UM promotes application of neuroscience in language teaching

The International NeuroELT Conference: Neuroscience and Language Teaching was recently held at the University of Macau (UM). 128 scholars from Chile, Brazil, Japan, Indonesia, South Korea, the Philippines, mainland China, Hong Kong, and Macao, attended the conference and discussed the relationship between language teaching and the latest developments in educational neuroscience. 

The theme of the conference, ‘NeuroELT’, means the combination of educational neuroscience and English language teaching. During the conference, Dr Sun Yilin, director of UM’s English Language Centre and president of the TESOL International Association, gave a keynote speech, titled ‘21st Century ELT: Trends, Strategies, and Implications’.

The two-day conference included eight main plenaries and presentations. Topics discussed at the conference included NeuroELT pedagogy, neuroplasticity, motivation, movement, collaboration, learning, cognition, and brain-based learning. Invited speakers included scholars in the field of English language teaching, with a focus on mind, brain and education, as well as authors of ELT textbooks.

During the conference, a number of PhD students from UM told the participants about a cognition laboratory under the Faculty of Arts and Humanities and presented the lab’s various pieces of equipment, including eye tracking devices and EEGs. They also discussed how the equipment measures language acquisition.