Minutes of the ILTA 2005 Business Meeting

July 22 University of Ottawa, Arts 026

1) The president, Dan Douglas, opened the meeting at 12:15. He began by thanking Vivien Berry for her 6 years as Secretary. He also called attention to the new on-line Newsletter that is now up and running, and congratulated the editors, Vivien Berry and Liz Hamp-Lyons, and their assistant Michael Chau, on getting this project off the ground.

2) The minutes of the previous meeting, Temecula, California, were approved as distributed. There were no matters arising from the previous minutes that were not already on the agenda.

3) It was announced that on-line voting on the proposed by-law amendments was planned to begin about September 1^st. The amendments concern the length of the ILTA President’s term of office and location of the annual Language Testing Research Colloquium.

4) Vivien Berry, the co-editor of the on-line newsletter requested that members submit their news. The next newsletter is expected to be ready in early autumn. Timely events will be put in as soon as received.

5) ACTION. Alan Davies moved that the draft Code of Practice prepared by his committee be accepted as a draft to be discussed during the next year. He announced that all suggestion and proposed changes should be sent to him. Those received by March 2006 will be considered by the committee and a revised draft will be presented to the 2006 Business Meeting in Melbourne. The motion carried.

6) It was suggested that funding for workshops be focused on meetings in various parts of the world to discuss the Code of Practice.

7) The Treasurer, Janna Fox, presented the Account Summary. She reported that the on-line membership renewal system is being set up. Antony Kunnan questioned the placement of the Student travel awards (funded by Ordinate) under Expenses as this is an in and out item. There was discussion of the Travel Subsidy for members of the Executive Board and it was agreed that the matter would be considered by the Executive Board. In discussion, it was made clear that although a travel subsidy had been offered to Liz Hamp-Lyons to attend the 2004 ILTA Business Meeting, it was not sufficient to enable her to make the trip and so was never in fact used.

8) The President reported that, due to a delay in appointing a committee, the Awards and Grants Committee does not have a report. In particular, no Best Article Award for an article published in 2003 has been selected. A Committee has been constituted and proposes to select a 2003 article for the award by the end of this year; an award for an article published in 2004 will be selected by June 2006. The Treasurer announced that the Lado Student Presentation Award will be made and two workshop awards have been made.

9) The Organizing Committee for LTRC 2006 in Melbourne announced that the Colloquium will be held from June 29^th to July 1^st. On June 28^th there will be two pre-conference workshops; one on Policy and Assessment in Schools by Penny McKay and Angela Scarino and another on ConQuest by Ray Adams and Margaret Wu. Professor Mark Williams will deliver the Messick Memorial Lecture. The deadline for submission of abstracts is October 31, 2005 with notification of acceptances in December. The conference website is <www.languages.unimelb.edu.au/ltrc2006>.

10) ACTION. A proposal was received from Carmen Velasco and Jim Purpura to hold the LTRC 2007 in Barcelona. The proposal was accepted.

11) ACTION. A proposal was received from Lyle Bachman, Antony Kunnan, Nathan Carr, Jin Yang, He Lianzhen, and Yang Huizhong to hold LTRC 2008 in Hangzhou, PRC. The proposal was accepted on the condition that the proposed by-law change presently before the membership is accepted.

12) The meeting was adjourned at 12:55.

Submitted by Randy Thrasher, Secretary