NeuroELT, unveiled in PNU International TESOL Education Consultancy Corporation (ITECC) launched its first international conference: “International NeuroELT Conference” in Philippine Normal University to bring out the integration of neuroscience in English language teaching; held in Main Building Auditorium and other school facilities from January 22-24. PNU’s Faculty of Arts and Languages (FAL) hosted 189 participants consisting of 138 PNUans and attendees from different universities including San Jose Recoletos-Cebu, Pamantasang Lungsod ng Muntinlupa, Assumption College-Makati, Centro Escolar University-Makati and Manila, De LaSalle University, University of the Philippines-Diliman, and University of Batangas. “PNU believes that having this kind of conference will open many doors of opportunity for PNUans”, said Prof. Ruth A. Alido, this year’s host for the conference. NeuroELT is a new interdisciplinary field within the fields of Applied Linguistics and Educational Neuroscience. It is the convergence of neuroscience and English language teaching. “So far, we only had this conference in Japan. In Japan, the first language is only Japanese, which means that most of the students are not capable to speak English. So then, that is the EFL instruction. Here, we have the ESL instruction. That is the very different context in Japan”, said Prof. Ai Murphy, Murphy School of Education, Japan. According to President and CEO of ITECC Revyrose Limbo, they decided to have their conference in PNU because PNU is a center of excellence and they have been collaborating with FAL and of course the expertise of the teachers and they have been conducting TESOL here every summer. The first day of the conference kicks off with the talk on Neuroscience’s relation to language teaching as education experts from the international academe shared ideas on how the memory helps make meaning from language, the maxims for learning and instruction, and strategies on promoting active class engagement as headed by one of the speakers Prof. Robert Murphy from University of Kitakyushu. The second day continues to expound on the NeuroELT concept “Collaboration boosts level of cognition.” Prof. Pearl Gaborno-Ilustre, ITECC & Centro Escolar University discusses how established concepts and ideas from Mind, Brain, and Education Science (MBE) can be applied to teaching ESL/EFL particularly through the use of collaborative activities. The last session of the conference extends on giving fascinating neuroscientific discoveries and how they can help on classroom teaching. Prof. Robert and Ai Murphy talk about the cognitive growth, memory tricks, good textbooks vs. bad textbooks, and brain “maxims” for better and easier teaching. “I found the conference effective and useful for me especially in the future wherein I can apply new knowledge in the field of teaching. I learned that as teachers, we need to incorporate variety, collaboration, autonomy, emotional content in our daily lesson, and let the students learn from their mistakes”, said fourth year English Major Marjory Varias. By Eloida de Jesus, Janet Mentes, Anna Ruth Reyes
Posted on: Tue, 27 Jan 2015 00:53:13 +0000
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