Keynotes & Invited Talks

Prof. Icy Lee delivered a keynote presentation on “Preparing L2 Writing Teachers in the Globalised Era” at “Celebrating Multilingualism and Multiculturalism: An International Symposium on Preparing Language Teachers for Global Classrooms,” held at Hong Kong Metropolitan University on 21 February 2025. In her talk, she examined the impact of globalisation and discussed its implications for the teaching, learning, and assessment of writing in the L2 classroom.

Dr Jason Loh delivered a keynote presentation at the Seminar on International Curriculum 2024: Development and Practice of the English Language Curriculum Program, organised by Taiwan’s National Academy for Educational Research, held in Taipei, Taiwan on 18 Dec 2024. His keynote was titled “Unpacking English Language Curricula and Teacher Education: A Perspective from Singapore”. In this presentation, Dr Loh shared with the Taiwanese audience the evolution of the Singapore EL syllabus over the years due to the changing needs of the nation and profile of the students. He also shared how we prepared our EL teachers to understand and tap on the ELS for their lesson preparation and enactment.

Professor Icy Lee delivered this keynote presentation on “Rethinking second language writing teacher development: An expertise perspective” at the ETRA-Wenshan International Joint Conference, held in Taipei, Taiwan, on 23 November 2024. She examined L2 writing teacher development using an expertise lens and discussed the implications for L2 writing teacher development. 

Professor Icy Lee delivered this invited workshop on “Feedback in writing enhanced by technology and AI” at the 33rd international Symposium on English Language Teaching and Learning, English Teachers’ Association-Republic of China (ETA-ROC), held in Taipei, Taiwan, on 10 November 2024. At the workshop, she shared strategies for leveraging technology and AI at different stages of the writing process.

Professor Icy Lee delivered this keynote presentation on “Preparing future-ready feedback literate teachers of writing” at the 33rd international Symposium on English Language Teaching and Learning, English Teachers’ Association-Republic of China (ETA-ROC), held in Taipei, Taiwan, on 9 November 2024. She revisited the writing teacher feedback literacy framework proposed in her earlier work (Lee, 2021), refining and augmenting it in light of the changing educational landscape. 

Professor Icy Lee delivered this keynote presentation on “Preparing future ready language teachers” at the  5th Global Teacher Education Summit, held in Beijing Normal University, China, on 27 October 2024. Drawing upon scholarship on teacher expertise, language teacher expertise, and growing research on writing teacher expertise, she provided a quadruple framework of language teacher expertise and discussed its implications for language teacher education.

Professor Icy Lee delivered this keynote presentation on “Revisiting second language writing teacher expertise” at the International Conference on Teaching and Researching EFL Writing, held in Shanghai Foreign Studies University, China, on 26 October 2024. She presented an evolving framework on second language writing teacher expertise and discussed its implications for writing teacher education and professional development.

On October 23, 2024, A/P Vahid Aryadoust led an invited workshop at Institute of Education, UCL (London), guiding graduate students and faculty through the applications of general linear and linear mixed-effects models in second language research. Using Jamovi software, participants engaged in hands-on exercises to enhance their understanding of GLM and LMEM for analyzing L2 data.

On October 21, 2024, A/P Vahid Aryadoust delivered an invited talk at the University of Cambridge, examining the use of sensor technologies, including eye-tracking and fNIRS, to validate second language listening assessments. The presentation offered insights into how these tools capture neurophysiological responses in listening tests, contributing to emerging discussions on validity and innovative assessment practices.

A/P Csilla Weninger delivered a keynote presentation titled ‘Bridging the home-school divide in digital literacy’ at the 15th AISOFOLL Conference in Lombok, Indonesia in October 2024. In her lecture, she discussed what we know about young people’s digital literacy ‘in the wild’; that is, how they use digital media and technology outside of school. She then elaborated on how we might take some of this knowledge and utilize it for digital literacy education in school settings. She emphasized that we must not simply replicate home or leisure uses but develop digital literacy instruction which both teachers and students will experience as authentic to the purpose and context of school literacy education.

On October 9 2024, A/P Vahid Aryadoust was invited by UCL’s Institute of Education to present his recent findings on how listeners’ gaze behaviors influence test scores and listening comprehension. Through eye-tracking data, the talk highlighted dynamic listening processes that traditional assessments may overlook, proposing advancements in test validity and neurophysiological evaluation in second language assessments.

Dr Alexius Chia delivered a keynote presentation at the 7th InterNational English Language Teachers and Lecturers (iNELTAL) Conference 2024. In this presentation, he shared with over 140 online participants how multimodal texts can enhance English language teaching and learning. He introduced the Semiotic Modes framework, demonstrating how it can be used to generate more targeted questions to foster deeper analysis and multiliteracy development.

A/P Rita Silver was invited by the Shanghai Center for Research in English Language Education at Shanghai International Studies University to deliver the following talks in September 2024:

Preparing a paper for publication: Journal editor expectations
In this talk, A/P Silver taps on her experience as an author, reviewer and editor to address key expectations for publishing in international journals. She explains journal selection and submission processes. She also offers tips on how to improve the chances for acceptance through careful journal selection, editing of the submission, balancing detail v brevity and on co-authoring. She closes by offering some warnings on the use of AI, agents, and possible scams in academic publishing which can be detrimental to authors’ publication efforts. 

Ways forward in classroom research
In this talk, A/P Silver reviewed some of the historical development of classroom research, including central purposes and common methods. She then addressed some of the key topics that have been investigated in the past 10 years to highlight some of the shifts in classroom-based research, and closed by suggesting some possible ways forward and current topics of interest. 

