The Centre for Applied English Studies at Hong Kong University will be hosting an international conference titled “Faces of English: Theory, Practice and Pedagogy” in Hong Kong on 11-13 June 2015. According to the conference organisers, the meeting aims to highlight “the rich diversity of approaches to understanding English and the range of contexts in which it is taught and studied across the globe”. It is also stated that:

The conference will bring together academics, researchers, practitioners and research students from around the world to discuss the interdependence between theory and practice, with papers which focus on the analysis, description and teaching of English in order to better understand the ways in which theory, research and pedagogy interact and inform each other. It also welcomes participants to share practical ideas and teaching materials related to the use of English in a variety of social, professional, educational and virtual contexts.

Keynote Speakers & Post-Conference Workshop Facilitators

Professor Rod Ellis, The University of Auckland, New Zealand

• Keynote: Teacher as input
• Workshop: Consciousness-raising tasks for grammar teaching

Professor Bonny Norton, University of British Columbia, Canada

• Keynote: Digital ways, unequal worlds: Identity, investment, and English language learners in changing times
• Workshop: Critical practices in the assessment of writing

Professor David Nunan, The University of Hong Kong

• Keynote: Language learning beyond the classroom
• Workshop: Designing projects for out-of-class learning

Professor Wen Qiufang, Beijing Foreign Studies University, China

• Keynote: Production-oriented approach to teaching adult English learners in Mainland China
• Workshop: How to implement POA in English teaching

Professor Ken Hyland, The University of Hong Kong

• Keynote: Anecdote, attitude and evidence. Does English disadvantage EAL authors in international publishing?
• Workshop: Writing for international publication in Applied Linguistics and EFL journals

Call for proposals

Proposals are invited for individual papers, colloquia, workshops, demonstration sessions and poster displays on topics such as the following:

• Assessment
• Autonomy and out-of-class learning
• Corpus linguistics
• Discourse and pragmatics
• ESP and EAP
• Language acquisition
• Language and gender
• Language for intra- and/or intercultural communication
• Language learning style and motivation
• Language planning and policy
• Language, power and identity
• Language teaching and learning (e.g., material development, syllabus design, teacher development)
• Language and technology

Paper presentations, which will report on on-going and completed research projects, will be allocated 20-minute slots followed by a five minute discussion. Workshops, will involve hands-on engagement with a topic, and will be allocated 50 minutes. Colloquia, which will involve at least three panel members, will present a topic and include discussion with the audience (50 minutes). Demonstration sessions will be allocated 10 minutes, during which ideas and teaching materials will be presented. The posters, which will report on on-going or completed research projects, will be presented on a notice board and presenters will be available to answer participants’ questions. Presenters are limited to one individual presentation and one joint presentation / colloquium / workshop / demonstration / poster display.

Prospective presenters are requested register for a presenter account and submit using the online submission system by 1 December 2014. A proposal should contain a title (10 words max.), an abstract (200 words max.), a short summary (50 words max.) and a short (50 words max.) bionote for each presenter. All proposals will be blind reviewed, and selection will be based on relevance to the conference theme, originality and quality of the proposal.

Important dates

• Submission deadline: 1 December 2014
• Notification of acceptance: 31 January 2015
• Presenter/Early bird registration and payment deadline: 28 February 2015
• Notification of presentation schedule: 1 May 2015
• Participant registration and payment deadline: 11 May 2015

Additional information

Further information about the conference can be found in the conference website, their Facebook profile and their Twitter feed.

Image Credit: eye/see @ flickr, CC BY-NC-ND