Zoltán Rézműves
1. Roads to Success: Integrating Different Learning Goals
Students in our English classes are on different learning journeys: some want to become confident in everyday communication, some have academic ambitions, and some hope to pass an important language exam to obtain qualifications.
How can we empower all our learners to choose their own destinations, and help them to reach their respective learning goals?
2. Equipped for the Real World: Life Competencies
In today’s fast-changing world, students need more than just a particular set of skills and a well-defined pool of knowledge to succeed. In order to learn and to adapt to the changing needs and expectations, they also need skills for life. What exactly are the core life skills? How can they be developed at different stages of language learning? The Cambridge Life Competencies framework was developed to give us a better understanding of those skills that our learners need and that language teachers are increasingly expected to incorporate into the English curriculum.
Charles Stewart
Motivating Students to Write (A2-C1)
Writing is a subject that few enjoy teaching and even fewer enjoy learning. Usually this disdain for writing is deeply rooted in the students’ general lack of understanding of how to effectively write academically. In this talk, we will look at teaching writing and establish concrete ways to help us motivate our students to write and to become better academic writers.
Tips for Teaching Vocabulary
Teaching vocabulary is something that every teacher does in all of their classes each and every day. Indeed, we all have our go-to activities in our “bag of tricks” that we use to teach vocabulary in our classes. In this interactive workshop, we will look at expanding this “bag of tricks” by identifying further activities and various tips for effectively teaching vocabulary, using the Cambridge Open World books as a reference example.
Dunstan Clarke
Brain-dependant Learning in the EFL Classroom
The term brain-based, or brain-dependant learning is used to refer to teaching techniques that take into account research into the function of memory and cognition. Although the topic itself is encompasses a wide number of different areas, this workshop will focus on building learners’ memory pathways.
Information is transferred into the long-term memory through memory pathways and there are a number of different kinds of pathways which teachers can use. However, in a normal language classroom, some of these are neglected. This workshop will look into how these neglected ones can be used to aid learners’ retention of grammar and lexis. In addition to the theory, the workshop will involve a practical component in which participants can try some-activities which they might then be able to adapt for use in their classroom.
László Németh
Speaking Your Students’ Language: The key to success?
We all know now that life competencies and digital intelligence have become core skills, and online resources and teaching materials are at the forefront of language teaching. This workshop will promote a clearer understanding of 21st-century learners and their demands, and participants will have the opportunity to try out some social-media inspired activities that satisfy those learner needs.
Chiefly built around participant engagement, the workshop will begin with a short introduction of methodological considerations and an illustration of the ‘typical’ 21st-century (esp. Gen Z) learner. Then, a conceptual framework called The Art of Lesson Planning (Németh, 2019) will be introduced that can help every teacher to better grasp lesson planning to more likely reach that so called state of ‘flow’ in the lessons and the whole learning process. Once the introduction is over, participants will be able to try three or four (depending on the remaining time) class activities designed for various purposes: ice-breaking, integrating skills, developing life competencies, etc. What binds all the activities together is that they are inspired by how we use social media and the language our modern online existence entails. At the end of the session, participants will be given some food-for-thought and have the opportunity to ask any questions and make suggestions regarding the presentation or the topic itself.
Flo Feast
Tapping into Teen Spirit
Teenagers often get a bad rap. If asked for an adjective to describe a teenager, you may hear ‘moody’, ‘lazy’ or ‘uncooperative’, but we were all teenagers once, so what’s going on? Why can’t we find ways to tap into all that teenagers have to offer? In this seminar, we’ll discuss the challenges we and our teenage students face in the classroom, and how we can help to ensure that our teenage learners get the most out of their English language learning opportunities. During the talk, we’ll utilise National Geographic Learning’s New Close-up, as well as practical techniques to help us tap into that infamous teen spirit.
