ELT Ireland Conference 2017

When I started teaching back in 2001, it seemed like there were tons of opportunities for CPD in Dublin. Every couple of weeks there'd be a talk at the Teacher's Club in Parnell Square, usually on a Friday evening so the discussion could spill over into a nearby pub. I saw talks by lots of the big names without realizing that they were big names, as well as talks by local teachers who were doing some really interesting things (Dee Doyle sticks in the memory). These talks would invariably be introduced by Jim Ferguson; whenever someone gets round to writing the history of ELT in Ireland, Jim will feature prominently and positively.

And then, I'm not sure when exactly, all that seemed to die down. Going to talks, mingling with colleagues from other schools, nabbing free books from publishers - you couldn't take that stuff for granted any more. I lost myself in exam preparation classes for years and when I looked back up the ELT landscape in Dublin seemed a bit barren, a bit fragmented. We were all still teaching, great things were still happening in classrooms but the sense of belonging to a wider teaching community wasn't there any more (at least, that's how it seemed to me at the time).

Skip forward to around 2013, I think. I was at a talk (they didn't stop altogether) and a stylishly dishevelled chap (I say that enviously as an aspiring, but ultimately failed, hipster) stood up to announce that he was part of a group that were starting an organisation for teachers called ELT Ireland. Not being the most prescient at the best of times, I shrugged and thought no more of it. That was about 3 years ago and since then ELT Ireland have gone on to do fabulous things for teachers here in Dublin, myself included.

Nabbed this photo from Laura O'Grady's Twitter feed. I'm sitting where the cool teachers sit.

Their first conference was two years ago. As well as having talks from established names, they gave a load of us teachers a chance to try our hand at presenting. In the past, I was often frustrated by talks that didn't seem to reflect the reality I teach in. Opening up a forum for teachers in Ireland means you might not get the sheen but the energy, the sense of a practitioner working through stuff and reflecting it back to us is powerful.

ELT Ireland also do an annual bulletin which is a chance for teachers to publish, they send out an email newsletter each week, run #ELTchinwag every two weeks and they host meet ups for managers. Their most recent conference was last week and covered a range of topics: non-native speaker discrimination; evidence based teaching; negotiated syllabi; CLIL; motivation; task based learning; managing your own CPD and teacher training; pronunciation (twice); questions; SEN; managing projects in a rolling enrolment environment as well as plenaries from Scott Thornbury, Silvana Richardson and Anne O'Keeffe. [Sorry there were tons of other great talks that I didn't get to see  - concurrent sessions :( .... If you like, you can check out the hashtag #ELTIrl2017 ]

If this all reads like a hagiography, that's because it is. There are about five or six people involved in ELT Ireland and they're volunteers. It's a ton of work and stress and they're not paid for any of it. Whatever madness possesses them to do this, I'm glad of it. ELT in Ireland is in a better place on account of them.

Peter Lahiff, Laura O'Grady, Lou McLaughlin, Joanne Mitten, Ben Dobbs

ELT Ireland Conference

Saturday and Sunday (Feb 21st and 22nd) marked the first ELT Ireland Annual Conference. It was a fantastic event and wonderful that this organisation exists here in Ireland. Our industry is going through some tough times, so it is great to have the chance to go to events like this, meet colleagues and share ideas. There were tons of highlights (I will do a post on these later this week) but one that really resonated with me was Peter Lahiff's talk about getting involved. His message, "Push, the door is open", really struck a chord, especially as Peter himself has given me, along with many others, a lot of support in trying new things and getting involved in the ELT world.

The hashtag for the conference was #eltirl2015 if you would like to check out some of the discussion.

I've attached the slides from my talk here if anyone would like to take a look. Basically the talk was about exam preparation classes and how to share the pain with students.

I'll try to explain one or two points that might not be so clear from the slides.

½ with answers + ½ with questions = less TTT

With reading texts, I might give half the students the questions and let them get cracking. With the other half, I give the answers. Their job is to find evidence in the text to prove the answer. After the time is up, get them together. They discuss a bit more as opposed to listening to me telling them the answers.

Text + student questions = speaking practice

I often give a reading text on a particular topic. The homework is to think up discussion questions related to the topic. The next day, we use those topic questions for discussion in class. They are hopefully more invested because they are discussing their own questions and they can use ideas/language they picked up from their reading.

Backwards essay writing = plans and questions 

I always bang on about making plans before writing. One thing that breaks up the monotony of me harping on is to give a complete essay and ask students to make a plan from it and figure out what the question was. If it is a good essay, it should be easy to make the plan. If it is a bit incoherent, trying to recreate the plan might show that up; likewise if the essay hasn't answered the question.

