ROYAL LECTURE

When we use language, we are not just using a vocabulary bound together by syntactical and grammatical rules. Our use of language affects every interaction we have with our students and says as much about ourselves as the messages we are trying to impart. This story will reflect one Australian secondary school’s journey as it seeks to engage students from a broad range of cultures through the use of language in an International Baccalaureate context.  

Annette Rome is Director of the Wesley College Institute. She has held a range of leadership positions at schools in Melbourne and has had teaching experience in a number of schools in the UK and in systems including the VCE, International Baccalaureate Diploma and A-Level. She brings with her the learning gained from being brought up in Brunei, Malaysia, the UK and Australia as well as wide-ranging experience outside schools. Her extensive involvement in bodies such as the Australian College of Educators, Science Teachers Association of Victoria Council, business corporate affairs divisions (including Orica) and the James Macready-Bryan Foundation ensure that she brings to education a range of perspectives and skills.

In many parts of the world, especially in (post)colonial countries English Language Education is still tied to colonialist notions of the English Language, which implicitly hierarchize varieties of English in favour of the so-called native forms such as British and American English. Hence, in these teaching and learning contexts, legitimate rule-governed varieties that have emerged in the former colonies are generally devalued as sub-standard and deficient in comparison to the “white” Englishes. This counter-linguistic position is reinforced by examinations such as TOEFL and IELTS which are widely considered to be normative assessment of English Language competence. This excessive value placed on inappropriate standards is most perniciously felt in the area of pronunciation, which the urban anglicized elites still use to restrict access to outsiders, and still consider as the most important yardstick of language competence.

As a result of pronunciation being the competence-marker of English the extra-linguistic pressure exerted on non-privileged learners of the language is so intense that it gives rise to hypercorrection and schizoglossia, making them even more the object of ridicule and stereotyping. In this context, if English is to facilitate social inclusion and provide equitable access to higher education and better employment, a self-conscious and systemic effort must be made to break with these archaic and impractical perspectives and provide a broader alternative standard that does not discriminate against second language learners. This paper will examine recent attempts in Sri Lanka to work towards teaching/validating a broader standard, which provides greater access to disadvantaged rural students through using their first language more effectively as a resource. This approach is complemented by the classroom practice of literary translation as a means of nurturing a sensitivity to nuance and subtlety in language use. The lessons learnt in this new methodological intervention are of interest in other English Language education contexts because they are the outcome of a sustained attempt to marry equity with quality in complex multi-lingual settings.

Arjuna Parakrama is Professor of English at the University of Peradeniya, and Chair of the Sri Lanka English Language Teachers’ Association (SLELTA).He has served as Head, Office of Civil Affairs, and United Nations Mission in Nepal. He has also been a Fellow with the Carnegie Council for Ethics & International Affairs, New York, and Senior Fellow, Jennings Randolph Program for International Peace, United States Institute of Peace, Washington DC. He holds a BA English, University of Peradeniya, MA English, University of Georgia, USA and a PhD from the University of Pittsburgh, USA. Currently, he is pursuing a degree in Law.

As the saying goes, ‘you can lead a horse to water but you can’t make it drink’. In order to achieve successful outcomes when working with children, it is vital that children themselves are also thirsty for learning. This session aims to explore ways of engaging children’s hearts and minds in their own learning through the integration of English with other aspects of their general cognitive and emotional development. After initial consideration of children's diversity and individual uniqueness, the talk will focus on the concept of the ‘C-Wheel’ and discuss eight key factors (context, connections, coherence, challenge, curiosity, care, community and creativity) which combine educational issues with child development concerns, and allow for quality teaching and learning to take place. Each factor will be illustrated by a variety of practical examples which show how they can be applied and realised in different primary classrooms. There will be an emphasis on the centrality of the child’s learning in pedagogical processes and in creating conditions which build confidence and success, and allow children to blossom both as learners and as people. Educational and cultural factors which influence teaching and learning conditions in different contexts will also be considered.

