The When East Meets West: The teaching and learning of reading and writing in the multilingual and multicultural context International Conference was held from 13 to 14 June 2014 at our University. The Conference was jointly organized by Centre for Advancement of Chinese Language Education and Research (CACLER), the Division of Chinese Language and Literature in Faculty of Education, the University of Hong Kong, and the International Association for the Improvement of Mother Tongue Education (IAIMTE)*.
In celebration of CACLER’s 15th Anniversary, we are glad and honoured to offer this global platform, also known as IAIMTE’s 2nd Special Interest Group (SIG) Reading and Writing Conference, on which synergy between research-based and classroom-based knowledge is enabled and facilitated. The theme of this conference has highlighted how the best of two traditionally diverse worlds can possibly be synthesised not only in terms of educational research but for arousing awareness of multilingualism and multiculturalism in a globalised context. Based on the main theme, scholars and educators from around the world were cordially invited to submit abstracts of their research papers related but not limited to the following sub-themes on reading and/or writing of kindergarteners, primary and/or secondary school students: 1) Curriculum design and the development of teaching materials; 2) Effective pedagogies for teaching and learning; and 3) Assessment of, for, as learning.
It is our great honor to have two renowned scholars to deliver distinguished keynote speeches at our Conference:Prof. Stephen D. Krashen, Professor Emeritus at the University of Southern California, U.S.A. and Founder of various influential concepts and theories in the study of Second Language Acquisition, together with Dr. Christy Lao, Associate Professor at the College of Education of San Francisco State University, delivered a distinguished keynote speech entitled ‘Compelling Comprehensible Input’ while Prof. Gert C. W. Rijlaarsdam, Professor at Graduate School of Teaching and Learning, University of Amsterdam and Founder of IAIMTE and the Chief Editor of L1 Educational Studies in Language and Literature Journal, delivered another keynote speech on ‘Writing to Read: Learning to Write Supports Comprehending’.
Moreover, we are very delighted that Dr. Stephen D. Krashen had delivered a 4-hour pre-conference workshop on ‘Fundamentals of language acquisition and teaching’ on 12 June 2014 afternoon and it was greatly received by over 200 participants.
The Conference was a great success, with over 200 delegates from 13 countries/regions (Botswana, Finland, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Korea, Malaysia, Netherlands, Taiwan, Singapore, South Africa and China), including 19 of our partnership schools, have stepped out to generously share their insights with fellow researchers and teaching professionals. Their experiences and perspectives are, without doubt, invaluable assets to those in our field. The Conference themes were addressed through 68 various plenary and featured presentations, papers, poster demonstrations and forum. We believe that the pre-conference workshop, distinguished keynote speeches as well as various presentations in this conference were able to enlighten us in different areas of language education, and foster information exchange amongst academic researchers, teacher trainers and frontline educators.
We look forward to have further collaboration with IAIMTE* in near future.
* International Association for the Improvement of Mother Tongue Education (IAIMTE), established in 1996 by Ken Watson (Australia) and Gert Rijlaarsdam (Netherlands), has been changed to the International Association for Research in L1 Education (ARLE) since 2014.
Prof. Gert C. W. Rijlaarsdam, Professor at Graduate School of Teaching and Learning, University of Amsterdam and Founder of IAIMTE, delivered another keynote speech on ‘Writing to Read: Learning to Write Supports Comprehending’
It is our great honor to have two renowned scholars to deliver distinguished keynote speeches at our Conference: Prof. Stephen D. Krashen, Professor Emeritus at the University of Southern California, together with Dr. Christy Lao of San Francisco State University, delivered a distinguished keynote speech entitled ‘Compelling Comprehensible Input’
Conference Booklet (Download)
Conference Rundown (Download)