Dear Colleagues,

The Department of Neophilology and the Department of Pedagogy, Pope John Paul II State School of Higher Education in Biała Podlaska, Poland, would like to invite you to the first international conference entitled:

Literacy skills in educational environments: changing theories and practices

that will be held Biała Podlaska on 22-23 October 2018.

 The co-organizers of the Conference are: The English Language Acquisition and Teaching Department at the Department of English, and the Division of Applied Linguistics at the Institute of German Studies and Applied Linguistics, Maria Curie-Sklodowska University in Lublin.

 The conference aspires to provide a forum for sharing both theoretical and empirical findings in research into the development of literacy skills as well as pedagogic practices related to their implementation at different stages in both monolingual and multilingual settings, with a focus on second/foreign language instruction. Our main aim is to bring together scholars and researchers interested in the exploration and analysis of the issues of teaching/learning reading and writing from a wide range of disciplinary perspectives, including second language acquisition, linguistics, psycholinguistics, sociolinguistics, educational psychology, pedagogy, or foreign language didactics, to name but a few.

We are pleased to announce that the following scholars have agreed to give plenary talks at our conference: 

Prof. Catherine Wallace (University of London)

Prof. Emilia di Martino (Suor Orsola Benincasa University of Naples)

Dr Linda Saunders (St. Mary’s University, Twickenham London)

Prof. Maria Dakowska (University of Warsaw)

Prof. Grażyna Krasowicz-Kupis (Maria-Curie-Sklodowska University, Lublin)

Dr Marcin Smolik (Polish Examination Board, Warsaw)

We are looking forward to your proposals of papers and posters on a range of literacy skills issues our conference intends to debate on.

Conference papers can be presented in three languages: English (the main language of the conference), but also in Polish and Russian.

 

Important dates:

-          15th June − abstracts submission and registration deadline for those who wish to present a paper

-          25th June – notification of proposal acceptance

-          30th June – registration deadline for those who do not wish to present a paper

-          10th July – deadline for the conference fee payment

All the necessary information can be found in this email as well as on the Conference website (http://www.literacyconference@pswbp.pl)

 

Submission of proposals

 

We welcome contributions related to the theme of the conference in the form of position, research and work-in-progress papers as well as posters. Each presentation will last 20 minutes, with 10 minutes allowed for discussion. The languages of the conference are: English (the main language), Polish and Russian. Preference will be given to proposals that are related to one of the areas listed below.

·         Teaching and learning literacy skills in today’s educational settings: monolingual, bilingual and multilingual

·         Traditional vs. new approaches to literacy education (e.g. New Literacy, critical literacy, multimodal literacy, digital literacy, internet literacy, etc.)

·         Explaining and modeling L1/L2 reading and writing processes: implications for teaching

·         Linguistic foundations of literacy skills development (the role of phonology, grammar, vocabulary, discourse)

·         An interdependence of reading and writing skills in the acquisition process and in instructional practice

·         The role of reading in language mediation (translating, summarizing, paraphrasing)

·         Learning to read – focus on early reading skills and reading curricula in teaching lower primary learners

·         Reading and writing with adolescents and adults; contribution of literacy skills to academic and professional development

·         Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) – reading and writing to learn at primary, secondary and tertiary levels

·         Exploiting literary and cultural texts in expanding literacy skills

·         Literacy-oriented techniques in L1 and L2 classrooms: learner participation, strategy training and types of assessment

·         Print vs. on-line instructional reading materials – designing and implementing

·         Educational potential of extensive reading and reading for pleasure

·         Motivation, interest, engagement, and attitudes in improving literacy skills

·         Linguistic identities of monolingual vs. bilingual and multilingual readers and writers

·         Difficulties in developing reading and writing skills (dyslexia, disgraphy, disorthography)