ENGLISH LANGUAGE TEACHING WITHOUT BOUNDARIES

At first glance, “ELT without boundaries” sounds like a perplexing theme. The post modifier “without” may stimulate conflicting views and competing paradigms. Does it imply legitimating “anything goes” (Feyerabend, 1987), or debunking conventional methods and methodologies, or is a call for radical change heralding an order-less enterprise? ELT without boundaries, or ELT with softer boundaries, or ELT with novel frontiers…, with or without, a real conundrum, so to speak, because of the arcane register.

TATE 2022 conference attempts to find out how ‘boundaries’ in ELT are constructed and reconstructed in an age of openness and exchange. It is also an opportunity to revisit the notion of ‘boundary’ in an age of globalization and study how the text (literary or otherwise) rewrites notions of ‘border’, ‘non-border’ or ‘border crossing’ in such a context of fast change and mobility.

Topics related to aboriginal cultures, canonical vs. non-canonical literature, notions of place, space and identity will likewise be addressed in the conference.

This conference is an opportunity to settle these questions and appease practitioners’ apprehension about a field massively influenced by virtual and physical shuttling between borders and communities. Accordingly, re-conceptualizing languages and cultures, re-demarcating speech communities, re-visiting competence, and re-weaving identities necessitate border contestation. The conference is not meant to tear down boundaries, but rather to look critically at the processes that create and sustain them and to creatively imagine alternatives (Kostoulas, 2019).

While creativity implies an informed ability to follow and flout rules and norms, “criticality entails using available evidence insightfully to question and problematize received wisdom in ELT (LiWei, 2011).

testimonials

If ELT is to transform itself and not be a shadow of what it should be, then an emancipatory mood within a “cool” space (Maher, 2005) shall inspire a dialogic perception of languages, cultures, speech communities, ethnicities, linguistic repertoires, competence, and learner identities. Cases of such “cool conceptualizations” could be discerned in Maher’s (2005) “metroethnicity”, Alim (2011, p. 134), Ill-literacy, Canagarajah’s (2011), “code-meshing”, Cook’s multicompetence (1992), Otsuji and Pennycook’s (2010) “metrolingualism”, Garcia’ (2009) “translanguaging”, Risager’s (1998) transculturality, and Gao’s (2014) “playful creator”. These instances of ELT border violations testify to a fast changing world where the digital sign is constantly migrating to the conventional text. ELT needs to keep pace by re-shuffling its borders, or else it might risk losing its luster.

We welcome abstracts for a 20-minute presentation dealing with topics that might include (but are not limited to) the following axes:

  • Linguistics/applied linguistics
  • Literature and literary theories
  • Culture studies

TATE 8th International Conference and Exhibition invites participants from diverse disciplines to take part in a constructive dialogue about the possibilities of implementing “Pedagogy of the Glocal,” contesting the local, the global, and venturing in a third space. The conference will also be a chance for ELT professionals to try out new approaches and discuss major challenges in teaching English in a periphery country like Tunisia.

We welcome abstracts for a 20-minute presentation dealing with topics that might include (but are not limited to) the following axes:

Linguistics/applied linguistics

Literature and literary theories

Culture studies

The conference organizing committee invites you to submit a proposal related, but not necessarily limited, to the following areas of research:

ELT and vocational education in a digital world

Quality assurance of language learningin ELT without borders

Educational policies/ reforms and implementation: Multilingual perspective

Languages and global employability

Language testing and NON-standardization

Technology in teaching, learning and the global job market
Literature and teaching: redefining the text

Teaching / learning needs in the 21st century

ESP without borders

Teacher education in ELT without borders

Literature without boundaries: film, music, painting and choreography, etc.
ELT and vocational education in a global world

Deconstruction of borders in language education

Language re-conceptualization in a borderless world

Fluid ethnicities and linguistic identities

Non-fragmented language skills

Psycholinguistic competence of the multilingual

Communicative competence of the multilingual

Sociolinguistics of globalization

Language variation in a superdiverse world

Translanguaging and transculturing

Revisiting literacy in the digital age

Multicompetence and translanguaging

Codemeshing

Contesting authority-providing Center methodology

Metroethnicity and metrolingualism

Pedagogy in a brave new world

Creativity and criticality to bring down boundaries

Borderless pedagogy - Utopian pedagogy

Contrived micro-macro borders

SPONSORS & PARTNERS

Become a sponsor

Event Fees List / including accommodation

Pack 1

320Euros

Non-Tunisian presenter
Full package ; including accommodation 2 nights

Pack 2

300Euros

Non-Tunisian participant
Full package ; including accommodation 2 nights

Pack 1

280Tnd

Tunisian participant (Student Attendee)
For MA or BA students. Full package (Including accommodation ; 2 nights)

Pack 2

160Tnd

Participation in conference + coffee breaks without accommodation

Pack 3

350Euros

Commercial presentation

  • Students can benefit from a 20-dinar discount
  • TATE members whose membership card is still valid at the time of the conference can benefit from a 20-dinar discount
  • Order forms (Bons de commande) are accepted
  • Participants’ spouses and children can benefit from a 20% discount on the total participation fees.