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An intreview with the past Chair of the Membership Committee, Mojca Belak, by Vicki Papageorgiou

Mojca, it has been a pleasure working with you these past few years.

It’s been a pleasure having you on the blog team, Vicky. Because of you, our work is now better organised. And thank you for suggesting this interview.

Can you tell us a bit about yourself and your work?

I teach English phonetics and British Society and Culture at the University of Ljubljana, Slovenia. I started teaching while I was a student, and never stopped. Even when I worked for the BBC World Service as a radio producer, translator and announcer at the beginning of my career, I was also in charge of teaching English via radio. I became an IATEFL member on my 24 th birthday, so it has supported me all my professional life; I can’t imagine teaching or thinking about our profession the way I do now if I wasn’t an IATEFLer.

I also believe that IATEFL members would be interested to know more about the work you have done as Chair of IATEFL Membership Committee these past six years.

In a nutshell, my work and the work of my team were all about gaining new members and keeping the existing ones happy. For the first three years, I was very involved in creating different membership rates depending on where teachers come from. In this, I was greatly supported by Gerhard Erasmus, who has now succeeded me as Chair of MemCom. In the end, membership rates stayed the same mainly because of Covid and the crisis that followed.

In the last three years, I worked a lot on making the IATEFL Webinar selection more inclusive. I also made sure that the webinar programme ran smoothly. I have my dedicated MemCom team (Syke Annamma Kumaran, Maria-Araxi Sachpazian and Božica Šarić Cvjetković) to thank for hosting the webinars and helping with webinar selections.

I was one of the three volunteers who work on this blog – read articles, suggest edits and in the end publish them online. I immensely enjoyed it. It was great to work with you and Syke on this.

I led the New Ambassadors Working Party on the Board of Trustees. We changed the job description and introduced the first four ambassadors in 2022, and two more this year. It is a scheme that will help promote IATEFL in various parts of the world.

I also started a Working Party which is searching for a new IATEFL patron. It is hard to find a person who will succeed David Crystal: we’ve looked and looked for a suitable patron in the last two years but couldn’t find one for several reasons. What I was also heavily involved in was the Free IATEFL Membership Competition last summer. IATEFL received a donation from Rob Howard, an IATEFL volunteer, that covered eight IATEFL individual memberships. MemCom suggested teachers worldwide write a blog article of 1,000 words for Views, and eight lucky winners would become our members for free. We advertised this in social media – the IATEFL Facebook Group alone has 22,500 members – so we expected a lot of contributions. In the end, we only received eleven articles. It’s popular to moan about how expensive the membership fee is, but, unfortunately, when given a chance to become members for free in exchange for a short article, there was not a lot of interest.

What is the biggest challenge you have overcome while you were on the IATEFL Board of Trustees, Mojca?

I can think of three big challenges. The first one is very personal: just days before I was to set off for the Harrogate Conference I had a bicycle accident and fractured my shoulder, so I had to stay at home. I wasn’t in Harrogate to attend my last conference as a trustee and couldn’t part with my fellow trustees the way I wished (We were such a good team.), and I couldn’t meet up with many friends and colleagues. It was hard to cope with all that and stay positive. Luckily I could watch the plenaries online, and I attended the AGM via Zoom.

The greatest challenge that involved the Board of Trustees and IATEFL, in general, was the Covid crisis. Trustees usually meet four times a year, but in 2020 and 2021 we had a long online meeting practically every month. It was very hard, but as a fellow trustee remarked recently, we are the team that will go down in the history of IATEFL as the Board that saved the association.

The third challenge happened a year ago when IATEFL suggested that IATEFL- named Associates change their name. It was something that previous Boards didn’t deal with even though it had been on the agenda for years. It was very challenging because there was lots of emotion and history that the Board of Trustees had to deal with in an effective manner. You can read a little about that in the March-April issue of Voices.

Despite these challenges I feel that what I have learned and experienced from being a trustee outweighs the negatives by far.

Can you share with our readers any exciting plans for the future that you have?

I used to volunteer as a translator of texts by Tony Samara, my spiritual teacher. Recently Tony’s team contacted me again because they need someone to provide spoken translations in Slovenian for Tony’s meditations online. The work will combine translating and working with voice, which as a former radio person I really like. In a way, it is like coming home.

Mojca, thank you for your time.

It was my pleasure.

