Dr. Penelope J. Robinson

Senior Lecturer

Interests

I am a senior lecturer in the School of Education where I teach on BA and MA programmes in Education and supervise PhD students. I am currently Academic Coordinator of the BA Educational Studies (TESOL)programme, a long-term project in which over 1,000 Omani teachers of English study for a University of Leeds degree. This responsibility for the academic management of the programme, includes the organization of teaching here in the UK and in Oman, the production of teaching materials, recruitment of staff, and assessment. With my colleague Gen Fairhurst I also co-ordinate the MA TESOL (Young Learners) programme. Before joining the School of Education at Leeds University I worked as a lecturer for the Open University where I taught undergraduate and postgraduate courses in language and linguistics and initial teacher training. I have also worked as a primary and secondary school teacher, an English language support teacher, an advisory teacher and a teacher trainer and have experience of working in England, Nigeria, Tanzania and Malaysia.

Research

My primary interest is in the developmental processes involved in the acquisition of English as an additional and a foreign language and the development of effective teaching practices which enable learners to acquire, understand and use English. I am also interested in the development of teacher knowledge and expertise through practitioner research, especially in the young learner classroom.

Recent conference presentations

September 2006: Invited Plenary Speaker, 'Teaching Foreign Languages to Young Learners' Conference, University of Ljubljana, Slovenia. (The leeds University BA TESOL (Oman) Degree programme: a cross cultural teacher development project)

September 2005: Invited Plenary Speaker at 'Teacher Development Through Teacher Research' (TDTR 6) IATEFL Conference, Santiago, Chile. (Developing Practice Through Classroom Research)

May 2005: Invited Plenary Speaker, VenTESOL Conference, Maracaibo,Venezuela. (Concerns and Challenges in the teaching of EFL in the Young Learner Classroom)

April 2005: Invited Speaker, IATEFL Young Learner SIG, Cardiff, United Kingdom. (Developing a Methodology for Shared Text-work in the YL-EFL Classroom)

March 2005: Presenter, TESOL Arabia, Dubai, UAE. (Big Books, Shared Reading and Young Learners)

November 2004: Invited Speaker, IATEFL Picturebooks Conference, Munich, Germany. (Shared Reading, Shared Understanding: Developing Practice with Big Books in the EFL, Young Learner Classroom)

December 2003: Presenter, Learning, Education and Diversity Conference, AILA, University of Waikato, Hamilton, New Zealand. (Teaching and Learning Vocabulary in an EAL Context)

Consultancies

British Council Consultancy for the Ministry of Education English Language Project, Saudi Arabia. May ‘04

Selected Publications

PAPERS

Robinson, Penelope J. (2005). "Teaching key Vocabulary in Geography and Science Classrooms: An Analysis of Teachers' Practice with Particular Reference to EAL Pupils' Learning". Language and Education, 19: 5, 428-445. Read Abstract.

CHAPTERS

Robinson, P.J. (2006). "A Research Approach to Developing Shared Reading in the EFL Classroom" in: Mitchell-Schuitevoerder, R and S. Mourão (Ed.) Research in Our Classrooms. IATEFL YL SIG 20th Anniversary Publication..

Robinson, P.J. and Al Zedjali, F. (2006). "Developing practice with shared large-format texts in the young learner EFL classroom" in: Nazia Ali (Ed.) Teaching English through Literature in the Arab World. TESOL Arabia.

Extended list of publications.

This page last updated by Penelope Robinson on 19th April 2008

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