Several HPU TESOL students and faculty attended and presented at the recent annual conference of Hawaii TESOL (Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages), on February 15, 2025. 

Tasman Kekai Mattox (MA TESOL '25) gave an oral presentation on "Teaching Comical Hypothetical Direct Reported Speech Using Online Media." In the presentation, Mattox shared her analytical insights on samples of authentic podcast conversations and demonstrated practical teaching ideas based on the analysis. 

Saadiya Patrick (BA TESOL '25) presented a poster entitled "Integrating Modern, Authentic Materials to Develop Learner Autonomy." Combining her two majors, TESOL and Arts & Markets, Patrick shared her creative ideas for teaching English using a popular marketing strategy in Korea, pop-up shops. 

Both Mattox's and Patrick's presentations grew out of their papers in courses at HPU. 

Professor Jean Kirschenmann convened a panel, "Empowering Multilingual Learners Through Their Own Words," showcasing three innovative projects in which multilingual high school youth tell, write, edit, and publish their own stories. Leeward District Educational Specialist, Greg Uchishiba, along with Jeremiah Brown and Jia Min Ruan from Waipahu High School, described the projects from administrative and teacher perspectives. Four HPU TESOL students reflected on their experience as writing mentors for Green Card Voices: Kylie Asuncion (BA TESOL '24) and Miki Davidson (MA TESOL '24) as well as Haley Coppock (BA TESOL '25) and Naoyuki Hamada (MA TESOL '25).

Professor Maria Levy energized everyone in attendance with her hands-on, practical workshop on "Prompt engineering for ESL lesson plans and activities using ChatGPT," which combined her insights on English grammar, language pedagogy, and technological applications.

Professor Hanh Nguyen and HPU MA TESOL alumnus Yuhui Du ('24) presented a paper on "Examining The Gradient of Authenticity in The Age of AI," in which they examined samples of naturally occurring conversations and compared them with AI-generated conversation scripts and AI-adapted transcripts. The paper stemmed from Du's term paper in a course with Nguyen at HPU.

Also attending the conference were current TESOL students (Kaitlyn Hudson, Anais Smeyers) and TESOL faculty (Eric Young, Warren Chung), as well as MA TESOL alumni Leola Solis and Amanda Wallace, who hold teaching and administrative positions at Brigham Young University - Hawaii.

The TESOL Program appreciates Hawaii Pacific University's continued support for transportation and registration for this year's Hawaii TESOL Conference.