FEELTA General Information

The Far Eastern English Language Teachers' Association (FEELTA) is a professional organization founded in 1995. Its mission is to strengthen the teaching and learning of English in the Russian Far East, to promote the professional development of EFL teachers, to support networking with colleagues all over the world, and to give access to the latest EFL resources.

FEELTA headquarters is in the Institute of Foreign Languages, Far Eastern National University, Vladivostok. Today FEELTA is an organization of 500 members. There are currently 7 FEELTA posts in the Russian Far East: in Blagoveshchensk, Birobijan, Khabarovsk, Komsomolsk, Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky, Ussuriysk, and Vladivostok (FEELTA headquarters). These posts provide ELT professionals with information and support within their geographical areas.

FEELTA's premier event is the international conference, which is held every other year and attracts some 500 participants. It is a major event and EFL practitioners from even the remotest parts of the Russian Far East come to network and expand their knowledge. The location of the conference alternates between Vladivistok and one of the other FEELTA posts. The inaugural conference, in June 1996, was held in Vladivostok, the 1998 one in Khabarovsk, the 2000 conference in Vladivostok again, and the 2002 conference in Blagoveshchensk. The 2004 conference was our biggest so far, held once again in Vladivostok, with the cooperation of our partners in the Pan Asian Consortium of language teaching associations, and featured an international line-up of featured speakers and participants from 17 different countries. The 2006 conference in Birobijan was smaller, quieter and more intense. We will be back in Vladivostok from June 26 - 28, 2008 for a conference hosted jointly with the National Association of Teachers of English.

The quarterly newsletter informs members of FEELTA activities and also of the main news in the field of TEFL both in Russia and overseas.

Among other FEELTA activities are an annual English Language "Talent Show" for secondary students, a Winter EFL Methodology School offering a number of workshops and seminars on new trends in language and culture teaching, and publishers’ seminars to give teachers knowledge of the latest textbooks and other teaching resources.

FEELTA is eager to expand its connections with overseas colleagues by forming partnerships with international professional organizations. In 2001, FEELTA became the 5th member of the Pan-Asian Consortium (PAC), an alliance of language teaching associations in East Asia. FEELTA has partnership agreements with each of the PAC member associations: KOTESOL (Korea TESOL), JALT (the Japan Association for Language Teaching), ThaiTESOL (Thailand), ETA-ROC (English Teachers' Association - Republic of China) and ELLTAS (English Language and Literature Teachers Association, Singapore) and with PALT (the Philippine Association for Language Teaching). The agreements allow us:

Since 1999, FEELTA has been an associate of IATEFL (the International Association of Teachers of English as a Foreign Language), and since 2003 an affiliate of TESOL (Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages), Inc.

We encourage EFL professionals to join the Far Eastern English Language Teachers' Association and to use their membership to the fullest so that FEELTA can be a powerful partner in your success.