Carol Read is a Teacher, Teacher Educator and Materials Writer with over 30 years' experience in English language teaching. Her special area of expertise is in primary education, working with children between the ages of 3 – 12. Carol is currently working as an international educational consultant on a range of projects from curriculum and course design to the delivery of customised teacher education courses. Carol is also a frequent speaker at regional, national and international conferences on English language teaching. Carol’s previous experience includes teaching, teacher training and academic anagement posts in Venezuela, Portugal and Spain. Her publications include a reader for young learners,Is it a butterfly?, which won an Extensive Reading Foundation award, a six-level primary course (with three co-authors), Bugs, which won a British Council Innovation Award, and a book on methodology for primary language teachers, 500 Activities for the Primary Classroom, which was Highly Commended in the ESU Duke of Edinburgh English language book awards.

Art in education can be perceived as a wholly practical activity, concerned with materials, techniques, images and artefacts. However, this reading excludes or sidelines ideas, content or meaning. This was a concern in England, the USA and Australia in the 1980s and led to the Critical Studies Movement, which saw a re-balancing of making with appreciation, skills with knowledge and understanding. The development also brought the role of language into play and the contribution art could make to students’ listening, speaking, writing and reading skills. In particular, discussion skills are developed as well as a specialist vocabulary.This broader more holistic view of art education influenced the introduction of the GCSE in 1986, a National Curriculum in Art in 1992 and the development of GCE Advanced and AS level qualifications. Meanwhile, the world of contemporary art was creating increasing challenges for teachers of art to create ‘ways into’ complex postmodernist works of art. However, parallel developments in museum and gallery education have supported teachers and created new partnerships for art education. The development of critical studies was significantly influenced by teacher educators working in higher education and it is from this perspective that making and talking in art will be explored.

James Hall, [EdD, MA, BA (Hons), ATC.], is Assistant Dean (Quality) in the School of Education at Roehampton University in London. James is a tutor on Roehampton’s joint Doctor of Education (EdD) programme with Kingston University and is leading the development of an International EdD with Fontys Professional University in the Netherlands. Jamesis also an MA tutor at Roehampton and has lectured on BA and PGCE programmes at Roehampton and formerly at the University of Reading. Before entering Higher Education to contribute to the initial training and education of art and design teachers, James taught art and design in secondary schools in England. His research interests are in professional education, quality assurance in higher education and art and design education.

Curriculum review and re-alignment is an integral part of any curriculum development process. The Malaysian English language curriculum is not an exception. Changes within and without the school system necessitates a periodical re-examination of goals, content, approach and strategies in order to ensure that the curriculum remains relevant and meaningful to the learners. The latest curriculum review, initiated in 2008, takes into account educational issues in Malaysia and the world. This paper discusses and elaborates on the issues that inform the transformation of the Malaysian primary school English language curriculum. The paper also highlights the key principles and concepts that shaped the curriculum transformation exercise. Finally the presentation will focus on some of the basic constructs that constitute the English language curriculum and how these align the content, pedagogy, practitioner at the chalkface as well as the learner.

Lee Boon Hua is the Principal Assistant Director in charge of Language & Literature Department in the Curriculum Development Division, Ministry of Education, Malaysia. Before taking up the current post, he was the Head of the Language and Technology Department in the English Language Teaching Centre, Kuala Lumpur. He also served as the principal of the Methodist Secondary School in Sitiawan, Perak. He received his doctoral degree from the University College of St Mark & S John / University of Exeter, United Kingdom, in 1999. His research interests include classroom practice, new technologies in language education and curriculum leadership

The European Union’s drive to foster the learning of foreign languages has led many European educational systems to set out the teaching of foreign languages from a very early age. In this context English has become the most widespread and the predominant foreign language in Europe. The results obtained so far through the early teaching of English are not as positive as expected, which is why CLIL (Content and Language Integrated Learning) programmes are becoming commonplace all over Europe. In this paper I will focus on the results obtained so far in a region, the Basque Country, located in the north of Spain to compare the outcomes of both approaches (early teaching versus CLIL). After a brief explanation of the reasons that have boosted the early teaching of English, on the one hand, and the implementation of CLIL programmes in English, on the other, I will focus on analyzing the language competence attained through both experiences and their effect on the students’ normal cognitive development. This analysis indicates that the use of English as a means of instruction bears more positive and fruitful outcomes than its early teaching only as a subject.

David Lasagabaster (University of the Basque Country, Spain) is currently Visiting Professor at the University of Melbourne. He has been involved in Teacher Education in Spain for many years and has published on CLIL, English teaching methodology and multilingualism. His work has appeared in books, edited books and several international journals.

