Why Join ATSA?

To stay connected to the

Alliant TESOL community.
To support and be supported
by classmates.
To develop confidence as a
TESOL professional.
To develop valuable leader-
ship skills .
To make a difference in our
Alliant TESOL community.
To build a student organiza-
tion you can be proud of!

education in TESOL, I
gained more confidence
on what it takes to pre-
pare and present at an
international conference.
As such submitting a
proposal for a research
paper and presenting it at
the next conference is no
longer an unattainable
Attending any academic
conference is a profes-
sionally rewarding expe-
rience. However as a
first time attendee of an
international conference
of this magnitude (over
75 countries represented)
and caliber, the 2014
TESOL convention in
Portland was a worth-
while endeavor that is set
to become an annual
hallmark of my academic
and professional life
moving forward. Attend-
ing these presentations
not only informed me of
current research and
practices, but more im-
portantly inspired own
research ideas. Also as
part of the team from
Alliant International Uni-
versity that presented tips
on pursuing a graduate
My Experience at TESOL Portland
Saladin Davies, ATSA presi-
dent, talks about why he
encourages all masters and
doctoral students to join the
organization.
ATSA is an academic and
social club that exists to
serve the professional devel-
opment needs of TESOL
students enrolled in Mas-
ters and Doctoral programs
here at Alliant. We promote
and encourage student
scholarship in our field
through campus workshops,
attending local, regional,
and national conferences,
and mentoring fellow stu-
dents.
I think one of ATSAs im-
mediate goals is to find
ways to encourage TESOL
students to become more
active in our club. We will
be able to accomplish so
much more if more students
would participate. For ex-
ample, we will hold a stu-
dent conference in which
Masters and Doctoral stu-
dents prepare their own
original research and pre-
sent it at a conference spon-
sored by ATSA. I hope to
make this student confer-
ence a reality next Spring
(2015).
ATSA has also held a num-
ber of workshops in the
past, and we have sponsored
speakers at the ELD confer-
ence, participated and fund-
ed events sponsored by
other clubs and organiza-
tions on campus, and have
hosted several annual holi-
day parties and mixers.
Being in ATSA has been a
great learning experience
for me, and it has allowed
me to grow and to develop
professionally and as a per-
son.
ATSA News & Notes
About ATSA: A Message from the
President
ATSA l ogo
Spring 2014
Caption describing picture or graphic.
Volume 1, Issue 1
goal. I also enjoyed so-
cializing with colleagues
from other institutions and
professionals from this
diverse group of
TESOLers was extremely
valuable. Talking with
people in the hallways, at
meals, and even thirty se-
cond elevator introductions
were opportunities to net-
work, share and even de-
velop new contacts All in
all, a worthwhile experi-
ence!
Olive Nabukeera
Dr. Malupa-Kim also serves as a
Standing Committee Member of the
TESOL Professional Development
Committee.


The Alliant TESOL faculty have had
a number of professional scholarly
activities this Spring.
Dr. Kelch and Dr. Malupa-Kim con-
ducted a Pre-Convention Institute
workshop at TESOL Portland. The
title was Writing and Implementing
Case Studies for Language Teacher
Educators. An article based on the
workshop has been published in the
most recent edition of the ORTE-
SOL Journal.
Dr. Baker shared her Matching
Learning Styles Vocabulary Exercis-
es in a poster session at the regional
CATESOL, and Dr. Malupa-Kim
gave a presentation titled Teacher
Talk 2.0. Effectively Explaining
Grammar in So Little Time.
Mary Patton interviewed Saladin
Davies, ATSA president. Sal is origi-
nally from Brooklyn, NY one of
Americas most ethnically rich and
diverse cities. He attained his Mas-
ters in TESOL from Alliant and is
now pursuing his doctorate in TESOL
as well.

