Integrating the global and the local: Current language teaching and language assessment practices in Latin America

Welcome to the 1st International Collaborative Congress UCR-LAALTA titled “Integrating the global and the local: Current language teaching and language assessment practices in Latin America”. This edition will focus on second language learning and its assessment.

These two main themes will generate a significant discussion from two thoughtful yet fundamental perspectives, which will frame a rich dialogue throughout this congress. Some experts will examine teaching a second language while others will explore language assessment, the available instruments to measure it, and the complexity to create effective and reliable tools to assess a second language acquisition process.

International and National experts such as Carol Myford, Micheline Durand, Nayibe Rosado, Salomé Villa, Gerriet Janssen, and Lourdes Rey among others will encourage introspective discussion about foreign language assessment from a wide range of methodological perspectives. Also, the challenges of such assessment, its constant process of revision and reformulation, and its desired adaptability to different learning contexts will be addressed.

Theoretical approaches aim at dissecting and understanding the assessment activity as well as guidance to improve its undeniable role in the process of acquiring a foreign language through an artificial environment. Moreover, other speakers will share their experience and expertise in a foreign language classroom, and this will help participants expand their knowledge on the subject matter. Finally, the scrutiny of the institutional structure and the curriculum organization will become a means to improve them from an epistemological perspective.