About Mojca Belak

Mojca Belak is a long-standing IATEFL member and volunteer – she used to be TD SIG newsletter editor and later coordinator as well as a member of Fundraising Committee and Scholarship Working Party. Until recently she was Chair of the Membership Committee and sat on the IATEFL Board of Trustees. She teaches at the University of Ljubljana, Slovenia.

Contribute to the blog

If you are a member of IATEFL and would like to contribute to the blog, we’d love to hear from you at [email protected]. We’re looking for stories from our members, news about projects you’ve been involved in, and anything else you think those connected to English language teaching would be interested in reading. We look forward to hearing from you! If you’re not a member, why not join us?

See blog guidelines and ideas

An interview with the new IATEFL Chair of the Membership Committee, Gerhard Erasmus, by IATEFL Ambassador Syke Annamma Kumaran:

You are the new Chair of the Membership Committee. Could you tell us about yourself and your area of work?

I am quite excited about being the Chair of the Membership Committee and I hope we can do good things for our members over the next 3 years. I am also looking forward to working with some of the amazing people we have on the Board of Trustees, in our Head Office, as well as on our committee and the other IATEFL committees.

I am currently the Academic and Course Director for Inspired CPD and Inspired Kids. Inspired CPD is a training and consulting company that delivers Trinity-validated and bespoke teacher training, corporate training, management consulting, Chinese lessons and English courses for business professionals. Inspired Kids has English classes, after school classes, and we are also a chess academy. My main duties involve overseeing the day to day running of the companies, the overall strategy, and I teach chess. I am quite enjoying teaching chess and I am hoping I can get a few good chess players together here in Taiwan.

Can you tell us about the overall responsibilities of the IATEFL Membership Committee?

In my opinion, the main responsibilities of the Membership committee are monthly and strategically. Monthly, we run a Facebook group, the IATEFL webinars, and work towards ensuring members have access to their member benefits while also preparing our webinars, available to non-members, in order to meet our charitable objectives as an organisation.

In terms of strategy, we are looking at ways of increasing the member benefits, making sure members are actually aware of what the benefits are, and working towards increasing an overall uptake on member benefits to ensure people really experience the value of being a member of IATEFL.

Can you speak about the IATEFL membership benefits?

I personally think the greatest benefit of IATEFL is the networking opportunities. When I joined IATEFL many years ago I was doing an MA and read an article that I found in the Voices magazine. The author’s email address was in the article, and I emailed them. We still speak to this day and have actually co-authored a few things. Being able to serve on a committee is also a great way to network, meet people in the industry, and become friends with people who can offer advice and insight from a range of different perspectives.

A second important benefit is discounts. There are discounts on events, publications, and sometimes even on courses. Over the years I have built up a substantial library of magazines and books through IATEFL which has come in very handy at times. Publications are another big benefit. Members receive Voices every second month, Conferences Selections once a year, and publications and blogs from SIGs. And actually, being able to join a Special Interest Group (SIG) of your choice is another benefit. You can also join more than one (I have for many years) and for 23GBP extra get access to additional publications, more networking opportunities and a large archive of publications.

Further benefits include a searchable archive of webinars and articles, being able to submit articles to IATEFL Voices and SIG publications, the opportunity to submit proposals to speak at IATEFL events or present webinars and making yourself more visible in the industry.
I feel that members who enjoy being part of IATEFL the most are those that make use of as many of the benefits of being a member as they can. So, the more you use your member benefits, the more you will feel a part of IATEFL!

Tell us about your experience as the coordinator of LAMSIG?

My biggest disappointment as LAMSIG Coordinator (Leadership and Management Special Interest Group Coordinator) is that I only actually got to attend one conference as Coordinator. The first year as Coordinator, we had the conference online. The following year, in Belfast, I was unable to attend due to Covid restrictions in Taiwan, and Harrogate was my last conference as LAMSIG Coordinator.

However, I think the positives far outweigh the negatives (or single negative). We had numerous panel discussions during Covid and beyond, and these were often very well attended. Our scholarship winner in Harrogate delivered a fantastic talk and it was great having Anju Moses there as we didn’t have a scholarship winner the year before in Belfast. This was simply because we couldn’t find an applicant that met all the criteria. So, if you are reading this and you think you can apply for a scholarship, PLEASE DO!

