Xuesong(Andy) Gao is a Professor of Language and Literacy Education in the School of Education, the University of New South Wales, Australia. His research interests include language learner autonomy, language education policy, and language teacher education. He is the editor-in-chief for International Journal of Applied Linguistics (Wiley), an executive editor for Teaching and Teacher Education (Elsevier). He also edits the English Language Education Series for Springer.  

Biography

Peter Crosthwaite is an Associate Professor in the School of Languages and Cultures at UQ. His areas of research include corpus linguistics and the use of corpora for language learning (known as 'data-driven learning'), as well as computer-assisted language learning, and English for General and Specific Academic Purposes. He is the Editor-in-Chief for the Australian Review of Applied Linguistics (from 2024) and serves on the editorial boards of key journals including IRAL, Journal of Second Language Writing, Journal of English for Academic Purposes, CALL and System.

Teachers at the AI Table

Lucy Macnaught, Auckland University of Technology

With constant developments in AI tools, it is understandable for us, as TESOL teachers, to be questioning whether design and innovation belong only to the role of computer programmers. By drawing on our knowledge of language and literacy and also pedagogic practices for teaching it, I argue that we have much to offer. In this talk, I focus on three levels of contribution. At a micro level, we can create and organize metalanguage with our students and then use it for mapping the types of tasks that we want GPTs to perform. At a meso level, we can use theoretical frameworks to design AI agents (customized chatbots). For the purpose of writing development, this involves designing a layer of instructions to steer how we want a GPT to behave, such as what to identify and give feedback on. No specialized programming language, like python, is required. Instead, we anticipate students’ needs in the instructions (the system message) that we create. Lastly, at a macro level, we can draw on pedagogic models to make principled choices about where and why AI tools are integrated in our teaching. I’ll discuss examples of using GPTs and customizing chatbots for literacy development at a tertiary level. This includes opportunities for making structural changes to assessments so that AI tools contribute to the development process, and not just the tweaking of a final product. Examples focus on classes with high numbers of linguistically and culturally diverse students. These decisions about AI integration and chatbot customization are relevant to TESOL educators and researchers in a range of contexts, as we all grapple with the pace and impact of technological change.

Biography

Dr Lucy Macnaught is a Senior Lecturer in the role of Learning Advisor at Auckland University of Technology. She collaborates with faculty to teach academic literacy within coursework and research programs. Her research interests include: embedded approaches to academic literacy development, including integrating AI and designing AI agents; classroom discourse analysis; and multimodal metalanguage. Her book, Writing with Students, is published with Bloomsbury Academic and is currently shortlisted for the M.A.K. Halliday Book Prize.

Language education in a world where GenAI is everywhere

Benjamin Moorhouse, Hong Kong City University

When ChatGPT was first released, it seemed like we would have to consciously interact with GenAI chatbots to get them to do what we want. However, a couple of years later, and we are now seeing GenAI-assisted features appearing everywhere. Use WeChat, and it'll automatically translate for you. Go to Google Docs, and you’ll be asked if you’d like the text you're reading summarized. You can practically use any application or go to any website, and you’ll find some kind of GenAI there to ‘help’ you with the task. Of course, there are accuracy and other ethical issues that this may bring. However, the main question we may have as language teachers is, ‘If all these GenAI tools are here to help us do language tasks for us, how will language learners get the opportunity to be exposed to language, engage in incidental learning, and practice their language use?’
Research is beginning to show that GenAI has the potential to decrease or increase learners’ cognitive and social engagement in the process of completing tasks, as well as their opportunities for language learning. The automation of processes that would have taken mental effort reduces opportunities for language learning; however, the purposeful use of GenAI as language learning partners has the potential to increase language learning opportunities.
In this talk, I’ll problematize the current GenAI landscape from the perspectives of cognitive and social engagement. I’ll argue that language teachers have an essential role to play in guiding learners to be strategic users of AI, where they use GenAI deliberately and purposefully to assist with their language learning goals. This requires critical GenAI literacy to be part of language teacher education and professional development.

Biography

Benjamin Luke Moorhouse (SFHEA) is an Associate Professor in the Department of English, City University of Hong Kong. He has extensive experience as a teacher educator and primary school English-language teacher. He has received several teaching awards, including the President’s Award for Outstanding Performance in Individual Teaching from Hong Kong Baptist University in 2023. Benjamin’s research has appeared in international journals, including System, TESOL Quarterly, TESOL Journal, RELC Journal, and ELT Journal. He is the author of Generative Artificial Intelligence and Language Teaching (Cambridge University Press, 2025).

