Blog posts in September 2012

‘No-one actually talks about drilling much anymore (but it still goes on everywhere). Two questions: does it work, and how best is it done?’ After a very smooth room change to a 300-capacity auditorium that would accommodate us all comfortably, Jeremy Harmer set about answering these questions.

In this semi-plenary, Piotr Steinbrich cast a sceptical eye over the idea that we should all be teaching '21st Century Skills' in our English language classes. He began by listing buzz words and concepts which have impacted in various ways on ELT in recent years: the ELP; Blended leaning; ELF; the CEFR; Multiple intelligences; CLIL and the Lexical Approach.

In this ‘live lesson’ Piotr taught a class of 10 secondary students at advanced level using Speakout Advanced (Pearson). During the lesson, students were presented with vocabulary connected with a courtroom scene in order to prepare them for a BBC video clip from the final Black Adder series, Black Adder Goes Forth.

Clipflair is a European Commission sponsored, Europe-wide project to provide video materials for language learning and practice for 15 different languages. The platform for the project is currently under construction, but Elzbieta and Agnieska (of the University of Warsaw) came to IATEFL to give us a preview of what it’s all about.

Mark Andrews presented the first of the innovative ‘Live Lesson’ sessions, in which a teacher (himself, in this case) taught a group of students (7) who had never met each other before. Generally, the session leaders were free to organise their sessions as they wished, and Mark framed the event as a teacher observation session.

Can pedigree lion pamper kitekats? In adverts, brand names, slogans, strap lines – English is all around us in Poland, but we barely notice it or question what it means. Maria Heizner makes the point that this is a very rich resource, and that by focusing on it, learners can discover that they already know many English words without even realising it.

Is Picasso’s version of the Velazquez painting “Las Meninas” merely a copy? No, it’s a creative reinvention! This is how Carol Read made her first point of the presentation: creativity never comes from thin air. So for Picasso, “Las Meninas” was an inspiration.