. ELT Strand: Reading Across Cultures Seminar
Building on the feedback of 10 East Asian delegates who attended the Oxford Conference on the Teaching of Literature in April 2007, it was realised that an East Asian conference would allow us to address region-specific issues relating to literature in language teaching. Reading Across Cultures, therefore, brought together up to 30 secondary and tertiary English language and literature education professionals from across the East Asia region.
Bringing Texts To Life
Singapore, 29 January – 1 February 2008
British Council Singapore will host the final seminar in the series to bring together secondary and tertiary English language and literature education professionals from across the region. This will be an ‘activity-driven’ seminar – including workshops on creative writing, the use of Manga illustrations to bring Shakespeare to life, and the teaching of dramatic literature.
Reading Across Cultures
Kuala Lumpur, 5-8 February 2007
This seminar not only left many participants with new knowledge and ideas, but it was fun too! The participants met with literature academics, writers and other teachers in a series of workshops, readings, informal discussions that were lively and informative.
Bringing Texts To Life and Reading Across Cultures are based on the Oxford Conference on the Teaching of Literature and address two main themes:
1. What is the role of literature in the English language classroom?
2. What contribution can literature make to the development of students’ intercultural awareness? What are the challenges of texts produced in unfamiliar cultural contexts?
The conference will be chaired by Claudia Ferradas Moi (past Chair of the Oxford Conference and lecturer at Instituto de Enseñanza Superior en Lenguas Vivas Juan Ramón Fernández, Buenos Aires) and Saratha Sithamparam (Associate Professor, Faculty of Education, University of Malaya). Other speakers inclue:
Isagani R. Cruz, Filipino writer
John Corbett, University of Glasgow
José Dalisay, Filipino writer
Louise Doughty, UK novelist
Paul Duffield, UK Manga artist
Stephen Knight, UK poet
John McRae, University of Nottingham
Bali Rai, UK teen fiction writer
Roger Robinson, UK poet
Edwin Thumboo, National University of Singapore
Edwin Vethamani, University Putra Malaysia
It will also address some of the issues around text selection, assessment and new media concerning these two main themes, both for higher and lower ability students. Speakers will be a mix of UK and East Asian academics and writers.
Strand objectives
•To build an East Asian network of practitioners, policy-makers and theorists working in the field of literature, language and culture and allied disciplines
•To promote literature teaching as a tool for English language learning and intercultural understanding
•To engage participants with new UK writers and writing and the tools necessary to work with them in the classroom
•To showcase UK and British Council excellence in ELT teaching
•To bring together upper-secondary and tertiary level literature educators to attempt to close the gap between these levels of education
•to develop potential partners for follow-up project work fitting with British Council objectives.
Countries involved:
•Korea
•Malaysia
•Philippines
•Singapore
•Taiwan
•Thailand
After Reading Across Cultures, in 2007/08 we will endeavour to provide support mechanisms to allow dissemination of learning from this seminar. Please contact Sinead Russell at sinead.russell@britishcouncil.org for further information.
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