Factoids on KOTESOL Conferences

1. The first KOTESOL conference was held on October 16-17, 1993, at Wonkwang University in Iri (now Iksan), Jeollabuk-do, celebrating KOTESOL’s first anniversary.
2. This year is KOTESOL's 26th autumn conference (1993-2018); one has been held every year since KOTESOL was formed.
3. The KOTESOL International Conference is the largest annual ELT conference held in Korea.
4. Approximately 200 English teachers attended KOTESOL’s first conference in 1993. Attendance has grown to over 800 each year since 2007, with over 1,550 in 2010. (Numbers have returned to the norm of "around 800.")
5. KOTESOL’s International Conference is truly “international.” Of the presenters listed for all the sessions at the 2012 Conference, over half were names of presenters who came to Korea from abroad especially to present at the conference; just over 100 were Korea-based.
6. The KOTESOL International Conference is always held on a weekend in the month of October, the middle of Korea’s ELT conference season.
7. All of KOTESOL’s autumn conferences have been held in Seoul except three: Iksan, 1993; Gyeongju, 1997; Daegu, 2000.
8. The International Conference attracts the world’s most renowned figures in the fields of English Language Teaching and Applied Linguistics. To name a few: Jack Richards, David Nunan, Stephen Krashen, Rod Ellis, Jeremy Harmer, Michael McCarthy, Penny Ur, Paul Nation, Scott Thornbury, Alan Maley, Jane Willis, Kathleen Bailey, Donald Freeman, Dick Allwright, and more!
9. The International Conference has grown from 30 presentations in 1993 to more than 200 presentations in recent years.
10. The competition to give a presentation at the International Conference is quite high: in 2018 roughly 55% of the conference presentation proposals submitted could be accepted; some years as low as 40% of proposals are accepted. Some years, as much as 60% of presenters come from overseas (2017).
11. Revenue from online pre-registration and onsite registration fees for an International Conference covers less than two-thirds (2/3) of KOTESOL's total expenses for that conference.
12. As a founding member of the Pan Asian Consortium, KOTESOL has twice hosteed the PAC Conference in association with the KOTESOL International Conference (PAC2 in 1999; PAC 2010), and is scheduled to do so again in 2017.
13. The International Conference, hosted in Seoul in the fall, is complemented by a Spring National Conference hosted outside of the Seoul area.
14. The Spring National Conference was first held in 2006, and has been held ten times in the past eleven years: Cheonan, 2006; Daegu, 2007; Cheongwon (Chungbuk), 2009; Daegu, 2010; Daejeon, 2011; Busan, 2012; Cheongwon (Chungbuk), 2013; Daegu, 2014; Seoul in 2015 (the exceptional case); and Wonju (Gangwon), 2016.
15. International Conference planning is so critical that it begins more than a year in advance of the conference date: invited speakers for the October 2016 International Conference were already being confirmed in July 2015.
16. KOTESOL International Conference presenters and attendees come from around the world: East Asia, Southeast Asia and Australia, North America, Asia, Europe, and the Middle-East.
17. It requires more than 200 individuals to plan and manage the International Conference: more than 50 members on the KOTESOL Conference Committee and nearly 150 student volunteers, in addition to regular venue staff and publishers’ personnel.
18. International Conference Committee members are all KOTESOL-member volunteers contributing many hours of their time throughout the year without compensation in preparations for the two-day conference.
19. In addition to KOTESOL’s National and International Conferences, the association’s regional Chapters also host chapter conferences at various times throughout the year. In 2012, chapter conferences were hosted by Gwangju-Jeonnam, Seoul, Jeonju-North Jeolla, and Daejeon-Chungcheong Chapters, and jointly by Suwon-Gyeonggi + Yongin-Gyeonggi Chapters.
20. Some of the members of the 2016 International Conference Committee have been an active member of each international conference for more than a decade.
     

Publicity@koreatesol.org
Rev: Sept 18, 2018.