IATEFL Brighton 2024 - Day 1

This is my first time going to the IATEFL conference and it's been wonderful to hear so many different ideas being shared. Despite being on my own and thinking that I didn't know many people, I was pleasantly surprised to see quite a few familiar (and new) faces at the conference.

My conference talk, bringing intercultural awareness into the classroom, went swimmingly in the afternoon. I was over the moon to see 80-plus people in the audience - a full house with several people standing. Based on the audience responses mid- and post-talk, I'm glad my talk was well-received and that the audience enjoyed listening to my sharing of practical classroom activities.

I also went to plenty of other talks.

Vicky Saumell's opening plenary was on artificial intelligence (AI). She highlighted some key features of Generative AI. Then she gave us some useful insights into the impact it has had on four groups of key stakeholders in ELT: teachers and teacher trainers, managers and administrators, material writers and illustrators, and publishers and editors. Finally, she raised some issues of Generative AI regarding ethics, ease of access, sustainability, inherent bias, and copyright among others. She invited the audience to ask themselves questions about how Generative AI should best be used.

Jon Hird's session on spoken grammar was helpful for teachers who would like to teach natural language beyond coursebooks. He highlighted the key features of spoken grammar: simple discourse markers, generic words (general words or 'place holders'), informal tags, contracted forms, ellipsis, fronting (in the context of heads and tails), reduction of the auxiliaries 'does' and 'did' to '-'s' and '-'d', and idea units (a succession of short phrases that are simply spoken next to each other and that are sometimes linked by a conjunction). He shared some common task types with which learners can practise using the features of spoken grammar. These include noticing/highlighting (for heads and tails), gap-fill (for the replacement of specific words by 'place holders'), sentence transformation (fronting and co-referential pronouns), and Q&A dialogue (reduction of 'does' and 'did').

Mark Carver and his colleagues from the University of St. Andrews, Scotland shared what they had done in an initial experiment with pre-sessional students. In this experiment, authentic texts from real lectures were used to assess the students' listening skills summatively. Their aim was to find out how well the students could understand such lectures by engaging in interactive discussion as a means of testing. In their attempt to ensure validity and reliability in the summative listening tests, various sources, including IELTS band scores, the CEFR scales and Bax's Text Generator, were used to provide a referential framework for the test results. An interesting point was raised regarding the inclusion of spoken discussion and extended written responses in the assessment, and how this could have affected the reliability of scoring. Finally, the audience discussed the practicality of proctoring/invigilating the students doing the listening tests on computer - lock-screen windows can be useful to prevent cheating.

Amy Coryat's session on the transition from IELTS preparation to university was insightful. She highlighted the additional challenges that international students often face in the context of studying at British universities. IELTS is just the beginning of their learning journeys. Reporting on the survey results of postgraduate students at the University of West of England, Bristol, she identified the key factors affecting the students' learning experiences. When it comes to writing essays and dissertations, she noted that many international students were completely unfamiliar with genres (i.e. a lack of knowledge), as well as the academic style of writing. Finally, she mentioned some factors other than language that affect the students' learning experiences, such as cultural differences and finding suitable accommodation. She proposed three ways that universities can better support international students: 1) pre-sessional language support; 2) open communication channels with academic staff; 3) development of academic skills such as reading subject literature.

The final session I went to was Anna Young's six-step cycle of experimenting with metacognition. In the context of teacher development, she shared one of her experiences of using this cycle to help teachers implement the metacognitive strategies of their own choice in teaching. Metacognition refers to the act of learning about how one learns new knowledge, which involves a degree of self-awareness.

 

Using metacognitive strategies as an example, she walked us through the six stages: 1) discover (introduction to a new teaching method or technique), 2) decide (teachers' own choice of the aspect of the method or technique for implementation), 3) design (paper record of teachers' own decision), 4) do (implementation of the chosen aspect - this involves the teacher's modelling 'metacognitive talk', i.e. the act of verbalising one's strategy for successful task completion, for the learners), 5) debrief (internal sharing of the experiment, preferably with feedback from the students as evidence), and 6) disseminate (external sharing at conferences or in journal articles). For the 'do' stage, she gave us some useful classroom ideas: an error log with the error, the correct form, and the cause of error (writing skills), student-generated personalised mnemonics (spelling), and self-evaluation/reflection form with criterion statements (spoken presentation).

