Standard 9 – Professional Commitment & Responsibility Artifact 1 Joely Rogers

Standard 9 – Professional Commitment and Responsibility

The teacher is a reflective practitioner who continually evaluates the effects of his or her choices
and actions on others (students, parents, and other professionals in the learning community) and
who actively seeks opportunities to grow professionally.

Artifact I for Standard Nine: Professional Commitment and Responsibility

Name of Artifact: Texas TESOL State Conference in Dallas, Texas & First Annual DFW

Metroplex Linguistics Conference

Date: Fall 2008 & Fall of 2009

Course: This was not part of a course, but the artifact was included in my language learning

history for Teaching Second Languages: Theory into Practice FL 561.

Rationale

Professional commitment and responsibility is not exclusive to the classroom. A

committed teacher is one who continuously seeks new knowledge about her field and

opportunities to grow professionally both in and out of the classroom. In support of standard 9, I

offer this artifact “Language Conferences Attended During the MATL Program,” that I wrote for

FL561’s language learning history. I am including this artifact because I feel it demonstrates my

commitment to grow professionally by learning about my future occupation (Texas TESOL

Conference) and the field of language itself (DFW Linguistics Conference).

Living in a major metropolitan city like Dallas has its ups and downs, but one of the

advantages is that many regional and state educational conferences are held here. I attended the

Texas TESOL State Conference in the fall of 2008. TexTESOL is an affiliate of TESOL, the

international organization for Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages. TESOL's

mission is to develop and maintain professional expertise in English language teaching and

learning for speakers of other languages worldwide (TexTESOL, n.d.). This conference was a

1
 Standard 9 – Professional Commitment & Responsibility Artifact 1 Joely Rogers

solid introduction to some of the many issues of the ESL classroom. I sat in on the following

presentations: Teaching or Editing? Feedback on Student Writing, Improving English Rhythm

Pronunciation Learning Strategies, Language Anxiety in Transition: Higher or Different, ESL

Grammar for All Teachers, Helping Students Overcome Phonetic Difficulties and Closing

Chasms: A Cross-Cultural Communication Program. I also attended a workshop on accent

reduction, where I made a valuable contact whose ESL class on accent reduction I later attended.

The artifact discusses the presentation “Language Anxiety in Transition: Higher or Different?” I

wrote about this presentation because we had recently studied language anxiety in one of my

MATL courses. Language anxiety can be a serious problem for 2nd language learners and I found

that the speaker’s presentation helped clarify the information we had studied in class. I will be

attending the 2010 TexTESOL Conference on November 11th. It will be interesting to attend

presentations on similar topics and see how much more I have learned about my field since 2008.

I attended the First Annual DFW Metroplex Linguistics Conference in the fall of 2009.

This conference was sponsored by the University of Texas at Arlington’s linguistics department.

In contrast to TexTESOL, this was a smaller conference, and since it was mainly linguistics, the

presentations were much harder to follow. The most valuable presentation I watched was on

corpus linguistics, a topic we covered in Dr. Powell’s Teaching Vocabulary class. I like corpus

linguistics and the presentation was a great opportunity to hear about actual research testing

whether on-line corpora could help ESL students improve their written essays. Like the

TexTESOL, the linguistics conference was also a good networking opportunity as there were a

couple of other ESL teachers and graduate students in attendance.

2
 Standard 9 – Professional Commitment & Responsibility Artifact 1 Joely Rogers

Artifact I – Language Conferences Attended During the MATL

Program

During this past year, I’ve had the opportunity to attend two language-related conferences

in Dallas, the 2008 Texas TESOL State Conference, and the First Annual DFW (Dallas Ft.

Worth) Metroplex Linguistics Conference. Each conference had fascinating speakers who

presented research on both theoretical and applied areas of linguistics. The TESOL conference

was quite large, with several hundred people in attendance and a large number of education-

related vendors, while the DFW Linguistics conference had less than 40 participants.

Summarized below are two student presentations which correlate with topics I’ve studied so far

in the MATL program – language anxiety and corpus linguistics.

2008 Texas TESOL State Conference

Hui-Chun Yang, a PhD candidate in 2nd language acquisition at the University of Texas at

Austin, presented research from her unpublished doctoral dissertation “Language Anxiety in

Transition: Higher or Different?” Lightbrown and Spada (2006) say that anxiety, which is

characterized by feelings of worry, nervousness and stress, can affect 2nd language learning if it

interferes with the learning process. Yang’s study sought to determine if the anxiety felt by

speaking a 2nd language (L2) could be correlated with age, gender length in the U.S and other

variables. Her data indicate that “self-perceived L2 ability was a major predictor of language

anxiety” (Yang, 2008).

First Annual DFW Metroplex Linguistics Conference

Yu-Jeung Kim, an MA in teaching ESL candidate at the University of North Texas,

presented research from her unpublished master’s thesis “Effectiveness of on-line corpus

research in L2 writing: Investigation of proficiency in English writing through independent error

3
 Standard 9 – Professional Commitment & Responsibility Artifact 1 Joely Rogers

correction.” Corpora or corpus (singular) are large databases of language containing real

discourse excerpts that range from a few words to whole books (Schmitt, 2000). Kim’s study

sought to determine whether independent use of on-line corpora could help ESL students

improve their written essays. She used two study groups; both groups were instructed on how to

use an online corpus and both wrote five different essays, which were scored by a native

English-speaking instructor. One group corrected their essays using the corpus in the classroom

with an instructor who was able to provide feedback; while the second group corrected their

essays with the corpus independently outside the classroom. Her data indicate that the group who

had access to the instructor was more successful at error correction (Kim, 2009). This seems like

an obvious answer, but Kim felt it was a training issue rather than a support one, theorizing that

if both groups had better training on how to use the corpus they might be equally successful.

Presentations aside, an added bonus of the conferences was that I was able to network

with experienced teachers, one of whom allowed me to observe of her class on accent reduction

for non-native speakers of English. Accent reduction classes are offered at all of the local

community colleges and after watching her class I became very interested in the possibility of

teaching this type of course in the future. Overall, both conferences were a positive, enriching

experience and I would recommend that anyone who is planning to become an ESL teacher

attend either a local or regional TESOL conference.

4
 Standard 9 – Professional Commitment & Responsibility Artifact 1 Joely Rogers

References

Kim, Y. J. (2009). Effectiveness of on-line corpus research in L2 writing: Investigation of

proficiency in English writing through independent error correction. Unpublished

master’s thesis, University of North Texas, Denton.

Lightbrown, P.M. & Spada, N. (2006). How languages are learned. Oxford: Oxford University

Press.

Schmitt, N. (2000). Vocabulary in language teaching. Cambridge: Cambridge University

Press.

TexTESOL. (n.d.). About TexTESOL. Retrieved on November 2, 2010 from

http://www.textesol.org/

Yang, H. C. (2008). Language Anxiety in Transition: Higher or Different? Unpublished doctoral

dissertation, University of Texas, Austin.