I should also credit Hugh Dellar, who very kindly allowed me to rip off the structure he used in this talk and offered his encouragement.  

The Homework Dilemma

A while ago I posted a survey on Twitter which 286 people were kind enough to respond to. The topic was Homework and the survey informed a large part of a talk I gave at ELT Ireland's 2017 conference. I've attached the slides here. It's taken me ages to get around to writing up the results of the survey but it's a nice bright day in Ireland, I'm back off my honeymoon and I've just submitted a final assignment so I thought I'd have a crack now.

Context

I'm a big fan of homework. In the past, I gave students homework intermittently and without a lot of thought (e.g. "finish that part at home", "talk to someone about.....") and the response was lacklustre. Then I started putting a lot more thought into the homework I gave and made it a routine of every lesson (set it at the end of class, discuss it with everyone, check it first thing the next day). It seemed to go over well so I've stuck doing it over the years. But as with all things, you start off doing it for a reason and then, after a while, you keep doing it because that's what you always do. So that's why I chose the topic to give a presentation on and why I wanted to know a bit more about what other teachers do. I was also curious to know a little bit more about other teachers' working conditions which I hoped to get a glimpse off through a discussion of homework.

The Participants

In total, there were 21 questions. The first 8 were to get basic information about teaching experience, qualifications, country (I wasn't interested so much in the nationality of the teachers, rather the country where they currently worked). By a fair margin, the most responses came from Ireland (75).

Country	Number (percentage of total)
Ireland	75 (26.2%)
Poland	40 (14%)
UK	19 (6.6%
Spain	15 (5.2%)
New Zealand	13 (4.5%)
United States	9 (3.1%)
Australia	8 (2.8%)
Greece	8 (2.8%)
Saudi Arabia	7 (2.4%)
France	5 (1.7%)

Table 1: The ten countries with the highest response rates

The majority of respondents had been working in ELT for over 10 years but I did get a good few responses from people who hadn't been working in ELT all that long. 

The majority of the respondents worked in private language schools but I also had a good few responses from people who worked in state schools and universities. To be fair, I was especially interested in responses from those work in private language schools. One, because that's the context I've spent most of my teaching career in. And two, because I was curious to know a bit more about homework practices in private language schools where homework might be a bit less expected/normal than in primary or secondary schools (61% of the respondents teach adults, 17% teach kids and 22% teach both adults and kids). 

Frequency

Most of the questions were close-ended - it was a survey online and I wanted lots of responses and was wary of asking too much of people timewise - and tended to be about quantity. So for example, I found that 23.4% of respondents always give homework and 39.2% usually give homework. Only 9.8% tend not to give homework (4% said that they never give homework). This seemed to suggest a lot more homework was being given than I had expected. When I filtered it according to whether they taught adults, the results didn't change all that much. So basically, this burst two conceptions I had - one, that ELT teachers don't give homework all that regularly and two, that teaching adults would mean a bit less homework being given out. 

Attitudes

I asked a few likert scale questions as well to get a sense of teacher's attitudes to homework (and also teachers attitudes about students' attitudes to homework - this might sound a bit arsey but I figure that if we think our students hate homework that might influence how much of it we give). Not surprisingly, seeing as most people are lashing out the homework, attitudes were fairly positive (see below)

Interestingly, they were a bit less positive when asked to guess at their students' attitudes to homework. The three responses chosen most frequently were: students accept it without enthusiasm (52.1%); most welcome it (26.2%); most hate it (14.3%). Again, this ratio didn't change much when I filtered it for those teaching adults. 

Working Conditions

I asked two questions which I hoped might reveal a little something about teachers' working conditions. The first question asked whether they were encouraged to give homework in their schools. 64% said yes, 12% said no (there were other responses which fell outside of these two opposites). Again, I found this interesting as I have only ever once been encouraged to give students homework in 15 years of teaching. 

The second question I asked was whether their rate of pay covered correcting students' homework outside of class. 21.6% were in the fortunate position of being able to answer yes; 70% said no. About 8% of respondents were not sure. This was a bit of a controversial question as you could well imagine an employer believing homework corrections were included in someone's rate of pay. Interestingly, on the day of the talk, I went to another talk by Bárbara Hernandes about non-native discrimination in Ireland in which she shared a job ad that required "native speakers only". It was a really good talk but I repurposed that job ad for my own talk - not only was it discriminatory but they were only offering €18 an hour. I questionned whether that type of rate (which is not the worst - I've seen €14 an hour a few times) could reasonably be expected to cover prep, teaching and homework correction. To put it in context, the minimum wage in Ireland is €9.25 an hour.

