TC Today - Teachers College Columbia University

The Translator
Bridging Language Theory and Practice
Phil Choong is in the middle of all things second language at TC
TC’s Community English Program is a venue where
teaching, research and community service converge—
and that’s why Phil Choong, the program’s coordinator,
loves his job.
The Center provides courses in English to area residents who
are non-native speakers. TC students in TESOL (the teaching
of English to speakers of other languages) and Applied
Linguistics teach in the center’s on-site language education
lab, using the courses as a site of theoretical inquiry. While
TESOL students are the largest group served, Choong also
coordinates courses for foreign languages, such as Chinese,
French and Arabic. “I’m in the middle of everything,” he says
with a smile.
A former law student, Choong began his journey to TC during
a break from his legal studies, when he began tutoring to
earn some extra cash and discovered he really enjoyed it.
He soon earned his TESOL certificate at Columbia University
and went to Taiwan, where his parents now live and where
he had spent the first two years of his life, to teach English
to students ranging from four-year-olds to adults. Despite
putting in 30-plus hours a week in the classroom, Choong
says, “It was the first time I was enjoying what I was doing
all of the time.”
In 2002 he enrolled in TC’s TESOL M.A. program. He earned
his master’s in 2005 and then his Ed.M. His current doctoral
work focuses on task-based teaching and learning (TBLT),
which requires the student to use the second language
to solve everyday problems and tasks. Choong is particularly
interested in the relationship between cognition, task
completion and task performance—and how the tasks themselves
can influence language learning.
Last year, he finished a pilot study at TC in which Japanese
students looked at images of Mr. Bean, from the popular
British television show and, in English, told a story of what
they saw in the pictures.
This past fall, Choong was one of four TC doctoral students
to organize, under the guidance of ZhaoHong Han,
TC Associate Professor of Language and Education, the
first-ever TC Roundtable in Second Language Studies on the
Second Language Acquisition of Chinese. True to Choong’s
interests, the event was the first major gathering on the
topic of second language acquisition of Chinese. Taskbased
teaching and learning was a major focus.
“TBLT has clear practical implications for the classroom,”
says Choong. “It all comes back to the classroom.”
— Suzanne Guillette
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photograph by Heather van Uxem