Malaysian radio stations broadcasting in English typically play a selection of current hits, plus popular music from the 90s and 80s, interspersed with advertisements, phone-in discussions and competitions involving members of the general public. These stations tend to be private ones, largely dependent on the revenue from their advertising and therefore needing to attract as wide a cross section of the listening public as possible. The stations offer a wide range of varieties of English both from their presenters, who appear to come from Australia and the UK as well as Malaysia, and in the varieties of English used for ads, phone-ins and chat between the music. Government public service ads are given in standard British English, those for cars and exercise machines in a much more local English, and there also appears to be a need to use American English, e.g ‘man’, ‘cool’ etc. in order to project the sense that these stations, which play mainly American music, belong to an international cultural community. Using a framework drawn from accommodation theory, work on commodified identities (Baudrillard) and notions of how and whether these stations maintain mutual intelligibility between broadcasters and listeners, we attempt to give a picture of how ELF is used within this context, as well as eliciting the view of some of the audience for these stations.

Goodith White is Director of Studies and Associate Professor in TESOL, School of Education, and University of Nottingham, Malaysia Campus. She holds a PhD from Trinity College, University of Dublin, an M.Litt from the University of Edinburgh and a B.A. (Hons) in English from the University of Lancaster, UK. She has a wide range of teaching experiences including service in the UK, Portugal, Singapore and Malaysia. She is widely published and her current research interest includes varieties of English and the use of ICT in learning.

Jane Evison is a Lecturer in the School of Education, University of Nottingham. She holds a PhD in English Studies from the University of Nottingham, an MA in Applied Linguistics and TEFL from the University of Portsmouth and a BA from the University of Leicester. Her research interest includes Testing, and Listening and Speaking.

Teachers use Assessment for learning (AfL) to give pupils a more active role in their own assessment, and encourage them to set relevant and personal targets. AfL focuses on the learning process (rather than the end product) and attempts not to prove learning, but rather improve it. It is formative assessment. It is a way for us to take stock during the learning process and can help inform us of how the learning is progressing. This session will discuss core features of AfL, and introduce some practical strategies to plan and promote AfL in teaching and learning. No matter what artistry we employ as teachers, learning is still something that learners have to do for themselves.

Gopinathan Raman Kutty is professor of education at Thaksin Songkla University, Thailand. He has about 30 years of experience in education. He is the Academic Director of Fairview International School KL and Principal of Fairview International School Penang.

‘LearnEnglish Family’ refers to a range of British Council products and services that are designed to support parents looking to help their children’s learning of the English language outside of the classroom. UK research shows that when parents help their children with their learning outside of the classroom, the academic performance of the child in the classroom improves. Furthermore, when teachers and parents work together, the chances of children being successful in their learning increase.

The presentation will introduce the concept of LearnEnglish Family and describe the pilot program for Malaysia in 2009-2010.

Heather Smeaton is a Senior Teacher ELT at British Council Kuala Lumpur. Heather is a teacher trainer with experience of designing and delivering both pre-service and in-service courses for teachers of English.

Many universities and foreign language institutes in Asian countries such as Malaysia, the Philippines, and Singapore have emerged and performed as hosts of overseas language and teacher training programmes for other Asian countries. From the experience of interaction with the universities and institutes that have developed language and teacher training programmes, the presenter would like to share useful experiences, tips and research results with the audience. The purpose of this presentation is to improve the mutual understanding between the developers, and between trainers and trainees and to present an ideal model of the programme. Comparing the cases of language and teacher training programmes in the Philippines, Australia and the U. S. A., it also emphasizes the importance of frequent interaction amongst the developers, between trainers and trainees, and between trainees and buddy assistants.

To improve the trainee’s communicative competence interaction through peer activities with buddy assistants is preferred and more effective than any other activities in the programmes. For the pre-and in-service teacher training programmes, practice for teaching English through English in the classroom has been one of crucial factors to develop competent teachers in the EFL context. Therefore, it is necessary for EFL teachers to develop their classroom English, as well as their English speaking proficiency through the training programme. This study shows research data that demonstrates the proof and potential of improved language proficiency in a 4 week teacher training programme. The models provided include various contents such as classroom English, proficiency class, 1:1 tutoring class, TESOL class, home stay, cultural exchange activity and writing journals in the intensive program. This presentation illustrates an overview of the survey data collected from the programmes in order to provide guidance for a better language or pre- and in-service teacher training programme.

