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Posts Tagged 'Webinar'

Towards incorporating learner autonomy in language classes for children

Published 16 February, 2012 Multimedia & Digital , Teacher Development , Young Learners 4 Comments
Tags: Annamaria Pinter, Children, English Language, Language classes, Learner autonomy, Online event, Webinar, Young Learners

Annamaria Pinter is Associate Professor of ELT/ Applied Linguistics at the Centre for Applied Linguistics at the University of Warwick, UK. Annamaria will be hosting a Global Webinar entitled ‘Towards incorporating learner autonomy in language classes for children’ on February 22nd and 24th. You can more information and register to attend here.

Autonomy is an undisputed educational goal for all. But does this apply to children as well? How can it be applied in language classrooms across different age groups? What can teachers do to help children become more autonomous learners? How does the teacher’s role change?

Why we can’t avoid autonomy:

Each year ever greater numbers of young children in various parts of the world start learning English, and by the time they become teenagers and/ or adults, the world around them will change beyond recognition, and they will need to adjust to new ways of learning. Training them to think for themselves is therefore an essential skill to teach today.

What benefits will this training come with?

Autonomy goes hand in hand with motivation. If your learners are highly motivated, they will be learning English enthusiastically. Autonomy is also linked to making choices. When children make choices, they will invest more responsibility and effort into whatever they do.

This webinar will be devoted to ideas/ techniques and activities that can be adapted for any classroom. Teachers can incorporate as much or as little as they see appropriate into their practice, and these ideas will work in any classroom because there is also a strong link between developing learner autonomy and attention to individual needs and differences in different contexts.

Here is one idea:

Get the children to work in groups and take some photos ( for postcards)
Get each child to choose their favourite picture to write about (with a purpose, e.g. my favourite place to show a friend )
Get the children to compare their picture stories/cards within the group. Having seen/ read other cards, ask the children to add at least one more idea/ sentence/ to their original writing and/ or improve the writing in any other way.

Autonomous learners – autonomous teachers?

If we expect children to become more autonomous, should we expect the same of ourselves? What about ‘Teachers as learners’ and ‘teachers as role models’?

Designing Good Tests: Principles Into Practice

Published 24 January, 2012 Exams & Testing , Skills , Teacher Development 8 Comments
Tags: Designing good tests, English Language, Exams, Keith Morrow, Listening tests, Reading Tests, Speaking Tests, Testing, Webinar, Written tests

Keith Morrow is the editor of ELT Journal and has worked in language testing for many years. He was involved in developing some of the first ‘communicative’ language tests, and is currently working as a consultant to testing projects in Austria and Luxembourg. Keith hosted a Global Webinar ‘Designing Good Tests: Principles Into Practice’ on January 12th and will be repeating it on January 31st. You can find out more information and register to attend here.

Testing goes on in almost every educational institution in the world, and is familiar to both teachers and students. “On Thursday we’ll have a vocabulary test”. “I want to get good marks in the end-of-year exams”.

Despite this, teacher training programmes often pay very little attention to the role, purpose, and nature of testing in the classroom. As a result many teachers feel insecure about the principles and practice of testing, and so they put together tests based on what they have always done – or just use tests from published sources.

Do you see a little bit of yourself in this description? Would like to find out more about some background ideas in testing?

For example, what is testing? Is it the same as assessment)? Why do we test? To help the students or to frighten them? Is it a carrot or a stick? How is a test made? What are the different forms a test might take? What are the different focuses a language test might have? And most importantly, of course, how can we design better tests in our own context and for our own purposes?

These are some of the areas we will be looking at in my webinar on 31st January. Please come and join me, to meet colleagues from all over the world online, and to have a chance to share ideas and insights about testing.

After the webinar on this topic that I gave earlier this month, there were a lot of questions that I didn’t have time to answer online. So here are some quick thoughts on some of them.

Can the selected response task test both elements of language and communicative skills?

A multiple-choice test can be a good way of finding out what students know. But finding out what students can do is rather more difficult. If you are thinking of communicative skills in terms of production (speaking and writing), I think you have to see how well they can actually speak or write. And you can’t do that with multiple choice.

Continue reading ‘Designing Good Tests: Principles Into Practice’

Brave New World English

Published 6 December, 2011 Business & English for Specific Purposes , Pronunciation 10 Comments
Tags: Business English, English as a Foreign Language, English Language Teaching, International English, Lingua Franca, Oxford English for Careers, Robin Walker, Webinar

Robin Walker is a freelance language teacher, teacher educator and materials writer. In this post, he considers the vital role that English now plays in World business and communication, and discusses the increasing importance of English as a Lingua Franca. Robinwill be hosting a Global Webinar on this topic on 12th and 14th December 2011. You can find out more information and register to attend here.

Last month I took on two clients, both seeking coaching in pronunciation. Pablo works in the finance department of a US multinational that has a key European plant here in northern Spain. His boss is Irish, but most of the people he uses English with are non-native speakers. Pablo handles accounts for the whole of Europe, and even within the confines of his office, he’s in daily contact with speakers from over 17 different countries.

