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ThaiTESOL - 2001 Conference,
Bangkok Jan 18th-20th The annual three-day ThaiTESOL conference kicked off on Jan 18th. Thanks to Khun Suchada, the President, I got my name on the guest list and thus had a free day out. Around 1000 teachers, mainly from colleges and universities throughout Thailand were in attendance. The majority were Thai but there were a sizeable contingent of farangs. Abhisit Vejjajiva gave the keynote speech, which was entitled ' Facing the future: English in the era of globalisation'. It concentrated on how and why the teaching of English to Thai kids could and should be improved and restructured. Abhisit Vejjajiva is a young, Democrat MP.
Considered by most to be one of the few MP's who really knows their stuff
and tipped as a future Prime Minister. He
was educated at Oxford University and speaks virtually perfect English.
In his speech he mentioned many points that are constantly being raised
by farang teachers. Briefly, these
included :
Over the course of the 3 days, more than 150 presentations and workshops were given by both academics, from Thailand and abroad, and publishers keen to flog their latest textbooks. Most of these lasted 45 minutes and conference participants were free to attend as many, or as few as they liked. Whilst I was there Pearson Education, represented by their Marketing Manager, Paul Hawksworth, trying vainly to sell a new Business English textbook in his presentation entitled 'How good a classroom resources can unlock the real world of Business English'. Maybe he should have concentrated more on a presentation entitled 'Why ensuring your handouts are printed with a grammatically correct title is important.' Also in attendance were the main TEFL course providers -
ECC, Text n' Talk and TEFL International, various language schools /
universities offering overseas study for Thai students and Derek the Geordie,
looking rather lost at his company's stand and making minimal effort to sell
multimedia English language learning CD's and videos. I reckon he has a dream that one day all Thais will speak
fluent Geordie : " Haway, wor Somchai. Are yuz gannin doon the RCA
t'neet ? " " Why-ai, P' Chalerm, yer bastard. Ah divvent na, wor lass is nay oot on the toon t'neet. Maybees, I'll see yuz doon the Tawandaeng, aroond eight, ya nars." So, for future reference, it's well worth persuading your school/college/employer to send you to the ThaiTESOL conference. There is more to it than a bunch of intellectuals discussing the relative merits of 'Building and using your own corpus and concordance', which, by pure coincidence, was the title of a ground breaking workshop given by Richard Watson-Todd. If the name seems familiar then that's because he's the guy responsible for Ajarn.com's laughable online bookstore and the infinitely more interesting case studies. Other perks of attending include free food for a start, plus the chance to meet with fellow teachers from all areas of Thailand. I'd just finished writing the above when this letter
appeared in the Bangkok Post, 23rd Jan 2001.
Abhisit puts on a good show I have never really been interested in
Thai politics, basically because after so many self-centred Thai governments of
national economic and environmental destruction, there seemed to be a shortage
of competent Thai politicians. That was until I attended the ThaiTESOL
conference held recently at the Queen's Park hotel.
The keynote speaker was Abhisit Vejjajiva, Prime Minister's Office
minister, whose speech, in perfect English, was on English in an era of
globalisation and I would add, information technology. All I can say is that Abhisit was spot on
in his criticism when he talked about the negative effects of a low level of
English proficiency has on Thailand's global competitiveness and the knock down
effect this has on its IT industry. After nearly 14 years of teaching English and IT here, I could not fault him. He was constructive, knowledgeable and personable. Chuan, it's time to step aside as Democrat leader. There's a new kid on the block. Anthony C. Latini Nuff said. |