Optimism or Concern?

At first, looking at the results, I was a bit bummed out. In one question, 190 teachers said that one problem they have is that they often end up with loads of correcting to do outside class hours, despite the fact that they're not paid to do this. In a few of the open questions at the end of the survey, a few people said that they had given up setting homework as correcting it was taking too much time that they weren't compensated for. 

As someone who likes homework and believes that it can help students improve, I didn't want to finish by saying that we shouldn't give homework unless we're paid to correct it (although maybe that is a valid conclusion?). In an open question, I asked teachers to share their ideas of what good homework is and many of them were brilliant - stuff that would help students and inform subsequent lessons so that it wouldn't result in tons of unpaid work for the teacher. 

There was some good stuff like this:

My students are better engaged in project based homework our interactive forum/collaborative items posted on class website. Example: choose a simple process and use a photo collage app on your phone to take pictures of each step. In class, they present and then use the collage as jumping off point for writing a process essay. Completely different level of engagement than asking students to choose a process and explain to classmates tomorrow.

 Setting up extensive reading activity where each student reads an article on a topic (e.g. Student A reads about technology, Student B about health etc) and then share their summaries in class. Works very well - no prep and maximum student learning.

This one really solved the problem of burden on teacher:

I provide a lot of self-study homework, by which I mean homework and answers, and it is not checked in class. This way I can provide students with an adequate amount of homework without having to spend too much class time correcting it. I have found that most of my students do indeed complete the homework even though it is not checked in class - they understand fully the idea of maximising class time

Overall

What I took from this survey is that teachers are amazing. 286 of my colleagues took the time to contribute to this survey and gave considered, helpful responses (there were one or two spicy comments on my questionnaire-making skills but even those were helpful!). And despite the fact that most of them don't get paid to correct homework, they're still dishing it out regardless of the consequences for their personal time because they believe it helps their students. I think this is commendable and I would hope that this level of commitment to the welfare of their students is appreciated (and acknowledged) by whoever is lucky enough to employ them.  

I'm a social learner (except when I'm alone)

I've come back to this fabulous talk by Russell Mayne a number of times now. It is a joy to watch someone taking shots at sacred cows with such abandon (though as someone who gobbled up the learning styles approach, I find myself cringing quite a bit (gobbled up......does that make me a gustatory learner?)). Without wishing to simplify, Russell's point is that ELT seems to offer a warm welcome to dubious theories and unsupported practices (e.g. Brain Gym and NLP). This leads to classroom activities like watching the direction of your students' eyes to determine when to start and stop activities.

Apart from silly lessons (nothing terribly wrong with a bit of silly), one of the main problems Russell highlights is the damage to the professional credibility of ELT. Russell's targets are not teachers on the ground, but those a little higher up the chain - teacher trainers, ELT writers, course book publishers. Those who influence the kinds of ideas and methodologies that make their way into the classroom. 

What I find interesting to consider (as Russell does in his talk) is why it is that there is such acceptance of theories that seem "intuitively true" but which lack any evidence to support them (and evidence that suggests they are in fact bogus). Why is it that in EAP we teach critical thinking, but don't really practise what we teach?

I don't wish to be an apologist for teachers but I think the straight answer is mostly practical. Time. Most teachers I know are paid by the hour and have little or no access to ELT journals. If they want to get any sort of professional development, they have to give up a Saturday, unpaid. Their outside class time is spent preparing classes, correcting work and fretting that they are not effectively helping students maximise their learning potential. If they go to a talk by a charismatic so and so who espouses the wonders of NLP, then chances are, come Monday, their students will be closing their eyes and visualising childhood memories.  

As Russell says, if we want professional credibility, we need to be more professional. I have taken this as a bit of a mantra lately. I figure if we want to be considered on a similar level to university professors, then we have to act like university professors (i.e. publish, give talks, look startled when approached by students in the corridor). However, I am fortunate to work for an institution that gives access to journals and support to do research. I am conscious that not everyone is so fortunate. Thankfully, with ELT Ireland we have a great resource in helping to make things here a bit more professional. 

Essentially, this brings me round to continuing professional development (CPD). Challenging accepted wisdom, engaging in the debate, should be a part of our CPD. But for many of us, it is not. According to the Medical Council, doctors are expected on average to do 50 hours per year on CPD. But there is a framework, a support system there that helps doctors to fulfil their obligations. As far as I know (and I may be wrong), there is no such system for ELT teachers. It mostly seems ad hoc. Wouldn't it be great if there was such a system and support for teachers to carry out their CPD? Perhaps then we may be better positioned to critically evaluate current pedagogical trends (fads?).  

