About 40 scholars from around the world, including the USA, Japan, South Korea, Thailand, Israel, mainland China, Hong Kong and Taiwan, presented their papers at the Third International Conference on Linguistics and Language Studies (ICLLS 2017) on 29 and 30 June in Hong Kong. Among the presenters were four graduating students and the programme director from the Teaching English as a Second Language (TESL) Programme at UIC.
UIC presenters and the Chair of the conference organiser, Dr Francis Lee (3rd l)
These four student researchers were Jinping Wang (Abigail), Qinglin Xie (Katherine), Qingxi Yu (Libby) and Hanzhang Zhu (Roy). They presented their final-year research projects at the conference, which included corpus-based and corpus-driven analyses, conjunctive cohesion and error analysis, and vocabulary learning strategies. Their papers have been published in the ICLLS Conference Proceedings downloadable from http://iclls2017.wixsite.com/iclls-2017/eproceedings.
Professor Rod Ellis, a keynote speaker of the conference, and Professor Laurence Anthony, an invited speaker of the conference workshop and seminar, were within the audience for these young researchers’ presentations. These young researchers responded to the professors’ questions confidently during the Q&A sessions and received invaluable feedback from them.
Jinping Wang (Abigail) finds her four-year education in UIC has equipped her well for presenting
Abigail reflected that it was a great honour to participate in this academic conference and her horizon in the linguistic fields was broadened. She was deeply impressed by the scholarly speeches given in the conference, in particular Professor Anthony’s talk on constructing elaborate and practical corpora. Although she was very nervous right before her paper presentation, she found that the four-year education in UIC had equipped her well for this kind of presentation. After the conference, she realised that linguistics was really a profound discipline and she would keep on pursuing linguistics in addition to language studies.
Qinglin Xie (Katherine) had never thought of presenting her paper before
Katherine found it a wonderful experience to attend ICLLS 2017. She had never thought of presenting her paper before some scholars and exchanging views with them. It was an honour for her to attend Professor Ellis’s speech and listen to his insightful comments to the participants’ presentations. Although she would switch to marketing for her master’s degree programme, she could still learn a lot academically from the conference. This paper presentation was a showcase of what she had studied during her four years in the TESL programme at UIC.
Qingxi Yu (Libby) realises that she still has a long way to go academically after receiving the audience’s feedback to her paper presentation
It was the first time as well as the last time that Libby could represent UIC to present a paper in an international conference. It was a great honour for her to present her final-year project to Professor Ellis. After listening to his constructive feedback, she realised that she still had a long way to go academically. She was especially grateful to the FYP supervision she could receive at UIC, which enabled her to complete this project.
Hanzhang Zhu (Roy) still senses the gap between his research and that of the linguistic experts even though he has taken a year to prepare and present his final-year research project
Roy felt very excited since he met Professor Ellis in ICLLS 2017, whose works had always been cited in his assignments. He had a deeper reflection on task-based language teaching after attending Professor Ellis’s lecture. Roy pointed out that he took a year to prepare and present his final-year research project, from the inception of the proposal to the final presentation at ICLLS. Yet, he still sensed the gap between his research and that of the linguistic experts. He was more motivated to insist on enriching his academic experiences in his further study aboard.
Roy felt very excited since he met Professor Ellis in ICLLS 2017, whose works had always been cited in his assignments. He had a deeper reflection on task-based language teaching after attending Professor Ellis’s lecture. Roy pointed out that he took a year to prepare and present his final-year research project, from the inception of the proposal to the final presentation at ICLLS. Yet, he still sensed the gap between his research and that of the linguistic experts. He was more motivated to insist on enriching his academic experiences in his further study aboard.
Reporter: Edith Yan (TESL & ELLS)
Photographers: Qinglin Xie (TESL) and Edith Yan
Editor: Samuel Burgess (MPRO)
(from ELLS)
