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The National Conference for Teachers of English, NCTE, is an
activity that began around 1966. Originally the focus of the NCTE was to
provide training to the teachers employed by the Ministry of Public
Education. Since the beginning, this activity had the support of the US Embassy,
and Centro Cultural Costarricense-Norteamericano
provided its headquarters to host the event.
With the increasing number of teaching professionals and the country's need
to provide a more specific and effective training to English teachers, it
was urgent to reorganize the event and an organizing committee was created.
This committee would include representatives from the three
sponsors, Ministry of Public Education, the US Embassy and Centro Cultural Costarricense-Norteamericano.
The new committee would
ensure quality in the presentations and workshops as well as the
participation of teachers from schools, universities, language institutes
and community colleges of the country.
Today the NCTE has
become a solid and independent organization. Around 500 participants join
the event every year seeking for the new ideas and trends in the field of
teaching, and the opportunity to interact with other local and
international fellow teachers. Publishing houses have also found the
event as a great opportunity to display their latest materials and texts.
Throughout the
years, experts in the field of ELT (English Language Teaching) have
visited our event, among them there is David Nunan,
Donald Freeman, Neil Anderson, Fred Davidson, Adrian Palmer, Bryan
Lynch, Andy Curtis, Diane Larsen-Freeman.
Marianne Celce-Murcia, Ronald Schwarz, and
Rebecca Oxford, among others, have also
joined the team through video or satellite conferences.
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