Conference Summary
American Council for the Teaching of Foreign Languages (ACTFL) Conference
November 15-18, 2007, San Antonio, TX

Theresa Catalano
PhD Candidate
Second Language Acquisition and Teaching GIDP

I am very grateful to have received the Herbert E. Carter Travel Award to attend the ACTFL Conference in San Antonio, Texas on November 15-18, 2007. This conference presented me with the opportunity to present my own work in the area of language pedagogy, and also to attend many sessions on everything from language teaching to language analysis to writing and publishing for academic journals.

My presentation "Art Activities for the Foreign Language Classroom¡¨ demonstrated my Creation of Art Technique which is designed to incorporate art into the language learning process as well as for use as a communicative tool. Participants took part in an activity in Italian, and worked with clay. After the presentation I was approached by several people interested in collaborating with me in the future. This provided an excellent chance for people to see new innovations in the French and Italian Department at the University of Arizona, and also connections were made for further projects.

I also attended many different sessions, most of which were extremely useful for my SLA research and teaching. I learned how to prepare podcasts in Italian for my students, and how to incorporate the latest research on the brain into language teaching. I also attended several sessions on using movement and authentic Italian texts in the classroom. Lastly, I attended a very informative session on the proper etiquette of getting published in language journals. All in all, the sessions were very informative and useful both in my studies and my teaching.

I would like to thank the GIDP for giving me this opportunity to attend and present at this very important conference. It is very important to be in the know about what the latest trends are in language teaching and analysis, and I feel that this conference was also an excellent opportunity to make contacts in my field across this country, and internationally.