Semarang │(May 6, 2018) Faculty of Foreign Language and Culture (FBBA) of Universitas Muhammadiyah Semarang held the 2nd English Language and Literature International Conference (ELLiC) themed “Education 4.0: Trend and Future Perspectives in English Language Education, Linguistics, Literature and Translation”. Attended by 185 presenters and participants from 7 countries (Indonesia, Singapore, Thailand, Vietnam, Myanmar, United States, Philippines and Sweden), ELLiC was held in the Nursing Research Center building on Saturday, May 5, 2018, beginning at 07.30 and ended at 17.45 WIB. The 2nd ELLiC also invited 4 plenary speakers. They were Prof. Dr. Djamaludin Darwis, M.A. (4th Rector of Unimus), Prof. Thomas Charles Koch (Indiana, U.S.A.) and Asst. Prof. Angkana Tongpoon Patanasorn, Ph.D. (Thailand). Becoming the keynote speaker was Dr. Willy A.Renandya, Ph.D. from Nanyang University in Singapore.
The event was opened by Yesika Maya Oktarani, M.Hum, as the Dean of FBBA. She revealed that the event was aimed at stimulating English educators to get more confident, believing that they were agents of change so that they wouldn’t only share about knowledge but also motivations as well as inspirations to the students.
Prof. Jamaludin Darwis, speaking in the 1st plenary session, told about the importance of learning foreign language from psycho-socio-religious perspective by comprehending ayahs and surahs in the Holy Quran within which a lot of scientific, technological, and language issues existed. Meanwhile, Asst. Prof. Angkana Tongpoon Patanasorn, Ph.D., the following speaker, told about constructive method and the application of Vocabulary Lists. As for Prof. Thomas, he promoted the need of extensive reading in English learning. And, Willy A. Renandya, the keynote speaker, stated about the significance of having proficiency standard for English educators in Indonesia, which was globally recognized, like CEFR (Common European Framework of Reference). “Indonesia in this sense is far left behind compared to other ASEAN countries that mostly have had proficiency standard for foreign language educators,” he explained.
At the end, this international conference has been organized successfully. “The conference is followed with a series of Semarang City Tour for overseas contributors as well as those from outside Semarang in order to promote local tourism and culture. The success of this international conference is expected to become a reference of academicians at Unimus to organize similar event and motivate lecturers and students to be more active and creative,” Dr. Dodi Mulyadi, the committee chairman, concluded. It is one of Unimus’ attempts to become an excellent and internationally-recognized university.
Reported by the Technical Unit of Public Relations and Protocol