Dr Alexius Chia delivered a keynote presentation at the 3rd International Conference on Learning Innovation and Research in Basic Education “ICLIRBE” 2024. In this presentation, he shared insights on multiliteracies in 21st-century education, highlighting the need to move beyond traditional literacy skills to include audio, oral, visual, spatial and gestural fluency. This approach empowers students, fosters inclusive learning environments, and prepares them for success in a complex, interconnected global society through dynamic learning experiences.

Dr Alexius Chia was an invited plenary speaker at the 1st UICELE and 2nd PELTIN International Conference on English Language Education held on 13 July 2024. In his presentation, he explored the 'why,' 'what,' and 'how' of multimodal texts in English Language education. Focusing on unraveling the mysteries surrounding the incorporation of these diverse texts, he guided teacher educators, teachers and curriculum designers present through the rationale behind integrating multimodal literacy into the language instruction. The presentation was meant to empower educators to appreciate the significance of multimodal texts and leverage their potential in the broader landscape of English language education.

A/P Suzanne Choo delivered a keynote presentation at the Association for Research in L1 Education (ARLE) and International Federation for the Teaching of English (IFTE) conference. A/P Choo's keynote address discussed the importance of interpretive justice given that questions about fairness, equity, and other notions of justice arise first from interpretations of communities and sociopolitical contexts. The presentation was developed from a recent paper “Hermeneutical justice as the foundation of cosmopolitan literacy in a post-truth age” that she published earlier this year in the Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy.

A/P Rita Elaine Silver was invited to deliver an online lecture on 16 May 2024 to China Center for Language Planning and Policy Studies, Shanghai International Studies University on the topic of ‘More than methodology: Considering research data management’. In this talk, she discussed some of the issue around research data management with reference to different research paradigms, data types, and potential future re-use of data. Practical tips were offered for managing the data from initial data collection through project closure in order to support future research endeavours and open science initiatives.

A/P Victor Lim Fei was an invited Keynote Speaker at the 2024 Practice and Pedagogy in Technology Enhanced Language Learning Conference (PPTELL 2024) which was held on 17 May 2024. This is an annual conference to be co-hosted by the National Taichung University of Education and PPTELL Association. In this keynote, he discussed the developments in designing learning in the digital age and offered a research and practice agenda for the next decade, with the goal of furthering the meaningful and effective design of learning with digital technologies.

A/P Angelia Poon has been invited to deliver a talk titled "Divided by Language: Exploring Chinese-ness in Anglophone Singapore Literature" at the National Taiwan Normal University on 13 May 2024. Singapore is distinctive for being a country with a Chinese-majority population that does not have Mandarin or another Chinese language as its official first language. One important intra-Chinese difference in the nation with notable implications for cultural politics has thus been language use. Analyzing novels such as Suchen Christine Lim’s The River’s Song (2014), Jeremy Tiang’s State of Emergency (2017) and Claire Tham’s The Inlet (2013), A/P Poon shows in this presentation how the cleavage between English-speaking and Chinese-speaking Chinese Singaporeans discloses persistent tensions about national history, class privilege, social mobility, and multiracial identity.

A/P Victor Lim Fei was an invited Keynote Speaker at the Research Office of International Curriculum Guidelines Seminar organized by the National Academy for Educational Research, Taipei, Taiwan, on 25 April 2024. In this keynote to the policy makers, curriculum planners from the Ministry of Education in Taiwan, he discussed the issues on the use of GenAI in teaching and learning. He also described and reflected on the initiatives taken in Singapore to equip teachers as designers of learning who harnesses the affordances of GenAI tools effectively and responsibly.

A/P Victor Lim Fei was an invited Keynote Speaker at the 2024 ALLT (Applied Linguistics and Language Teaching) Conference held on 20 April 2024. In this keynote, he discussed the tenets of educational semiotics in relation to examples from his research. These include a semiotic awareness in the teacher's embodied teaching in the design of the learning experience, recognising learning as design, teaching multimodal literacy and valuing students’ lifeworld literacies.

A/P Csilla Weninger was a featured speaker at the 58th RELC conference. Her talk discussed the impact of artificial intelligence tools on language teaching and learning. She discussed three enduring notions in ELT which have been further challenged by AI: authorship, the prioritization of language structure over social context, and the idea that language learning is a value-free endeavor. She then discussed four new priorities for language education that can help us to rebalance what matters in language education in the age of AI: affect, imagination, ethics and futures-thinking. A/P Weninger also took part in a panel discussion at the RELC conference on how teacher educators can address the evolving needs of their student teachers. 

In this presentation, Dr Willy Renandya explored the notion of engagement from a second language acquisition perspective, presented some of the key elements that are normally associated with it (e.g., curiosity, choice, challenge and creativity) and offered practical suggestions of how language teachers could use pedagogical approaches that fully engage L2 learners in and out of the classroom. Dr Renandya also took part in a panel discussion at the RELC conference on how teacher educators can address the evolving needs of their student teachers. 

A/P Suzanne Choo was invited to deliver a talk titled "Infusing Ethical Literacy in CCE to Develop Global Citizenship Dispositions" at the Research-Practice Connection (RPC) 2024. The event, held on 7 March 2024, was organized by the OER School Partnership Unit and the East Zone Teacher Learning and Professional Development Committee. RPC fosters a collaborative environment where researchers and practitioners can exchange ideas and enrich their practices.

Asst/P Ann Ang was invited to deliver a talk titled "Watery Depths: Articulating the Southeast Asian Pre-modern in Ponti" at Universiti Brunei Darussalam's Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences (FASS) seminar held on 5 March 2024. In this presentation, she discussed the sociocultural framing of water as biophysical capital and as part of the ecological landscape in one of South East Asia’s smallest nations, Singapore, and the re-imagining of these perspectives in a recent anglophone novel.