Call for Papers

We are pleased to announce the 2nd International Conference on Teaching Literature in English for Young Learners: Fostering Cultural Awareness, conceived as an academic forum for students, writers, researchers, school teachers and university professors alike.

The conference will be held at the Facultat de Magisteri at the Universitat de València (Spain), on the 14-15 Mayo 2015 and this time the theme selected is FOSTERING CULTURAL AWARENESS.

2nd International Conference

TEACHING LITERATURE IN ENGLISH FOR YOUNG LEARNERS: FOSTERING CULTURAL AWARENESS

The classic distinction between ‘culture’ with a small or a capital ‘c’ is but one example of how culture has been, and continues to be, understood in many different ways which inevitably have an effect on educational theory and practice. When teaching a Second or a Foreign language, for example, it is commonplace to consider that the integration of culture and language is necessary to a certain extent for successful learning to ensue; yet differences in perspective soon arise when it comes to defining culture and especially to finding concrete didactic translations for the language classroom. This debate becomes further entangled in the area of English language teaching, on account of the international and lingua-franca status enjoyed by the target language, and the local vs. global dynamics which this implies. As a result, the following questions are likely to assault the teacher and the researcher alike: Does culture involve specific content-knowledge, or rather a set of analytic skills which students should attain? Should cultural awareness take the students’ culture as a point of reference, the culture associated with the target language, or both—and in all three cases, how?

For the 2nd edition of our International Conference on Teaching Literature in English for Young Learners: fostering cultural awareness, we are asking literature to lend us a hand in finding our bearings among the debates aroused by cultural awareness in English language education. We are looking for real cases of workshops in which concrete children books have been drawn on to integrate language and culture in innovative and successful ways. Not one interpretation of cultural awareness will be favored in advance, since our aim is that teachers and researchers from all over the world present and justify their own views on the matter, by analyzing their real classroom experiences. Student-centered pedagogical orientations, however, will be favored when choosing among the proposals.

Instructions for registration are available at the conference website: www.uv.es/teachlit We encourage scholars, primary teachers or writers to attend it, or to submit proposals on the aforementioned topics.

Registration fees: Attendance 40 € / Presentation of papers: 95 € (before 30 March 2015) 120 € (before 10 May)

Proposals from 300 to 500 words should be sent to teachlit@uv.es before 15 Jan 2015. All abstracts will be peer-reviewed, and notification of acceptance will be sent before 15 Feb.

We suggest the following subject matters, though papers addressing the theme from other perspectives are also welcome:

— Fostering culture through children's literature— Bridging home and foreign cultural backgrounds: Getting rid of the foreignness — Culturally-aware pedagogies— Critical and cultural literacies— Muticultural, intercultural and intracultural realities— The value of literary study in making students more aware of the concept of culture— Literature for children: Education for global citizenship.

A selection of papers will be published as a volume in a prestigious international publication to be determined. Papers can be submitted in English, Spanish, and Catalan.

Organizing committee: Agustín Reyes Torres, Luis S. Villacañas de Castro, Betlem Soler Pardo.

Assistant organizing committee: María Alcantud, Ximo Espinosa, Xavier Mínguez, Eduardo España, Gloria Torralba, Rocío Domene