BAAL 2013 Conference

BAAL is a professional association based in the UK, which provides a forum for people interested in language and applied linguistics. We have an international professional membership of more than 600 members.

BAAL organises scientific meetings, and publishes a newsletter and conference proceedings. We also send representatives to national and international meetings of interest to our members.

BAAL is affiliated to AILA, the International Association of Applied Linguistics

BAAL is a registered charity (registered charity number 264800)

BAAL is not an accreditation body for any courses or organisations and neither its name, nor its acronym, nor its logo can be used in the publicity material of any other organisation without prior permission of the Executive Committee. In particular, its name should not be used to suggest that it has accredited the work of another organisation.

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BAAL 2013 Conference - Draft programme

Click here for the conference draft programme.

Bernie O'Rourke (Chair of Local Organising Committee)

BAAL 2013 Conference - Registration now open

Registration for BAAL 2013 is now open. For more details, click here.

Bernie O'Rourke (Chair of Local Organising Committee)

BAAL LLT SIG - 9th Annual Conference

July 4th and 5th 2013

Linking teaching to learning in language education

Hosted by: St. Mary's University College, Twickenham

Click here for details.

Registration is now open at:

www.smuc.ac.uk/baal-language-learning-conference/

Parvaneh Tavakoli, BAAL LLT SIG

Congratulations Celia Roberts & Cyril Weir

The Academy for Social Sciences has announced the list of newly-elected academicians. The full list is here: http://www.acss.org.uk/news.htm.

Two of the new Academicians were nominated by BAAL: Professor Celia Roberts and Professor Cyril Weir. Many BAAL members will have heard them at conferences, will have read their work, and will know they are deserving of this recognition, On behalf of BAAL, I offer them our congratulations.

Greg Myers, BAAL Chair

John Gumperz, 1922-2013

You may already have seen notices of the death of John Gumperz on 29 March in Santa Barbara. His work had a great intellectual and personal influence on a number of members of BAAL, in such areas as interactional sociolinguistics, the ethnography of communication, communicative competence, intercultural communication, and many other fields.

There are some biographical materials here:

http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/ANTH/emeritus/gumperz/gumpb io.html

One recent set of scholarly tributes is here:

http://www.degruyter.com/view/j/text.2011.31.issue-4/issue-files/text.2011.31.issue-4.xml

Greg Myers, BAAL Chair

I thought this might be of interest to BAAL members:

http://www.npr.org/2013/04/03/176166674/linguist-did-pioneering-work-on-discourse-across-cultural-boundaries

Dr Paola Trimarco

Death of John Trim

We have learned that John Trim died on 19 January, after a long illness. John Trim will be known to many BAAL members as one of the pioneers of British applied linguistics, who was crucial in shaping a field that draws on the findings of linguistics but also those of other fields. He was originally a scholar of German, with a degree from University College London. Among his many roles, he was:

Lecturer in Phonetics at Cambridge and later Director of the Department of Linguistics, where the Language Centre is now named for him.
Director of CILT, the Centre for Information on Language Teaching (1978-1987), where he played a key role in forming the Association for Language Learning.
Advisor to the Council of Europe on learning, since the 1960s, co-originator of the Threshold Level concept that has a huge influence on language curricula and testing, and one of the prime movers in the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages.
And of course he was one of the founders of BAAL. He was at the first discussions in London in 1965, and at the first annual meeting at Reading in 1967 he was elected Treasurer, and he was Chair from 1985 to 1988. He organised the first major AILA meeting at Cambridge in 1969, which provided one of the key statements of the scope of research in the field.

John Trim remained active throughout his later years, and has left several interesting accounts of the development of institutions in our field, including an extended interview with Nick Saville on the CEFR, an account of language work at the Council of Europe, and an interview with Lid King and David Little forthcoming in Language Teaching.

Greg Myers, BAAL Chair

Colleagues may be interested to view an interview we we recorded with John Trim ('A personal view on the history of modern language learning and teaching') in September 2012. Further details and link to the interview here:

http://historyofmfl.weebly.com/video-interview-with-john-trim.html

Nicola McLelland and Richard Smith

BAAL News No. 102

Click here for the latest available issue: BAAL News, Issue 102, Autumn 2012.

Li Wei appointed to REF Education Sub-Panel

Professor Li Wei of Birkbeck College, University of London, has confirmed that he has been appointed to the Education sub-panel. BAAL members in general, and those in Education departments in particular, will be delighted that such a distinguished and broadly experienced linguist will be involved in these assessments. Congratulations to Li Wei, and my thanks to Guy Cook and the EC for their efforts in making sure that each relevant sub-panel has at least one member with language expertise.

Li Wi said in his message that there would be other additions to panels. So, if you are in a group of applied linguists submitted in a larger grouping from other disciplines, it would be useful to do whatever you can do to make sure that your university signals that language scholars will be included, so that the panels can plan accordingly.

And remember that we are still taking suggestions for nominations of non-academic users to REF panels.

Greg Myers, BAAL Chair

Applying Linguistics Fund

The BAAL Applying Linguistics Fund supports members by offering up to £10,000 for carrying out activities which link research and application.

Applications are invited from full or student members of BAAL
Funded activities can take place in the UK or overseas.

Click here for details.

Hilary Nesi

Congratulations to three new Academicians

I am delighted to announce that three members nominated by BAAL have been awarded the title of Academician by the Academy of Social Sciences:

Emeritus Professor Christopher Candlin (Macquarie University, Australia)
Professor Paul Meara (Swansea University, UK)
Professor Srikant Sarangi (Cardiff University, UK)

BAAL members who know their work, both in their research and their contributions to BAAL and AILA, will know that the recognition is well-deserved.

The Academy of Social Sciences is a body linked to many of the main learned societies in the UK. Besides recognising the contributions of academicians, it promotes links between these learned societies, and campaigns for a stronger voice for UK social science in policy-making. Names of other academicians can be found here: http://www.acss.org.uk/about5.htm. The Executive Committee will be discussing the next round of nominations; please contact me if you have suggestions.

Greg Myers, BAAL Chair

Book Prize Winner

We are pleased to announce the winner of the BAAL Book Prize awarded at the 2012 conference:

Exploring English Language Teaching: language in action. Graham Hall. Routledge.

Congratulations to Graham Hall and Routledge.

2011 Conference Proceedings Published

The proceedings of the 44th Annual Meeting of BAAL are available at http://www.baal.org.uk/confprocs.html

Christopher Brumfit International Scholarship

The Christopher Brumfit International Scholarship provides an award for an Applied Linguist from outside Britain to attend the BAAL Annual Meeting. Click here to find out how to support the scholarship.

Postgraduate Group on Facebook

The BAAL Postgraduate group is on Facebook. Why not pay a visit to the page? Click here to find out more.