Good Morning, Ladies and Gentlemen: I am always pleased with the opportunity to address you—teachers of English—you who bring a new way of speaking and writing and reading and thinking to your students.  You multiply their power to communicate.  We are richer for your efforts and grateful for your accomplishments.  And all of us in this auditorium are grateful as well to the organizers of this conference and to those of you at our higher education institutions who are supporting the operation.  Thanks to you all.

Anyone reviewing your past agendas and your program for this 19^th International TESOL Arabia Conference and Exhibition would surely conclude that you Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages know a great deal.  Most important, of course, you know English.  Because millions of other people also know English, however, you must know something that they do not.  I could reason from the titles of the hundreds of papers presented at your conferences that you know, better than those other millions of English speakers, exactly how to teach English—that you have mastered techniques for teaching the English language successfully.  But the titles of those papers also indicate that techniques change and that new techniques appear annually, just in time for each new conference.  Would I be wrong then to suspect that something more elemental than knowledge of transitory techniques distinguishes you? I suspect that your truly elemental quality is imagination.  Anatole France [fran(t)s] once wrote that “to know is nothing at all; to imagine is everything.”  Speakers of other languages benefit from your imaginations.  That is to say, you have become effective teachers because you are imaginative.  You are constantly imagining a learning environment in which you have brought to bear everything you know from your formal education, from your life experiences, from your self-reflection, from your engagement with the culture of your students—in short, from everything you know.  And you know that your knowledge lies inert in that learning environment until your imagination animates it for your students, until you turn “nothing at all” into “everything.”

Ladies and Gentlemen: The theme of this 19^th International TESOL Arabia—From KG to College to Career—recognizes that language is an exceptionally potent tool for individuals throughout their entire lives.  Proficient ability in English will ensure that our students have access to rich opportunities in education, in employment, and in expanding relationships. The success of your conference will come when the results of your discussions and your research reach the interested teachers, students and the general public. This reminds me of the almost crushing responsibilities that you have accepted as teachers.  Without the proper education today, young people face a bleak future.  The future really does depend on you.  You may have encountered Thomas Friedman’s view of that future in the New York Times.  Friedman, author and prize-winning journalist, shares our appreciation of the special challenges presented by globalization and the revolution in information technology, and he writes:  “This is a world in which education, innovation and talent will be rewarded more than ever. This is a world in which there will be no more ‘developed’ and ‘developing countries,’ but only…high-imagination-enabling countries and…low-imagination-enabling countries.”  His analysis sounds a ring of truth. I daresay that everyone in this room wants his or her country to be a high-imagination-enabling country. Certainly we in the United Arab Emirates cherish that desire.

We have thrived on the power of the imagination.  Our founder the late Sheikh Zayed imagined the union of seven separate emirates.  He imagined a nation marked by tolerance and global involvement.  He imagined the creation of a strong educational system.  Our President, His Highness Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed Al-Nahayan, supported by our Vice President and Prime Minister, His Highness, Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al-Maktoum, and  His Highness Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Al-Nahayan, Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi, has imagined a knowledge-based economy that brings stability and prosperity to its citizens and positively influences the region and the world.  The United Arab Emirates has been from its beginning a high-imagination-enabling country.  Imagination has prompted innovative and creative action in government, education, and business.

The high regard for imagination in the UAE has made it an oasis for entrepreneurs. The best model of a high-imagination-enabling community must be, it seems to me, the educational community, just as this 19^th International TESOL Arabia must be the model of a high-imagination-enabling conference.  You might well think of yourselves as entrepreneurs for the English language.  Or, if the analogy with entrepreneurs brings you too close to a commercial stereotype, instead think of yourself as the poet that Theseus imagines in Shakespeare’s:  A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Like that poet, you are the people who in Shakespeare’s words, “glance from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven,” and summon your imaginations to use your knowledge in ways that make things unknown to your students things that are real—an English language with a shape.  Your imagination must draw on your knowledge in ways that give their vague sense of English, again in Shakespeare’s words: “a local habitation and a name.” Poet or entrepreneur—you are vital to the knowledge-based economies of the Arab world.  Your work contributes to the existence of high-imagination-enabling countries.  So today and tomorrow, please free your imagination and exchange your best ideas with your colleagues.   We all will benefit from your work, and the 19^th International TESOL Arabia will be a great success.

My best wishes to you all, and I hope you find this conference rewarding. Thank you.

The ballots have been tallied and the results of the 2013 TESOL Arabia Executve Elections are in. TESOL Arabia is proud to welcome Melanie Gobert as VP/President-Elect, Cynthia Weston as Executive Secretary, Sufian Abu Rmaileh as Executive Treasurer, Ian Taylor as Al Ain Chapter Representative, Naziha Ali as Dubai Chapter Representative, Sally Mcquinn as Eastern Region Chapter Representative, Peter McLaren as Publications Coordinator/Proceedings, and Tom Le Seelleur as Member-at-Large. Congratulations to All!   

