IATEFL Conference Selections 2022 - digital publication

IATEFL’s annual Conference is for many of us the biggest event of the year, where we catch up and connect with fellow professionals from around the world, share our knowledge and experience, learn and grow together, and recharge our professional batteries. The Belfast Conference may have been slightly smaller than usual, but delegates from all over the world, plus thousands more joining in online to watch the live-streamed plenary sessions and daily ‘IATEFL Live’ broadcast, were treated to 406 sessions – talks, workshops and poster presentations – on a variety of themes from a

wide range of contexts. Thanks to our generous sponsors and strategic partner, we also had the opportunity to enjoy the early morning ‘How to…’ and ‘Mindful’ sessions, pop-up presentations, the careers fair and the ever-popular evening events – Pecha Kucha, Music Night, International Quiz, Sharing Stories – and special to this year, Introduction to Belfast.

In this year’s Conference Selections, you will find reports of plenaries, talks, workshops and poster presentations from no fewer than 34 countries. Plenary speakers report on early language learning (Nayr Ibrahim [5.1]), reading as a social activity (Gabriel Díaz Maggioli [12.1]), EMI (Libor Štěpánek [3.1]), and environmental sustainability & ELT (Sarah Mount, Geoffrey Mokua Maroko, Owain Llewellyn and Ceri Jones [1.1]), and several individual papers within this issue pick up on these themes.

Other individual papers address a range of topics, and, as in 2021, teaching, training and assessing with technology continues to prove a prevalent theme in the wake of the pandemic and resulting shift online (see Chapter 2 and throughout the collection).

This edition also features a large number of papers concerned with English for academic, business or specific purposes (Chapters 3 and 4) and approaches in teacher training and development (Chapters 7 and 8). Other chapters which reflect familiar and recurring themes of IATEFL Conferences include Global issues (Chapter 1); TEYL (Chapter 5); Assessment in practice (Chapter 6); Inclusive practices (Chapter 10); and Teaching language and skills (Chapter 12). This year’s issue also sees a renewed focus on materials and resources (Chapter 11), and for the first time, a special focus on teacher associations (Chapter 9). In short, the collection offers something for everyone and reflects the wealth of experience and expertise associated with any IATEFL Conference.