I think being on a committee of a SIG gives you the opportunity to bring new ideas, learn from others, and contribute to the SIG and IATEFL. Currently, the LAMSIG committee is 90% different from what it was when I joined the committee, and by Brighton next year, it will be 100% different. Being on a committee is one of the best networking opportunities available.

What are the challenges you face in your new role?

I think that is a little early to say. I am still coming to grips with all the systems and procedures before deciding what to change, what to keep and how to move forward. There will be a few changes and I feel the most important will be to streamline what Membership Committee members do and how to either share the workload or find ways to generate expertise within the committee. I am leaning towards the latter and as soon as we have a full committee, we will be able to put this in place. A further challenge will be to ensure we improve both member benefits and how members access and take advantage of the benefits, and hopefully that will result in a growth in membership. I have a personal membership target that I would rather not share here, just in case I fail horribly, but it would be great if we can break the 5000 member barrier.

About Gerhard Erasmus

Gerhard is currently the Academic and Course Director of Inspired Kids, a language and after school centre for children, and Inspired CPD, a teacher training, corporate training, and consulting organisation. He is also an Educational Doctorate student focusing on Organizational Leadership. Gerhard has been living in Taiwan for more than two decades. He is married, has three kids, and is a hobby magician.

Contribute to the blog

If you are a member of IATEFL and would like to contribute to the blog, we’d love to hear from you at [email protected]. We’re looking for stories from our members, news about projects you’ve been involved in, and anything else you think those connected to English language teaching would be interested in reading. We look forward to hearing from you! If you’re not a member, why not join us?

See blog guidelines and ideas

On 4th February 2023 I presented the webinar “Word (hi)stories: making lessons memorable and engaging”. More than 200 participants attended from all over the world and I wanted to thank them for the heart-warming emails I received after the webinar. It was based on the talk I gave at IATEFL conference in Belfast in 2022. The main idea at the heart of this webinar is that many of the apparent inconsistencies of the English language that puzzle students, often have a logical or historical explanation. Each variety of English (American English, Australian English, British English…) will have been influenced by different historical events: my webinar focused on British English.

Note: IATEFL members can access the recording of this webinar (and all other webinars) by logging on to the IATEFL website and then clicking here: https://www.www.iatefl.org/resources/word-histories-making-lessons-memorable-and-engaging

This article is follow-up to my webinar, which was recorded for the benefit of those who could not attend live on 4th February. In this article, I will give a brief overview of a few selected topics of the webinar and try and address the interesting questions I was asked at the end of my talk and provide a list of further reading for those who wish to know more about the development of English.

How can the historical development of English lexicon and grammar help students?

Students often ask us why English is so inconsistent in its grammar, pronunciation and spelling, especially students whose native language may have a more predictable pronunciation, in that a given spelling may correspond to a single sound – as in German or Italian, for instance. It is therefore useful to talk them through a little of the history of the development of the English language to show them that many of such apparent inconsistencies can often be explained by looking at the history of English. This does not mean that we need to be experts in the field; sometimes it is sufficient to explain a few historical events and tell the stories that lie behind a few selected words, grammatical constructions, spelling or even pronunciation and intonation.

In order to do so, it is best to start out by providing students with an overview of the languages that contributed to shaping English, and the mechanism that are at play when two languages are in contact for a long time. Two of the main mechanisms worth mentioning are borrowings and calques, and a third – more complex one –is grammaticalization, all of which are briefly described in the next sections.

Lexical Borrowings

 A borrowing (also called loanword), as the name suggests, is a word that was adopted from another language. English has borrowed extensively from many languages, mostly from Germanic languages, French and Latin. 

For example, debt is derived through ME word dette (pronounced /det/, as in French). However, during the Middle Ages, scholars added the letter “b” to show Latin etymology. The letter “b” in “debt”, therefore, was never pronounced in English but the spelling became established. Of course, people continued pronouncing the word as they used to, and this partially explains why there are silent letters in some words to date. The same happened with doubt (from French doute + Latin dubitum), plumber (O.F. plommier + Latin plumbum), subtle (O.F. sotil + Latin subtilis ), and island (German «Eiland» meaning”small island« + Latin insulam), just to mention a few.

Calques

A calque is word-by-word translation of a phrase or a grammatical structure from another language. For example, the English periphrastic construction going to + infinitive, used to talk about the future, is a calque of the French form aller + infinitive.

