Chandigarh (Bharat Sandesh) – Regional Institute of English, Sector 32, Chandigarh acted as host for the Second day of paper presentations for 33rd ALL INDIA CONFERENCE OF LINGUISTS. The conference which is centered on various aspects of linguistics like Computational Linguistics; Discourse Analysis; Historical Indian Grammatical Tradition; Language Technology; Pragmatics; Psycholinguistics; Semantics; Sociolinguistics and Syntax, is organized by the Department of English and Cultural Studies, in collaboration with Central Institute of Indian Languages, Mysore and Regional Institute of English (RIE), Chandigarh. Dr Sharda Kaushik, Director, RIE stated that such conferences help educationists develop the professional credentials, making it possible for them to establish networks and inform each other about the latest developments in the field.
Prof M L Tickoo, renowned linguist, released the RIE Journal Focus on English Language Teaching (FELT), which is a special issue on Writing Skills, on this occasion.
Prof Rana Nayar, Head, Department of English and Cultural Studies, Panjab University, Chandigarh, shared his concern on the falling standards in competence in using English in the younger generation. The convener of the conference, Prof Pushpinder Syal said that this is the first time that an All India Conference on different languages has been hosted in this part of India.
The first session at RIE started with plenary talk by Ms Sarah Daverall, Director with British Council. She has held numerous overseas posts including Manager of the British Council Teaching Centre in Naples from 1999 to 2002; Examinations Services Manager for East China (2002-2004); and Deputy Director Examinations Services China and Director Examinations for North and Central China (2004-2007). Ms Daverall said “English and culture are intimately connected and the language is the reflection of the culture of the country.” The session was chaired by prominent Indian Linguist Prof M L Tickoo.
It was followed by parallel sessions on pedagogy and technology. The session on pedagogy was chaired by Prof SM Gupta and had presentations on various features of pedagogy like evaluation in writing tests, discourse analysis and teaching linguistics and microskills in writing skills. The paper presenters also talked about the challenges in Language pedagogy. The other session which was chaired by Dr Bindu Bajwa focussed on papers on Unicode converter, emotional issues in virtual learning, FSL video tagging software, students and technology, and technology and students.
The third session had presentations on pragmatic grammars and various nuances of language learning skills and was chaired by Dr Iqbal Judge and Prof Anil Sarwal respectively. The papers highlighted the different facets of primary classroom, pragmatics in language teaching, second language learning, mother tongue and primary classrooms. The parallel session talked about speaking tests, prose in reading, listening speaking skills and schema in reading comprehension.
