Every three years AILA holds its international World Congress. This congress is the biggest event in Applied Linguistics, bringing together - usually more than 2,000 - researchers and practitioners from all areas of Applied Linguistics for five days.

The Congress is characterized by high level presentations and discussions on key issues of the field. Its format includes keynote addresses, plenary speeches by outstanding scholars, invited symposia, symposia, individual papers and poster presentations.

The first AILA Congress took part in Nancy, France, 1964, presenting in its strands cutting edge findings from theory and practice of the time. Following this model, the programs of the Past Congresses represent the history of the discipline.

Each congress is organised by a different national or regional affiliate. The congress sites alternate between different areas of the world to reflect the global character of AILA.

• What is AILA?

AILA is the acronym for Association Internationale de Linguistique Appliquée or International Association of Applied Linguistics.

AILA is the international federation of national or regional associations of Applied Linguistics.Through its member associations, AILA currently has a membership of more than 8.000 individuals worldwide who as researchers, policy makers or practitioners are active in the field of Applied Linguistics.

Applied Linguistics is an interdisciplinary field of research and practice dealing with practical problems of language and communication that can be identified, analysed or solved by applying available theories, methods and results of Linguistics or by developing new theoretical and methodological frameworks in Linguistics to work on these problems. Applied Linguistics differs from Linguistics in general mainly with respect to its explicit orientation towards practical, everyday problems related to language and communication.

The problems Applied Linguistics deals with range from aspects of the linguistic and communicative competence of the individual such as first or second language acquisition, literacy, language disorders, etc. to language and communication related problems in and between societies such as e.g. language variation and linguistic discrimination, multilingualism, language conflict, language policy and language planning.

AILA is a Non-Governmental Organization (NGO) having FCR (Formal Consultative Relations) with UNESCO.

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