JACET Presidential Keynote

Reflection, Reconnection and Beyond : The Role of Academic Organizations for the next decades.

Masaki Oda
Tamagawa University

Reflection & Reconnection is a theme of the JACET 60th Anniversary Commemoration Week. As this talk serves as an inauguration address of the 9th President of JACET, special attention will be paid to change of landscape of ELT and applied linguistics over the years, and how academic organizations including JACET have to deal with the dynamic nature of the discipline. The presentation has three sections: Reflection, Reconnection and Beyond. In Reflection, I will first reflect on the relationship among English, Language Teaching and Applied Linguistics in relation to the development of the organization particularly in the last few decades. In Reconnection, I will review raise two major issues facing JACET: i.e., Translingualism and Transdisciplinarity. As JACET has been identifying itself as an academic organization specializing English language teaching in higher education and has made significant contribution to the Japanese higher education, however, it would prevent us from developing ourselves further. As JACET has been an AILA affiliate representing applied linguistics community of Japan, I would argue that JACET should take the initiatives in collaboration among language teaching organizations in Japanas a first step of reconnection. Furthermore, we need to keep in mind that Applied Linguistics itself has grown big enough to cover various aspects of language and communication, and thus JAAL in JACET, an AILA affiliate, must consider working with academic disciplines beyond language teaching which has been its major area of inquiry. ELT at higher education remains a major focus of JACET, however, active translingual and transdisciplinary collaboration is crucial for decades to come, consequently we would be able to help solving various problems in language and communication in the society.