Il va pleuvoir=it is going to rain

When foreign words are borrowed, new sounds are borrowed as well. After some time, though, when the new word is fully assimilated into the borrowing language, the pronunciation may change to a more anglicized version, and this explains why there are often two or more ways of pronouncing a word.

The general principle is to adopt and then adapt.

Going back to borrowings, it is interesting to know that many words were borrowed more than once from the same source language in different periods in history. This gave rise to etymological twins, or doublets – words which share the same etymological root but have developed different meanings. A few examples are reward-regard, ward-guard, flour-flower and grammar-glamour.

Grammaticalization

During the webinar, I briefly introduced the phenomenon of grammaticalization. I must say many participants were really intrigued by it. Grammaticalization is the process by which some words lose their semantic content (this is called semantic bleaching) and acquire a grammatical function. An example is the modal verb “will”.

“Will” entered the English language with the meaning of “want”, as it comes from comes from Anglo-Saxon willan, meaning “to want, wish”. If I wanted to say “I want some bread” in Old English (500-1100), it would probably correspond to something like “Ic will bread” (invented example, I hope experts in Old English will forgive me for any inaccuracy!)

In modern German “I want” can still be translated as  “Ich will”, followed by a direct object.

Over the centuries, will underwent semantic bleaching in English, i.e. the meaning of the verb was lost, and the verb simply retained a grammatical function: since it meant “want/wish” and wishes are projected in the future, it started being used to talk about the future. However, we can still see a remnant of the former “want” meaning in: have the will to do something, if you will (= if you wish), my car won’t start (=refuses to=doesn’t “want” to start). Of course, this is a very simplistic account, but I hope I will be able to tell you more about grammaticalization in future talks/webinars.

Questions & Answers

After the webinar I was asked many interesting questions, which I will try and answer as best as I can.

Do similar mechanisms exist in other languages?

Of course! There are endless examples of borrowing in other languages too. For instance, in Italian architecture the word “bovindo”, is taken from English bow-window. However, the letter “w” in Italian tends to be pronounced as if it were “v”, hence “bovindo”.

Do we need to be expert in HOE?

Not necessarily. Just pick a few interesting (hi)stories and many of your most curious students will almost inevitably develop an appetite for knowing more and more!

Should we teach etymology in class?

No – the purpose is not to teach etymology. Etymology – or perhaps a more descriptive account of the history behind words, grammatical constructions or pronunciation – is just a springboard to show that there are reasons behind apparent inconsistencies. Some students tend to be demotivated by too many “exceptions”, but if they see them as part of a natural process of language development, they will see the logic behind these exceptions and feel more comfortable.

Who decides about change in spelling?

In the Middle Ages it was scholars who had to make decisions as to which form to record in writing, in an attempt to “tidy up” the language. There were no written rules and scribes wrote down words trying to reproduce at best the sounds they heard. This resulted in multiple spellings. 

Over the centuries, many factors have contributed to changes in spelling: The Great Vowel shift, processes of standardisation, spelling reforms, the invention of the printing press, the compiling of the first dictionaries.

Today, as in the past, there can be many triggers for change. Sometimes it may simply be a natural process of language change, unintentionally brought forward by its users and consolidated by frequency of usage: people simply start using a form that is convenient, because it may be short, easy to use or simply fashionable. This may result in new spellings, new words, acronyms being used as words or verbs, verbs being used as nouns and vice versa. For instance, we google words (where the name Google has become a verb); we PM someone on social media: the acronym for “Private Message” is being used as a verb; we shop for clothes in the womens department: the grammatically correct form women’s, made up of the irregular plural noun women + the Saxon genitive ‘s, has become a single word in most department stores.

Other times, there may be official attempts to reform spelling, but it does not mean that all the changes will catch on. Most people will continue writing words as they used to.

Will the pronunciation of English change in the future?

This is a difficult question to answer. It may well change, especially considering the fact that there are more non-native than native speakers using the English language every day for international communication. International English is more accent-neutral, therefore pronunciation may change to simpler forms that can be understood by everybody and connected speech mechanisms may not be such a big part of the way English will be spoken in the future. Another major factor driving change is the speed at which linguistic trends catch on (but also disappear) due to video-based technology: reels/TikTok… Everything is faster nowadays, and while it means that trends spread quickly, it may also mean that trends change so quickly that they do not have the material time to stick.

