VicTESOL Symposium Panel of Experts: Send in your questions about ‘Plurilingual perspectives and their implications for teaching’

• Dr Shem Macdonald – VicTESOL – Moderator
• Dr Marianne Turner – Monash University
• Dr Julie Choi – University of Melbourne
• Dr Howard Nicholas – La Trobe University

An awareness, understanding, acceptance, and embracing of the plurilingualism of learners in TESOL programs can positively shape how we teach and how they learn. The fact that plurilingualism features prominently as a new strand in the Draft English as an Additional Language Curriculum as part of the Victorian F-10 Curriculum suggests that this claim bears some weight. However, do we, as TESOL professionals, have a clear idea what plurilingual perspectives are and what their implications are for teaching language?

To explore this question, we have invited several experts in the field of TESOL/Applied linguistics to a panel discussion to share their perspectives on plurilingualism. We then ask them to outline some of the implications of such views for how  teachers of EAL might approach their planning and teaching.

Your questions and comments

Prior to the Symposium and the Panel discussion, VicTESOL invites questions from members and others about the topic of plurilingualism and the teaching of EAL.  These questions will be elicited and collected through the event registration process as well as via a range of social and digital media in the weeks leading up to the Symposium. We will collate a selection of questions to be put to the panel on the day.

If you cannot make it to the Bastow to hear the panel answer your question, we are also planning on bringing the panel discussion to you via live streaming on the day, plus through a recording for viewing afterwards via a link on the VicTESOL website.