Agnieszka Dzięcioł-Pędich
Principles and tools for preparing materials for students with specific learning differences (SpLDs)
The aim of our meeting is to discuss the principles of materials development for students with specific learning differences such dyslexia.
In the first part of the session I will talk about principles that can help ensure that written material considers the difficulties experienced by some dyslexic people e.g. fonts, page layout, line spacing as according to British Dyslexia Association: ‘Adopting best practice for dyslexic readers has the advantage of making all written communication easier on the eye for everyone’.
In the second part of the session the focus will be on free tools teachers can use to modify the appearance of materials for students with specific learning differences, including some functionalities of word processors and YouTube you are probably unaware of, online OCR tools, screen-reading software, tools for creating subtitles, tools for slowing down recordings, and more.
Participants are encourage to ask as many questions as they need!
Jana Čadová
Grow your vocabulary and sound smarter!
Teaching vocabulary is an essential part of language teaching. Let´s examine some effective ways of teaching vocabulary.
Do we teach vocabulary in a way that enables our learners to adopt it quickly? From their learning practice learners understand that isolated words or word chunks do not make an acceptance of their speech; they take a dictionary, travelling abroad, not a grammar reference book anyway. Let´s speak about what teachers need while teaching vocabulary to well-equip their learners. Let´s not talk about favourite activities like word games, matching games and translation into the mother tongue only, but concentrate on meaningful vocabulary activities to develop learning confidence. Some examples have been withdrawn from a new coursebook, ´My English Way (Fraus)´, devoted to young teenagers.
Lukáš Heřman
Starters (Jazykové Rozcvičky)
You can expect a brochure of warm-up activities that are going to be enjoyable for both you and your students. We will present intuitive activities that don’t require any further explanation. Your lessons will have a fresh flow right from the start.
Pavlína Štefanová
Oxford Online Placement Test – fast and accurate placement testing
Zvolit správnou úroveň na začátku studia není vždy jednoduché a pro učitele to znamená často mnoho práce s přípravou, vyhodnocením a následným rozřazením studentů – o spotřebě papíru nemluvě. V rámci této prezentace se podíváme na různé typy testování a ukážeme si možnosti rychlého, snadného a přesného online otestování úrovně studentů, které Vám usnadní práci a čas.
Petr Hedbávný
Activities for (false) beginners – with IMAGLEE cards
Good knowledge of English hinges on good foundations. In this workshop, we will focus on how to awaken curiosity and the love for learning in every beginner. We will go through tailored activities for those aiming at mastering the A1 level. As a tool, we will be using IMAGLEE cards, a multi-semantic tool combining numbers, pictures and colours.
David Fisher
How to get students (and teachers) speaking clearly
Teachers often tell students to speak up, be clear, don’t mumble, etc. But speaking clearly is an art that needs to be taught and practised, especially in the context of a school where students are more often told to sit still and be quiet. This workshop will introduce a few simple techniques that teachers can use to help their students speak as clearly as possible.
This workshop by the director of The Bear Educational Theatre, will share the secrets of how to speak as clearly as possible and how to make it easy for others to listen to you. This skill is especially valuable of course for students who are facing spoken exams, but it is also useful for teachers and other presenters. The workshop will look at the practical mechanics of speaking clearly. it will give teachers practical ideas for how to teach the skills to their students. It will also give teachers themselves a framework for reflecting on their own speaking habits. Are you always speaking clearly? What can you do to make it easier for your students to pay attention to you?
A Show Full of Lies
A Show Full of Lies is an entertaining look at the role that lying plays in human interactions. The show features jokes, games, and different stories where characters are lying and the audience have to think what they would do themselves in those situations.
A Show Full of Lies is an attempt to get students to think critically about the role that deception plays in human interactions. It also introduces the very relevant topic of misinformation in the media and social media. The first half of the show is very light and looks at different kinds of lying that are common in human interactions. The second part introduces situations from the worlds of business and politics and invites the audience to reflect on how they feel about those situations. The show has no ideological bias or agenda. It does not lead the audience to any specific conclusions, it rather gives them a space to become aware of the issues and to reflect on how they feel about them. It does, however, carry an important message though about our personal responsibility to not spread lies and to find ways to discover the truth.