Q. Why did you choose Alliant for
your Masters and Doctoral de-
grees?
Well, I was looking for a program that
had a strong international focus which
emphasized practice over theory.
Q. How did you first become in-
volved in TESOL?
I would have to say my first experi-
ence in TESOL was working as an
English tutor at Paul Valery Universi-
ty, in the south of France. Primarily, I
was assigned to individual students (or
small groups of students) that needed
help with conversational skills. How-
ever, from time to time, I did some
proofreading and editing work for
graduate students in other departments.
Q. What is your past experience in
teaching ESL and/or EFL?
Although, I have classroom experience
in the US, it has not been in ESL class-
rooms. Most of my teaching experi-
ence was as a reading resource teacher
in charter schools with native English
speaking students. However, within
the last three years, I have had the op-
portunity to teach ESL at the universi-
ty level.
In regards to my EFL teaching experi-
ence, I worked for five years in Japan
as an Assistant Language Teacher
(ALT) in secondary schools as well as
an English teacher in the private sec-
tor. Working for the private sector
involved teaching company classes,
teaching individual and small group
lessons for children and adults, and
private tutoring for EIKEN (Test in
Practical English Proficiency), and
TOEIC (Test of English for Interna-
tional Communication).
Q. What are your future profession-
al and personal goals?
My long-term goal is to find a univer-
sity appointment teaching undergradu-
ate and graduate pre-service teachers
in either the US or overseas. In addi-
tion to teaching, I would also like to
become more
Student Profile: Saladin Davies, ATSA President
Faculty Scholarly Activities
ATSA News & Notes Page 2
Learning is lifelong, and
we can learn so much from
our colleagues and fellow
classroom practitioners.
involved in TESOL Inc., or one
of its local affiliates such as
CATESOL. Its really important
to me professionally, because I
believe that learning is lifelong
and that we can learn so much
from our colleagues who are
doing SLA research as well as
our fellow classroom practition-
ers.

Q. If you could teach any-
where in the world, where
would it be and why?
I really enjoyed the time I spent
teaching in Japan. I think it is a
very beautiful country, and the
people are friendly and kind. It
would be great if I had a chance
to work there again.
Dr. Miras advice: Remember that YOU are
the presenter...not your PowerPoint slides.
You need to know your content and be able to
speak about it fully and clearly. Your Power-
Point slides are there as support material on-
ly.

Content and Word limit: a good number of
words per slide will be from 15 to 20 words.
This seems like a small range, but considering
the amount of time it takes you to click from
one slide to another, this may be all your audi-
ence can read!

Colors and fonts: who doesnt love colors?
Make sure your color choices do not clash!
Also, choose standard fontsthe computer
where you are giving your presentation may
not have the same fancy fonts . Font
size is also important; they must to
be readable to you and to your audi-
ence.

Visuals: well-proportioned graphs,
charts or pictures help make your
presentation attractive.
Randall's ESL Cyber Listening Lab (http://www.esl-lab.com). This site provides lots of listening clips that are categorized into
easy, medium, and difficult, which mostly focus on real-life conversation topics. After each listening clip, it provides different
types of post-listening exercises. Jiamin (Connie) Huang (This is Jeff Harveys recommended site as well.)

I really like Better Lesson (http://cc.betterlesson.com/). This website includes a lot of lesson plans, which is very helpful and use-
ful. You can just type the keywords on the search place, and then a lot of lesson plans will appear. Pei-Hsin (Penny) Tsai

The Smithsonian offers several topics that you can use to teach cultural awareness to ESL/EF stu-
dents (http://smithsonianeducation.org). This site is updated by the federal government. It has several topics which open to other
resources to teach students in language arts, world studies, U.S. history, and so forth. Jose Veazquez

