To enhance the quality of education, it is necessary to provide accesses and more opportunities in the learning process. Learning can happen not only in classroom setting but also other forums which provide opportunities to present ideas and papers as well as partners for discussion and giving feedback such as conferences.
The need to conduct such learning opportunity has prompted the faculty of languages and arts to host the First International Conference on Linguistics and Language Teaching 2015 (the 1st I-CoLLaTe 2015). This conference is also one of the programs conducted in the university 51st anniversary. It lasted for two days from Tuesday-Wednesday, May 12-13, 2015) at YSU auditorium. The conference committe invited 1 keynote speaker and 4 other main speakers. They are Dr. Katharina Endriati Sukamto (MLI-Indonesia), Prof. Sombat Khruathong, Ph.D. (Prince of Songkla University, Thailand), Christrine Moerman (IFI Prancis), Nguyen Ngoc Huong Giang, M.A. (Hanoi University, Vietnam), Prof. David Reeve (University of New South Wales, Australia).
Dr. Katharina Endriati Sukamto presented her paper entitled ‘Language and Culture Understanding’. Prof. Sombat Khruathong, Ph.D. gave his presentation on ‘ASEAN Languages as Lingua Franca in ASEAN Community’ In the mean time, Christrine Moerman presented her paper entitled ‘CEFR: Common European Framework of Reference for Languages: Learning, Teaching, Assessment’. Nguyen Ngoc Huong Giang, M.A. discussed his paper entitled ‘Google Forms: Beyond The Forms’ and Prof. David Reeve presented his paper on ‘Best Practice in Language Teaching’.
From 132 abstracts sent to the committee, 87 full papers were presented in the conference. The papers are presented in the form of a proceeding with an ISBN. Other than Indonesian Writers, other writers come from Malaysia, Sri Lanka, Senegal, and Burundi. The conference was attended by 191 participants consisting of lecturers, graduate school students, and undergraduate students. The follow up of this conference is that a number of primary research papers will be published in an E-journal of the I-CoLLaTe.