Annie McDonald

In this plenary, Ken Wilson did precisely what it said on the tin (aka, the programme) – he gave us 10 of his favourite quotes, which when applied to language teaching, had the potential to get us reflecting on what we do, and even become inspired to make some changes.

This opening plenary from one of IATEFL Hungary’s ex-presidents aimed to get the conference goers into a reflective mood. To have us reflecting back to the beginnings of our teaching careers. To consider whether the stages in our careers matched hers. And the stages she described were:

‘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.

Jeremy Harmer ran a wonderfully informative, engaging, practical and thought-provoking ‘Advanced Lesson for Teachers of English’ session involving text analysis, language use and prosody.

In this live lesson, Hugh taught a class of 11 intermediate students using a unit from Outcomes (Heinle Cengage Learning). During the lesson, students were given the opportunity to describe different dishes and ways of cooking food, and to explain their own cuisine to foreigners.

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.

English & The New Literacies (Plenary session, sponsored by National Geographic Learning). David Evans argued that the job of a teacher nowadays is to teach more than words and their meanings. He explained that, given the way that information is presented is central to literacy and literacy is about gaining knowledge, it behoves us to incorporate new literacies into our teaching.

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.

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.