The Institute of English at the University of Silesia is pleased to announce the 30th International Conference on Foreign and Second Language Acquisition (ICFSLA). Traditionally, this conference focuses on research in second language acquisition and foreign language learning, concentrating each year on different aspects of the research field. The leading theme of the 2018 conference is:
“We know who we are, but not who we may be”:
Identity in second language acquisition and foreign language learning
With traditionally very strong emphasis on cognitive aspects of language acquisition and learning, and more recently the significance of socio-affective factors and environmental issues, modern day research in SLA has inevitably become a multidisciplinary domain. It is a field of applied science which targets bi- and multilingual communities as well as individuals and their need to accommodate in diverse language contexts. The latter raises issues of identity extensively studied by psychology, philosophy and neuroscience and understood as one’s relationship to the world, others and ourselves over time and space. In the context of SLA, individual identity is seen as constructed and negotiated in language acquisition and learning situations (Pavlenko 2002: 286), but also in various contexts in which we speak different languages interacting with different people for different purposes and in different roles, when the experience of another language opens new doors for us to see different worlds. In our taking up of this theme we would like to debate how individual languages: L1, L2, Ln build our identities, how they enrich or challenge who we are by birth and how they affect the way we function as language users/learners and teachers. We welcome presentations and discussions on the different ways language identity can be conceptualised in SLA and also in the teaching of foreign languages. Topics on language identity can relate to external and internal factors determining our language identity in relation to other people (other learners, teachers, speakers of a given language) and different situations and contexts, but they may also focus on individual features such as anxiety, self-efficacy, emotionality or the self.
As many of our regular Szczyrk conference participants are interested in issues of multilingualism, and work within multilingual educational settings, we also welcome proposals related with multilingualism research.
In addition to the main conference theme, we also accept selected proposals in other areas of SLA research of interest to our conference participants.
All those wishing to contribute papers, or just wanting to attend presentations and workshops, are invited to participate in the conference.
Following the success of the last year´s poster presentations of Ph.D. projects, we would like to continue with this form, instead of our regular Ph.D. workshop. Interested prospective candidates are asked to prepare a poster of their projects and share them with other conference participants and, more importantly, with academic supervisors in order to receive a response and some constructive feedback.
We will also continue with an academic publishers´ session, from which less experienced young scholars can get information, advice and guidance on how to prepare texts for publication in an academic journal. It will be conducted in a question-and-answer format.
We are pleased to announce that the following scholars, whose research revolves around identity issues (among others) have agreed to give plenary talks at our conference:
Prof. Larissa Aronin (Oranim Academic College)
Prof. Rod Ellis (Curtin University, Perth, Australia)
Prof. Hanna Komorowska (University of Social Sciences and Humanities/University of Warsaw, Warsaw)
Prof. Sarah Mercer (University of Graz)
Prof. Simone Pfenninger (University of Salzburg)
Prof. David Singleton (University of Pannonia, Vészprem/Trinity College, Dublin)