Further reading

As for the history of English and borrowings, there is a wealth of interesting resources, it is difficult to make e selection. Here are just a few:

• Crystal, D. (2012). Spell it Out: The Singular Story of English Spelling. London: Profile Books.
• Durkin, P. (2014). Philip Durkin. 2014. Borrowed Words: A History of Loanwords in English. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Fennell, B. A. (2001). A history of English: A sociolinguistic approach. Oxford, UK: Blackwell Publishers.
• Hogg, R. M., & Denison, D. (2006). A history of the English language. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

If you are interested in grammaticalization, there are many papers you can access on the internet about both grammaticalization and degrammaticalization. I suggest you have a look at the work of Martin Hilpert http://members.unine.ch/martin.hilpert/

Books:

• Ledgeway A. & Roberts I. (Eds.) (2017), The Cambridge Handbook of Historical Syntax (Cambridge Handbooks in Language and Linguistics, p. I). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 
• Narrog, H. & Heine, B. (Eds) (2011). The Oxford handbook of grammaticalization. Oxford: Oxford University Press.  

About Jennifer Lowe

Jennifer is a tutor, teacher and teacher-trainer. She conducts academic research in Linguistics and English Language at Lancaster University and is a regular speaker at International conferences on English Language Teaching and Linguistics. She is part of the ELT Research team’s freelancer network at Cambridge University Press and runs her own private language school near Milan – founded in 1996 and employing 8 teachers.

Contribute to the blog

If you are a member of IATEFL and would like to contribute to the blog, we’d love to hear from you at [email protected]. We’re looking for stories from our members, news about projects you’ve been involved in, and anything else you think those connected to English language teaching would be interested in reading. We look forward to hearing from you! If you’re not a member, why not join us?

See blog guidelines and ideas

Any new teaching-learning pedagogical experiments like digital learning, gamification, cooperative learning, etc. are welcomed and appreciated by the education community but looking at the social realities, each new approach takes time to reach Indian classrooms (Sarpparaje & Jeyasala, 2020). In order to facilitate and raise the standards of teaching, training, and learning English using a robust methodology, the British Council, India offers a funded project scheme called the English Language Teaching Research Mentoring Scheme (ELTRMS) every year for Indian academics and researchers in the field of English Language Teaching For the year 2019-2020, twelve research groups  received the ELTRMS grant,  and our research on flipped learning held its prestigious position among those that had been selected Through the inspiring scheme, the selected researchers were empowered and inspired to uphold research quality in all aspects of their research works. As part of the research activities, a five-day workshop on “Flipped Classroom Approach to Enhance Communication Competency of College Students” was organized using the project grant to disseminate the idea of flipping to 26 ELT professionals in and around Tamilnadu, India.

The on-site training not only allowed the participants to understand the novel and trending teaching approach but also reinforced the idea of changing their teaching strategy by embracing the flipped method to enable the maximum beneficial hours for students to practice the language using technology. Workshop participants created a sample flipped learning resource package inclusive of self-made video lectures on the contents they usually teach in their respective colleges. They were also guided to implement active learning strategies, and guide students to learn through the flipped method. The effective assessment plans and technological platforms were also discussed in order to execute a flipped lesson in all its essence. Thereby, they felt more prepared to roll out the same to their own students.

The feedback indicated that the participants valued the workshop training and required more ideas to create in-class activities. With the gained confidence and excitement, the participants were highly successful and exultant about their flipped experience which was affirmed by them in the post-survey. As Gopalan et al (2018) rightly point out, it appears that the teaching community is always willing to accept changes happening in the world of teaching and for doing so, what they require the most is this training ignition to be confident and believe in their preparedness to conduct a student-centered class like the suggested model of flipped learning.

Inspired by the workshop, S. Sabitha Shanmugha Priya, one of the workshop participants went on to conduct along with her supportive team of colleagues, a seven-day National Faculty Development Program on “Blended and Integrated Teaching in Real and Virtual Classroom”. It was a mammoth success as it was attended by 70 teachers nationwide and the speciality of the course was that the whole content was delivered via the flipped method (i.e., all the sessions were made available in YouTube while during the session enriching activities were conducted to assess the participants’ understanding). I felt privileged to be invited as one of the resources of this program.

Motivation behind meaningful Faculty Development Programs as this

It is good that teachers are interested in moving forward by employing a student-centered approach to instruction. During the Covid pandemic teachers practised panic-gogy, which is the only way to reach and teach students. What is panic-gogy? It is just  a term combining panic and pedagogy coined by Sean Michael Morris in an interview about the impact of the pandemic on higher education (Baker, 2020).

