40th Anniversary EOI Alicante
REGIONAL TEACHER TRAINING EVENT
EOI Alicante ∞ TESOL-SPAIN
Comunidad Valenciana
Friday 17th January, 2014
“Consolidating Language Acquisition”
9.30-10.00 Registration
EOI Alicante
Calle del Marqués de Molins, 56-58
03004 - Alicante
10.00-10.45
Visual Literacy as a Resource to Engage Learners’ Interest
Shawn Redwood, Colegio Sta. Isabel, Madrid
Travel and study abroad are both an integral part of language learning. Both go hand in hand and allow language learners to move beyond the textbook and the language classroom to put their skills to the test and to hear authentic language as it is spoken by native speakers. The purpose of this workshop is to demonstrate ways to help teachers prepare creative and exciting lessons using pictures and memorabilia, such as menus, metro maps and advertisements, from their past travels. This workshop is of special interest to teachers who are looking for ways to bring the culture and customs of English-speaking countries to life in a meaningful way to help improve student’s language skills, as well as sparking their interest in travelling to an English-speaking country.
"A picture is worth a thousand words." This cliché we have heard a thousand times, or more, yet we do not really take into account the words of wisdom that are staring us right in the face. We find that the use of pictures in English textbooks is to accompany a reading and that many of these pictures are stock photos of people with outdated clothes and hairstyles. We have to remember that pictures are also sources for teaching culture. When the teacher carefully selects the right picture that is rich in information, and that is of high interest to students, this image can help students to explore not only the culture and customs of English-speaking countries, but also the richness of the English language.
We must teach our students visual literacy, or the skill of reading pictures to find relevant and important information, make inferences, and locate meaning. This helps students to develop a new range of skills and even students who do not learn English quickly are not eliminated from the learning experience because they are considered poor readers. We must also stress that good reading skills are not needed to learn from visual sources, such as pictures, video and movie clips.
Shawn Redwood has been in education for 20 years and teaching EFL for more than 9 years. He is a Teacher Trainer and an English Language Assistant at Colegio Santa Isabel in Madrid. He also worked at CEIP Federico García Lorca, Colegio Nuestra Señora de Loreto Colegio Espíritu Santo and Colegio San Saturio. Shawn’s principal areas of interest are bilingual and international education, visual literacy, as well as implementing authentic material in classroom.
10.45-11.30
Now, where did I put my keys?
Jonathan White, Cambridge Univ. Press
Wouldn't it be wonderful if all our students had perfect memories?
We know memory is a large part of learning a language. In this talk we're going to focus on some of the theories behind how our memories work and how these theories can be implemented into our classes to help our students learn more effectively and efficiently. And we'll finish off by demonstrating some exciting classroom activities for you to experiment with yourselves.
Jonathan White studied for the CELTA and started his ELT teaching career in the UK. Since moving to Spain in 2009 he has worked for both the British Council and International House where he trained as a young learners specialist. Jonathan later went on to run his own school focused on exam preparation before joining the Cambridge University Press as a Teacher Trainer.
11.30-12.00
Coffee Break
12.00-12.45
Teaching Digital Natives
Liam Fitzpatrick, Edebé
Today’s students have a world of information available to them via their mobile phones. No longer do they need to spend hours looking through the library and then have to remember the facts they discover. Why remember if you can bookmark?
There are still those who feel that this change is somehow bad; as if there were something intrinsically good in spending an evening looking for rather than thinking about information. It is certainly arguable that this change has left us free to use our brains for more important things: now that my learners compose email, they can worry less about where to put the addresses and more about what they are actually saying. Should we not be preparing our students for the world in which they really live?
The fact is that unless we at least acknowledge the existence of technology, we run the risk of our lessons seeming out of touch and irrelevant. In this session we will look at the reasons why we should embrace technology and some of the tools available to us. It will also be demonstrated that at the heart of this there are also some surprisingly ‘old-fashioned’ educational values.
After a brief introduction to some key educational issues related to the role of technology in the English Language Teaching classroom in the 21st century, the speaker will deal with 8 main points with examples (Primary and Secondary) that can be applied in ELT Methodology.
Liam Fitzpatrick, originally from Ireland, Liam graduated with a BA in Social Sciences with La Trobe University, Melbourne, Australia. Based in Spain since 1994, he has also completed post-graduate studies in TESOL with Aston University in the UK and has accumulated more than 15 years of experience in the field of ELT. Liam currently works both “in & out” of the classroom for Express Publishing.
12.45-13.30
What is happening to writing?
