Reflections from IATEFL 2025 Tugba Yıldırım Kumbasar The IATEFL Conference, held from 7 to 11 April 2025 in Edinburgh, offered a wide array of inspiring and intellectually stimulating sessions, making it a delightful challenge to experience everything and capture it all in a single post. With that in mind, I’ve chosen to reflect on a few sessions that particularly resonated with my focus on arts in language education, and to consider how their insights can be meaningfully applied within our specific second language (SL) teaching context.

Eaquals International Conference 2025, Malta

The ETZ Conference, held on March 1st, 2025 in İstanbul brought together professionals, experts, and enthusiasts from various industries to discuss the latest trends, advancements, and challenges in their fields. The event provided opportunities for networking, knowledge sharing, and collaboration. While it fulfilled its purpose in many respects, some areas could benefit from adjustments to improve the overall experience for participants in the future.

We are excited to invite language instructors to the Arts Integration in Foreign Language Instruction (AIFLI) Online Conference, which will take place on May 31, 2025. This online event will focus on the theme of arts integration in foreign language teaching, with the primary objective of introducing participants to the arts integration approach and providing insights into its implementation.

The English-Speaking Union National Championship took place on March 12th, 2025, featuring prepared speech heats as part of the competition. Participants competed for a place in the final round following a structured evaluation process. Jacqueline Einer, Director of Sabancı University School of Languages, served as the Head of the Judging Panel, and Kassandra Robertson and Kenneth Mark Fine served as adjudicators.

A Reflection on Education Technology Summit by Gökçe Dülgerci, Metin Çırpan and Engin Kaça  Held at the Radisson Blu in Şişli on March 1st, 2025, the fifth Education Technology Summit, summit aimed high with its promise of a "Digital Awakening." Unfortunately, despite the hype and high expectations, organizational hiccups diminished the overall experience, but there still were a few learning points and thought-provoking ideas in some of the sessions.

Tea Talks with CEOs Club in Collaboration with the FDY Public Speaking Program

Bank of America Scholarship: Women’s Entrepreneurship Program by eCornell

I recently had the opportunity to give a seminar to students of the Applied English-Turkish Translation Department at Çağ University, a foundation university located in Mersin. It was part of a seminar series with professional translators organized to allow prospective translators to learn from experienced ones. 

This year, I had the opportunity to attend several sessions during the EAQUALS Online 2024 event. The virtual conference, held on October 11th and 12th, 2024, centered around the theme of “Quality Practices in Language Teaching” and included plenaries, presentations, and panel sessions focusing on a variety of topics including the effective use of AI in ELT, creativity, emotional regulation, assessment, sustainability in education, and the steps in creating a student-centered educational setting. In this reflection, I would like to focus on the use of AI in ELT and share some key points from the related sessions.