The Way Forward: Learning from international experience of TEYL
Key Note Speakers
Professor Richard Johnstone OBE is Emeritus Professor of the University of Stirling in Scotland. He has conducted extensive teaching, publication and research at national and international levels in respect of the early learning of additional languages. He was Director of the independent evaluation of the national pilot projects which introduced modern foreign languages at primary school in Scotland; Director of the national evaluation of children receiving Gaelic-medium primary school education in Scotland; Director of the national Assessment of Achievement research on French and German at primary and early secondary school in Scotland. He was a member of the group of six which in 1999 conducted the first EC-funded survey of research on ELL across member states of the European Union and a member of the group of three which in 2006 completed a follow-up EC-funded survey which included not only research but also professionals’ views of good practice and the key principles of ELL teaching. Currently he is Director of the UK’s first project on early partial immersion in a foreign language and also Director of the independent evaluation of the national early bilingual education programme in Spain which is run under the joint auspices of the British Council in Spain and the Spanish Ministry of Education and Culture. He was commissioned by the Council of Europe to write the publication on early language-learning in their languages policy publication series.
Yuko Goto Butler
Yuko Goto Butler is Associate Professor of Language and Literacy in Education at the Graduate School of Education, the University of Pennsylvania. Her research interests are primarily associated with the improvement of second and foreign language education among young learners in the U.S. as well as abroad in response to the diverse needs of an increasingly globalizing world. Dr. Butler has been interested in identifying effective ESL/EFL teaching and learning methods and strategies that take into account the relevant linguistic and cultural contexts in which instruction takes place. She is also interested in how we can effectively assess children’s second/foreign language proficiency and how best to evaluate the effectiveness of various programs and policies for language education. Her most recent project examines various issues that have arisen in conjunction with the introduction of English language instruction at the elementary school level in select Asian countries, including Taiwan, Japan and Korea.