Vice-President/President-Elect (2013-2014)	Melanie Gobert (elected unopposed)
Executive Secretary	Cynthia Weston (elected unopposed)
Executive Treasurer	Sufian Abu Rmaileh
Al Ain Chapter Representative	Ian Taylor (elected unopposed)
Dubai Chapter Representatative	Naziha Ali (elected unopposed)
Eastern Region Chapter Representatative	Sally Mcquinn (elected unopposed)
RAK Chapter Representatative (Acting)	Paula Gibson (confirmed by TAEXCO eVote)
Publications Coordinator Proceedings	Peter McLaren (elected unopposed)
Member-at-Large	Tom Le Seeleurs (elected unopposed)

For further elections information, contact the Elections Committee at elections@tesolarabia.org.

21^st International TESOL Arabia Conference March 2015

The TESOL Arabia Executive Council would like to announce the call for conference chair proposals for the 21^st International TESOL Arabia Conference to be held in March 2015. The conference is the highlight of the TESOL Arabia academic year. The first International Conference was held in 1992 and since then it has grown in importance and prestige. Presently, it is by far the largest conference held in the Gulf, and is the third largest English Language Teaching conference in the world. We are now looking for individuals interested in chairing or co-chairing the event.

Chairing a TESOL Arabia International Conference

The duties and responsibilities of a Conference Chair or Co-chairs include, but are not limited to the following. Many of these tasks can be delegated, but the Chair is still responsible.

• Choose a theme; invite, and arrange transport and accommodation, for guest speakers
• Appoint a conference committee; call and chair meetings as required
• Choose and negotiate prices and facilities at an appropriate venue
• Establish sponsorship tiers and benefits
• Liaise with venue staff before, during, and after the event
• Ensure Call for Papers is sent out at an appropriate time
• Set prices for exhibition, Job Fair and registration
• Liaise with processing company on all conference matters in which they are involved
• Manage hotel bookings for committee and guest speakers
• Negotiate hotel rates for conference participants
• Liaise with sponsors and exhibitors before, during and after the event
• Manage all design requirements for forms, certificates, badges and other printed and online matter
• Manage publicity for the event
• Manage all printing requirements
• Manage all payments, along with Conference Treasurer and processing company
• Manage income from all parts of the conference, including sponsorship, registrations, exhibition, Job Fair, along with Conference Treasurer and processing company
• Arrange for volunteer and paid casual labour at the event, according to requirements

• Become a full, active, voting member of the TESOL Arabia Executive Council, and report TA Conference affairs to TAEXCO.
• Arrange and chair a post-conference debriefing of the TA Conference Committee and collate recommendations for the following year.
• Chair the Dr Lisa Barlow Memorial Travel Grant Committee
• Provide minutes of TA Conference meetings for the TESOL Arabia Executive Council

Eligibility:

• Must be a certified ESL professional with at least 5 years experience
• Must have prior experience as a conference committee member of a conference of at least 500 participants
• Must be a TESOL Arabia member a year prior to and during the year they are chairing the conference
• Must be a UAE resident
• Must be willing to shadow the co-chairs of the 2014 TA Conference and attend all committee and extraordinary meetings

Proposals should include:

• Contact information
• A letter of interest which includes a bio of professional background including a description of previous conference experiences, possible themes for the event, and a statement of approach that indicates what you might want to change or add to the conference.
• CV

* Please note… this is a voluntary, not a paid position.

The deadline for submissions is March 21, 2013. Please send your letter of interest and CV to James McDonald: James.Mcdonald@zu.ac.ae . In the subject line, please indicate TESOL Conference Proposal.

For the 3rd year in a row, HCT-Dubai, Men’s Campus and Gulf-based language educators have traveled to Dhaka, Bangladesh to deliver two days of teacher training in teacher effectiveness during the UAE National Day holiday.

This event was organized by the TESOL Arabia Leadership and Management SIG in collaboration with Bangladesh English Language Teachers Association (BELTA). Eighty Bangladeshi English language teachers attended training in topics such as leadership styles, time management, professional development and a variety of different topics. This year’s workshops were facilitated by Dr Christine Coombe, Audrey Renton, Konrad Cedro, Guy Brooksbank, Mouhamad Mouhanna (UAEU) and Fife MacDuff (US RELO).

According to the event organizer and co-chair of the LM SIG, Dr Christine Coombe, “giving back to the profession is a major LM SIG mandate.”

Further teacher development academies are planned for the coming year in places like Vietnam, Sudan, Uruguay and Argentina.

Teacher Effectiveness Workshops Program

Dhaka 2012 Photos

The 16^th Annual Current Trends in English Language Testing (CTELT) Conference will be held at HCT Dubai, Men’s Campus on November 22-23, 2012.  The theme of the conference is “Evaluating Teacher and Program Effectiveness.”  It is hoped that exploring the fundamentals of both teacher and program effectiveness in highly-interactive sessions will provide teachers in the region with the necessary professional development they need to better evaluate themselves, their students’ work and the programs they work in.  This annual conference is organized by the TESOL Arabia Testing, Assessment, and Evaluation SIG and the TESOL Arabia Dubai Chapter.

