As if the fact alone that the AFinLA’s 50th Anniversary Symposium was arranged as a predominantly face-to-face event in Jyväskylä wasn’t enough reason to celebrate already, GLO-LO celebrated its first official appearance in the broader academic community.
The GLO-LO members contributed two presentations to the thematic workshop on Instructing manual and physical tasks in second language interactions; the first presentation was on the role of material objects in instructions at the construction site, the second one on students as teachers in vocational training. Both sparked interesting discussions about on-site language learning, multilingual resources, and moving bodies in space.
But the conference’s theme “Language, change, and society” went way beyond academic discussions during the many inspiring presentations. For our delegation from Tampere, changing languages, multilingual resources, and translanguaging became a lived experience. For example, during the conference dinner at Harmooni, our L2 Finnish speaking research group member, Nathalie, found herself at a table with a whole crowd of Finnish teachers who expertly used their skills and experiences to include her in the ongoing conversations. That did not only give Nathalie a great boost in confidence but also kicked off a whole new tradition of making more use of all available language resources: English, Finnish, German, and Danish as well as French and Estonian for good measure.
Thus, on-site learning happened in every thinkable variation. After three exciting days, we went home with (beautiful conference-) bags full of fresh ideas, new and renewed acquaintances, and many thrilling things to think about.
Teksti: Nathalie Schümchen
Kuva: Anna-Kaisa Jokipohja