Introducing TOP Co-coordinator 2018-19, Ellen Lange

[Marsha Chan, Pronunciation Doctor]

Dear TOPs,

Ellen Lange gracefully stepped into the role of Co-coordinator with me at the last minute. You may know Ellen as former CATESOL President and as an individual who has contributed a great deal to our organization and to our field of TESOL. You can see her in this photo of Current and Past Presidents on the CATESOL home page, standing third from the right -- and on the left in the second photo on this blog post. I asked her to tell TOPs a little about herself in relation to the teaching of pronunciation.

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It's high time for me to introduce myself.  Marsha Chan asked me to be the Co-Coordinator of the TOPS Interest Group while we were at the Annual Meeting of CATESOL in Anaheim.  The original Co-Coordinator for 2018-2019, Ms. Kerri McCanna, had had a change in her job responsibilities and had to to step down.  Although most of you know me as a composition teacher and the co-author of Writing Clearly:  An Editing Guide, I have been teaching pronunciation as a "sideline" for most of my career.  In retirement, I have been working with international graduate students and teaching them intonation specific to research presentations.  I will be sharing this technique at conferences this coming year.  Also, I am a great fan of learning online and will be sharing additional sites that I have found useful not only for myself but also for the students to use.  Although I am very supportive of the research on pronunciation, I often find what researchers are reporting falls short in the area of how to teach it.  It has become my passion to take the research and move it into teaching.  Also, I am a firm believer that pronunciation can be addressed in any class, that it can be useful to teach pronunciation in small bits.  

Go TOPS!