A Funny, yet Honest, Only Sometimes Brutal and Mostly Lovely Review on Attending the CATESOL Conference in San Diego

  Regional CATESOL Conference

This Saturday 10/10/15, I attended the CATESOL conference in San Diego at the Educational Cultural Complex (A San Diego Continuing Education Campus) and was able to explore the various exhibits as well as hear the Key note speaker Deborah Gordon present on Multi-word vocabulary. The lecture by Deborah was refreshingly practical and did not contain the usual lengthy intellectual theories explained with 5 syllable words, as other lectures I’ve attended have had. I enjoyed it when she gave a list of 8 myths of vocabulary teaching, which were borrowed from Keith False’s book “Vocabulary Myths: Applying Second Language Research to Classroom Teaching.” I was happy to hear that several of the suggestions, based on the myths, were things I am already doing in my classroom. For example one myth was that you should avoid using the native language when teaching vocabulary and avoid vocabulary lists. Well in my class I often use lists which compare the English word with the closest equivalent in the student’s first language. So according to Keith False’s research, what I am doing is beneficial to my student’s. I was surprised to hear that you don’t need to teach a new vocabulary word in context. I wonder if Keith is suggesting that it is better not to, or if he is simply saying it is not necessary in order to learn the word. I don’t always use words in sentences when teaching a new vocabulary, but I do try to provide a context with visual images showing the word in an item or within a real-world scene. For example, if the word is “ball” I teach it with the Spanish equivalent, show a picture of a ball and then a picture of kids playing with the ball. What would Keith False say about that, I wonder? The remainder of the lecture explained multi-word vocabulary, what they are, why they are important and briefly how to teach them. I had not thought much about teaching MWV such as “blood pressure” or “as a matter of fact,” because my students are still learning “ball” and “bat,” but it is important for them because they may not find a Spanish equivalent or a clear definition in an English dictionary. Also 58% of spoken English contains these type of vocabulary. A neat resources she gave us was a website that lists the most frequent of these MWV for us to teach. A handout was also given which listed some common errors student’s had made in their writing because they did not know the correct use of the proper MWV. However, in my opinion this is where the lecture took a slight nose dive. She seemed to spend the majority of the last 20 minutes showing examples of student errors and having us find the misrepresented MWV. I feel one or two examples would be enough, especially with the combined handout we can take home and read ourselves. I would have preferred she spent more time on giving practical advice on how to best teach MWV. At the end she had two slides of tips, but ran out of time to present them. Additionally some of these tips were essentially useless. For example one “Captain-Obvious” tip was “make sure there is ample opportunity to practice MWV.” Not only is that extremely vague because it assumes that everyone has the same understanding of the word “ample”, which we don’t, but it wastes time telling us to do something we already know rather than teaching us how. Despite these last minute pieces of the speech, it really was a wonderful lecture that anyone could enjoy. To give a speech to a room full of educators without being overly pompous or soul-killingly tedious is rare and I appreciated her down-to earth practical lecture. 

After the key note speaker I encountered my favorite part of the conference, free sample textbooks. Let me preference this by saying that I am very resourceful and only take what I truly will use, and I truly will use all 15 free textbook samples that I collected and requested. I am not greedy; I have just been a broke college student and now teacher for too long and I love anything free to support my cause of teaching English. Okay to be honest, I just love anything free in general. I have been called the "Free-Sample Queen," but that doesn't change the fact that I'm putting it toward a good cause. There were so many free books and I was very excited. I got a Spanish to English dictionary which I am going to use to help me make my vocabulary lists and use as a classroom resource. I also got a variety of workbooks, grammar books and textbooks with pictures that the students will enjoy. My textbooks will serve three main purposes. One is that I will go through and see if any are valuable enough to suggest them to be purchased by my school for future use. If they can be convinced, the book I am really shooting for is the English/Spanish dictionary because it could be used as an additional resource for the curriculum we already have. The second purpose is for me to become familiar with the world of TESOL and the types of resources out there. Finally, the third purposes is so I can use the books ideas and activities to help me in my teaching. I obviously can not copy the book, but I can springboard off their ideas on how to teach concepts like present perfect, for example. If I find a lot of good ideas in one text, then I will invest in it for my students when I get my next grant or classroom budget.

Overall I enjoyed the conference. The key note speaker was understandable, had thought-provoking points and though she could have improved the last 20 minutes, I gained some great ideas during her speech. I did indulge in some of the free food and was very happy about the fresh fruit. To go off topic for a moment and give a totally brutally honest reflection of the breakfast, they should not have cut the bananas! I am perfectly capable of peeling one myself and, yes I do want the full banana and, no I don’t want two banana halves that are already browning on the ends. Also the bagels were somewhat stale. Sorry for the rant. That’s the brutally honest review version, but in reality it was nice to have some food that was not just pastries so I got over those little details of cut bananas lol. I had some really delicious strawberries and even took a croissant back to my husband. My favorite part of the conference was of course the samples of new textbooks. They opened my eyes to new resources and the TESOL world. Though I did not attend the workshops, I liked this event enough that in the future when I have more depth into my career I will  attend again and make up for that loss. In closing, though I dreadfully hated waking up early on a Saturday where I usually sleep in till 9am, I learned a lot and enjoyed the opportunity to attend this career boosting event. I recommend every educator teaching English to attend at least once, even if you mainly teach Elementary like me.