent.
I attended the conference interested in teaching language to young
learners, collaboration between Native Speaking Teachers of English
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Marchesseau(NESTs) and non-Native Speaking Teachers of English (non-NESTs),
and academic writing. There was a substantial number sessions
dealing with writing for specific purposes. Most of these sessions dealt
with academic writing issues for high proficiency non-native speakers
of English studying at the secondary or post secondary level in theU.S. I attended about five of these, which proved to be interesting,although not always applicable to my circumstances. For instance,
while listening to a colorful secondary school teacher from Brooklyn,
New York speaking about her experience teaching racial minorities
was certainly interesting, her situation was very dissimilar to my own
in a Japanese University.
Sessions dealing with ESL in the Asian context were more limited,though I attended a couple which addressed NEST/non-NEST issues inHong Kong and Taiwan. Similar to research I have been conducting,these paper sessions indicated strong commonalities between Hong
Kong, Taiwan and Japan. I also attended two discussion groups focusing
on issues relating to teaching young learners in Japan and elsewhere.
Discussion sessions are commonly held in the evening between 7:00
and 9:00, when participants are a little more relaxed, though perhapsjet-lagged and exhausted after a full day attending sessions. The qualityof discussion sessions depends on the preparedness of the presenters
and the contribution of the participants. Presumably the presenters arewell prepared, (though this was not the case in one of the discussions Iattended). Some presentations, however, only seemed to attract one or
two participants, which was unfortunate.
Due to jet-lag, I missed the first couple of plenary presentations but
managed to see the presidential plenary by Jun Lui on Friday. In his
presentation, entitled “Tides of Change: From Seattle to Shanghai”, Lui
spoke about his life, from his experience growing up in China during
the Cultural Revolution, through to his current success as a prominent
applied linguist. Lui is a charismatic speaker, and the content of hisspeech was both accessible to all and interesting. It was a pleasure
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and a nice change to sit back and be passively entertained for anhour. Aside from merely amusing us though, Lui drew importantconnections to the broader theme of this year’s conference as well as
the current status of English around the world. There are more Englishteachers who speak English as a second language than “native speaker”
teachers today, just as there are more users of English who speak it asa second language than a native language. These trends appear tobe increasing and Lui suggested that choosing a non-Native English
speaking president of TESOL is a reflection of the changing use andfunction of English. It would appear that TESOL, as an organization,is healthy, progressive and in good hands. Hopefully Lui will help tomotivate passive members of TESOL such as myself, to become more
active ones in the future.
Overall, the TESOL conference appeared well organized, butobviously a conference of this size is not without its headaches. One
problem that did affect many was presentation cancellations. A list ofcancelled presentations was given out along with the program. By thesecond day though, all but the most organized of us had probably lostit amongst the many handouts that we were constantly accumulating.
One presentation I had hoped to attend had been cancelled, which I
only found out upon walking into an empty room. It had likely been
written in the appendage, of course. Another presentation had notbeen cancelled according to the latest information but none of thethree presenters showed. Evidently, the presentation had been muchanticipated. The room was full of disappointed people and there was
grumbling about other similar incidents.
Generally the quality of the presentations was high, but this is alsodifficult to control for such a large event, especially when presentations
are chosen based on relatively short proposals. One might expect thatthe quality of the presentations at the TESOL convention would far
surpass those of national associations such as our very own JALT, but
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prepared than others. Some speakers are better than others. JALT is nodifferent in this respect. Disappointment with the occasional lackluster
session though, should be more than offset by the sheer variety ofsessions available, spanning more than three days from 7:00AM to
9:00 PM. Besides, the occasional bad presentation might be equallyinteresting in its own right, depending on one’s purposes. For those
who might wish to present at a future TESOL conference, as prestigious
as the organization is, and as stringent as the screening process is (onlyone in five proposals was accepted this year), one needn’t feel that thepresenters form an exclusive and inaccessible club. Good research anda well-written proposal stand a fair chance at being accepted, and you
can submit more than one proposal. The Asian contingent is probably
under-represented and I’m certain that we have a lot to offer.
This year, Seattle proved to be a very suitable location for the event.
The convention Center is in the center of the city, and Seattle itself has
a healthy downtown, which means there were many restaurants tochoose from. There were also a variety of ways to “wind down” after
a full day of academic discussion, and the recommended hotels were
all convenient. This was in sharp contrast to last year’s conference inTampa, where shuttle buses ran from the Convention Center to thehotels, and the downtown area offered less in the way of restaurants
and nightlife. The Washington State Convention Center itself was fairly
easy to negotiate. There was a reasonable variety of restaurants locatedwithin the Center. Some events were also held in the Sheraton andGrand Hyatt, adjacent to the Convention Center, and the staff were
helpful in providing directions at these locations.
With Seattle behind us, next year TESOL goes to New York City.
TESOL has held conventions in New York City before and I’ve heardthat attendance is particularly strong. The city itself is no doubt a huge
additional attraction. If you’ve never been to a TESOL conference
before, next year might be a good opportunity to attend, and to have
fun in a great city.
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