INGED (İngilizce Egitimi Dernegi) or ELEA (English Language Education Association) is the association of English language teachers in Turkey. Based in Ankara, INGED basically aims to bring together English language teaching (ELT) professionals from all levels of education ranging from K-12 to tertiary level and to provide them with professional development opportunities since its foundation in 1995. To achieve this goal, the association creates platforms for sharing opinions, experiences, and knowledge such as conferences, seminars, and workshops.

The association is administered by a seven-member executive board, which is elected every year at the annual general assembly. The current president of INGED is Dr. Aydan Ersöz, a renowned scholar in the field of ELT in Turkey. INGED is an affiliate of TESOL International Association and an associate of IATEFL and it has partnership agreements with several associations from the Czech Republic, Azerbaijan, Bulgaria, Poland, Macedonia, Serbia, and Greece.

As mentioned before, INGED organizes various events all around Turkey in order to encourage ELT professionals’ development and to create a sense of belonging within the profession. Some prominent events are the INGED Drama Fest, which takes place every year in May both in Ankara and in Izmir as well as seminars and workshops that take place almost every month of the academic year and that function as teacher training sessions. Another important event of the association is its biannual international conference, a prestigious event not only for ELT professionals in Turkey, but also for those outside Turkey.

The 18th International INGED ELT Conference, themed “Winds of Change” took place on 20-22 October 2017 and was hosted by Istanbul Aydin University. With a full program spanning three whole days, it included 4 plenary sessions, 63 paper presentations, and 12 workshop sessions along with a panel discussion. The conference has kept its international spirit alive with participants from the Czech Republic, Egypt, Greece, Hungary, Moldova, Morocco, Poland, the UK and the USA.

The conference started with the opening speeches of the rector of the host institution, Istanbul Aydin University, Dr. Yadigar Izmirli; the president of INGED, Dr. Aydan Ersöz, and the director of the preparatory school, Dr. Necmiye Karatas, which were followed by the first plenary session of the conference: Richard Smith’s talk titled “Learner and Teacher Autonomy in Difficult Circumstances”. In his session, Dr. Smith dissected the concept of autonomy, pointed out how difficult achieving autonomy under difficult circumstances can be, and shared some success stories drawing examples from his studies in Nepal and Chile.

The second plenary speech of the first day was delivered by Dr. Miroslaw Pawlak, who focused on the role of grammar teaching in the language classroom. Dr. Pawlak touched on various aspects of grammar teaching ranging from picking the right syllabus to selecting the appropriate techniques for teaching the right structures.

The second day of the conference began with another plenary session, which was given by Dr. Peter Medyges. His inspiring and fun session was titled “The Native/Non-Native Conundrum” and it was on the change in non-native speaker teachers’ (NNESTs) status in the world of ELT.

The last plenary speaker was Dr. Birsen Tutunis with her session on pre-service English teachers’ identity development, which happens during their transformation from a future teacher to a novice teacher.

In this year’s conference, there was a new section: a panel discussion. The theme of the discussion was language teaching in Turkey. The panelists were INGED President Dr. Aydan Ersöz, Dr. Birsen Tutunis, Dr. Yasemin Bayyurt, Dr. Dincay Koksal and Dr. Richard Smith and they tried to find the answer to the question why changing policies do not make any differences in the language performances of students. There were contributions from the audience as well.

Despite the tight schedule and a packed program including a cocktail party, a great conference dinner, and a raffle, it was a satisfactory experience with all new lessons learned and old ones revised—and—all in all, it was fun. 

For further information on INGED please visit our website http://inged.org.tr/ or like our Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/INGEDTURKEY/.

Büşra Çelen has an MA in ELT from Gazi University, Turkey. She is pursuing a PhD degree on second language teacher education at the same university. Ms.Çelen has been serving as a board member of INGED Turkey since 2012.