We often present at ELT conferences and events. Just select the title below if you're looking for the handout or download from a talk or workshop you have attended.
ELT teachers have used attainment tests for many purposes - to evaluate, assess, or even threaten students! But they can also be a force for motivation. We will investigate how typical tests and question types (mainly testing grammar) may impact on student motivation, and look at ways to design, adapt and use them to increase their motivational value.
Cultural awareness seems to be making a re-appearance in the language teaching and learning literature. In this workshop we will focus on the ‘new look’ cultural awareness – intercultural competence (ICC). We will situate its growing importance and discuss what it entails. We will also take a look at a selection of classroom materials and briefly consider assessment of ICC.
With increased mobility in the European Higher Education Area, many teachers are now finding that they have students from different cultural backgrounds in their classrooms. Additionally, many English language teachers might be finding that they are now teaching students who are aiming to study a part of their degree, through the medium of English, in a different country.
If you want your students to be able to say ‘I can speak English’, they need speaking practice in class. But this often turns out to be difficult and messy, and many teachers avoid it. In this workshop, we will classify the practical problems of speaking practice activities into three kinds, relating to:
The Common European Framework of Reference (CEFR) is an indispensable tool for the realisation for the Bologna Process in the European Higher Education Area. It offers guidance for teaching, learning and assessment of languages for communication purposes.
In this talk I will highlight some patterns in English language classroom talk. I will suggest how these patterns arise, and what their implications are for language learning. I will conclude that it may be better not to talk like a teacher sometimes.
(I have also presented this talk at TEA (Canary Islands) and as a plenary at CETA (Cordoba, Spain))
Too often, we treat writing as mere grammar practice. But writing is communication too. In this workshop, we will look at classroom tasks which focus on meaning and content in writing, and not just form. Lot’s of imaginative and creative ideas to take away!
Songs have long been popular with language teachers. They demonstrate language in a memorable, motivating way. However, all too often, the exploitation is limited to gap filling. In this workshop, we will look at other ways in which they can be used in the classroom.
We looked at 8 features of pronunciation which are of particular relevance for Spanish speaking learners of English. These included vowels, spelling of vowels, consonants, consonant clusters, word stress, phrase stress patterns, tonic syllables and connected speech. Each feature was explained, contrasted with Spanish and demonstrated with an example game.
In this You Tube Video, Mark demonstrates a series of different classroom activities for presenting and practising the contrast between the vowel sounds in live and leave.
