by Michelle Jeanne C. Caracut, OPI

Chezka Bianca Torres, Lynrose Jane Genon, and Sheena Gem Harun, faculty members of the Department of English, CASS, were awarded ASEAN Access Grant to the 12th Annual CamTESOL Conference on English Language Teaching.
Grant details include up to $200 contribution toward airfare, travel allowance of $117, conference registration fee waiver, invitations to conference dinner, CamTESOL-UECA Regional ELT Research Symposium and Conference Welcome Function (Presenter’s Warm Up).
The three lecturers presented their research papers on February 20-21 at Phnom Penh, Cambodia. Torres and Genon’s paper was entitled Constructive Alignment of Assessment Practices in Four Achievers’ English Language Classrooms while Harun’s was Assessing the Effects of Animated Cartoon and Task-induced Involvement in L2 Incidental Vocabulary Acquisition. Harun also presented her paper in the CamTESOL-UECA Regional ELT Research Symposium on February 19, 2016 at the same venue.
Torres, Genon, and Harun were the only participants from Mindanao and the first awardees to have submitted Best Thesis undergraduate research papers in the English Department and received such grant.
First-time to read a paper in an international conference held outside the country, they consider meeting various people and learning from them was the best part of the experience. Torres said “It was quite a new experience for us especially being young professionals to be able to hear from others who have been there for a long time already and to be able to share ideas and to network with them.”
Harun added that through the conference she had the opportunity to be invited to do a collaborative study in Malaysia. Genon further said that attending the conference inspired her to do research more and that it gave her new perspectives about teaching.
Harun is currently taking her Master of Arts in English Language Studies and Genon is taking up a Master in Culture and Arts Studies.
CamTESOL is a conference for professionals in English Language Teaching and related issues. The first CamTESOL conference was in 2005 on the theme of “Practical Issues in Teaching”. CamTESOL has now become the premier professional development conference in the Asia Pacific region with an average audience of 1,700 attending annually, over 600 of whom are international participants from over 30 countries.
Topics : ASEAN Access Grant CamTESOL