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2018 has been a complex year for our affiliate, but 2019 is
looking good. The ARTESOL Annual Spelling Competitionis a national
spelling event organized by Argentina TESOL for non-native English
speaking students under the age of 15. ARTESOL organized the first local
Spell Event in 2009 sponsored by Franklin Electronic Publishers in
association with TESOL International. When the Global Spell Event was
discontinued, the decision was made to continue it locally. This year’s
event was our tenth event, and we had schools from downtown BA, Greater
BA and also from different province.
In terms of networking, which is one of the key objectives of
the ANPC, we are very grateful to have been invited to participate in
the meetings and panels that took place at the HELTA HONDURAS TESOL 4th
ANNUAL CONFERENCE, so well described by Grazzia Mendoza and Ulrich
Schrader in the October issue. Gladly, our board reacted favorably to
the possibility of the creation of a Latin American TESOL Affiliates
Regional Group, so that makes the road ahead look promising in terms of
collaboration.
On a very different note, getting to our convention this year
was a bit more difficult, so we wanted to share the ups and downs to
help other affiliates who might have similar problems. As our 2018
convention venue, we had been planning to use National University.
However, a few days before the summer recess, the institution informed
us that an authority had changed his mind, which had us searching
frantically for alternatives. This had happened to us the previous year
as well, so we had to hold the convention at a hotel the last minute
even though we have always favored educational institutions for our
annual Convention due to the academic nature of the event and because of
our limited financial resources. When we had almost lost hope for an
appropriate venue, the binational center in the same locality came to
the rescue, and we were able to hold a successful convention.
With this in mind, we
started a complex and careful search for our 2019 Convention. We were
finally able to sign an institutional cooperation agreement for academic
and scientific collaboration with the Universidad Católica de las
Misiones. This will allow us to use their premises this year and in
years to come for our coming Convention, which is, as you can imagine,
very anxiety-relieving. We have also pledged to collaborate on projects
attending to mutual needs. The agreement will be valid for four years,
but it does not restrict our possibility of making other similar
agreements. We think that making a long-term agreement could be a valid
alternative for other affiliates who have undergone similar
difficulties.
We feel there is a long way to go in terms of moving along the
path that has been set by the ANPC, but we have taken a few more steps
in that direction.
Mónica Gandolfo is the First Vice President of Argentina TESOL.
She is a teacher educator, coursebook co-author and presenter with an
interest in disadvantaged contexts and lexis related issues in
comprehension and production. |
