On May 22-25, 2004 the 4th International Conference on ELT in China was held at the newly-built International Convention Center of Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press in Beijing. The theme of the conference was "New Directions in ELT in China". The number of proposals submitted totaled about 1,700, out of which approximately 400 were selected by a review committee for presentation at the conference. The number of participants was close to 1, 500, mo, st of whom were college teachers of English. There were, however, a large number of primary and secondary school English teachers as well. Overseas participants came from more than 20 countries. This was the largest conference of its kind ever held in China. More important than the scale of the conference was its great variety of topics and high quality of presentations, which made this conference a milestone in ELT history in China.