Educational systems in many nation-states continue to operate under a monolingual paradigm, overlooking the multilingual realities shaped by migration and minority communities. This neglect perpetuates educational inequities by failing to recognize students’ diverse linguistic repertoires as valuable resources for learning. Translanguaging (García, 2009) has been proposed both as a lens for understanding how multilingual speakers flexibly mobilize their languages to communicate and as a pedagogical approach that leverages these practices in teaching and learning. Building on this, Cenoz & Gorter (2021) have introduced “pedagogical translanguaging,” which systematically integrates students’ linguistic repertoires into classroom practice. Despite increased attention in research, translanguaging in mainstream education remains underexplored, particularly regarding its potential to enhance learning outcomes, foster socio-emotional development, and reduce gaps between monolingual and multilingual pupils. Moreover, many teachers regard translanguaging-based approaches as too abstract or idealistic (Ticheloven et al., 2021), raising questions about their feasibility. 

The presentation will discuss recent empirical work addressing the affordances and challenges of translanguaging-based approaches, focusing on interactional dynamics (Dekker et al., 2023; Nap et al., 2023), attitudinal dimensions (Dekker et al., 2021), policy implications (Duarte, 2022), and teacher-researcher collaborations (Robinson-Jones & Duarte, 2023). It concludes with reflections on the extent to which translanguaging-based approaches can contribute to greater equity in education.

Biography

Joana Duarte is full professor of Educational Sciences at the Faculty of Behavioural and Social Sciences, University of Groningen and director of the teacher education department. Her research expertise spans multilingualism and education, diversity and inclusion, global citizenship education, language didactics, and minority languages. Her work explores how learners from diverse linguistic and cultural backgrounds navigate educational systems and how their multilingual repertoires can be harnessed to promote equity and inclusion. Through empirical and policy-oriented research, she investigates pedagogical innovations that support minority-language speakers and aims to inform teacher education and professional development.

Featured Symposium 3: How long does it take to learn EAL alongside the curriculum?

Chair: Marg Turnbull

Please come back later for details of this symposium.

Biography

Margaret Turnbull is currently an Associate lecturer and doctoral student at the University of Wollongong. For most of her career, she has worked in NSW education system as an EAL/D teacher, leader and researcher. More recently she has worked as a language and literacy advisor to the Australian Curriculum Assessment and Reporting Authority (ACARA) advising on the Australian English Curriculum, the National Literacy Learning Progressions and the EAL/D Teacher resource.

How long does it take to learn EAL alongside the curriculum? Instructional and theoretical implications of the international research

Jim Cummins, University of Toronto

Numerous research studies carried out over the past 45 years in countries such as Australia, Canada, Israel, the United Kingdom, and the United States, have demonstrated clear differences in the typical length of time required for immigrant-background students to attain peer-appropriate conversational skills in the school language as compared to how long it typically takes them to catch up to their native-speaking peers in academic subjects and literacy-related aspects of the school language. Although there are significant individual differences in these trajectories depending on a variety of factors (e.g., prior education in the home language, socioeconomic status, age on arrival, etc.), the data reveal a typical pattern, on average, of 1-3 years catch up for face-to-face conversational language and 4-7 years catch up to attain grade-appropriate proficiency on measures of academic or ‘book’ language.  The presentation will examine the instructional implications of these data as well as their relevance to theoretical debates about the legitimacy of the construct of ‘academic’ or ‘book’ language (e.g., claims that “academic language is a raciolinguistic ideology”).

Biography

Jim Cummins is a Professor Emeritus at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education of the University of Toronto. His research focuses on literacy development in educational contexts characterized by linguistic and socioeconomic diversity. In numerous articles and books, he has explored the nature of language proficiency and its relationship to literacy development, with particular emphasis on the intersections of societal power relations, teacher-student identity negotiation, and literacy attainment. Cummins’ contributions to our understanding of educational attainment among immigrant-background students include the distinction between conversational fluency and academic language proficiency, the common underlying proficiency (CUP) that enables transfer of concepts and knowledge across languages, and instructional strategies to promote teaching for crosslinguistic transfer.

How long does it take to learn EAL alongside the curriculum? New evidence from 110,000 Australian EAL students over a decade

Lucy Lu, Australian Education Research Organisation

This presentation shares recent AERO research that investigated how long it takes EAL students in NSW schools to develop the English language skills necessary to participate equitably in the Australian curriculum. Despite international research on this topic, apart from the work of Creagh et al. (2019) in Queensland, there has been little comparable work in Australia. This research aimed to strengthen the evidence base around EAL students’ progress in the Australian context.

The research involved analysis of the academic English test results of 8,500 EAL students tracked over nine years. It also included analysis of the progression of EAL learners through the phases of English language development (Beginning, Developing, Emerging, Consolidating), using teachers’ professional judgements collected annually over the same time period.

