This year's end of season seminar/workshop was held on 29th November at Ace English Bay Street and was very well attended. This was the first time we offered five workshops per session, and most workshops were full. Well done to all the workshop presenters for their time and effort, to the committee for their organisation and to the members who, once again, gave up their Saturday morning to further their development.
The workshops were as follow:
First Session
Alan Marsh: Telling Tales Stories and jokes provide a springboard for language skills practice and language input in engaging and challenging ways. We’ll be looking at some of them in this practical workshop.
Caroline Campbell: Enhancing Language Learning through ICT Today, learners live in a digital world which should be exploited to their advantage when learning English. In this workshop I will explore how ICT tools can help learners develop the four language skills in a meaningful manner as they engage in authentic tasks rather than fictitious ones.
Jean Theuma: What is professional development all about? We are being bombarded by the idea of CPD (Continuing Professional Development) and INSETT (In-Service Teacher Training). I plan to show what this means to us as teachers and how we can set and achieve our own professional development goals.
Jean Sciberras:Let’s Connect! How can we improve students' writing in an interactive and creative way? How can we jazz up traditional course book gap fill exercises? In this practical workshop we will be looking briefly at cohesion and coherence, and focusing on one kind of discourse marker: linkers. We will take a look at some collaborative activities that dispel the notion of 'solitary' work, invariably and erroneously associated with writing.
Larissa Jonk: Creating EFL texts for a CLIL context What is CLIL and how is the EFL teacher affected? EFL teachers are sometimes given the task of teaching students who require English lessons prepared around a specific subject area. This workshop will look at some practical examples of sourcing content and adapting the material for the EFL classroom. unfamiliar with IWBs and would like to delve into the use of technology in the classroom.
Second session
Caroline Campbell: The truth about Task Based Learning (TBL): Myths and Reality (repeat session) Based on Jane Willis’s ideas, in this workshop we will discuss a number of statements about TBL, including some common misconceptions. Is the way you teach language effective? Is the language you teach relevant to students’ everyday lives? Learn more about TBL in this workshop which will provide you with some practical ideas that can be easily applied in class.
Jean Theuma: Teaching Listening Anyone can listen, can't they? You play a CD, the students listen and answer questions, right? How much more can there be? Come to Jean's session and get practical advice on how to teach your students to really listen and understand...
Johnna Grech and Zarah Towell: Classroom Management 101 “I already know that!” “That’s not what my last English teacher taught me!” “I’m not interested in this topic!” What do you do when your students chatter in Italian, display boredom or arrive late and disrupt the atmosphere of your lessons? Let’s pool our experience and learn some new techniques in handling classroom issues that can make or break the learning experience.
Matt Done:DHT in EFL Do we demand enough of our students and give them sufficient pushes in their learning? In this workshop, we look at the concept of ‘demand high’ teaching, or DHT. In addition to discussing our current practice, we will look at ways of injecting a sense of challenge back into our lessons.
Natasha Fabri: Reading 2.0: Teaching communicative reading skills using online materials With such a wide array of online materials at our disposal, giving learners the right tools to read effectively in the digital age has never been more important. We will explore the genre approach and the learners' metacognition in practical ways in the classroom.