Live Methodology Afternoon

Trying to encourage our learners to both enjoy and benefit from reading texts in class can be a challenge as we often repeat the same task types over and over with mixed results and levels of engagement. In this session we will discuss a few extra ideas which will provide you with a bit of a twist. Some of them will explore several less-frequently-used reading sub-skills; some others will serve as the springboard for integrated skills work and/or lexical and grammatical development; but more importantly, most will be low or no-preparation (i.e. unplugged / lazy).

One of the unique challenges often presented by teenage students is their level of motivation (or lack thereof). In this seminar, we'll discuss the ways in which our students' reasons for attending a language class don't always line up with our own, and how to take advantage of their natural tendencies and interests to engage and motivate them to be productive, and sometimes even eager, contributors to our lessons.

Heather Belgorodtseva

When author Terry Prachett described teaching as the honourable profession of lying to students he was not making a criticism, but admiring how teachers try to break down complex ideas to help students of different ages or levels understand them. However, it is worth examining the difference between the pedagogical rules of grammar, compared to the reality of English language usage, and re-considering how far we want to oversimplify what we teach, what the advantages or disadvantages of this are and what any alternatives might be. In this session we will do just that.