Findings from the research on the time needed for EAL students who enter school with limited English is broadly consistent with those from previous research. New evidence is provided highlighting the significance of the relationship between students’ starting levels of English and their educational progression; time needed for students to progress from one phase of language development to the next; and the educational advantages of bilingualism. These findings have implications for EAL policy, funding, support and practice.

Biography

Dr Lucy Lu is the Australian Education Research Organisation (AERO)'s Senior Manager of Analytics and Strategic Projects. Lucy has led research projects focusing on teaching practices, assessments and education measurement. This included work expanding the evidence base to support needs-based funding allocation models and identifying effective practices in high-achieving schools.

"How Long?" EAL/D learner progress in mainstream and intensive English settings. Two Queensland studies

Sue Creagh,  University of Queensland

As a group, EAL/D students are ‘invisibilised’ in the NAPLAN test because the LBOTE category, of which they are a subset, does not provide information about the English language level of EAL/D students when they undertake the NAPLAN test. This has created a difficult policy situation whereby there is little understanding of how English language level impacts NAPLAN performance and limited empirical evidence to support the provision of targeted EAL/D programs in schools.  This presentation will reflect on two research projects focused on establishing empirically how long it takes to learn English as an Additional language or dialect, whilst learning and engaging in the Australian curriculum in English. The first study tracked the performance trajectory of EAL/D students on NAPLAN between 2009 and 2015 compared to their English speaking peers, providing the first Australian ‘how long’ study, in the context of Queensland. The second study measured the progress of EAL/D students in their first phase of learning English, within the setting of a secondary intensive English program, using the Bandscales State Schools (Queensland) for EAL/D learners to compare rates of progress across different learner groups. I will consider both studies’ purpose and findings and consider the challenges of undertaking these kinds of studies and possible directions forward to build on this work.  These projects provide an important contribution to the challenging policy problem related to EAL/D learners and their visibility in Australian education and assessment.

Biography

Dr Sue Creagh is an honorary senior lecturer at the University of Queensland. While at UQ Sue taught both undergraduate and post graduate courses in EAL/D for teacher education programs. Sue’s research has focused on the performance of EAL/D students in NAPLAN, and policy issues in relation to the identification and assessment of EAL/D learners with a specific focus on the needs of EAL/D learners of refugee background. Prior to working in higher education, Sue was an ESL teacher for many years in Queensland.

Honglin Chen is Professor in TESOL and Language Education at the University of Wollongong, Australia. Her research focuses primarily on three interconnected areas in language and literacy education, including writing development, English curriculum and policy, and teacher knowledge and pedagogy. She has a keen interest in the roles of metalinguistic understanding, thinking and reasoning, disciplinary literacy, and intersubjectivity in supporting writing development.

Language is central to the accumulation and communication of disciplinary knowledge, yet its role in science teaching often remains peripheral, with teachers typically acknowledging its importance, but varying widely in their confidence to teach specific language resources for science writing. The current emphasis on evidence-based literacy instruction and explicit pedagogies place renewed focus on the role of language in learning. However, this emphasis does not necessarily ensure that literacy instruction will be meaningfully integrated with curriculum learning. In this presentation, I draw on a Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) study of student writing development during the transition from Year 6 to Year 7 in Science to describe the linguistic resources developing in students’ writing at the stage and to consider how different writing experiences afford opportunities for such development.

Insights from the study are brought together with the evidence base for effective writing instruction to identify critical language resources at the transition to high school science.  Revisiting the BICS – CALP distinction through an SFL lens, I treat the everyday to technical shift as a gradient of congruence and abstraction rather than a binary, drawing on fine-grained nominal-group analysis alongside an analysis of logical resources to identify instructional priorities. The paper offers practice-focused implications for EAL/D teachers and curriculum designers to prepare EAL/D learners for the academic demands of science writing across the transition.

Biography

Emma Rutherford Vale is an experienced literacy educator with a background in EALD education.  She has worked as a cross curriculum literacy instructor, literacy consultant and teacher educator in the areas of TESOL and English language and literacy at the University of Wollongong and University of Tasmania.  Emma is currently completing her Doctoral Thesis exploring writing development at the transition from primary to high school in science.  Emma’s research interests include writing pedagogy, the role of knowledge about language in classroom instruction and language development across the years of schooling.

Biography

Erika Matruglio is an Associate Professor in the School of Education at the University of Wollongong, Australia. Her research explores connections between language, knowledge, and values and the disciplinary bases of these connections using the complementary theories of Systemic Functional Linguistics and Legitimation Code Theory. Her publications engage with topics such as the nature of classroom discourse, conditions which enable cumulative knowledge building, disciplinarity and the demands of writing in the disciplines.

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