The recent days of panic-gogy have not only revolutionized teaching but have also also provided an exponential platform and meaningful time for teacher training. Academicians have witnessed a staggering rise in the body of published literature and development programs/seminars/workshops/conferences on virtual learning in almost all disciplines. Such development in tertiary education programs endorse strategic improvements in a professional manner. An effective teacher training workshop should impart the teaching-learning methodology coupled with impactful assessment tools so as to enhance their confidence in the process of teaching and learning. That way, the course on Blended and Integrated Teaching in Real and Virtual Classroom established the relevant effect of such a professional development program revolutionizing teaching-learning practice of both teachers and students.

My  Contribution to the Faculty Development Program

The topic I chose for my session was “Drafting Effective Lesson Plans for Integrating Speaking and Writing Skills in Teaching”. It had been reported by National Association of Software and Services Company that only 25% of engineering graduates are employable and others lack the very basic abilities to speak or write well enough in English.  Hence, the topic and the prevailing situation of the students gave me a humble opportunity to take some sincere attempts to bridge this serious gap between what students learn and what they should acquire. I didn’t try to reinvent the wheel by suggesting what had already been  known,  I just passed on the tasks and activities that I usually conduct in my classes in an attempt to improve my students’ language competency. In addition to sharing my own teaching experiences, my search for online tools to sharpen the speaking and writing skills of the learners made me explore innovative tech tools such as apps StoryBird, Zunal, Word it Out, and Easelly which eventually made me learn how to use them first!  In the process of acquiring this new knowledge I realised that I was learning a lot by preparing to train others.

I was pleasantly surprised to receive the participants’ sample lesson plan draft, integrating all the important points I made via the Google Meet session. Their lesson plans stood as testimony to their involvement in the course offerings and I am sure that they will implement all the beneficial suggestions that they learned. The overall experience was highly overwhelming and I will forever cherish both the learning and the teaching opportunities it offered. Thank you is a small word to express my gratitude for all the benefits I enjoyed through this program and these moments make me a perennial learner who wishes to participate as well as to hold informative sessions to upskill in the constantly changing professional role.    

 PS: Here is the link of the session that I uploaded in my YouTube studio which I would like to celebrate and spread.

References

• Baker, K. J. (2020). Panic‐gogy: A Conversation with Sean Michael Morris. The National Teaching & Learning Forum, 29(4), 1–3. doi:10.1002/ntlf.30239
• Gopalan, C., Bracey, G., Klann, M., & Schmidt, C. (2018). Embracing the flipped classroom: the planning and execution of a faculty workshop. Advances in Physiology Education, 42(4), 648–654. doi:10.1152/advan.00012.2018
• Sarpparaje, M., & Jeyasala, V. R. (2020). Impact of Flipped Learning on Student Perception in Technical English Course. Tathapi, 19(18), 190–201. http://tathapi.com/index.php/2320-0693/issue/view/21

About Sarpparaje Murugavel

Sarpparaje Murugavel has been working as an Assistant Professor of English at Thiagarajar College of Engineering, Madurai. She has been teaching for a decade in reputed technical institutions and she has participated in about 30 various national and international seminars, workshops and conferences. She has obtained CEFR proficiency level C1 in Business English Certificate Higher by Cambridge English Language Assessment in 2017.  She has to her credit two funded projects on from ICSSR (as CI) and the British Council (as PI) and have published three papers in Scopus indexed Asian ESP Journal.

Contribute to the blog

If you are a member of IATEFL and would like to contribute to the blog, we’d love to hear from you at [email protected]. We’re looking for stories from our members, news about projects you’ve been involved in, and anything else you think those connected to English language teaching would be interested in reading. We look forward to hearing from you! If you’re not a member, why not join us?

See blog guidelines and ideas

“If you don’t buy a raffle ticket, you won’t win a lottery.” This was what was written at the end of the email, with the link to the IATEFL Belfast conference scholarship application, sent by one of my professors, encouraging us to give it a shot. This prompted me to apply for the same without giving it a second thought. Provoked by his line, I ended up deciding to apply for the same. There were multiple application calls with different criteria. At the outset, therefore, I was bewildered as I could make multiple submissions. Nevertheless, after giving it a lot of thought, I made up my mind to make two separate applications so that I could land at least one scholarship. I made an application with utmost care and fortunately, I won it. My happiness knew no bounds when I received an email from the scholarship committee that I had won English Language Centre Brighton Robert O’Neill scholarship to attend the conference.

