The XVI Spring School of Language Studies was held on May 8, 2015 at 9.00-15.15 in Liikunta-building at the University of Jyväskylä. The Spring School of Language Studies is usually organized every year by and for the doctoral students of the Language Campus, that is, the doctoral students from the Department of Languages, the Department of Teacher Education and the Centre for Applied Language Studies. This year, four doctoral students were involved in organizing the XVI Spring School, and they were Maiju Strömmer and Petra Linderoos from the Department of Languages and Kara Ronai and Sonya Sahradyan from the Centre for Applied Language Studies. The members of the Language Campus post-grad development group also supported the organization of this event, and they were post-doctoral researchers Elina Tergujeff, Elin Almér, Petteri Laihonen and Saara Jäntti.
The program of the XVI Spring School included three parallel presentation and data sessions as well as a poster workshop. During the parallel sessions, fifteen doctoral students from the Department of Languages and the Centre for Language Studies presented their data or doctoral research projects in Finnish or English and received comments and feedback from professors as well as junior and senior researchers of the Language Campus. In every session, at least two faculty members were available to give feedback on the presentations. After the parallel sessions, the University Communications Coordinator Liisa Harjula gave a presentation about the poster template of the University of Jyväskylä. Afterwards, Dr. Elina Tapio from the Department of Languages led an interactive workshop on “How to prepare and present a poster”. In the workshop, we discussed different goals and ways of presenting a poster. We questioned the low status of posters in conferences in the field of Applied Linguistics and found out some advantages of posters as compared to presentations. Elina Tapio encouraged everybody to prepare a poster and advocated for better advertising, placement and presentation opportunities for posters at conferences.
Twenty-four of the forty-two Spring School participants were doctoral students from the Department of Languages and the Centre for Applied Language Studies. According to the feedback we received, doctoral students found the Spring School useful for their research and evaluated the event positively. In general, the Spring School provided doctoral students with excellent opportunities not only to get or give feedback, but also to share ideas, expertise and concerns, and eventually to create possibilities for collaboration. The XVI Spring School was supported by the Language Campus with the cooperation of the Department of Languages and the Centre for Applied Language Studies.
Many thanks to everyone for being part of organizing, supporting and participating in this spring school!
XVI Spring School team