The ELT Mini Conference in Bihać & Other News

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Last month my dear colleague Nizama and I had the honour of presenting our work to English teachers from the Una-Sana Canton at the “ELT Mini Conference: Linguistic Approach to Teaching” in Bihać. Organised by TETA and American Corner Bihać, this one-day seminar was the perfect opportunity to share the knowledge with fellow English teachers – and so much fun to do! The photo above shows us all against the wonderful Una backdrop, and I think the only one who’s missing is the lovely Mirela Midžić from the AC – thank you for everything, especially the “Ghost Brothers of Darkland County” (she knew I love Stephen King because my students come to her to loan his books XD)! Also, big kudos to colleagues Elma and Edin, as well as everyone who came that day to our mini conference.

In case you were wondering, Nizama and I recently did a research on teaching phrasal verbs using conceptual domains – fascinating stuff!

Here’s us at the beginning of our presentation:

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This wasn’t the only such event in the past few months – there was also the amazing IATEFL Conference in Slovenia, then a couple of school seminars in Teslić and Sarajevo, and right now I’m preparing for the 4th International FLTAL Conference in Sarajevo next week (presenting a paper on metaphors in politics – wish me luck!)

Some visuals from Slovenia (with Nizama, Lisa, Elma, and Danka):

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Soon I will also have news on my second book. Until then:

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“The Only Way To Soothe My Soul…”

za_index_1 Always fascinated with the passage of time, I marked another milestone five months ago (almost to the day, hence my writing) – as you may have seen from my revised biography, I’m a doctoral student as of November 2012! I’m currently attending the Doctoral studies in Linguistics at the Faculty of Philosophy, University J. J. Strossmayer in Osijek, Croatia. It didn’t take me long to get back into this “comfortable” role (less than a year after I finished the Master studies), but I ascribe that to the general notion that rules my thoughts which is: “if you’re not going forward, you’re stagnating”. Good old Oscar Wilde would put it: “You can never be overdressed or overeducated“. So far, I’m more than impressed with the quality of the programme and I’ve gained seven new colleagues, to whom I give my best regards. Accepting this new challenge, I found myself invigorated by the overwhelming amount of new knowledge and I felt that Yeats’ fire rekindled inside! This is truly the only path for me, the only way to soothe my soul... Recently I passed two exams (collecting As again!), so basically I still got the mojo (couldn’t resist this sentence)! This is also the reason why I’m not posting as I’d like to (or as someone dear has said to me recently “your neglected website”), but I’ll find time here and there to put some new travelogues up (Bratislava and Vienna, respectively), as well as some photo galleries from journeys past (btw, the photo on the left was taken for my student report card – tried to project a bit of Princess Leia and Jesse, the clever librarian because of a bad hair day). New verses are not forgotten, only carelessly hidden inside my journals until it’s time for them to be published – speaking of, I’ve got the title of my next book down to two possible choices – exciting times! Until then, be well and enjoy my music picks of the year so far (looking forward to their summer shows!):