ESL Lesson Plan

Are you an ESL graduate student?

Have you still never presented at a conference before but realize that potential employers will see your involvement with the academic community as a big, big plus when considering your C.V.? Then think about university sponsored graduate conferences, particularly interdisciplinary ones (where you'll have improved chances of having your proposal accepted). They are the perfect place to begin presenting since they are a safe, friendly environment where you'll find encouragement instead of criticism.

You might, for example, consider this highly reputable one coming up on the 17th and 18th of February, 2006 at the Indiana University of Pennsylvania. This university is very friendly to those in the EFL/ESL field, it has one of the largest and most successful Ph.D. programs for TESOL in the United States. The title of their conference this year is the "IUP GSA/EGO 4th Annual Graduate Interdisciplinary Conference - Investigating Our Reality: Bridging Interdisciplinary Gaps" and will be held at the Hadley Union Building [HUB], Indiana University of Pennsylvania, Indiana, PA 15705-1094.

The link to the conference and an online submission form is here: http://www.english.iup.edu/ego/home.html

Cross-discipline conferences like these are an excellent place to present an idea you've had about teaching an ESL lesson, or a good experience you've had with and ESL lesson plan of your own creation. You might just want to speak about the challenges of teaching ESL in the country you work in. Or, you might discuss more weighty, theoretical developments in the field. You can be as innovative or as non-threatening as you want.

The process begins with a written proposal. You don't even have to write the paper first if you don't already have one, just come up with a 200 word abstract for something you'd like to write or investigate. Many people submit proposals all the time and then write the paper after they've been accepted. There's no reason you can't do the same.

After submitting, in this case online, the next step is to actually write the paper. It must be something that can be read aloud in 15 minutes or less, so it doesn't have to be long. Creating a handout and/or a PowerPoint presentation to go along with your presentation is a great way to look professional and take the "focus" off of you if you are the type to get "stage-fright." The key is to practice a few times before hand.

If you'd like to submit to the conference just referenced, please go to the website listed earlier, follow the links and complete the form.

Here are a few more facts from the "call for papers" regarding this particular conference: Fifteen-minute presentations, poster sessions, artworks, performances, and round table discussions will demonstrate how your scholarly work as a graduate student is innovative, investigative, and in-depth, thereby clearly addressing and traversing gaps between the disciplines. A diversity of creative presentation methods are encouraged. All scholarly work for presentation will be selected by graduate students and faculty after a review of the abstracts. The conference is free and open to the public. Lunch and refreshments will be provided. More information will be provided after the acceptance of your proposal.

I'll be at this one; I hope to meet you there presenting too.

Any questions for the panel?

Lee Hobbs
ESL Instruct, Editor-in-Chief
ESLemployment.com

*For the COMPLETE list of Industry Events mentioned on ESL-Lesson-Plan, click HERE!

**For more English Language-Related Industry Events (literature, compositoin, etc.), see our sister blog's list HERE.