The Academic Committee of the First SHARE Convention wishes to invite teacher trainers, teachers, researchers, material writers, and other professionals in fields connected to ELT, translation and interpreting, the teaching of Spanish to foreigners, education and the humanities in general to share their practical ideas for the classroom, views, ideas, projects and experiences with colleagues from all over the country during the Pre-Convention Seminar (October 19th 2006).

The theme chosen for this year´s Convention: "HOW TO…"
has been thought of as including a direct demonstration of strategies, techniques, examples, procedures and methods for concrete classroom practice as well as the sharing of successful experiences in EFL and ESL.

Therefore, we expect presenters to deal with concrete classroom applications as well as
reports of or proposals for innovative classroom practice or new theories, methodologies or ways of looking at language and language learning and teaching in the real EFL /ESL classroom.

All Presentations will be 60 minutes long. All presentations will be Workshops.

Workshop
Rather than describing or discussing, a workshop shows a technique for teaching or testing. The presenter's statement of the theory underlying the technique should take not more than ten minutes. The rest of the time is used for showing, rather than telling.

The abstract should include a brief statement of the presenter's central purpose and a description of what will be demonstrated (e.g. role playing) and how it will be done (e.g. some of the audience participating as students or an unrehearsed lesson with actual students).

Presenters should bear in mind that these presentations may be attended by a maximum of 40 participants.

The Committee will allocate the presentations in such a way as to offer the Convention participants as much variety as possible at any given slot and therefore expects presenters to be prepared to make themselves available at any of the times scheduled for presentations.

The Committee will notify all applicants of their decision to accept or reject the proposals via electronic mail not later than 1st October 2006. All decisions by the Academic Committee are final. On the same date, Presenters will be notified of the exact times when they are expected to conduct their presentations.

All proposals must contain the following sections:

1.- Presenter´s Proposal Form. In the case of presentations conducted by more than one presenter, the presenter´s proposal form should be adapted in such a way that it contains all the relevant information about the people who will conduct the presentation.

2.- An abstract of their presentation as the presenter wishes it to appear in the Convention book. This abstract should be not be longer than 100 words and should give the Convention participants a clear idea of the content of the presentation so as to help them to choose which presentation to attend.

The applicant should refer to himself /herself using the third person of the singular.

Successful candidates might eventually be asked to re-write parts or all of the abstract, in which case one of the members of the Committee will be appointed to guide the presenter.

3. A summary of the content and dynamics of the presentation which must be of a minimum length of two A4 pages and must not exceed four A4 pages.

The summary should include a statement of the presenter´s goals, a summary of the theoretical framework, and a precise description of the tasks to be performed during the presentation.

The Academic Committee will base their acceptance or refusal of the proposal on this summary exclusively.

The summary must contain a list of the general and specific bibliography used by the applicant in the preparation of the presentation. The bibliography is not to be counted in the number of pages. The bibliographical references should be made in the APA format or any other standard literary or scientific format.

4.- A biographical statement which should not be longer than 100 words (in the case of presentations run by more than one leader, a maximum of 100 words per presenter).

Degrees will be quoted in the language in which the certificates or diplomas were originally issued (e.g. Profesor en Inglés or Especialista en Informática Educativa or Master of Arts in Applied Linguistics) together with the complete name of the institution which granted the degree. No vague descriptions of academic degrees will be accepted (e.g. "has been a teacher of English for ten years" or "holds a degree in Education")

All details which are not academically relevant should be avoided.
All presenters should be holders of legally valid degrees from our own country or abroad.

Proposals should be written in the language in which the presentation is to be made. The official languages of this Convention are: English and Spanish.

All proposals should be e-mailed to the President of the Academic Committee:
omarvillarreal@speedy.com.ar (NB: villaRReal)

The Deadline for presentation of proposals is 20th September 2006.

All applications for presentations that promote commercial interests will be directly disqualified.

Applications by presenters which offer commercial presentations for the sponsors of the Convention will not be accepted.
All presenters are exempted to pay the Convention fee.

Presenters are entitled to a Diploma which clearly states his or her participation in the Convention as a Presenter (Diploma de Disertante). This Diploma will be presented to him or her in the course of the closing ceremony.

PRESENTER´S PROPOSAL FORM

Title of Workshop:
Presenter:
E-mail address:
Alternative E-mail address:
Home address: street and number
City and Province
Telephone number:
Cell-phone:
Affiliation (Name(s) of the Institution(s) where you work- state also city and province of each Institution)

This presentation is aimed at (check a maximum of three):

English Teachers in general
Preschool teachers
Primary School teachers
Secondary School teachers
University lecturers
Translators and Interpreters
Researchers
Novice Teachers
Other (please specify):

Audiovisual equipment needed (state YES or NO as applicable)

Cassette player
CD player
Blackboard/Whiteboard
VHS player + TV set
Overhead projector

N.B. Computers or Multimedia kits will not normally be provided, but you can always request that kind of technological support. The Executive Committee will inform you in due course whether that equipment will be available or not. The Executive Committee will NOT print handouts.

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(*) Adapted from the TESOL Guidelines.