BAAL 2025🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿

I attended and presented my research at the British Association for Applied Linguistics (BAAL), held at the University of Glasgow from September 4 to 6. It was particularly valuable to meet and speak with senpai's who completed their PhD under my current supervisor.

Everyone was incredibly kind, which was truly heart-warming. It was a moment when I could really see the generations of scholars before me, and I found it quite moving. Since all of them are highly accomplished in their respective fields, I felt a renewed determination to conduct research and activities worthy of pursuing my PhD at the Warwick.

As for the conference programme, judging from what I saw, a significant proportion of the presentations focused on multilingualism, EMI, and AI (ChatGPT), which seemed particularly popular. Research related to motivation appeared to be somewhat in the minority?, though this likely changes from year to year. BAAL 2026 will be held at Aston University (https://baal2026.com), which is nearby from the Warwick, so I may submit an abstract and, if accepted, present there as well!

In any case, I spent a very intensive few days talking with many people, sharing meals, and even dancing?, so I felt a bit of burnout upon returning. That said, with such a tightly packed schedule ahead, I simply need to keep going...haha