I like the TESOL organization website (http://tesol.org). I find it helpful not only with professional information, but career oppor-
tunities as well. Tiffany Garcia

http://www.wordandphrase.info. This is a corpus database. Click into COCA CORPUS and you can find the frequency of a
word, how to use it in different scenarios, its synonyms and antonyms. Another function of this website is that you can copy and
paste an article, then it will mark the academic words for you. Bo Jin
Sadiq, Olive Nabukeera, Lorian
Miles and Abrahem Abdaldaem.
All TESOL masters and doctoral
students are encouraged to present
at next years CATESOL!
The San Diego Regional CATESOL
Conference was held in April. It was
a great opportunity for the TESOL
doctoral students to receive valuable
experience as conference partici-
pants.
Crystal Sie and April Tai (Using
ThingLink for Creative Teaching and
Collaborative Learning) and Gi Lee
(Social Networking for Language
Learning) received awards for best
conference poster presentation.
Poster sessions were also presented
by the following doctoral students:
Sal Davies and Amir Monfared; Tony
Reader-friendly PowerPoint Presentations
Favorite TESOL Web Sites: TES 7485
Doctoral Students Shine at San Diego Regional
CATESOL Conference
Page 3
Volume 1, Issue 1
Presenting at the local CATESOL
conference is easy and a great
way to build your resume!
Helpful URLs for improving your PowerPoint presentations:
http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/powerpoint-help/tips-for-
creating-and-delivering-an-effective-presentation-
HA010207864.aspx.
http://www.dartmouth.edu/~library/biomed/guides/powerpoint.
Lesson Topic:
Lesson Plan 7 Lets Eat Part 1: Students learn about food.

Lesson Objectives:
Students will be able to:
Order food in a restaurant
Listen for details in order to identify food items

Pre-teaching notes: Teacher always plays American music before class starts and as class ends. This signals to students they are in
English class. Music examples include Simon and Garfunkel, The Beatles, Plain White Ts, Adele, and Motown.

Activities Materials

Visit the ATSA web page to view the entire lesson plan!
https://sites.google.com/site/allianttesolstudentassociation
Teachi ng Ti ps
Lesson Pl ans f r om your TESOL cl assmat es!
Introduction

Write the following questions on the board. Explain the questions and any new vocabulary. Then
the teacher will answer the questions based on his/her family situation.
Break students into pairs and have them discuss the following questions.
Who does the grocery shopping in your family?
Where do you or your family go grocery shopping?
What are typical things you buy?
How often do you or your family go grocery shopping?
Do you like to go grocery shopping? Why or why not?

After 10-15 minutes, bring the class back together and ask for volunteers to answer the questions.
White board and mark-
ers.

Music CD and player

Teaching the Content of the Lesson

The teacher will read a description of 5 different foods.
Students will listen and then will write down the number of the text next to the food item that best
describes it. See Listening Activity and Teacher Instructions for details. Review the answers.
Ask students how they selected the answers. Ask them, which were the key words that helped them
to identify the food item.

Students will learn to order food in a restaurant. Break students in pairs. Partner A will be a cus-
tomer and Partner B will be a waiter. After approximately 10 minutes, switch roles. Give everyone
a copy of the Ordering in a restaurant worksheet. Partner B will greet Partner A and ask for his/
her order. Partner A should ask a few questions about the menu. Have partners complete the activi-
ty a few times in order to change the dialogue.

During the activity the teacher should circulate through the class, observing and encouraging stu-
dents, answering questions, and keeping students on track. The teacher should use his Student
Performance Log and update it for 25% of the students.
Listening activity and
Teacher instructions

Student performance log
for teacher

Ordering in a restaurant


Conclusion We are going to have our first exam at our next class. During the first part of the class,
we are going to review the first four units. Then we will have a short exam.

Homework Food Matching Worksheet. Bring to next class. Each correct answer is worth 5 points.



Homework: Food
Matching Worksheet
Jeff Harvey
TESOL Masters
ATSA Officers: Sal Davies, President; Amir Monfared, Vice President; Abrahem Abdaldaem,
Treasurer; Mary Patton, Secretary; Crystal Sie, Officer at Large; Dr. Kelch, Faculty Advisor;
Dr. Malupa-Kim, Technical Advisor
Contact ATSA: atsa.sandiego@gmail.com; Alliant Post Office Box 177