Presenter Bio: Professor Z N Patil is currently the President of ELTAI (English Language Teachers’ Association of India), Pune Chapter, India. He has been teaching English Language, Linguistics, and Literature at several schools, colleges, institutes, study centres and universities in India and abroad for 47 years. He retired as Professor of English and Head of the Department of Training and Development, English and Foreign Languages University, Hyderabad, India. Since then he has been freelancing in India and abroad. He has voraciously published in the field and has to his credit 20 textbooks, 8 resource books, and 95 articles published in national and international journals. He has also delivered several invited and sponsored keynote addresses at various national and international conferences across the globe. He has been the recipient of several prestigious awards like ‘Lifetime Membership Award’ from English Scholars Beyond Borders (ESBB); ‘Best Educationist Award’ from International Institute of Management and Education, New Delhi, India; ‘Mahatma Phule Social and Educational Lighthouse (Mentor) Award’, India amongst various others.

Abstract: The current COVID 19 pandemic has given us all sufficient pause for thought to examine our taken-for-granted assumptions about well-being. By the same token, it has compelled us to examine our academic well-being in language teaching as a constituent of overall well-being. Against this backdrop, the presentation will signpost the centrality, immediacy and primacy of those key issues that resonate with the prevalence and permeation of an ecologically- driven dialogism that can help us debunk and demolish the current technicist, technocratic, template-centered orientation and provide/inspire dynamically evolving learning spaces in academe. It should then be viewed as an epistemic exercise in border-crossing by which we as language educators make sense of ourselves and our lived thorough worlds.

Presenter Bio: Sivakumar Sivasubramaniam is currently Extraordinary Professor and Immediate past Head of Language Education in the Faculty of Education at the University of the Western Cape, Republic of South Africa (RSA). He is also a National Research Foundation (NRF) rated Researcher in RSA. Prof. Sivasubramaniam serves the Editorial Board of the Journal of English as an International Language (EILJ) as Chief Editor and has served the Editorial Board of Asian EFL Journal (AEJ) as Associate Editor for 12 years both of which are two reputed international peer-reviewed journals indexed by Scopus. In recognition of his invaluable international voluntary services, he has been invited to serve on the Executive Management Board of English Scholars Beyond Borders (ESBB), an international NGO dedicated to promoting diversity and equity in the teaching of English across the globe. He has been a foreign language/ second language educator for over thirty-eight years now and has taught English in India, Ethiopia, Thailand, Bahrain, Armenia, and U.A.E prior to relocating to the Western Cape. He has presented papers, conducted workshops and delivered keynote addresses at prestigious conference forums abroad. He has supervised several PhD and Masters students and has co-authored with them to develop their voice, agency and intersubjectivities. He continues to run mentoring sessions for cohorts of young faculty in the craft and dynamics of doctoral supervision focused on epistemic stances that are eminently attuned to eschewing scientific rationalism in favour of social inclusion and social justice. His research interests include response-centred reading/writing pedagogies, literature-based language pedagogies, constructivism in EIL, second language advocacy, narratives in language education and text-based approaches to academic and social literacy practices.

Abstract: This presentation examines English Language Teaching (ELT) from a wider Vygotskian perspective and focusses on the compelling need of enabling students to act in real-life situations, express themselves naturally and accomplish tasks of different natures in which mutual cooperation, co-construction of meaning, and social interaction is placed at the center of learning and teaching process. Led by the primacy of this pedagogic perspective, the presentation emphasizes on the motivations that drive English language teachers to focus on the hallmarks of Liberal Art Education (LAE), viz. communication, critical analysis, and creativity as prerequisites for success in human life. Based on the premise that the quality of the students of today determines the quality of the world they shall create tomorrow, the presentation discusses and demonstrates (a) why LAE is crucial; (b) how LAE materials are effective; (c) why the integrated-interactive approach is inevitable in LAE, and (d) how can the richness of unconventional LAE materials be exploited to enrich ELT and train social actors for living and participating harmoniously in multi-lingual and multi-cultural societies of the modern world.

Presenter Bio: Dr. Vijay Singh Thakur is an Associate Professor in the Department of English Language and Literature of Dhofar University, Salalah, Oman. Currently, he is the Assistant Dean of the College of Arts and Applied Sciences of the University. Prior to becoming Assistant Dean, he was the Head of English Language and Literature Department of Dhofar University. He holds a doctorate degree in Applied Sociolinguistics. His main publications include two books on Discourse Analysis of a Novel: Theory and Method & Sociolinguistic Perspectives of Politeness in Communication and two jointly edited books on Effective Writing Methodologies & Critical Perspectives on EFL Assessment. He has also published 33 research papers and articles and delivered 20 presentations at international conferences in the fields of Applied Sociolinguistics, Discourse Stylistics, Cross-Cultural Pragmatics, and TESOL Pedagogy. His other academic contributions include one completed Ph.D. thesis supervision in an Indian university and evaluation of 37 Ph.D. & 9 Master’s theses from the universities in South Africa, India, Qatar and Oman. He is an Associate Editor and Editor on the editorial boards of 4 international journals indexed by Scopus and Eric namely The Asia TEFL Journal; Journal of English as an International Language; English Scholarship Beyond Borders; and International Journal for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning. He is also an active member of an international not-for-profit academic organization called English Scholars Beyond Border.