Ana works at the Spanish branch of a German company that makes air bridges, the metal and glass tubes that feed us on and off planes in airports around the world. She uses her English for telephone calls, Skyping and video-conferencing, and with Chinese, Brazilian, Arabian and European clients. English dominates her daily life despite working in Spain, and her office is a Tower of Babel in the making.

Image courtesy of fimoculous on flickr

Wow! It’s happened. (They said it would.)

Wow! It’s happening right now. (It’s everywhere I go.)

And wow! It’s going to go on happening far into the future.

English has gone global, and is being used much more today as a lingua franca (between non-native speakers), than as a native language (between native speakers), or as a foreign language (between native speakers and non-native speakers).

Continue reading ‘Brave New World English’

Scared to teach?

Published 10 November, 2011 Teacher Development 3 Comments
Tags: Classroom activities, English Language Teaching, Images, Jamie Keddie, Resource Books for Teachers, Teacher Development, Verbal communication, Webinar

Jamie Keddie, author of Images, part of the Resource Books for Teachers series, discusses the role of images and texts in classroom activities and whether they are used as a substitute for actual contact teaching. Jamie will be hosting a Global Webinar on this topic on 14th and 30th November 2011. You can find out more information and register to attend here.

Recently, I heard a story about an English language teacher who went on to teach mathematics at secondary level in the United Kingdom. Having spent 6 years in Spain, looking for ways to get his learners to speak English, it seems that he was able to put the fruits of this period to good use in his new job.

One communicative activity for geometry that he devised was to give each student in the class a piece of paper with a different shape on it. Their task was to mingle and describe their shapes to each other without showing each other the images.

“Well, this shape has three sides and two of them are of equal lengths,” student A would say. “Is it an isosceles triangle?” was the expected response from student B.

My friend who told me the story was making the point that many of the techniques that make up a language teacher’s classroom repertoire may lend themselves to other teachers in completely different contexts.

This is, of course, hardly a revolutionary observation. But what about the other way around? In other words, how much do language teachers borrow from the techniques of non-language teachers?

Of course, I can only speak for myself. And to do so, I want to recall a moment from earlier this year.

It was a Sunday evening and I was desperately trying to find a short text on the Normans. I needed classroom material to use with a group of visiting students from China who were in the UK for an intensive English language and culture course.

Now, I happen to enjoy history. If you want to know about the Normans and how they changed the course of the British history, you could do a lot worse than ask me to tell you what I know.

At school, I was lucky enough to be taught by a number of inspirational teachers, none of whom were afraid to share their subject knowledge. In other words, they used to teach us.

So the question is this: Why did it not occur to me to stand up and enlighten these students using my own voice and teaching skills? Why was I so intent on finding a text – a piece of paper to do the job for me?

If teachers of other subjects can borrow from us, why did the idea of borrowing from them not cross my mind? Am I alone in realising that for years, I have been afraid to teach?

In my webinar next week, I shall be exploring this topic and more. Whether you agree or disagree, I hope you will join us, tell us of your own experiences, and put forward your own views.

Translation in language teaching and learning

Published 20 October, 2011 Applied Linguistics 3 Comments
Tags: Applied Linguistics, English Language Teaching, Guy Cook, Learning, Linguistics, Translation, Translation in language teaching, Webinar

Guy Cook, author of the award-winning applied linguistics book Translation in Language Teaching, presents his arguments for re-establishing translation as an essential part of modern language teaching and learning. Guy will be hosting a Global Webinar on this topic on 26th and 31st October 2011. You can find out more information and register to attend here.

Using translation is surely a natural and obvious means of teaching someone a new language. It has lots of good effects. It can be used to aid learning, practise what has been learned, diagnose problems, and test proficiency. In any case, teachers can’t stop students translating – it is such a fundamental basis for language learning.

Translation is also useful skill in itself. And not just for professional translators and interpreters. In multilingual societies and a globalised world, translation is all around us as an authentic act of communication: from families, schools, hospitals, courts, and clinics, to business meetings and the United Nations. We find it in notices, labels, menus, subtitles, news interviews and many other places.

In addition, it allows learners to relate new knowledge to existing knowledge (as recommended by many learning theories), promotes noticing and language awareness, and highlights the differences and similarities between the new and existing language. Many people also find the tackling of translation problems intellectually stimulating and aesthetically satisfying. In addition, it helps create and maintain good relations between teacher and student, facilitates classroom management and control, and allows students to maintain their own sense of first language identity, while also building a new bilingual identity. It does not seem to impede efficient language use – many students who began their studies through translation go on to become fluent and accurate users of the new language.

So what is wrong with it? Given all these apparent advantages, it seems most peculiar that the mainstream literature on language pedagogy and second language acquisition, has routinely dismissed translation as a desirable component of language teaching and learning for over a hundred years – without research, reasoning or evidence. Is there perhaps some other reasons that translation has been villainised in this way?

In my webinar next week, I shall be asking what happened to translation, and why. I shall be making a case for reinstating translation as a major component of language teaching and learning. Whether you agree or disagree, I hope you will join us, tell us of your own experiences, and put forward your own views.

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Posts Tagged 'Webinar'

Towards incorporating learner autonomy in language classes for children