Katherine Maxwell will speak about the methods used to learn a
second language
Gilroy – Katherine Maxwell was not even planning on making the long trip across the Atlantic to a conference in England despite being one of 35 people invited. But when they made her one of only nine presenters, she decided that this was an opportunity she could not miss.
Maxwell, a professor of English as a second language at Gavilan College, has been selected to speak at the weeklong 2007 Oxford Round Table starting Monday and hosted at the college in England.
Maxwell originally intended not to attend the conference as she has two young kids at home and her husband works long hours as principal of Gilroy High School.
However, the invitation from the conference prompted her to submit an abstract of a report she had written for publication in the Forum on Public Policy, a journal associated with the Oxford Round Table. The conference organizers saw the work and were so impressed with it that they asked her to speak about it.
She now plans on going to the conference, and while she is there, she will give a presentation on the methods that people use to learn a second language and how effective they are.
Maxwell is using her work done in graduate school, from which she produced the book-length report she submitted for publication, as a base for this talk. In her research, she evaluated the different learning strategies of a number of students, who varied in age, ethnicity, years of study and motivation, among other traits.
One of her primary discoveries was that those learners that employed multiple strategies-such as associating pictures with words, using flashcards or having group discussions in the second language-were more successful.
The other eight presenters at the conference also will talk about their studies and experience in the field of education.
The staff at Gavilan is supportive of Maxwell’s trip, said Kathy Campbell, a teacher in the English as a second language department.
“What we do in the ESL department is any time a professor gets a chance to go to a conference, we have them bring that knowledge to the rest of the department and sometimes to the rest of the college as well so we can benefit and so the students can benefit as well,” she said.
The knowledge Maxwell gleans from the other presenters and attendees at the conference will ultimately translate into advanced teaching techniques and increased student learning, Campbell said.
“That we can enrich our statistics and methodologies and keep up to date with our technologies, our students can only benefit from that,” she said.
