St Mary's Hosts PhD Student Language Conference

PhD students from across London were invited to make presentations at a student conference organised by the London Second Language Acquisition Research Forum (L-SLARF) at St Mary's University, Twickenham. The day-long conference gave PhD students from St Mary’s, the University of Greenwich, Kings College London, the Institute of Education and the University of Reading, the opportunity to present their research projects to an audience of academics and fellow PhD students. The forum was recently formed by academics from the aforementioned universities as a way to share and develop research in the field of cognitive and task-based approaches to second language acquisition. Following a highly successful inaugural conference at St Mary’s in June, in which members of the forum presented their latest research papers, the PhD conference gave their doctoral students an opportunity to meet, make presentations and receive feedback on their own work. Dr Pauline Foster, Professor of Applied Linguistics at St Mary's and a founder member of L-SLARF, said the conference planned for next year would be a bigger event. She said, “We hope that this conference will become an annual event, providing our PhD students with valuable and constructive feedback on their research in a supportive atmosphere. “Next year we are expecting to run parallel sessions to accommodate a larger number of presentations but we will maintain the friendly and constructive nature of the event. It will be excellent preparation for any student aiming to present at bigger and more formal conferences.” A student commented that, “It was great to be able to get comments and suggestions from so many experienced researchers, and we also liked the opportunity to meet one another. Being associated with L-SLARF means we can feel part of a wider PhD community. I made a lot of valuable contacts today.”