Parallel Sessions
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What Counts as Literacy Today? Teaching, Writing, and Assessment in Changing Times
Teachers are being asked to prepare students for literacy demands that are rapidly expanding and shifting. This panel brings together diverse perspectives to respond to a shared provocation, exploring writing, grammar, assessment, multimodality, metacognition, and generative AI in relation to contemporary literacy education.
Moderator:
Csilla Weninger researches and teaches in the areas of digital media literacy, multimodality and critical discourse analysis at NIE in the ELL department.
Panelists:
Tay May Yin (Ph.D.), Principal Master Teacher at the English Language Institute of Singapore, was Senior Lecturer/ English Language at the National Institute of Education and Fulbright Research Scholar at Teachers College, Columbia University.
Christine Xavier, Senior Lecturer at NIE, NTU, specializes in pedagogical grammar and sociolinguistics, with research centered on grammar for literacy development.
Matthew Ong is an accomplished English Language educator based in Singapore with over 20 years of experience in the classroom and a recipient of the Inspiring Teacher of English Award 2008 and the President’s Award for Teachers 2018.
Gordon Blaine West researches literacy and language assessment for young multilingual learners, focusing on multimodality and how students make meaning in classrooms at NIE in the ELL department.
Humanizing Feedback Practices in Writing
Writing is often perceived as anxiety-laden, and an excessive focus on errors can worsen the situation by turning feedback into a dehumanizing enterprise. Concerns about dehumanization are intensified when Generative AI marginalizes human roles in feedback processes. This panel explores ways to humanize feedback by conceptualizing it as a metacognitive, dialogic and agentive practice in the writing classroom.Panelists:
1. When feedback dehumanizes
Icy Lee is Professor of Education (TESOL & Language Education) at NIE and has published extensively in the area of feedback in L2 writing.
2. Enhancing students’ metacognitive awareness through feedback
Kiren Kaur is a Senior Lecturer at NIE and her areas of interest are literacy, metacognition and teacher development largely revolving around the primary school context.
3. Human-GenAI collaboration in writing feedback
Caroline Ho is Lead Specialist/English Language at MOE ELIS currently researching into enhancing EL primary and secondary students’ argumentation through AI-mediated scaffolding.
4. Promoting learner agency in AI-mediated feedback
Ni Youhua is a PhD student at the National Institute of Education, Nanyang Technological University, whose research focuses on generative AI-mediated feedback in second language (L2) writing.
Standard English and Singlish together in English Language classrooms: Can, lah! And here's how!
Singlish and Standard English each have distinctive features appropriate for different situations. This workshop highlights key patterns in Singapore English and explores how teachers can leverage them in a bilectal classroom with contrastive analysis and activities probing purpose, audience, & context to support students in becoming confident, effective communicators.
Facilitators:
Mark Fifer Seilhamer is an NIE ELL Senior Lecturer with a research focus on issues related to language ideologies and language & identity.
Chang Qizhong is a faculty member at the ELL department in NIE, working on grammar, syntax and linguistic variation.Hosted by the Language & Society Research Group
Teaching Literature in Secondary Schools: Reception, Production, Understanding
Literature education involves teachers and students’ understanding of complex processes of literary reception, interpretation, and production of text. This panel brings together Literature educators, curriculum specialists, and academics, who will explore the longitudinal response to literary texts, text performance, literary inquiry, and aspects of ethical pedagogies.
Speakers:
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1. How holistically do secondary school students respond to literary texts? Findings and implications from a Longitudinal Study
Meenakshi Palaniappan and Lee Pei Yong are curriculum specialists at the English Language and Literature Branch in MOE where they develop, the Literature Syllabus for secondary schools in partnership with the Literature fraternity.
2. The Art of the Monologue
Ken Mizusawa is a Lecturer in the Department of English Language and Literature at the National Institute of Education (NIE), an institute of Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. He is a teacher educator, educational researcher, textbook author and a playwright represented by Playmarket, New Zealand.
3. From Quest to Question: Open Inquiry as an Approach to Reading Poetry
Joel Kenneth Gwee is interested in inquiry-based and critical approaches to poetry, especially the English epic across the long eighteenth century; he has taught Literature in Integrated Programme, G3, and G2 contexts.
4. Recovering Truth-seeking Ethical Pedagogies for the Literature Classroom in a Post-truth Age
Farah F. Vierra is a Ph.D. candidate in the English Language and Literature Department at the National Institute of Education, Nanyang Technological University. Her research examines truth literacies and students’ stances toward truths in post-truth educational contexts.
Moderator:
In a teaching career spanning three decades, Dr Dennis Yeo has taught at elementary to tertiary levels. He lectures at the National Institute of Education, Singapore. His research interests include Gothic literature, film, popular culture and literature pedagogy.