ALTAANZ
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    • ALTAANZ Online Research Forum 2021
    • ALANZ - ALAA - ALTAANZ 2022
    • LTRC/ALTAANZ Online Celebratory event 2020 >
      • About the event
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      • LTRC Anniversary Symposium
    • ALANZ / ALAA / ALTAANZ AUCKLAND 2017
    • ALTAANZ Conference Auckland 2016 >
      • Keynote Speakers >
        • Plenary Abstracts
      • Teachers' Day
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      • Conference programme
    • ALTAANZ Conference Brisbane 2014
    • ALTAANZ Conference Sydney 2012
  • Past ALTAANZ / LTRC Workshops
    • LTRC / ALTAANZ Workshops July 2014 >
      • Test analysis for teachers
      • Diagnostic assessment in the language classroom
      • Responding to student writing
      • Assessing Pragmatics
      • Introduction to Rasch measurement
      • Introduction to many-facet Rasch measurement
    • LTRC / ALTAANZ workshops September 2015 >
      • A Practical Approach to Questionnaire Construction for Language Assessment Research
      • Integrating self- and peer-assessment into the language classroom
      • Implementing and assessing collaborative writing activities
      • Assessing Vocabulary
      • Revisiting language constructs
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    • Penny McKay Award
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The penny McKay award

The Penny McKay Memorial Award honours Penny’s contribution to research and development in second/additional language education. As a teacher, consultant, researcher, keynote speaker and professional activist, Penny McKay was a leader in language education in Australia and internationally. Working collaboratively with educators and researchers in schools, she pioneered an approach to assessing learners' development in English as an additional language.
 
The Award is jointly offered by the Applied Linguistics Association of Australia (ALAA), the Australian Council of TESOL Associations (ACTA) and the Association for Language Testing and Assessment of Australia and New Zealand (ALTAANZ).
 
The Award is for an outstanding doctoral thesis which benefits the teaching and learning of second/additional languages in Australian schools and pre-schools, including Indigenous languages, community languages, foreign languages, Standard Australian English as an additional language or variety, and/or English as a foreign language.
 
The Award consists of $500, a certificate and free conference registration at a 2022 conference of one of the sponsoring organizations.  The winner will be offered a slot to present a paper on an aspect of their research at that conference.
 
The winner will be formally announced at the AGM of each Association and be presented with their award at their preferred conference. The winner’s name and a 300 word summary of their thesis will be published in each Association’s journal (ALAA – The Australian Review of Applied Linguistics; ACTA - TESOL in Context; ALTAANZ - Language Assessment Matters).
 
The closing date for 2021 applications is 1 November 2021. Please send all submissions to the chair of the selection panel, Prof Chris Davison, c.davison@unsw.edu.au by the deadline. 

Further information and general details on the application process can be downloaded here.

The application form can be downloaded here.
 
The Award was established and is maintained from donations from individuals, professional associations and other institutions in Australia and overseas. To donate to the maintenance of this Award, or for further details, please email Prof Chris Davison, c.davison@unsw.edu.au


Past winners of the penny mckay award

2014:
Susan Creagh "A Foucauldian and Quantitative Analysis of NAPLaN, the category 'Language Background Other Than English' and English as a Second Language Level" (University of Queensland).
​
Julia Rothwell "Let's eat the captain! Thinking, feeling, doing: Intercultural language learning through process drama" (Queensland University of Technology).
 
2015
Jennifer Alford “Conceptualisations and enactment of Critical Literacy for senior high school EAL learners in Queensland, Australia: commitments, constraints and contradictions” (Queensland University of Technology).