Joe McVeigh

Hi, everyone.  Here’s a short audio greeting and summary of upcoming presentations at TESOL in Dallas.        

I hope to see many of you there.  Here’s where you can find me at the conference. Check back at the end of the week for links to presentation slides and handouts.

Developing Strategic Planning Skills for Language Program Managers
Thursday, Mar 21 10:00–11:45 CCA302
Bruce Rindler, Joe McVeigh
Both novice and experienced administrators benefit from exploring a framework for successful strategic planning and applying it to their personal situations. Participants learn and practice techniques for defining a program’s environment and capabilities, choosing a strategic direction, writing program goals, and gaining institutional support.

I Want to Write a Book: Publishing with TESOL
Friday, March 22,  2:00–3:45 CC  C145
Maureen Snow Andrade, John I. Liontas, Robyn Brinks Lockwood, Joe McVeigh, Jennifer Lebedev, Gail Schafers, Lynn Zimmerman
In this interactive session, meet with TESOL Book Publications Committee members and authors. Learn how to identify a topic, develop your ideas, submit a proposal, and finalize your manuscript. Bring your ideas, expertise, and enthusiasm, and get guidance from experienced authors and editors.

Marketing Our Books: How Can Authors Help?
Friday, March 22,  4:00–4:45 CC   A303
Laurel Pollard, Joe McVeigh
As authors, how can we best help teachers find the wonderful materials we have written? We discuss what materials writers can do to promote our work after publication.

Developing Intercultural Awareness (Invited Speaker Session)
Saturday, March 23, 1:00–1:45 CC Ballroom A4
Joe McVeigh
How can we become more aware of intercultural differences and help bridge cultural gaps? In this engaging and interactive presentation, we examine key concepts of intercultural communication and look at practical ways to help learners communicate more effectively when they interact with those from different cultural backgrounds.

I’d especially love to see friends at this last session. It’s late in the conference and the room holds 600 people! Help me fill it up!

I’m delighted that Pearson has taken the entire first chapter of my co-authored book Tips for Teaching Culture and put it online for all to see. The Pearson website shows general information about the book, but there is now an online preview of the first chapter, along with the Table of Contents and a list of activities. The first chapter, titled “Exploring Culture” talks about hidden aspects of culture and provides activities that you can use with students in the classroom to raise their awareness about cultural issues and intercultural communication.  Take a look!

Some ELT teachers are curious about getting a start as a writer of coursebooks or other materials for publication. Going straight to the publishers is a good idea because there are a lot of misconceptions about what this process is like. The main one is that you should write a book and then take it to a publisher. No! These days, all publishers work from a plan that goes several years into the future. The possibility that your idea for a book fits into those plans is pretty small. The best thing to do is, rather than pitching a particular book, pitch yourself and your skills and interests. I was invited to talk about this subject at TESOL in 2012. Here’s a copy of the handout from that talk. Often writers begin working on ancillary materials such as teacher’s guides, workbooks, and test items, and then work their way up to writing a student book.  It can be a fascinating process, but it’s more work than you think! See the handout for more information.

Greetings to the teachers in the Preparatory Year Program at Kind Saud University in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.  I’m looking forward to our workshops during your Professional Development Week in January.  I’ll be talking on the one hand about the teaching of reading and writing and on the other about the teaching of listening and speaking.  Shortly after the talks, you’ll be able to download copies of the presentation slides from the resources page.  As a reminder, I would love to hear from you about your opinions and experiences using Q:Skills for Success. Send me an email or use the contact form. Please be sure to note which level book and which strand (speaking/listening or reading/writing).  If you’d like to be part of focus groups for the next edition, please make a note of that, too.  Thanks!

On November 3rd I’ll be presenting at the New York State TESOL Conference at the Hilton in Albany. Hope you can stop by for one of these sessions if you’ll be there.  I’d love to see you.

Managing Stress for TESOL Professionals
Saturday, November 3, 10:45am-11:45am, Van Rennselaer
Too much stress has an adverse effect on our jobs and our personal lives. In this session we explore the sources of our stress, learn about the mind-body connection, and practice some basic stress-reduction techniques. Participants will leave the session with tools and permission to feel much better!

Managing the IEP Accreditation Process
Saturday, November 3, 3:30pm-4:40pm, Ballroom D
Preparing a self-study for accreditation is a rigorous process that can tax the resources of even the best staffed IEP.  The presenter will share tried and true tips for organizing the effort, meeting deadlines and addressing standards while maintaining sanity for teachers and administrators.

Earlier this year I had the chance to take part in an online professional development opportunity known as the Virtual Round Table Web Conference. Participants from all over the globe gave online presentations in a webinar format on subjects related to technology and language teaching. If you missed the conference, all of the 45 presentations were recorded and are available to view online for free. Be sure to scroll down the linked page for the complete program.

I’m increasingly fond of the webinar format. In case you haven’t participated in one, it works like this …[Read more on the TESOL Blog]

It is once again time to prepare those proposals for next year’s  TESOL Convention in Dallas in March of 2013. The deadline is June 1, 2012.  It’s a challenge to make it onto the program. Last year, the acceptance rate was about one in four.  But you can enhance your chances by paying close attention to the newly revised proposal evaluation criteria and making sure that your proposal meets them. For more, read my tips on writing successful conference presentation proposals on the TESOL Blog.

Have you been asked to deliver a webinar? Wondering how to do it? Check out the tips in this webinar about how to give good webinars! This was part of the Virtual Roundtable Conference in April.  You can view the slides alone on Slideshare, but you’ll get more out of it if you watch the video recording of the webinar. Choose full screen viewing and you can follow along with the chat.

Looking for conference presentation slides and handouts?  Try this page first. The most recent presentations are at the top. In most cases you can download the PowerPoint slides and handout. You can usually also view the PowerPoint on SlideShare. You can download from there, as well, but because of all the images, some of the files are kind of large, so you might want to just watch them online in a flash version.  Thanks for coming to the presentations — I hope you found them helpful.

Thanks very much to those of you in Saudi Arabia and elsewhere who have expressed interest in my Tips for Teaching Culture book.  If you are outside the U.S., the best way to get a copy of this book is from the Pearson international website.  Be sure to check the shipping information to find out how much it costs to send it to you.  If you are inside the United States you can order the book directly from Pearson in the U.S. or from Amazon.com.  If you are looking for the Q: Skills for Success series, please contact your local Oxford University Press representative.  And thanks again for your interest in my books.