Focus on language diversity

Digitization and language awareness have gained a high priority in the educational context due to the current situation. This leads to new questions and research approaches and calls for creative solutions on a local, national and global level. These will be discussed at the 15th Congress of the Association for Language Awareness on "Languaging and Language Awareness in the Global Age," October 29-31, 2020. Contributors will include the Kassel University team of English/American Studies of Foreign Language Teaching and Learning Research and Intercultural Communication.

Prof. Dr. Claudia Finkbeiner is President of the Association for Language Awareness and explains, "Together with the Committee of the Association for Language Awareness, we have deliberately chosen Australia as the venue for the 15th International Conference in order to support the Language Awareness movement in this continent as well. With Australia, we also capture the Pacific Rim countries and thus an incredibly large diversity of languages and language varieties."

Over 70 scholars* from over 25 countries, for example, Australia, Canada, USA, United Arab Emirates, Malaysia, Nepal, Germany, France, Canada, Uruguay, Brazil, Indonesia, Iran, Thailand, etc. will give exciting presentations. Questions that will be discussed include: How is the learning and teaching of languages being reconceptualised in our globalised, digital age? How do new global paradigms and technologies further principles of language awareness, such as reflection on language to gain insights into how languages work?

The Kassel research team, consisting of Prof. Dr. Claudia Finkbeiner, Dr. Madeleine Olson and Wiebke Sophie Ost, will lead a panel session on "Digital Learning and the Role of Language Awareness in Language Teacher Education". Fortunately, for the Kassel team, digital teaching and learning is not a challenge, as they will report on the digitization project "Online Educational Initiatives". This project was awarded in 2019 as part of the Hessian University Award for Excellence in Teaching by the Minister Angela Dorn. Contributing to this success was the selection of the project for the Central Teaching Grant by the University of Kassel, as well as the support provided by the teams of the Service Center Teaching and the E-Learning Center of the Department 02.

While the aforementioned context focused in particular on anchoring the project in university teaching and implementing it in the digital learning environment, the researchers will now present the results of the accompanying research. Originally, the team would have traveled to the Centre for Teaching and Learning Languages, Deakin University Melbourne and Geelong Australia at Easter, together with numerous cooperation partners of the University of Kassel, in order to directly deepen the discourse with further scientists and practitioners from all over the world.

Due to the current pandemic, all plans for the on-site conference had to be changed and alternative conference formats developed. This was seen as an opportunity by Prof. Dr. Rod Neilsen and his team in Deakin and the conference will now be implemented digitally via the Whova platform. The scientists expect this to provide further valuable impetus for their own work at the University of Kassel. Incidentally, the head of the organizing team,  Prof. Dr. Rod Neilsen, has already visited the University of Kassel and a Memorandum of Agreement was signed between Deakin University Melbourne and Geelong, Australia and the University of Kassel. Other partnership officers of the University of Kassel, e.g. from the University of Lleida, Spain, the University of Kocaeli, Turkey, the University of Alberta, Canada etc. will also be present to strengthen the network and the partnership.   

Registration for the conference is still open at: www.ala2020.com

For more information about the Kassel University Team's digitization project, please visit https://www.researchgate.net/project/International-Online-Cooperation-An-Academic-Cyberspace-Community.

Contact

Prof. Dr. Claudia Finkbeiner, Dr. Agnes Madeleine Olson & Wiebke Sophie Ost
University of Kassel
Department 02
Institute for English/American Studies
Foreign Language Teaching and Learning Research & Intercultural Communication
Kurt-Wolters-Str. 5
34125 Kassel

flul[at]uni-kassel[dot]de