2007 AGM Minutes
30th June 2007
University of Wollongong
APOLOGIES: Clare Painter, Kristina Love, Mary Macken-Horarik, Marina Aidman
COMMITTEE
President: Bev Derewianka
Vice President/ Membership Secretary: Pauline Jones
Treasurer: Susan Hoadley
Minute Secretary: Shooshi Dreyfus
STATE REPRESENTATIVES on COMMITTEE:
ACT: Mary Macken-Horarik
Queensland: Garry Collins
Northern Territory: Peter Wignell
NSW: Clare Painter
SA: Peter White
Victoria: Kristina Love
Western Australia: Anne Thwaite
Tasmania: ?
Motion to accept last year’s minutes:
Put forward by Garry Collins; seconded by Rosemary Huisman
NOMINATIONS
Susan Feez was elected as Treasurer. Our hearty thanks were expressed for the wonderful job done by Susan Hoadley.
PRESIDENT’S REPORT
Activities
ASFLA Congress 2006 was a very successful event organized by Len Unsworth and team from University of New England, Armidale, in conjunction with the Australian Literacy Educators Association. Our thanks to the team for a stimulating conference.
The 2007 ASFLA Congress has just been held (with an overlap between ASFLA and the Australian Applied Linguistics Association) at the University of Wollongong. Well-received innovations included (i) a ‘Chat Space’ at the end of each day where participants formed informal groups to discuss issues and pursue questions from presentations with each other and/or with the plenary and featured speakers of the day; and (ii) Master Classes where an expert in a particular field (Theo van Leeuwen on multimodalities and Sue Hood on Appraisal in EAP) provided feedback to doctoral students who had given a short summary of their research and had raised questions.
The 2008 Congress will be ISFC to be held at Macquarie.
For 2009, South Australia (specifically peter White) is investigating the possibility of hosting the conference.
In December 2007, a specialist workshop, Semiotic Margins: Reclaiming Meaning, will be held at Sydney University, organized by Jim Martin and Sue Hood. The purpose of this workshop is to focus on modalities of meaning which have been sidelined as ‘paralinguistic’, or as belonging to another modality of communication (e.g. gesture, kinesics, voice quality, laughter, typography, colour). In particular we want to raise questions about what counts as part of language or not, and why, and the theoretical cartography of currently evolving descriptions (i.e. where they belong metafunctionally, stratally, in terms of rank etc.).
A series of seminars on Friday afternoons has been organized by Clare Painter. The presentations have been of a very high quality, giving access to latest developments in SFL theory and research.
Christian Matthiessen presented this semester’s series of advanced SFL workshops for doctoral students. Our thanks for the investment of time and effort in this valuable resource.
Several other SFL-based workshops have been held in various states in the language education area (eg David Rose working with the Catholic Education system in Victoria; Queensland workshops; South Australia professional development courses).
Support for SFL communities
- Jim Martin was supported to go to Indonesia to help with the development of the fledgling SFL association.
- Maria Herke was funded to go to India
TREASURER’S REPORT
ASFLA bank account is healthy. Discussions were held regarding how funds might best be distributed to support initiatives.
MEMBERSHIP REPORT:
Pauline asked people to check whether they are paid up as there are only 10 people on the list as being current members. It was pointed out that this is perhaps accounted for the fact that the 2006 conference fees included ASFLA membership fees. Pauline plans to expand membership base.
QLD REPORT
Gary Collins reported on successful intensive in-service courses through ALEA using Brian Dare and John Polias’ course.
SA REPORT:
Peter White reported that Brian Dare and John Polias’ courses are great but they are limited so moves to expand longitudinal study of classrooms and genres etc over 3 years in conjunction with Guiseppe Mamone are going ahead.
VIC REPORT:
Claire Acevedo reported that since 2003 they have been using David Rose’s work on reading in Catholic Ed. Taking data which now confirms the first data collection that the average reading rate improves 2-4 times after this reading intervention and some state schools collaborating with David.
WEBSITE
Chris Cleirigh has taken on the job of managing the content of the ASFLA website. This will include moderation of the forum, posting of news, announcements about conferences, seminars and workshops, updating of publications, and so on. It was suggested that a section be developed showcasing the various SFL professional development programs on offer. A committee will also develop a section where reviewed conference presentations will be published and other research papers/theses will be made available. It was also suggested that the Sydney Friday afternoon seminars be pod cast and accessible from the website.
GENERAL BUSINESS:
Thanks to Bev Derewianka and the 2007 conference committee for hosting the conference.
Welcome to Cecilia Colombo as ISFC president.
Recommended that credit card facility be got rid of because it is expensive and now with internet banking facilities, it does not get used anyway.
Discussion on how ASFLA funds might be used and distributed to best advantage: Bev Derewianka suggested formalizing this. Rosemary Huisman suggested an each semester application for submission. Annabelle Lukin recommended leaving it the way it is because it has worked thus far and worries that if we advertised there’d be a flurry of requests and more work for the executive in processing them. Claire Acevedo suggested somewhere in between formal and informal.
Annabelle has suggested that since Nigeria has its own SFL association that that we support them to organize small conferences as a way of building them up to be able to hosting ISFC sometime in the future. Two people are to go to Nigeria next year and will request funding for one.
Cecilia Colombo raised the importance of supporting SFL in India as well