The Korea Tesol and FAB conferences are teaming up for a joint event on May 13 and 14, the FAB11 & Kotesol National Conference 2017.

Korea Tesol — Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages — is a professional association of English teachers that holds national and international conferences each year to give language instructors opportunities to sharpen their teaching skills.

This year, the national conference will be joined by FAB, a nonprofit group focused on neuroELT — the application of neuroscience research to English teaching.

Based in Japan, FAB has held 10 conferences across Asia so far, and looks to take a practical approach to teaching applications.

Speakers are based at institutes in Korea, Japan and Hong Kong, as well as several other countries.

The Saturday schedule will include 14 FAB sessions on neuroELT and 28 Kotesol sessions on a broader range of English language education topics, including the use of humor in teaching, applications of online discussion to English learning and understanding how second language learners interpret specific grammar points.

In addition, there will be plenary sessions led jointly by FAB co-founders Curtis Kelly, a professor of English at Kansai University in Japan, and Robert Murphy, an associate professor at the University of Kitakyushu, Japan, on “What Neuroscience Tells us About Language Teaching.”

The Sunday itinerary will be devoted to neuroELT workshops, with six workshops and two group discussion sessions.

The conference takes place at Sookmyung Women’s University in Seoul and runs from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. Saturday and until 5 p.m. Sunday.

Discounted online registration closes May 5. One-day and two-day passes will be available onsite.

For more information and the conference schedule, visit koreatesol.org/nc2017.

By Paul Kerry (paulkerry@heraldcorp.com)