17th INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE OF NELTA

Nepal English Teachers' Association (NELTA) has recently organized a biggest carnival in Kathmandu. The theme of this international conference was " Beyond Binaries: Sharing ELT Practices and Creating the Future." The venue of the programme was St. Xavier School Lalitpur. The participants of the carnival were mostly the English Teachers specially from education faculty  and  NELTA members. There were more than two thousand teachers from all over the country and abroad. The key speakers of the plenary session were Angi Malderez from the University of Leeds, Fredricka L. Stoller from Northern Arizona University, and Rod Ellis from the university of Auckland.

Fortunately, this grand occasion took place on a Saturday along two public holidays. So, many teachers got a silver opportunity to inculcate the grand narratives of white masters in their virgin head. The first day programme was held on Saturday,  18 th  Feb, one hour later than the scheduled time. The grand festival was opened with  inaugural ceremony burning seventeen candles by the chief guest and the other key speakers and the guests from abroad.The participants were seemed to be stuffed with pride and overjoyed . It reminded me  
the Discourse of Orientalism by  Edward Said and Gramchi's definition of hegemony "  the consent of the ruled to be ruled." The participants were clicking and snapping the photographs of the so called scholars of the west and some of them were occupying  the space of their mobile's memory card recording the video of the session.
After the welcome speeches, the key speakers presented their papers with the help of projector machine. We were waiting for the special guideline which could be really helpful in our teaching profession. Although their presentation was structurally perfect, I think, it could not meet the expectation of many participants. I later realized that it was more beneficial to those who studied teaching methodology in  M. Ed course than to others who studied literature like me. However , I  was happy to learn something new the  methodology in teaching second language in the classroom situation. After a long presentation of cacophonous discourse, we released ourselves from the overcrowded hall and joined the serpentine line for lunch. The time was 2:30. It showed the picture of the great depression of 1939 America where thousands of people stood on line  to receive a loaf of bread. Thanks, food was not horrible. No sooner had the concurrent sessions began than we had our lunch. The English Masters started running up and down in search of better presenter. Most of them were sitting in the white skinned presenters room without knowing the topic of  presentation. There were some senior presenters who were fortunate to have audiences standing at the back showing the whole landscape of the mouth. And  others managed some friends to listen them while presenting their papers. We learned innovative teaching methodology and skills in current situation.
At last, there was an infotainment cultural programme which really made us forget the long stress of the day. We learned about different cultural folk dances and its importance for us as a Nepali citizen sliding towards western culture.