 

This 6D cycle modelled on Savannah Richardson's (2022) is said to be effective with both experienced and new teachers. In fact, it can make differentiated professional development a lot easier to implement in language schools where a one-size-fits-all approach to input sessions would risk disengagement among the more or highly experienced teachers.

All in all, it was a wonderful day in Brighton. The sun came out in the afternoon - it was quite warm at 14 degrees despite a constant 'breeze' (just a bit of a breeze) from the Channel!

 

(It's been very nice to pop home, which is the UK, and the first thing I did this morning was to treat myself in cooking a half English breakfast. By the word 'half', I mean bacon, Cumberland sausages, baked beans and scrambled eggs. Not a proper one without hash browns, mushrooms and toast, I know! Sorry if this sounded too indulgent.)

TEYLT Worldwide (Issue 1, 2024)

Here is a short text I've written for the latest IATEFL YLTSIG publication, TEYLT Worldwide. It is a subscriber-only publication (ISSN: 2520-2596). In my text, I recounted and reflected on my experience of using ChatGPT in a writing skills lesson.

I've personally found the following articles very useful:

• Adrienn Szlapak's one on the use of first language (L1) in the primary classroom use - I've been trying to learn more about English as an Additional Language (EAL). In her article, Adrienn explains what EAL entails in a clear, detailed manner.
  
• Annie Altamirano's one on differentiated instruction - I've learnt some concrete ideas for using differentiation in the classroom. Annie shares her experience with lots of hands-on ideas.
  

 

Learning by doing - and teaching

I was teaching several week-long English immersion courses at a local high school in outer Milan last month. The students and I met for three hours every morning, and there were more or less than 20 teenagers in each class. Their level was on average early B2 Upper-Intermediate.

In our lessons, the students explored teamwork, collaboration and communication through listening, reading and spoken discussions in English. For the final lesson, the students needed to complete a mini-project.

While spoken presentation is obviously the go-to option for the mini-project, I decided to experiment with something different in my final week. Adding to their spoken presentations, the students needed to design an activity, which involves teamwork, collaboration and communication (in English), for their classmates. Not only did they have to talk about the above three topics, but each group of students also took turns to be the 'teacher' in planning and running their own activity. The rest of the class, of course, had the opportunity to put theory into practice.

It might be a bold move, but the students did very well. One group came up with a problem-solving puzzle that involves moving a wolf, a sheep and cabbage across the river; another group designed a revision task (with material!) modelled on what the class had done on good and bad teamwork. Finally, a tech-savvy group of students designed a Kahoot quiz to revise what they had learnt about teamwork, collaboration and communication.

What better way to learn something than by doing (and teaching) it?

Dealing with sensitive topics in EFL classrooms

I was teaching a class of 18 Italian-speaking teenagers earlier in the morning. Today's lesson was part of a week-long English immersion course at a local high school in outer Milan.

As the main topic was 'diversity, inclusion and equity', I had already foreseen some common issues that would possibly come up in this three-hour lesson. Little did I know there would be an outspoken seventeen-year-old making awkward comments on race and ethnicity. Without repeating his unsavoury words, 'genes' was mentioned multiple times, a question about whether one is '100%' of a nationality was directed at another student, and a view that represents virtually no difference to the one held by a controversial Italian politician, Matteo (surname withheld), was expressed.

While an adult's instant reaction might be one that rightly dismisses the student's ideas, I used a more empathetic approach in this instance. Rather than put the student in the spotlight and dictate how that student should think, I neither invalidated his experience nor approved of his ideas. I didn't say his ideas were completely wrong or mine were correct. What I did was simply introduce a different perspective that lies beyond his current frame of reference. I also asked guiding questions that made him question his own beliefs.

Problem with true/false reading comprehension tasks

I was teaching a group of Upper-Intermediate (B2) teenagers earlier this week. As a lead-in to the reading tasks, my students discussed whether video games serve any educational purpose or they are just pure entertainment. The 'gist' task was naturally one in which my students compared their ideas to those of the writer.

Then came the true/false reading comprehension task. I was feeling uninspired by it, so I decided to change this second reading task on the spot. Rather than use the coursebook, I asked my students to map the writer's arguments for and against, as well as the supporting examples, in the form of a skeleton plan. After that, they worked together to make their plans more concise by focussing only on the key arguments, akin to writing the index page of an extended academic essay.

After the task, my students reflected on their level of comprehension of the text. We agreed that a true/false comprehension task focuses their attention on various individual sentences, but it never challenges them to dig deeper into the writer's ideas and develop a holistic understanding of the text.