A Welcome Message from Professor Mao Sihui, Dean of CLA
Mao Sihui
Chairman of the Organising Committee for the 10th ELC International Conference
Dear Colleagues and TESOL Friends,
Warm greetings from Shantou University, Guangdong, China!
As Dean of College of Liberal Arts (CLA) and Chairman of the Organising Committee of the 2023 International Conference on Fostering a New ELT Ecology: Movers, Shakers & Innovators, I am pleased and privileged to tell you that my colleagues at the English Language Center (ELC) have been working diligently to create a multicultural forum for you all to share your rich teaching/research experience and present new ideas, best practices and scholarly findings in TESOL. As you may know, 2023 marks the 20th anniversary of the establishment of our ELC.In the year of 2002, with the generous support from the Li Ka Shing Foundation, STU successfully started the English Enhancement Programme under the leadership of Julia Hsiao, Vice Chancellor of STU. The past 20 years, despite the unprecedented challenges brought by Covid-19 pandemic, have witnessed the healthy growth and great development of the ELC in terms of curriculum design, communicative approach for language teaching, co-curricular activities and services (such as those offered at our CILL - Center for Independent Language Learning) and the building of an innovative, competitive and truly international team of TESOL professionals and researchers from China’s Mainland, Hong Kong, Macao, Taiwan and other countries such as Cuba, India, Malaysia, Mexico, Poland, Turkey, the United Kingdom as well as the United States of America.
It is also with great pleasure that I announce the news that we have inviteda great team of leading scholars from the international TESOL communitywho will speak at this conference in April 2023. They are (in alphabetical order):
Gabriel Fan FANG (Shantou University)
HE Lianzhen (Zhejiang University)
HUANG Guowen (South China Agricultural University)
Joyce KLING (Lund University)
Stephen KRASHEN (University of Southern California)
WEN Qiufang (Beijing Foreign Studies University)
ZHENG Yongyan (Fudan University)
They will address a whole range of important topics and issues such as foreign language education policy, developing cloud communities of TESOL/TEFL professionals, self-selected pleasure reading, CLIL support for EMI success, coursebook design for language and moral education, new developments of language testing in China, and prospects and challenges for enhancing “Glocal Competence”. Their presence and keynote presentations at the conference will be a great source of inspiration for all of us to continue our labor in the TESOL vineyard.
Colleagues and friends, with your valuable participation and our great commitment to serving you and facilitating discussions, we are expecting a great forum to exchange innovative ideas, an open platform to demonstrate best practices, a spacious arena to display original research and a warm reunion to share our learning/teaching experiences in and out of the conference hall. As “Movers, Shakers and Innovators”, we are all playing a significant role in fostering a new ELT ecology in and for the years ahead.
At ELC, while being firmly committed to the mission of cultivating in our students key attributes and skills such as “Proficiency”, “Autonomy”, “Sustainability”, “Intercultural Competence” and “Critical Thinking”, we have been actively conducting conversations between traditional approaches and innovative theories regarding the incorporation of new technologies and digital learning platforms into ELT. As Executive Director of ELC, an innovative and professional institution, I am truly proud of what my colleagues do and also of what has been achieved over the years. It is with great pride, pleasure and sincerity that I warmly invite you to come and share your teaching and research experience with us at this global gathering.
We look forward to welcoming old friends back and new friends to Shantou University in April 2023!
Professor Mao Sihui (PhD)
Dean, College of Liberal Arts, Shantou University
Chairman of the Organising Committee of the 2023 ELC International Conference