BESIG events

Pre-Conference Event 2010

BESIG is pleased to announce the Business English Special Interest Group Pre-Conference Event. It will be held on Wednesday, 7 April 2010 as part of the annual IATEFL Conference and Exhibition in Harrogate, UK. The Pre-Conference Event will take place from 10.00 am to 5.00 pm and includes talks, workshops, coffee breaks and lunch. Well-known speakers, trainers and writers in the field of Business English will be expressing their ideas and thoughts on the topic "Business or Business English?" The day has been set up so that there will be time for discussions and feedback from both the trainers and the participants and ideally will lead to topics that can be explored further through the discussion list or at other BESIG events. The PCE is sponsored by Cambridge ESOL and our media partner is Business Spotlight. For further details please click here: Pre-Conference Event 2010.

International Business English Summer Conference 2010

IATEFL BESIG is now accepting proposals for presentations and workshops for a summer conference, which will take place in Rome, Italy from 25 (afternoon) to 26 (morning) June 2010. Please click here for further details concerning registration and speaker proposals.

Annual Conference 2010: Bielefeld, Germany

The 2010 Annual Conference will be held in Bielefeld, Germany over the weekend 19 - 21 November. Please click here for a leaflet with preliminary information about this return to the venue for the very first BESIG Conference held in 1988.

The new BESIG committee, which was elected at the AGM in Poznan, met up for a very productive committee meeting in Bielefeld, and here are some of their reactions to the meeting and the venue:

"This was a really useful meeting. The new committee blended well and we now have a comprehensive and strategic lists of tasks based on our individual inputs as well as the positive feedback we received from the membership at the AGM and subsequently. An added bonus was that we met in the excellent venue provided by VHS Bielefeld for 2010. We are all now thoroughly familiar with the building and surrounding area and this will stand us in very good stead as we plan the details for the conference."

Duncan Baker (Treasurer)

"This is a great venue - the 2010 conference is going to be well worth the visit!"

Paul East (Joint Coordinator)

"The committee got to tour the building which has impressive architecture, wonderful spaces for our Friday evening reception and Saturday plenary as well as a fantastic exhibition hall for delegates to spend time in looking at the latest materials available in our field. The seminar rooms are welcoming and well-equipped so that both presenters and delegates should feel very much at home."

Marjorie Rosenberg (Joint Coordinator)

And here is a sneak preview of the the venue together with some glimpses of the committee at work in this historic building:

Annual Conference 2009: Poznan, Poland

The 2009 Annual Conference was held in Poznan, Poland over the weekend 20 - 22 November. For details of the 2009 scholarship winners, an overview of the sessions, conference photos and much more please click here.

Events calendar

All forthcoming events organised or co-organised by BESIG are announced on this website, and archives of previous events are available via the links on the right. In addition we have an Events Calendar into which members can enter details of other events of interest to the BESIG community. Click here for details and to view the Calendar.

Wiki on previous conferences

In the run-up to this year's conference we are gathering information about previous conferences on our wiki. A wiki is a webpage which anyone can edit. So if you have any information about any of the previous 19 conferences please contribute it to our wiki!

Conference archives

For archives of annual conferences and other previous events please follow the links on the right.