Reading is often portrayed as an individual cognitive act, but learning to read is profoundly social. Children learn to read best when they do so through “dialogic reading” with a parent who asks questions to stimulate the child’s thinking. As for adults, the entire purpose of a university is to provide social scaffolding for reading and learning; otherwise, universities would be replaced by bookshelves. For both children and adults, social scaffolding is especially important for second language learners, who face additional linguistic challenges in comprehending texts. This presentation explores new digital tools for promoting social reading across the lifespan, through both natural language processing and facilitating human interaction. First, it discusses whether and how conversational agents, such as Siri or Google Assistant, can provide opportunities for social interaction that contribute to young children’s language and literacy development. The presentation then turns to digitally-supported human interaction among adult readers through the use of social annotation software. Annotation has long been known as a way to support reflective reading, but recently available social e-reading tools, such as Perusall and Hypthoses.is, now allow a whole class of students to collectively annotate the same document. Research on the impact of social annotation on learning processes and outcomes will be synthesized, including implications for use of these tools in English language teaching.

Mark Warschauer is Professor of Education at the University of California, Irvine, where he directs the Digital Learning Lab. Professor Warschauer has made foundational contributions to language learning through his pioneering research on computer-mediated communication, online learning, technology and literacy, laptop classrooms, the digital divide, automated writing evaluation, visual-syntactic text formatting, and, most recently, conversational agents for learning. His dozen books and more than 200 papers have been cited more than 40,000 times, making him one of the most influential researchers in the world in the area of digital learning. He is a fellow of the American Educational Research Association and a member of the National Academy of Education.

The pandemic has accelerated the creation and adoption of curriculum innovations. This keynote address will present and discuss innovations in discipline-related English language training both within and outside the curriculum that were created for two purposes: to help students improve their English and to ensure they spend time outside of class on English language learning. Aspects such as curriculum design, development, implementation, and evaluation will be explored; the considerations that deserve attention will be highlighted. References will be made to some theoretical frameworks, such as the Community of Inquiry approach (Garrison, Anderson, & Archer, 2000), the three-phase process of change via initiation, implementation, and institutionalisation (Fullan, 1991), and the ADRI approach, as well as to empirical studies that employed big data learning analytics triangulated with qualitative methods.

Associate Professor Julia Chen is the Director of the Educational Development Centre at The Hong Kong Polytechnic University. Her research interests include English Across the Curriculum, leveraging technology for advancing learning and teaching, and using learning analytics for curriculum review and quality enhancement. She was the principal investigator of several large-scale government-funded inter-university projects on EAC and using technology for literacy development. Her work has been published in journals and edited collections. A two-time recipient of her university’s President Award for Excellent Performance, first in teaching and then in service, she was shortlisted for the Hong Kong UGC Teaching Award and by QS Quacquarelli Symonds for the Reimagine Education Learning Assessment Award. She is a Principal Fellow of Advance HE (PFHEA), and recently received the lifetime designation award of Distinguished Fellow from the Association for Writing Across the Curriculum. She has served on many education committees, as well as review boards in the US and East Asia

Change as the only constant in life is a familiar experience to many of us, as we manage ideological shifts in English Language Teaching (ELT) that necessitate practical professional reworkings in various situations. Changes resulting from the process grobalisation (Tsui, 2020) have seen Asian countries adapting in these critical areas: English language policies being reformed, the notion of standard English being reconceptualised, postmethod ELT being re-evaluated, and professionalism of ELT being reconsidered, amongst other areas. This paper reviews two areas of change that have emerged as critical issues (Schleppegrell, 2020; Tsui, 2020; Troudi, 2020) in the local ELT context: postmethod ELT including critical pedagogy and ELT 4.0 technologies (Kamilia, Affendi, Noah, & Yunus, 2020) and ELT professionalism. It examines the extent and nature of change as a basis for assessing impact on some areas of our professional practice and student learning. It highlights the challenges that have surfaced in the process of managing change and suggests some possibly innovative ways in professional adaptation to change. Some possible waves of future change that will impact the mission of the centre will be discussed, in the light of their pertinence to the general ELT community.

Associate Professor Wu Siew Mei teaches English language and communication skills to both undergraduate and graduate students. Her research interest stems from related English language classroom issues, including investigations into the nature of academic writing, objective testing in large scale English language proficiency assessment and the validation of test descriptors. She is also the Vice Dean of Students at the Office of Student Affairs and oversees curriculum development in the university’s residential college and general education programmes.

The English Language Teaching classroom is not an isolated social vacuum but an institutional global(ised) space. Therefore, my talk centres on the coloniality of our beliefs and practices in ELT. While many argue that colonialism is a thing of the past, the discourses and practices associated with it continue to shape most, if not all, facets of the ELT profession. We refer to this condition as the coloniality of ELT where the practice of ELT is by itself deeply embedded within the structures and logics of (global) coloniality. Although I also problematise the many ways this lens is mobilised in teaching and research, I argue that attempts at transforming the ELT classroom must contend with its embeddedness within conditions of coloniality.

Dr Ruanni Tupas is Lecturer in Applied Linguistics at the Institute of Education, University College London. He taught for 10 years at the Centre for English Language Communication, National University of Singapore. He was Programme Leader of the MA in Applied Linguistics programme at the National Institute of Education (Singapore) before he joined the UCL Institute of Education in 2019 where he teaches the graduate programmes of both TESOL and Applied Linguistics. He is currently an Associate Editor of the International Journal of the Sociology of Language.