These reports are from presentations and talks we have attended and are intended to let you know what was going on at various conferences if you weren't able to attend yourself.
Hanna Kryszewska, who works with Pilgrims on the Humanising Language Teaching magazine, has found in Howard Gardner’s ‘Five minds for the future’ (2006), a new organizing principle for humanising approaches. ‘Five minds…’ is Gardner’s ‘new baby’, replacing his notorious ‘Multiple Intelligences’ theory.
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.
These changing times require educationalists to be constantly evolving. We need to embrace change and enjoy being flexible. In the classroom, this will almost inevitably mean a certain switch in power relations, since the students are likely to be in some ways more technology-savvy than the teacher, and so the flow of information will be opposite to what we normally suppose to be the case.
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.
Patrycja Grudzien-Dubiel, who is studying for her PHD at the University of Warsaw, is researching the effectiveness of online reading and listening activities as compared to their traditional equivalents. This session described her experiences so far, including the results of a smaller pilot study.
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.
BRAZ-TESOL holds a national conference every two years, and in July 2012, the event was held in Rio de Janeiro. It was truly a national event, with delegates coming from all over the country - and it's a big country, with some internal flights being several hours long.
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“English for Beach Entrepreneurs: Reflecting upon an ESP course” (Patricia Elizabeth Perez Martins, Claudia Rebello dos Santos Santos)
Patricia began by taking us through the standard stages of ESP course design for this 25 hour course, and then Claudia described course implementation, adaptation and learning results.
We're busy adding material following the BRAZ-TESOL conference.The talks "Pronunciation games for Brazil" and "Silent Stories: using pictures in ELT" now include videos from audio files recorded at the event, and we are busily writing up summaries of various wor
“Transforming the CEFR guidelines into teaching activities” (Janaina Pietroluongo) Janaina began by outlining what the Council of Europe is, as opposed to the European Commission. She went on to put forward the argument that was the main thrust of her talk: that it is a great mistake to view the CEFR as prescriptive. In fact, it is intended to be learner-centred.