Hoo Dong Kang is a Professor at Chinju National University of Education, Korea, and Vice-president of the Korea Association of Teachers of English (KATE) and is here to inaugurate the fraternal relationship between MELTA and KATE. He is also the Technologies Executive Director of Asia TEFL. His special interests are Teaching Methodologies, Multimedia Assisted Language Learning, and Teacher Education.

Decisions about the content of teacher education programmes, pre-service and in-service, tend to be based on assumptions about teacher needs. In many cases these assumptions are made by teacher educators who themselves have no first-hand experience of the contexts in which programme participants teach. This paper will argue that needs analysis which takes account of teachers’ wants as well as lacks should form the basis for course design. It will then illustrate how this principle can be operationalised by reference to in-service courses in materials evaluation and design which start from an exploration of the roles teacher-participants play in their interactions with teaching materials. Underlying many of these roles is the requirement that teachers be critical, confident and creative yet real-life teaching contexts may constrain the free exercise of these attributes. Examples will be given of activities that can be used to stimulate criticality and creativity, and suggestions made for how constraints might be tackled.

Ian McGrath is an Associate Professor in TESOL at the University of Nottingham. The author of Materials Evaluation and Design for Language Teaching (Edinburgh University Press), his research and publications relate primarily to Professional Development and Teacher Autonomy.

As Eskey (1997) points out: what we teach in any kind of content-based course is not the content itself but some form of the discourse of that content.

In this paper I will review the literature on content-based language teaching and then look specifically at the ways content-based teaching can be used to prepare students to study specific academic disciplines at tertiary level. I will consider the argument that content and language teaching should be separated until students are judged to have reached a sufficiently advanced language level to then acquire the content.

I will share my experiences in producing materials for students who want to study law at an English-medium university and discuss the ways language, skills and content can be integrated. I will also examine some of the practical implications for institutions offering preparatory courses that are specific to an academic discipline. These include the important questions of: 1) whether language teachers should be asked to teach content-based courses that are not from their own academic discipline; 2) whether teachers of the discipline who are not language teachers have the necessary skills to deliver this kind of course. I will conclude that our aim as English language teachers working in this field is to help our students to become part of the relevant discourse community by teaching them the specific language and vocabulary that will enable them to integrate into that community.

Jeremy Walenn is now the manager in Asia for Garnet Education, a leading UK publisher of materials for English for Academic Purposes. He has taught EFL for over 30 years. He is also the author of a wide range of books for Garnet including English for Law and Talking Trinity.

All teachers face students who are perplexing. After all, students are human beings who exhibit a wide variety of personalities in a range of different learning situations. Multicultural students exhibit even greater challenges to teachers as the cultural underpinnings of learning styles often dominate the learning situation and frequently cause confusion and misinterpretation. This quandary is multiplied many times over when the child also demonstrates a learning disability or communication disorder, sometimes mild and sometimes, severe. Frequently these difficulties are not identified and present themselves in unusual ways including personal, social, or academic failure. However, it is clear and well documented that children with learning and language disabilities are frequently unidentified and suffer negative consequences in the learning environment.

This interactive presentation will focus on identifying certain language-learning disorders (LLD) that are frequently missed and yet cause difficulty for the teacher and the student. The presentation will identify characteristics of these children, and specifically focus on the signs that may be observed in the classroom. Techniques and strategies that may be useful for the classroom teacher for all children that address language skills will be presented.

Participants should be prepared to contribute to a number of small group activities that will allow practice in developing strategies for classroom use. Regardless of whether children with special needs are in your classroom or not, these strategies may be implemented in any teaching-learning environment.

Joan C. Kosta received her masters and doctoral degrees in Speech Pathology. Her undergraduate degree is in theatre and speech. She developed and served as Director of Speech-Language Pathology and Audiology in both hospital and academic settings. She is a creative innovator and in addition to management and program development, has written and produced several DVDs, including “Talking Time,” a communication training program for parents and young children, as well as continuing education videos for nursing personnel and rehabilitation teams. Dr. Kosta has published, developed grant proposals, and spoken at numerous conferences and meetings. She received several professional awards, particularly relating to her work on disability and multiculturalism. Her experience teaching, conducting research and providing therapy has extended from the United States to Japan and Malaysia. She was awarded a Fulbright Scholarship to Malaysia in 2003 and has returned several times since. She is currently a Visiting Professor at the Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia. Dr. Kosta has provided workshops to educators and professionals in speech pathology, geriatric services, counseling, and special education children in the classroom.

