Best poster prize - Language Testing Forum
Thuy Thai
Postgraduate Researcher, HudCRES
The Language Testing Forum (LTF) is a long-running UK-based language testing and assessment conference, now part of UKALTA (The UK Language Testing Association). In 2018 it was held at the Centre for Research in English Language Learning and Assessment (CRELLA) at the University of Bedfordshire from 23-25 November. The conference theme was 'Assessing Languages across General and Specific Contexts'.
I knew about this conference when I first started my PhD journey in September 2017. My supervisor, Dr Susan Sheehan, asked me if I was interested in helping her with organising the LTF held at Huddersfield in November 2017 (that she has written about here). Helping during the conference, I realised that this is a long established conference in the field I am studying and it was lovely that I had a chance to meet many well-known scholars who I always admire through reading their books and journal articles.
In July 2018, I received an email calling for abstract submission for the 2018 LTF conference. Without hesitation I thought to myself, “I need to go for it”. I discussed the idea with my supervisor and we both agreed that a poster presentation would suit me best at that time - when I had just finished my data collection. If it had not been for Susan’s critical and timely comments, I'm sure the abstract would not have been accepted. I am also grateful to the School of Education and Professional Development for providing the funding enabling me to attend.
Designing a poster
Poster design has never been my strength! I do not have a good sense of colour matching nor coordinating blocks together. On this basis I watched a number of tutorials on YouTube, for example this one, which suggested how to create a poster using existing programmes.
There are several different software options that help to create an eye-catching poster; however, most of them are not free and quite complicated to use. I decided to use Microsoft Power Point because it is freely available to me and relatively user-friendly.
I also looked at posters from LTF in different years and the winning posters of other conferences to have an idea what a good poster looks like.
Several tips I have learned:
• Poster size: A1 (most popular size, but it is advisable to double check the requirements of the conference you are going to attend)
• Font: Helvetica or Gill Sans as they are reader-friendly
• Font size: 40-48 for Title and 24-28 for Body text
• Font colour: dark is highly recommended
• Background colour: not something clashing, use colour wheels if you are not sure
• Structure of the content: the information that you most want the readers to take away should be in the middle of the poster
• Picture/diagram use: make sure they are relevant to the topic
The finished poster
On the day
My big day came. During lunch time I stood by my poster and bravely showed my willingness to talk through it with the audience. They were happy to patiently listen to me and exchange ideas. Besides, I could listen to other presentations and the follow-up discussion in the Q&A session. What I like most about LTF is that everyone will listen to each presentation and ask questions or give feedback, which means none of the presentations will be missed. Not only could I learn from the presentation but I also learned the way people professionally deal with the follow-up questions which were sometimes quite challenging.
I was well prepared, but I definitely did not expect to be awarded the best poster prize.
There were 12 posters coming from stronger research institutions, including University of Lancaster, University of Oxford, University of Reading, Cambridge Assessment, Euroexam International, etc. When they read my name out I still could not believe it was me, I needed to wait until they read out loud the title of my project. Excitement and butterflies were with me for the rest of that day and several following days.
I also received a certificate with the signature of one of the most well-known scholars in the field, which is a good motivation for me during the very first steps in my academic career.
Thuy with a representative from Textinspector.com - sponsor of the best poster prize
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