50
Language Teaching
Organizing a Teaching Conference AsiaTEFL 2020 Comes to Korea
www.gwangjunewsgic.com
November 2020
TEACHING & LEARNING
Interview with Dr. Park Joo-Kyung AsiaTEFL is a large organization of English professionals involved in the field of teaching English as a second or foreign language throughout Asia. Its member countries stretch from Southeast Asia, to South Asia, to the Middle East, and to the Far East. It has held an annual international conference since 2003. These international conference venues shift from country to country annually, and this year the conference is back in Korea. The AsiaTEFL 2020 conference chair is Dr. Park Joo-Kyung of Gwangju. She is a long-time director of AsiaTEFL and a former president of Korea TESOL as well as of its Gwangju-Jeonnam Chapter. The Gwangju News connected with Dr. Park to find out more about the conference and about how one goes about organizing a major conference with hundreds of presentations and many more hundreds of participants. — Ed.
Gwangju News (GN): Dr. Park, you are a professor of English here in Gwangju. Let’s start off this interview with you telling our readership a little more about yourself. Dr. Park Joo-Kyung: First of all, thank you for having me. I am a professor in the Department of English Language and Literature at Honam University. I have been teaching there since 1995 after teaching at Chonnam National University for two years. My teaching and research interests include teacher education, teaching English as a lingua franca, and critical pedagogy. I have been involved with the Gwangju International Center (GIC) for many years in different capacities, including GIC Talk guest speaker, GIC Citizen’s Choir, and GIC board member. Gwangju is my fourth home, following Incheon, Seoul, and College Station, Texas, in the U.S.; but it is where I have lived the longest. I am very happy and grateful to be part of this great city where I have gotten to know so many wonderful people such as Dr. Shin Gyonggu, the GIC director, and Dr. David Shaffer, chairman of the GIC board, to name just two. We have been friends and colleagues for 27 years. I also feel so blessed because the city of Gwangju has given me so many opportunities to develop personally and professionally.
2020�11��(November).indd 50
GN: You have been chosen as the conference committee chair for AsiaTEFL 2020. How did this come about? Dr. Park: This past April, I got an emergency call from AsiaTEFL president, Dr. Jeon Ji-hyeon. She asked me to take over as the conference chair for AsiaTEFL 2020 because the designated conference chair could not continue for personal reasons. Let me first tell you what AsiaTEFL is. AsiaTEFL stands for the Asian Association of Teachers of English as a Foreign Language. It was founded in 2003 by Dr. Lee Hyo-woong of Korea Maritime University and supported by many other organizational leaders in many other Asian countries. It has about 18,000 members and hosts an annual international conference that attracts more than 1,000 participants each year in different venues around Asia. Since its foundation, I have served AsiaTEFL as its first general secretary, as chair of AsiaTEFL 2011, as conference executive director, and as both a featured
10/28/2020 10:50:17 AM