This workshop will explore the importance of appropriate daily structures to support the teaching of language with a particular focus on “reading” to young primary aged children. Young children need on-going sustained, focussed blocks of time to inquire and learn. Our role as primary school educators is to teach language skills for understanding and to empower our children to develop and use language signs, symbols and systems when and where they need them. We must teach these skills in an engaging, sequential and differentiated manner and be accountable for this learning.

Kim Anderson is the Senior Associate in the Wesley College Institute for Innovation in Education. She has been a staff member of Wesley College, Melbourne for 30 years and spent 12 years as a primary school teacher. Kim was the Head of the Preparatory School for 15 years (1990- 2005) and had the privilege of co-designing and building an Early Learning Centre and Primary School. She has co-led the implementation of the Primary Years Programme (PYP ) International Baccalaureate ) at Wesley College – St Kilda Road Campus (2001-2003) and also co-led the self study leading to PYP Evaluation (2007) She is currently the Chairperson of the Victorian PYP Network – Principals’ Group (2005-2008). Kim is an Honorary Fellow of the University of Melbourne and has co-led the writing and teaching of the certified Post-Graduate course in Educational Studies (PYP- IB). She is also a trainer in PYP for IB Asia Pacific. Kim has also co-led the Bunuba - Wallmajarri Collaborative Curriculum Project between the Fitzroy Valley Community in Western Australia and Wesley College in Melbourne.

Trained English language teachers are generally expected to have adequate competency and proficiency of the English Language, adequate knowledge about the English Language and skills in pedagogical practice. While these basic requirements still pose challenges to many teachers new demands are now being placed on teachers which only further compound their difficult situation. The Digital Age has more than dawned upon the field of education but many Malaysian English language teachers are still lagging in their use of technology and even more teachers have yet to use computer mediated applications in their language classrooms. This paper will address these challenges and make recommendations on ways in which teachers could upgrade themselves professionally and make themselves relevant to their learners.

Malachi Edwin Vethamani, PhD, obtained a Bachelor of Arts (Hons.) in English Literature, Diploma in Education (TESL), and Master in Education (TESL) from University of Malaya and a doctorate in Literature in English from the University of Nottingham, England. He is a recipient of the Chevening Award (1993-1996), the Fulbright Scholarship (2000) and Sumito Foundation Research Grant (2009). His areas of specialization are teaching English as a Second Language (TESL), teaching literature in English, ELT professional development through computer-mediated applications, Malaysian literature in English and new varieties of English. Dr. Vethamani has carried out many researches and has published widely and presented conference papers in the areas of his specialization both locally and abroad. He was the President of the Malaysian English Language Teaching Association (MELTA) from June 2001 till January 2008. He is currently a Vice President of the Asian Association of Teachers of English as a Foreign Language (Asia TEFL). Website: www.edwinvethamani.com

Language pedagogy and the computer; A long-lived relationship, but how successful? Information technology offers a plethora of attractive tools. It evolves very fast and is often considered a symbol of development. In educational settings, the presence of computers has become synonymous to high standards. In assessing the effectiveness of the use of IT in ELT, the key question is one of roles: is IT at the service of language teaching or is language teaching at the service of IT? In other words, does ELT methodology follow what the computer can do, or does the computer help ELT reach its pedagogical aims? Up to fairly recently, computer-based communication tended to be between human and machine and the machine was in control.

Language-learning applications were restricted to the capabilities of software. In fact, it was the software that indicated what could be done, and language pedagogy tended to follow those indications. With the advent of Web 2.0, computer-based communication has become computer-mediated communication (CMC). Despite the great technological advancement, the role of the computer has become less prominent. It has transformed from a powerful decision-maker to a powerful instrument. CMC has effectively become a new mode of language communication, a hybrid between speech and writing. This new form of communication forms the basis of what has been branded e-learning and offers invaluable advantages to language teachers and learners. This paper discusses some of the characteristics of CMC and some of the tools that can be of particular benefit to language pedagogy: podcasting, wikis, and blogs.

Mario Saraceni is a lecturer in English Language and Applied Linguistics at the University of Portsmouth (UK). He has taught in this field for fifteen years, in Europe and Asia. His academic interests include World Englishes, Stylistics, Semiotics, Systemic Functional Linguistics and the use of technology in language pedagogy.

