The opening conference was given by Professor James P. Lantolf, Greer Professor of Language Acquisition and Applied Linguistics and an expert in sociocultural theory and language learning in The Pennsylvania State University. He is also the Director of the Center for Language Acquisition in the College of the Liberal Arts.

Lantolf is Co-Director of the Center for Advanced Language Proficiency at the same university and has published a large number of papers and high impact research articles at an international level in recent decades.  Lantolf is a significant role model in his field of study.

The aim behind the Symposium is to provide a forum for discussion and reflection on the relationship between and practice in terms of teaching and learning additional languages.  Dr Olga Esteve, from the Pompeu Fabra University, and Dr María González Davies, from the Ramón Llull University organised this Symposium.