The benefits of attending ELT conferences

muhammad ismail faruqi;

Thousands of ELT professionals attend conferences around the world each year and such activity is assumed to make a positive contribution to these individuals’ professional development and work. Evidence of what exactly those benefits are is, though, scarce, and this article reports a study seeking to identify, from delegates’ own perspectives, the impact that attending conferences has. Overall, the evidence presented here is positive, highlighting a range of benefits that delegates report as a result of conferences. Ways in which the impact of attending conferences can be even further enhanced are
also identified and discussed in this article.