To promote a scholarly conversation among TESOL practitioners, researchers, materials writers, curriculum developers, and policy makers, the English Language Center (ELC) of Shantou University (STU) will host its 9th Biennial International Conference from 20 to 22 April 2018.
The conference theme is Revisiting ELT Practices in Multicultural Contexts: Evidence-Based Practices. The conference strives to promote the idea that as ELT practices are situated in multicultural settings, English teachers and teacher educators will need to re-appropriate or revisit their ELT practices at curricular, pedagogical, and assessment levels. This is because learners with different sociocultural and linguistic backgrounds have a different motivation to learn English as a foreign language (EFL), English as an additional language (EAL), English as an international language (EIL), or English as a lingua franca (ELF). This different learning orientation challenges TESOL practitioners and teacher educators to re-think or question what best ELT practices mean to learners of English and in what ways such practices help learners become autonomous learners of English and competent users of English.