Many Japanese students are not good at giving speeches or presentations in English, because they are shy and lack the ability to express themselves. The author helped students overcome these weaknesses by introducing digital storytelling (DST) in class, thereby enabling the students to improve their oral language skills. DST combines the art of telling stories with various multimedia tools, such as text, still images, audio, and video, and it is a new media pathway to literacy, learning, and creativity (Ohler, 2007).

An experiment was conducted involving two classes, one a speaking class of twenty-three business major students, and the other a reading class of thirty-five nursing major students. The study was focused on the development of presentation skills of the students, and the results showed that the speaking abilities of the students in both classes improved dramatically. DST provided them with a good chance to grasp how they actually spoke when giving a presentation, and students didn’t mind spending a significant amount of time preparing for presenting the best digital stories. Consequently, they learned the importance of clear articulation and dramatic interpretation, and became able to speak with confidence in front of the audience. Making digital stories also enabled students to learn to read in depth and to visualize the story, and every storytelling experience provided motivation for reading and writing. Through DST, students became actively involved in developing the skills necessary for effective public speaking. Essentially, DST enhanced their autonomy and self-esteem, and they were able to enjoy the process of oral language development.

Midori Kimura holds PhD in TESOL and is an Associate Professor at Tokyo Women's Medical University. Her research interests include Learning Strategies, Learning Styles, and CALL. She has presented papers at international conferences, such as E-learn, ED-MEDIA, SITE, and EuroCALL.

In a hectic schedule, it’s not always possible to design creative, colourful and interactive lessons from scratch and at times like these having an effective course-book is invaluable. A thorough, interesting, user-friendly course-book can be an English teacher’s best friend. This workshop will look at just such a course-book, English for Life, published by Oxford University Press. English for Life is a simple, easy to use course-book that focuses on the English students’ need for real life situations making the content meaningful and engaging for young people. The course-book comes in a package with CD Rom and teacher’s book. It’s very visual and is designed so that teachers can just ‘pick up and teach’! This workshop will be very interactive. We will try out activities from the book and discuss their relevance for participants’ classrooms. We will see how the course-book can be exploited to the maximum, to encourage interaction, enjoyment and effective learning with very little preparation. This workshop will be useful for any teachers working with teenagers.

Mina Patel is Managing Director of Ten Education Consultants in Malaysia. Prior to this she was English Language Projects Manager at the British Council Malaysia. She has a Masters in Applied Linguistics and her areas of interest are Continuous Professional Development for teachers and Humanistic Language Teaching and Learning. Previously Mina worked for the British Council in Sri Lanka and for other organisations in Thailand, Greece and England.

The term ‘exploratory talk’ was first used by Douglas Barnes in a now seminal book, From Communication to Curriculum, in which he distinguished between two kinds of talk: presentational talk (which is usually teacher centred) and exploratory talk in which learners actively engage with each others’ ideas. In many classrooms, presentational talk seems to be the norm, and exploratory talk, if it is present, is rare. The question arises: How can we create language environments in our English classrooms where students actively engage with each others’ ideas? This paper addresses this question through a close analysis of “exploratory talk” in two Malaysian English classes, the first from a primary-level lesson on speaking and the second from a secondary-level literature lesson. Drawing also on interviews with the two teachers after their lessons, the paper explores what goes into the design of such lessons.

Moses Samuel is a Professor and Head of the Department of Language and Literacy Education at the Faculty of Education in the University of Malaya. His research and teaching interests cover Sociolinguistics, Literacy Development, TESOL Methodology and TESOL Teacher Education.

(Abstract will be provided during the conference)

Rebecca McDuff has been a regional Public Affairs Information Resource Officer (IRO) in the U.S. Department of State for more than 16 years. She has worked with U.S. libraries and information centers in Mexico, francophone West Africa, the Asian sub-continent, and Central Asia. Currently based in Jakarta, her regional responsibilities include Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Australia, New Zealand, and Fiji. A professional librarian for more than 30 years, Ms McDuff has lectured widely on Internet resources, librarians in the 21st century, Web 2.0, information literacy, and other topics. Prior to joining the Foreign Service, Ms McDuff worked for the San Francisco Public Library. She is originally from Texas and has degrees from the University of Texas at Austin (B.A., M.L.S) and San Francisco State University (M.S.).