Schedule

The workshop begins with a discussion of whether we ‘cover material’ rather than focus on the potential for deep learning, and whether our coursebooks prioritise the mechanics of task over learning itself.

We will try out ways to demand high by raising the ‘doable’ learning challenge for our students and thereby getting more from our coursebooks, and ways to work live by meeting students at their learning edge using spontaneous responses to student utterances. I will propose some possible qualities of a ‘demand high mind set’.

Combining cooperative learning strategies with task based learning enables teachers to make learning more effective in the classroom. Pupils use the language they already have at their disposal to complete a task on their own, in pairs and in groups . Cooperative learning methods helps pupils to improve their social competence and helps them to do the task cycle in English.

It is, however, vital that the tasks are meaningful, motivating and produce and end product.

In this workshop participants will carry out tasks using cooperative learning strategies and methods. At the end they will reflect on the effectiveness und success of the tasks. Furthermore we will discuss the different methods for evaluating pupils’ performance , individually and in the group.

Based on audio and audio-visual texts various techniques will be demonstrated and tried out, which focus on the different levels of text comprehension.

The activities take a new look at dictations, mirror authentic responses to texts and include bottom-up as well as top-down comprehension strategies.

John's workshop will look at how to use Improvisation in the classroom as an aid to learning English.

Improvisation is such a creative tool for interactive learning. It helps create awareness, body language, comprehension, verbal skills, brainstorming, empathy, humour and acting skills. Besides that, it is a load of fun.

The road to developing our professional knowledge can be a rocky one and our chosen route may have differing impacts on our classroom, our continuing professional development as well as that of our learners. Drawing on the principles of action research, this practical 90-minute workshop will focus on the potential for both teacher and learner development through the implementation of certain actions strategies in order to support development of ‘independent professionalism’ (Leung 1993).

We will also explore the differences between methodology, method and approach and critically explore how action research supports the current state of the art move towards a ‘postmethod pedagogy’ (Kumaravadivelu 2001:537), considering the advantages and limitations of such an approach as well as the implications this may have on a teacher’s commitment to the concept of best practice. We will conclude with a discussion on potential areas for future development and the participants will leave with a clear set of personalized action strategies to apply to their daily teaching.

Teachers of foreign languages face new challenges when it comes to working with texts. Changes in society, cultural developments and the widespread use of modern media have led to an increasing number and variety of text types.

Digital texts are available at any hour, messages spread almost in real time. Texts today are ‘added’, ‘connected’, ’cut’, ‘pasted’,’ linked’, ‘liked’, ‘posted’, ‘shared’ … Messages and written texts tend to become shorter, and students seem to struggle more with longer or more complex types of writing.

New forms of texts gain more relevance. To name a few: graphic novels, picture stories, photos, comics, cartoons, maps, statistics, recipes, audio and sound files, documentary and feature films … New genres and varieties as well as paralinguistic features need to be decoded; heterogeneous classrooms, students’ backgrounds and their dispositions, abilities and knowledge need to be taken into account. A new literacy is needed in our classrooms, and federal curricula allow for it. The workshop invites participants to have a closer look at all kinds of texts and how they can be dealt with in EFL classes. The focus will be on the early secondary level but strategies can be used in more advanced courses as well.