Affiliate News - 02/22/2019 (Plain Text Version)
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ARGENTINA TESOL'S (ARTESOL) 2018 ACHIEVEMENTS Monica Gandolfo, ARTESOL, Argentina
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. |
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