This year, the 50th annual Illinois TESOL-Bilingual Education (ITBE) conference took place with the theme "Innovate to Educate: New Horizons in Language Teaching."

Many students, faculty, and alumni from UIUC's Linguistics, MATESOL, and ESL programs played a role in the conference. UIUC's own Dr. Anna Mendoza gave an engaging afternoon keynote: "Native Speaker Standard Is a Myth," and Dr. Ulugbek Nurmukhamedov - MATESOL Alum and former lecturer in the ESL Program - presented the morning keynote: "What AI Doesn’t Know about ITBE and Teacher Educators. "  Additionally, ESL lecturer and ITBE board member, Abdulsamad Humaidan presented "How to write a proposal for 2026 ITBE Convention!

There were also several presentations from current students:

  • Nataliya Spirydovich and Ekaterina Shutenko, MATESOL students, presented "Smarter, Faster Material Design: How AI Empowers Language Teachers"
  • Adebola Obayemi, MATESOL student, presented "Pedagogical Strategies for Sustaining Motivation in Adult ESL Learners"
  • Arezoo Ataollahi, MATESOL student, presented "Accessible and Effective Visual Presentations for ESL Classrooms"
  • Sasha Radford and Kseniia Mikhailova, MATESOL students, presented "Casual to Classy: Teaching Language Formality With Artificial Intelligence"
  • Rita Ginting, MATESOL student, presented "Raising inclusive education awareness with technology in English classroom"
  • Elif Varlik, MATESOL student, presented "Comparative Study of Language Teacher Training for Multilingual Classrooms"
  • Nihan Sanic, MATESOL student, presented "Academic Writing Anxiety in EFL Learners & Innovative Mitigation Strategies"
  • Mehmet Sahin, MATESOL student, presented "LGBTQI Educator Identity Negotiation, Experience Navigation, and Institutional Heteroprofessionalism" 

     

This year, ITBE awarded two, one-day registration grants. Both went to students from Illinois. Congratulations Mehmet Sahin and Elif Varlik!

 

Well done to these many students and faculty members representing UIUC at the ITBE conference!

 

 

March 5, 2025