The GlobELT 2015 Conference brought together researchers, practitioners, and educators with an  interest in language teaching and linguistics at all levels from around the world to promote connections between theory and practice and to explore different perspectives on the application of research findings in different contexts.

Three eminent linguists were invited as keynote speakers: David Newby (University of Graz, Austria), Rod Ellis (University of Auckland, New Zealand) and Gülcan Erçetin (Boğaziçi University, Turkey).

David Newby presented the European Portfolio for student language teachers (EPOSTL) of which he is  one of the authors. The EPOSTL is a self-assessment tool for language teachers in initial training, helping them to monitor and reflect on their experiences, performance and progress in the course of their teacher education programme. It builds on insights from the Common European Framework of Reference (CEFR) and the European Language Portfolio (ELP), as well as the European Profile for Language Teacher Education. Since its publication in 2007, the EPOSTL has been widely used at universities and teacher education institutions throughout Europe. In the meantime, interest in the EPOSTL, which is available in 14 languages, is growing beyond the borders of Europe.

The audience, who came from a variety of mainly non-European countries – Australia, Canada, Cyprus, Germany, Iran, Kazakhstan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Nigeria, Russia, Saudi-Arabia, Syria and Turkey –, expressed a great deal of  interest in this powerful tool.

The organisation committee of this event was chaired by Ismael Hakki Mirici (Hacettepe University, Turkey), who attended the ECML Conference “Crossing continents: EPOSTL around the world” in Graz, Austria, on 18-19 February 2014.

Conference proceedings will be published in Elsevier’s Procedia – Social and Behavioral Sciences (ISSN: 1877-0428).

Conference website

David Newby presenting the EPOSTL              David Newby with EPOSTL fans