Upcoming Conferences

There are three central points that arise when talking about English learning and teaching in relation to the industrial revolution 4.0.Firstly, English has become a lingua franca in various aspects of international contacts. Being able to communicate in English is no longer an additional advantage. It is the key to getting more connected to the world, to being more involved actively in international discourses, and to playing important roles in shaping the future of the world. We will be expecting more and more people with the more need of English proficiency. This will directly lead to the higher demand of English teaching and learning in various aspects of life.

Secondly, as the use of English has spread all over the world across different countries with different cultures, linguists start questioning whether or not English as a lingua franca has moved beyond where it originally comes from. The emergence of English varieties or world Englishes has been presumably triggered by cultural intervenes. Therefore, talking about English as lingua franca means also talking about how various cultural practices are embedded in different varieties of English. Is it still appropriate, for instance, to weigh the use of an English variety on the basis of a certain variety? All these phenomena will objectively influence how teachers and learners of English view what is understood as correct and acceptable English.

Thirdly, the latest development of information and communication technology has transformed the face of education in many aspects. The way of how English is taught and learned has changed radically from the traditional face-to-face interaction in the classroom to the application of various digital technologies. There are various application programs both online and offline easily accessible and ready to help teachers and learners of English. Translation machines have also become better and have challengedhow the teaching of translation and the face of the translation practices in the future will look like. Teachers of English language have to keep abreast of and be familiar with all such technologies which are characterized with big data, cloud, learning machines and digital artificial, and all digital technologies.

This conference brings these three main points to challenge the language teachers, researchers, observers, and policy makers to present, share, and discuss their ideas, best practices, and other related papers to the audience. It is expected that by the conference, some breakthroughs will be proposed and innovations can be driven, which, in the end, will have a significant impact on the practice of language learning in general and English in particular.