You are invited to submit a paper on the topic of the next volume (7/1): Vocabulary in Languages for Specific Purposes. Submission deadline is 30th April, 2012. Please note that Scripta Manent also welcomes manuscripts covering topics other than those advertised. For more information click here.

The Fourth International Language Conference was held on Thursday 22^rd and Friday 23^th September 2011 at the Faculty of Logistics at the University of Maribor, Slovenia. The conference was streamed live online and video recorded, giving the opportunity to all the candidates who could not join us live to join the event online. The programme consisted of an opening address, two invited lectures, 42 presentations and 5 workshops.  In the opening address the dean of the faculty, Prof. Dr. Martin Lipičnik, stressed the importance of mastering professional foreign languages, which has become one of the crucial competences for most professions and presents an important competitive advantage for professionals from all walks of life. The importance of foreign languages for successful communication and exchange of information in the diplomatic and business world was further discussed by Ms. Mascarenhas, the Ambassador of the Republic Cape Verde, and Mr. Zvone Dragan, the first Slovene ambassador to China. The opening presentations were given by Prof. Dr. Peter Zimmermann, who gave a presentation on the problem of plagiarism in the modern society, and prof. Bob Johnson, who gave a presentation on the quality in education.

The conference participants, who came from all parts of the world, including Austria, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Germany, Hungary, Japan, the Republic of Latvia, Russia, Serbia, Slovenia, Spain and the United Kingdom, presented and exchanged their views on issues such as the role of languages for specific purposes in the 21^st century, the Bologna Process in an LSP course, modern approaches to LSP teaching with the emphasis on competences, intercultural dimension of teaching and learning in an LSP course, and many others.

The conference presentations and discussions that followed provided us with plenty of innovative and useful ideas, which we could take with us to our lecture rooms and classrooms.

The social programme included a medieval reception at the Old Castle Celje. After having a short guided tour of Celje, we arrived at the captivating Old Castle, where we were greeted by the countess, Her Highness Barbara of Celje, her knights and ladies-in-waiting, who performed a medieval programme ‘Become a knight of Celje.’

For more information about the conference please visit the conference website.

We would like to take this opportunity to invite you to participate at our Fifth International Language Conference, which will take place in September 2012 (more information will be available at the conference website).

Polona Vičič, lecturer in English at the Faculty of Logistics

You are invited to participate in the conference as a speaker or as a listener.
For more information on the conference please write to Polona Vičič or Sara Orthaber (int.conference@fl.uni-mb.si).

The weekly keyword is translated not only from English to German but also into French, Spanish and Italian. There will always be an audio file as a pronunciation aid and, depending on the word that has been selected. There will also be video clips, exercises and puzzles for students based on the keywords.

If you would like to subscribe to the Technical Word of the Week newsletter, send a mail to paul@thepyramidgroup.biz with “Subscribe – Tech Word of the Week” in the subject line.

Contact: Paul East, Geschäftsführer Pyramid Group
IATET Präsident (Int. Association of Tech. English Trainers)
www.thepyramidgroup.biz |  www.iatet.com

The sessions start January 10 and here is their call for participation.

EUROCALL 2010 was held in Bordeaux, France, and dealt with Languages, cultures and virtual communities. The conference has a great website and a blog where some of the presentations, photos and videos are shared together with tweets that can tell you a lot about what was going on there. I know I enjoyed reading them. The three keynote addresses can also be viewed so please follow the links below:

• Keynote address by Graham Davies : “Where have we been, where are we now, and where are we going ?“
• Keynote address by Andreas Lund : “Collective Cognition : A case for CALL ?“
• Keynote adress by Bernadette Charlier : “Quel modèle pour comprendre l’apprentissage au-delà des frontières ?“

Congratulations to the conference organizers and thanks for sharing these resources with those of us who couldn’t attend.

Moodle News is running a series of ‘back to school’ posts which are meant to inspire teachers with ideas for sprucing up the looks of their moodle or upgrading the contents by introducing new activities, adding a new plug-in or doing something for themselves such as joining a social group. I have found a lot of inspiration in these posts so I thought you might be interested in reading them too.

In June eleven teachers met in Celje to learn how to set up a langugage course in Moodle, design practice quizzes, create glossaries and to consider pedagogical guidelines for successful blended language learning. The participants were very active and eager to explore Moodle and we hope they will be able to implement the new knowledge in their classroom settings.

See you in autumn in our next workshop on online corpora!