Denver, CO

Between March 26 and March 28, 2009, I attended the TESOL (Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages) Annual Convention in Denver, CO, my attendance of which was in part covered by CETL. It was an excellent conference, with quite a number of celebrities in the field participating, and I hereby express a hearty “thank you” to CETL for their co-sponsorship.

I had the privilege to attend numerous great presentations, covering a wide range of topics—e.g., content-based instruction, curriculum/materials development, integrated skills, second language writing, reading/literacy, and technology in education. However, the one thing that stood out the most, to me, was a plenary address on the where and how of language learning. This presentation was two-faceted. On the one hand, it refreshed the audience’s knowledge of how language processing occurs in the brain. On the other hand, though, it went considerably beyond that knowledge, in that it presented visuals—for instance, MRI’s—which literally revolutionize our understanding of language processing.

A thing that I find worth noting here is that the term limited English proficient (LEP) student, which school administrators in North Carolina favor over the internationally-recognized terms English language learner (ELL) and ESL learner, was never used during the conference—at least, not in my presence. I take this as strongly suggesting that the warfare that we, the MA Program in ESL and Applied Linguistics at WSSU, have been waging against this scientifically-inaccurate term has been right.