Sylvie Doláková
Let’s Play, Let’s Move!
Teaching English to (very) young learners should contain some must-do aspects. One of them is movement and passion. In action games the children immerse in the theme of the game and forget completely they are using a foreign language.
Teaching English to (very) young learners can be quite efficient if we set the goal together with some movement, excitement, and an appealing point. So called ACTION GAMES (group, circle, or line games), clapping games and other rhythmical activities will not only make the children eager to participate, but also they will provide them with useful features; listening and speaking skills, vocabulary, phrases, grammar, concentration, memory, and fair-play. Let’s explore a few examples that will raise your students on their toes and make them ask: Once again, please!
Tomáš Bednář
Jak učit jazyk pomocí SLOVNÍCH MAP
Zkuste si, jaké to je použít SLOVNÍ MAPY v hodinách.
Cílem je, abyste sami zažili, jaké jsou benefity použití slovních map při představení/opakování tématu, při testování nebo využití při procvičování gramatiky a časů.
Tom Czaban
How can Czech students avoid making typical English mistakes?
The importance of a learner’s native language cannot be overstated: a Czech learner will make different mistakes than a Spanish learner and vice versa. In this presentation, Tom Czaban (a British native speaker with several years of teaching experience in the Czech Republic) discusses some of the main English mistakesCzech learners make. The workshop will also touch upon why students make these errors, and how you can help your students to avoid them.
Tomáš Mach
For real? The “reálie” research revisited
The talk presents a summary of research on the concept of “reálie”. Not only does it investigate what the term means and how it is commonly understood and applied by Czech ELT practitioners, but it also aims to shed light on the usefulness and adequacy of that understanding and those applications. Various alternatives with respect to CEFR and the Czech maturita exam are offered. High school teachers are especially welcome to attend and share their views.
Anica Đokić
The Whole World Is a Classroom
The aim of this talk is to provide the participants with the tools for planning a lesson outside their classrooms, around any theme, especially the one suggested by the setting in which the lesson is taught. The workshop is based on the principles of dogme teaching, as well as teaching unplugged, meaning that in our lessons we use what we have around us as teaching materials, and the language taught is about what we can see, hear, smell, or touch. In addition to these principles, theme-based instruction is also applied in lesson planning, which means that a lesson is structured around a theme, and contains vocabulary introduction, grammar structure practice, a song and a crafty task. Such lesson (previously taught in the nature) will be presented.
Joe Dale
Promoting an inclusive approach with tips on accessibility using
technology
The aim of the session is to raise awareness amongst language teachers about the different accessibility features which are readily available in popular tools such as Word and PowerPoint, Google Docs and Slides, Book Creator etc and how these can cater to the varying needs of all learners to provide inclusive language learning. Joe Dale will give a practical demonstration of each tool explaining how it can be used in the classroom for all learners. In this presentation, Joe will explore a range of tools which help all learners to access their learning.
Radka Malá
Think Visual, Think Wild, Think Gen Z
They’re sooo different. What happens when Gen X meets Gen Z? Why might your classroom look a bit wild (at the best of times)? And is there a way to coach Gen Z to their full potential? Using Wider World 2nd edition as our primary source of this practical workshop, we’ll try out some simple ideas for ourselves, so get ready for some running, lots of visuals and a bit of detective work.
Tery Lemanis
CLIL, Culture & 21st Century Skills in the EFL Classroom
Educators often warn that children need improved 21st century skills and that if we don’t develop them properly, students won’t be prepared for college and the workforce. But what exactly are 21st century skills? In this session, we will take a look at the key skills seen as pertinent in the EFL classroom and see real examples of exercises and activities that promote 21st century skills, CLIL and Cultural Awareness.