Lindsay Clandfield, Macmillan
Communicative approaches to language teaching have put much value on the oral skill. Classrooms around the world have, over the past thirty years, devoted more and more time in class to speaking, which is great. Writing however, has remained relatively unchanged. Often assigned for homework, or in the form of longer pieces of writing (the composition, the essay, the business letter) this skill has just not seemed as sexy as speaking. However, due to technological developments we are all writing now a lot more than we used to. In some cases, we write more to people than we talk to them. This workshop looks at activities and tools that help students practice writing in new and enjoyable ways.
Lindsay Clandfield is an award-winning writer, teacher, teacher trainer and international speaker in the field of English language teaching. He has written more than ten coursebooks and is the main author of the adult course Global (Macmillan). Lindsay is the series editor of the Delta Teacher Development books and has co-written various methodology books for teachers., notably Teaching Online and Dealing with Difficulties (Delta Publishing). Lindsay is also the creative force behind various web projects including the popular blog Six Things and the e-publishing collective The Round. You can find out more about him at his website www.lindsayclandfield.com
13.30-14.00
Visiting stands
14.00-15.30
Lunch
15.30-16.15
Moving Pictures: A new Direction for Videos in TEFL
Brian Engquist, Pearson
There’s nothing new about video in the EFL classroom, but the ease with which we can now use tools to create video has turned it from a passive to an active experience. Let’s take a look at the history of video starting with the traditional and moving towards what’s on the cutting edge today.
Brian Engquist works for Pearson and has spent the last 20 years as an English teacher and teacher trainer in Spain. More interested in the social consequences of technology than the technology itself, he hopes his talks place the emphasis on the C in ICT.
16.15-17.00
Assessing speaking as part of a system of continuous assessment
Tom Stutter, British Council Valencia
In the British Council Valencia, we base our assessment on the evaluation of students’ written and spoken competence and standardise our marking by cross-marking with colleagues.
While written work can easily be corrected outside class, assessing a class of 14 students while they carry out a speaking task poses certain problems.
This talk looks at ways that a teacher can effectively measure students´ performance by recording them in class or using various web applications for them to record themselves outside class. This is also an effective way of keeping a record of and measuring students´ progress throughout the year.
I will also look at tasks which lend themselves more readily to speaking assessment, both form typical course-books and tasks which have been put together by teachers (often integrating various skills) and ways of assessing students´performance.
Tom Stutter has been working at the British Council Valencia since 1986, first as a teacher and then as a Senior Teacher. He has also worked as Branch manager at the British Council in Palma de Mallorca and Academic Manager in the British Council in Dar Es Salaam in Tanzania
Before working for the British Council, that he worked in Switzerland and France for International House, Inlingua and as language assistant in a state secondary school in Geneva.
He has been involved with the introduction of continuous assessment in Valencia as well as the integration of Interactive Whiteboards in classroom teaching.
17.00-17.45
Introducing History, Culture and Society through Songs
Donna Lee Fields, International University of Valencia
Teaching the history and culture of English-speaking countries is an essential component of the ESL classroom. This can be done more meaningfully and more interactively using songs - presented through Digital Storytelling techniques - as jumping off points for the lessons. This talk will offer examples and the applications to create such projects.
Donna Fields is a professor at the International University of Valencia, specializes in giving magisterial on-line classes, has a doctorate in Spanish Literature, is a teacher trainer for the Department of Education in Valencia, and is the coordinator for the on-line English courses at the Diputación of Valencia. She has taught primary, secondary and adult classes in public and private schools both in the United States and in Spain, gives private English classes, and is currently working on multi-language children’s books.
17.45-18.30
Let’s dance!
Pauline Gillen, EOI Alicante
How do we learn effectively? I’m no expert on the matter but what I do know from my own experience is that the more you practise, the better you do something and even more importantly, the more you enjoy yourself, the more likely you are to remember the experience.
There are more ways of learning than sitting behind a desk and as teachers, we can use our creativity and abilities to show our students that successful communication takes many forms while at the same time encouraging them to have confidence in themselves and lose their fear of looking silly. In the end, we’re all still children at heart and we can learn a lot by ‘playing’.
So, what do I have in mind? Come and dance with me!! Learn the vocabulary and steps to two dances from my culture and, at the same time, improve your listening skills, coordination and memory!
Pauline Gillen is currently an English teacher at the EOI in Alicante. Of Irish origin, she studied languages and worked as a Foreign Languages and Outdoor Pursuits teacher for 14 years in a secondary school in the north of England while also working in Adult Education for the Local Authority. She came to live permanently in Spain in 1993 and worked as an English and French teacher in private and grant-maintained schools prior to joining the EOI system.