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<DIV><STRONG><EM><FONT size=3>The Second “TALKING ACROSS THE WORLD”
Conference<BR></FONT></EM></STRONG>English Communication Skills for the ITES
Industry<BR>May 31st (Thursday) – June 2nd (Saturday) 2007<BR>MANILA,
Philippines</DIV>
<DIV><A
href="http://www.talkingacrosstheworld.com/">www.talkingacrosstheworld.com</A><BR><BR><FONT
size=3><STRONG>CALL FOR PAPERS<BR></STRONG></FONT><BR>As the Information
Technology Enabled Services – ITES – industry is increasingly being
outsourced to non-English speaking destinations, the need for good English
language communication skills is acute. At present the single biggest problem to
industry growth in this area is English language communication
skills.<BR><BR>The applied linguistic research that has started in this industry
is fascinating and the potential is enormous. At present, a number of research
bids have been submitted to look at issues of language assessment, curriculum
development, corpus building and quality measurement in this industry.<BR><BR>We
are keen to invite academics who have been working in this area or a related
area to submit a paper for this conference.<BR><BR>Specifically, the conference
will address the issues of:<BR><BR><U>1. Modes of Adult Learning in the
workplace</U> </DIV>
<DIV>This will cover papers related to adult learning principles; modes of
delivery (e.g. classroom based training- class/small group/ individualized
support; autonomous learning); stages of professional development (e.g. novice –
expert level capacity);coaching and mentoring.<BR><BR><U>2. Assessing language
for work impact</U><BR>This will cover papers related to language and
communication assessment practices in the BPO industry e.g. examples of how
homegrown assessment works in house and for what purposes; the role of
commercially available business English testing instruments.<BR><BR><U>3.
Academic and workplace partnering</U><BR>This will cover papers related to how
workplaces and the tertiary sector inter relate in the provision of employment
related skills with specific reference to language and communication skills
development at the secondary and tertiary levels.<BR><BR><U>4. Curriculum
innovation and evaluation in language education at the workplace</U><BR>This
will cover papers related to how language research can inform the development of
training materials; the syllabus design process from planning to implementation
to evaluation; development of teacher education and trainer/coaching support
programmes.<BR><BR><U>5. Intercultural communication and its place in
training<BR></U>This will cover papers related to how intercultural awareness
impacts the success of outsourced BPO work; <BR>critiques of existing programmes
in intercultural training and ideas for more effective training and awareness
raising for culture.<BR><BR><U>6. Discourse analysis and linguistic
research<BR></U>This will cover papers related to linguistic analyses of
different aspects of BPO interaction and transaction, both spoken and written
e.g call centre exchange and email/chat support.<BR><BR>Plenary papers will be 1
hour and all other papers will be 40 minutes (30 minutes presentation and 10
minutes questions and answers).<BR><BR>For further details, please visit our
conference website: <A
href="http://www.talkingacrosstheworld.com/">www.talkingacrosstheworld.com</A><BR>Deadline
for submission is 15th January 2007. <BR><BR></FONT><FONT
style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt"
face=Arial><STRONG>RCPCE</STRONG><BR><STRONG>R</STRONG>esearch
<STRONG>C</STRONG>entre for <STRONG>P</STRONG>rofessional
<STRONG>C</STRONG>ommunication in <STRONG>E</STRONG>nglish<BR>English
Department, The Hong Kong Polytechnic
University<BR>---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------<BR><A
href="http://www.engl.polyu.edu.hk/RCPCE/">http://www.engl.polyu.edu.hk/RCPCE/</A><BR>Tel
: (852) 2766 4364<BR>Fax: (852) 2333 6569</FONT></DIV></DIV></BODY></HTML>