2009
Role of English Language Instruction Debated at Khabarovsk Conference
The Far Eastern State University of the Humanities in Khabarovsk and the Khabarovsk chapter of the Far Eastern English Language Teachers’ Association (FEELTA) organized a 3-day conference for English Language Teachers that focused on the issue of World Englishes, the inclusion of teaching other foreign languages, as well as general methodology. In line with its goal of supporting American studies programs, the Embassy’s Public Affairs Section provided a grant to bring Russian Experts from west of the Urals and an American expert based in Korea. English Language Officer David Fay gave four presentations on topics, including a plenary on “Assessing World Englishes”, a workshop on a new Embassy publication, a collection of short stories written by English Access Microscholarship Students, and a workshop at Khabarovsk’s American Center entitled, “Bloglish, Teenspeak and Spanglish: America’s Struggle to Understand Itself”. In total over 200 teachers attended the conference from various parts of the Russian Far East. Experts also arrived from Korea, Japan, China, Australia and Germany. A parallel set of meetings involved information resource specialists and included the American Corners coordinators from Khabarovsk and Vladivostok.