Download revised Sunday conference schedule | abstracts (PDF)

Keynote Speaker

Dr. Robert Courchene

Institute of Official Languages and Bilingualism (OLBI/ILOB), University of Ottawa (Canada)

Self-Access Learning and the Learner

Setting up a self-access center with the latest technology or providing students with materials will not automatically transform them into autonomous learners.

Learners, like children, vary in the degree to which they are willing to be independent, to take responsibility for assigned tasks. Sheerin (1991) explains that it is difficult to change students' attitudes towards learning especially in contexts where the role of the learner is to be a passive recipient rather than an active collaborator in the learning process. To do so requires learner training that helps students prepare psychologically to be independent learners and to acquire new attitudes and strategies.

This training can take the form of an initial intensive training session or be an ongoing process leading students to become autonomous learners. The level of autonomy each learner is comfortable with will be different with regard to different tasks and contexts. In leading students to become self-motivating learners, the teachers play a critical role as mentors, as providers of skills and strategy training and as developers of materials that promote autonomy.

In this presentation, with an explicit focus on the learner, I will examine the role teachers, materials, and self-access learning centers play in developing learner autonomy.

Dr. Courchene will also lead a workshop entitled:

Using Literature to Teach Language

In both oracy (oral-based) and literacy (reading and writing) based cultures, fairy tales, myths, legends are universal and play a key role in the transmission of knowledge and beliefs. Children are socialized using these different genres and grow up sharing them with other members of their culture.

One of the most universal of all fairy tales is Cinderella (some researchers estimate that over 250 versions of this story exist). Using this and other selections from literature, I will show how we can bring together children from all different cultures by sharing their versions of this fairy tale while at the same time teaching them English and literacy skills: round-robin, knowledge framework, bilingual readers, show and tell, interview techniques, character descriptions, alternate endings, elements of a fairy tale.