Plenary speakers include Dr Deena Boraie of the American University of Cairo and President-elect of TESOL; Dr Phil Quirke, Director of Madinat Zayed and Ruwais Higher Colleges of Technology; Dr Amanda Howard of British University in Dubai and Peter Davidson of Zayed University and Co-chair of the TAE SIG.

CTELT 2012 will feature presentations showcasing some of the excellent testing and teacher education work being done in the region.

The event is sponsored by TESOL Arabia and Core Education and Consulting Solutions and hosted by the Higher Colleges of Technology, Dubai, Men’s Campus.

16th Annual CTELT 2012 Conference Schedule and Program

CTELT 2012 Photos

TESOL Arabia needs you to become involved in one of the largest TESOL professional teachers’ associations. With more than 1,600 members, this dynamic volunteer organization offers unlimited professional and management development opportunities.

To nominate yourself or someone who you think would be interested in one of the following positions on the Executive Council from March 2013 to March 2014, please go to the online nomination form. Nominations run from now until midnight on 31 December 2012. Voting will run from 6 January to 28 February 2013.

Positions open in the TA Executive Council Election 2013:

Vice President/President Elect

Executive Treasurer

Executive Secretary

Member-at-Large

Publications Coordinator/Proceedings

Regional Representative: Al Ain Chapter Rep

Regional Representative: Dubai Chapter Rep

Regional Representative: Eastern Region Chapter Rep

Regional Representative: RAK Chapter (Acting) Rep

For more information about what each position does, see the Job Descriptions. (As the home base of TESOL Arabia is in the United Arab Emirates, all executive officers should reside in the UAE and be knowledgeable about the country, its culture and institutions.) Nominees and nominators must be current TESOL Arabia Members up to the end of March 2012. For membership information, visit the Membership Section of the website. For further elections information, contact the Elections Committee at elections@tesolarabia.org .

1 September 2012

The editors of the Proceedings of the 2012 TESOL Arabia Conference: Achieving Excellence through Life Skills Education would like to invite you to submit a paper based on your presentation at the TESOL Arabia 2012 Conference to be considered for publication in the next volume of the Proceedings.  Only those who presented at the conference may submit articles for the Proceedings.

Please send your article to Publications Coordinator, Peter Davidson at: peter.davidson@zu.ac.ae

The deadline for submissions is Monday, October 1, 2012.

Please follow the specifications outlined below:

• Articles should be no longer than 3000 words (including References and Appendices)
• Articles should be typed using Times New Roman, font size 12, with 1 ½ line spacing.
• If you include Tables and/or Figures, make sure they are no wider than 12 cm.
• Do not use color in Tables or Figures.
• Do not use footnotes.
• Only use “portrait” orientation (i.e. do not insert any pages in “landscape” orientation).
• Remove all hyperlinks in the text.
• Include a complete list of references using APA style.  Follow the Brief APA Style Guide, and consult the Publications Manual of the American Psychological Association, 6^th Edition (2009) if necessary.
• Send articles electronically as a Word attachment.

We will acknowledge receipt of articles within two weeks.

22 February 2012

Nurses in Somaliland holding copies of donated books from TA Book Drive, July 2011

The Book Drive room is humming with activity these days. The main task is packing up boxes for a large shipment to Iraqi’s universities. TA member Anwar Fettlawi helped arrange this by contacting the Embassy and the Ministry of Higher Education in Baghdad. This shipment should be completed before the TESOL Arabia conference. Next summer, we plan to send more books to help out with the training of nurses in Somaliland as we did last summer. (See photo) In addition, the 620 boxes we shipped last September should soon be distributed among several Somaliland universities.

Thank you notes from students in the Al Hemam Institute, Ajman

Closer to home, the Book Drive continues to support Al Hemam Institute in Ajman which provides after school training to teens and low-income adults.(see photo of children’s thank you notes). Several boxes of books were also donated a few weeks ago to help AUD student-teachers provide weekly English courses to laborers in Dubai. This effort is coordinated in part by the Adoptacamp charity. We also plan to donate graded readers to a reading project established by the TA Literature SIG in Sharjah for the Ruqaya girls school.

We continue to rely on the hard work and youthful energy of several high school volunteers, some of whom are doing their Duke of Edinburgh award. You’ll probably see some of them at this year’s TA conference. The book storage room in Zayed University continues to be ours, and We’re still sorting out thousands of books donated by ZU last month, so we expect to stay very busy for the next few months. ZU is planning to donate even more course books from various majors in the near future after they are decommissioned. A special thanks for the hard work of volunteers like Stacey Patton at AAWC and Jamie Baird at ZU-AUH. There have been many others who have pitched in – a big thank you to all!

Used textbooks can again be donated to the TESOL Arabia Book Drive at the March conference. The Book Drive will be collecting educational books (mainly EFL/ESL) and children’s books.

These books will be sent to resource-poor schools and universities overseas as well as being distributed to charitable organizations in the UAE.

For any enquiries or to learn more about the Book Drive, please email us at:ruth.glasgow@zu.ac.ae or paul.dejong@zu.ac.ae

More information on TESOL Arabia Book Drive Initiative