Based on my personal experience, if you want to win a scholarship, you  should first read the requirements of the application carefully and go for one that is the best suited for you. On top of this, you should apply for at least two different scholarships and this way make it more probable that you win at least one; however, you should make the strongest possible application with utmost care and a bit of research. The strongest suggestion I would give is: never submit your application until you are fully satisfied with it; if you aren’t , it can’t satisfy the reviewing committee either. It’s as simple as that.

Hurray! I won the scholarship. After a couple of months, after all the arrangements, finally, I was ready to fly. On 15th May 2022 I landed at Heathrow airport, London before I took a connecting flight to Belfast for there aren’t any flights that directly connect Belfast and my country, Nepal.  It was evening in Belfast when I landed there, and it was drizzling. Exhausted, I took a taxi to Premier Inn Belfast in Alfred Street, my pre-booked accommodation. Soon after dinner, I went to bed as I was completely exhausted after a long-haul flight.

The next morning, full of excitement and nervousness, I woke up to the sound of alarm, for it was the first day of the conference. After breakfast, to get to the conference venue, I had to struggle a bit to adjust to the British transportation system since I come from a country that has a different system. In the end, I got to the venue. It was already crowded with delegates from different parts of the globe. It was a foggy morning and it drizzled outside.

ICC Belfast, the conference venue, was very luxurious. The beautiful scenery around it fascinated me at the first glance. I could imagine from this what Belfast has to offer. The auditorium hall was packed with delegates from different countries. It vividly reflected the unity in diversity within the community of practice. Shortly after that  the conference started formally with educative, enlightening presentations and speeches. My best memory was of the time when the scholarship winners were put in the first row of the hall, on the reserved seats; there was loud applause in the hall when we were introduced by the organizing committee. Those beautiful moments still flash in my head.

The five-day (16-20 May 2022) stretched conference was exceptional in all aspects. It was  a perfect learning and networking opportunity. The conference gave me a wider perspective on education in general and teaching language in particular. I learned more about changing trends in research and teaching English as a foreign language. Most importantly, I learned the importance of considering the ‘context’ while teaching the English language in a non-native setting. Besides this, I made several international friends – teachers, teacher educators, publishers, professors, and so forth. Connecting with them  wouldn’t have been possible without the generous scholarship from IATEFL.

The conference fills your mind but adventures/explorations fill your soul! Who would return home without exploring a bit of British cities? After the conference, I went for a sightseeing tour on the Hop-on Hop-off bus, a bus that enables anyone to get on and off as one pleases. The bus offers panoramic views from the rooftop; it took me to the Titanic Quarter, St. George’s Market, Great Victoria Street Belfast, and many more, but I can hardly recall other names. The bus allows people to explore every area of Belfast.

With all fond memories from Belfast, I flew off to London. At first sight, London didn’t fail to fascinate me. During my short stay in London, I explored  London Bridge, Buckingham Palace, London Eye, and Centre London Aquarium. The memories from London are still fresh in my head. During each exploration, I thought of IATEFL. Without it, I would not have been where I was.

This entire narration has been feasible owing to IATEFL. It has helped me grow both professionally and personally: professionally by giving me a learning opportunity, exposing me to the world-class conference of English language teaching professionals, and personally by allowing me to connect with professionals from the same fraternity around the globe and to explore international (British) cultures, the way of life and the entire system. All in all, it has helped me grow as an educator.

If you want to learn and grow by attending the IATEFL conference but have financial constraints, I strongly suggest you apply for an IATEFL scholarship without a second thought. Where there is a will, there is a way. Bear in mind, if you don’t buy a raffle ticket, you won’t win a lottery. Nevertheless, once again, a gentle reminder—make sure to submit your application only when you are fully satisfied with it; if you are not , it cannot satisfy the reviewing committee either. And next time you should share a story about your being an IATEFL scholarship winner.  All the best! 

About Babu Lama

Babu Lama is an educator from Nepal. Besides, he also writes on topical educational issues for different national dailies, published in English and is also a scholar of MPhil in English Language Education at Kathmandu University School of Education. He was a  scholarship winner of the IATEFL Belfast Conference 2022.

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