Nine graduating students from the Teaching English as a Second Language Programme (TESL) presented their final-year-project (FYP) research papers at the 2nd International Conference on Linguistics and Language Studies (ICLLS) in Hong Kong on 23 and 24 June. Remarkably, one of the students Jennifer Tan won the Excellent Paper Award 2016.

TESL students, their advisor Dr Irene Fung (6th l), and Dr Francis Lee, Chair of the Conference Organising Committee (4th l)

Tan’s paper, titled Relationships between Achievement Emotions, Motivation and Language Learning Strategies of High, Mid and Low English Language Achievers together with the other eight TESL students’ papers are now published in the ICLLS Conference Proceedings.

Jennifer Tan wins the Excellent Paper Award 2016

These promising young researchers were Yuki Chen, Jiangsen Jiang, Elaine Lin, Terra Mo, Janette Ren, Jennifer Tan, Jojo Wu, Bonnie Zeng and Claire Zhou. They received a lot of praise, encouragement and invaluable feedback as well as suggestions from the conference participants. Their outstanding performance and the high quality of their research projects drew a loud applause.

The TESL students believed that it was a very valuable experience for them to interact with scholars from different regions in the conference. They shared their thoughts about this conference:

Jennifer Tan: It is a great experience to participate in this conference. I’ve never thought that I could win the Excellent Paper Award! It really encourages me to become a good researcher.

Yuki Chen: I feel so proud of myself to be one of presenters in this international conference. I got many suggestions through communicating with other presenters. To me, this experience is really invaluable and unforgettable!

Janette Ren: If you don't push yourself, you'll never know how good you are. Take every chance you can get, be anyone you could be. You see, I made it!

Elaine Lin: It's a rare opportunity and an unforgettable experience for me to present my FYP in an international conference. This experience has inspired me to march forward.

Claire Zhou: I never thought that one day I could stand on the stage of an international conference and interact with scholars from different countries in the field of linguistics. It was a fabulous conclusion for my college life.

Bonnie Zeng: It is a great honour to present my fyp in this conference. Receiving recognition and appreciation from scholars has strengthened my confidence. I will keep on learning to become a good researcher!

Terra Mo: I felt so curious, so excited, so anxious and so nervous while preparing for this conference presentation. But after being able to present my paper successfully, I have a strong sense of achievement. This conference is really a rewarding and unforgettable experience to me!

Jiangsen Jiang：In this conference I met many people and learned many new things. That's really good! I also learned from Chayada & Korakote's presentation, “accent is not a big deal because right now is the time for world Englishes.”

Jojo Wu: I took great pride as a TESLer at UIC to be able to attend this conference where I met all these wonderful people, such as Dr Matley of University of Zurich and Ms Zocca, a PhD student from Germany. They provided great comments on the improvement of my project and inspired me to integrate daily observations into research. I am eternally grateful to all those people who made these two days possible and meaningful.

Reporters: Irene Fung, Jennifer Tan (TESL)
Photos provided by TESL