posted by Jürgen Kurtz, Justus Liebig University (JLU) Giessen, Germany
The 13th BAAL Language Learning and Teaching SIG will come together again at the University of Central Lancashire (Preston, UK) from Thursday 6th July to Friday 7th July 2017. The conference theme will be: ‘Celebrating the diversity of language teaching’.
Language learning and teaching takes place in diverse settings around the world. The variety of contexts and acronyms such as MFL, EFL, EAL and ESOL can sometimes serve to highlight the differences within this diversity rather than the commonalities. Yet despite the apparent differences such as class size, language(s) learned, age of learners and reasons for language learning, there are many shared concerns. These relate, for example, to target language use, motivation, assessment, role of L1, language learning processes and teacher education.
This conference will encourage participants to consider how the realities of these different contexts throw light upon the many shared concerns that practitioners may have, and how we might all learn from one another.
- What does research into language learning processes tell us about the impact of pedagogy in different contexts?
- How does the learning of additional languages affect first language development?
- What are the shared concerns of teachers of learners of different ages?
- How do we assess language learning in different contexts?
- What are the challenges facing teacher education?
Confirmed plenary speakers:
Professor Victoria Murphy, University of Oxford (EAL)
Dr Chris Jones, University of Liverpool (EFL/ELT)
Professor Suzanne Graham, University of Reading (MFL).
For further information, please click here. This is what I am going to talk about:
‘Employing augmented reality for adaptive learning in and beyond the EFL classroom’
In many EFL classrooms in Germany, teachers use (and frequently overuse) textbooks and related materials and media. In consequence, classroom discourse is often textbook- and teacher-driven, with a strong focus on form and on accuracy. Taking this into consideration, this talk reports on current research into the development of a future generation of EFL textbooks and accompanying digital materials and media in Germany. The vision for the project is to create a mobile, interactive, and adaptive learning and teaching assistance system for personalized use in and beyond the EFL classroom. The talk will culminate in the presentation of the ‘Zoom-App’, a multimodal prototype software application designed to enhance self-regulated language and culture learning by overlaying supportive digital content onto the physical textbook page.
Foreign Language Education in the 21st Century 
Using this innovative and fascinating tool in EFL-classrooms may be accompanied by many positive side effects apart from the possibility of creating more vivid occasions for communication in the target language as a motivational boost on each side of the teacher’s desk. Catching up with the state of the art seems, for sure, a good thing, but, all optimistic visions notwithstanding, there might be disadvantages too. As the introduction of the textbook taught us, new technologies can be rather helpful, facilitate teaching and even improve it if utilized correctly. Hence, material and/or technology that is supposed to support successful language teaching is always just as good as the teacher making use of it. So, there is no conclusive point why we should assume that augmented reality would be any different than other tools and material that is frequently overused or – even worse than that – used for its own sake, which happens all too often with software like PowerPoint. However, in most cases, having a textbook is hopefully better than having none and the same could hold true for augmented reality but still I cannot see it as efficiently used implement in foreign language environments. I, therefore, should be grateful for being convinced of the contrary.