British Association for Applied Linguistics facts for kids

The British Association for Applied Linguistics (BAAL) is a group in the UK. It's for people who are really interested in language and how it's used in the real world. This is called applied linguistics.

BAAL helps people who study language. They hold regular meetings across the UK. They also publish papers from their conferences. BAAL sends out a newsletter and gives money to students for their studies, which are called scholarships. A special committee, called the Executive Committee, helps run BAAL. Professor Zhu Hua is currently in charge.

BAAL has over 1200 members from all over the world. It is also a registered charity in the UK. This means it's a non-profit organization that helps others.

What BAAL Does

BAAL organizes scientific meetings. These meetings are where experts share their research about language. They also support many activities related to applied linguistics. BAAL connects its members through a special email list called BAALmail. On this list, members can share news, achievements, and job opportunities.

BAAL also has a say in a big journal called Applied Linguistics. This journal publishes important research about language.

Yearly Conference

Since 1967, BAAL has held a big meeting every year. This meeting is called the Annual Conference. At this conference, they give out three special awards:

• The Book Prize for the best book.
• The Richard Pemberton prize for the best paper by a student.
• A prize for the best poster presentation.

The most recent conference was in 2019. It was held at Manchester Metropolitan University. The theme was 'Broadening the Horizons of Applied Linguistics'. This means looking at new ideas in language studies.

Recent Book Prize Winners

BAAL gives an award for the best book in applied linguistics each year. Here are some of the recent winners:

• 2023: Ian Cushing for Standards, Stigma, Surveillance: Raciolinguistic Ideologies and England's Schools.
• 2022: Claire Krammsch for Language as Symbolic Power.
• 2021: Alison Wray for The Dynamics of Dementia Communication.
• 2020: Gabrielle Hogan-Brun & Bernadette O'Rourke for Palgrave Handbook of Minority Languages and Communities.
• 2019: James W. Tollefson & Miguel Pérez-Milans (Eds.) for Oxford Handbook of Language Policy and Planning.

Special Interest Groups

BAAL has many Special Interest Groups, or SIGs. These are smaller groups that focus on specific areas of language study. They meet regularly. These groups help researchers share ideas and work together on topics they care about.

Some of the current SIGs include:

• Corpus Linguistics (studying language using large collections of text).
• English as an Additional Language (EAL).
• Health and Science Communication.
• Intercultural Communication (how people from different cultures communicate).
• Language Learning and Teaching.
• Multilingualism (speaking many languages).
• Testing, Evaluation and Assessment (how we test language skills).

BAAL's History

BAAL started in the 1960s. At that time, more and more people became interested in the science of language. They also wanted to know how to use this science in real life. For example, they wanted to improve how we teach and learn languages.

Peter Strevens suggested creating BAAL. He was a new professor at the University of Essex. In 1965, a small group met to discuss the idea. At first, they thought BAAL might only focus on language teaching and machine translation. But in 1967, at the first big meeting, they decided to include more topics. BAAL became the UK's part of a larger international group called AILA. Pit Corder was the first person to lead BAAL.

In the early years, only certain people could join BAAL. But by the 1970s, they wanted more members. In 1985, they removed the rule about needing special qualifications. Today, anyone who is interested can join BAAL.

BAAL keeps its old records and papers at the Centre for Applied Linguistics. This center is at the University of Warwick.

See also

• Language acquisition