The Importance of Being Native

I think here in Ireland, we have a strange relationship with the English language. In one sense, there is a sense of regret that English has replaced Gaeilge as our first language. We lament the teaching of Gaeilge in schools and marvel at how other countries manage to get their kids speaking different languages by the time they leave school. We sprinkle the "cupla focal" in our speech but I believe there is a real sadness for many of us that we can't converse in the language of our (very recent) ancestors.

And it is perhaps this regret that makes us particularly proud of our brand of English - Hiberno English. We delight in the fact that we have different words for things; words like press for cupboards or rashers for bacon.

And our grammar is different too. Instead of the present perfect form (e.g. I have eaten), many of us use the "be+after+ING form" (e.g. I'm after eating). I don't know if it is nationwide but in Dublin, you'll often hear someone say I do be tired on Fridays when someone from the UK might be more inclined to say I'm usually tired on Fridays (Stan Carey has a nice piece on this grammatical form here). These constructions are leftovers, grammar structures that were translated from the Gaeilge and hung on as the language went into decline.

And we are proud of our writers - Wilde, Joyce, Shaw, Yeats, Beckett, Heaney. We tell visitors that the English may have invented the language but we took it and made it better. I grew up hearing this stuff and it is impressive that such a small country has 4 Nobel Prize winners for Literature. But still, you'd wonder. Would we swap one of those Nobel prizes for bilingualism?

So, I suppose the point I'm trying to make is that we have mixed emotions when it comes to speaking English. This gets even more complicated in the world of English Language Teaching. Because of our history, because we lost our native language, we get to sit at the head of the table as native speakers (although Thailand gave us a bit of a scare a few years ago, before letting us back into the club).

You would think that considering this tangled history with the English language, our institutional failure to teach our native language and the massive levels of emigration from this country, we would be well placed to challenge notions of what it is to be a native or non native speaker of English. That we would be sensitive to those who have left their homes and are speaking English out of economic necessity. But I worry that this is not the case. I worry that we may be even more protective of the importance of "nativeness" by virtue of the fact our own doesn't sit so comfortably.

Many jobs here still look for native only teachers. I'm not going to name and shame but with a dodgy Internet connection whilst sitting on a train I found 4 in 5 minutes. As many other people have pointed out (here, here, here, here and here), this is discrimination - excluding someone possibly qualified for the job on the basis of something over which they have no control. If we take the Braj Kachru "Inner Circle" view of what constitutes a native speaker, then these ads are effectively saying Americans, British, Australians, New Zealanders, Canadians and Irish only. Obviously there are many more countries that can be considered native speakers, but I think putting it like this helps to highlight the discrimination involved in native only advertisements.

So, in a way, the word native helps to cover up some discriminatory hiring policies. It is a lot easier to say "I just want native English speakers" than to say "I just want Irish people". I can imagine the people who post these ads might object to the accusation of discrimination and say that they are simply responding to market demand. Spanish kids don't want to come to Dublin to learn English from a Spanish teacher. That would seem a reasonable position and suggest that the schools in question make these decisions based on their view of quality standards or concerns for the needs of their students. And yet one school advertising for natives only stipulates that no experience is required. Do Spanish kids want to come to Dublin to learn English from someone who has never taught before? Does "nativeness" trump all other considerations?

It seems strange to me that a large chunk of the ELT world holds on to the notion that students want native teachers (rather than the notion that students want teachers who will help them learn as quickly as possible). Why is it that in this one area, we let a perception of what students want dictate our approach when in everything else, we claim to know best ("No, no, no, put away your dictionaries - it's better if you guess the word from the context")?

The troubling thing about this glorification of the native is that it creates a horrible dichotomy. The majesty of the native requires the humbling of the non-native. Silvana Richardson argues that we need to move away from the term "non-native". The addition of a negative prefix to people who have successfully learned a language to a very high level (and, as is the case in Ireland, are brave enough to leave their homes to work in a foreign country) seems perverse. Would anyone be comfortable with their job description including a negative? It suggests a lack where really there should not be one. Would native mono-lingual English teachers be happy if they were referred to as "English teachers who have never done what they are trying to get you to do"? But even that wouldn't be a fair comparison, because at least they could do something about it. The non-native title is a permanent exclusion.

This is not exclusively a problem in Ireland. I have heard stories from around the world of teachers being excluded from jobs because of their nationality. But the world is changing. Most English conversations today are between people for whom English is their second (or third, or fourth) language (the world of Tennis is a great illustration of this - look at how Wimbledon, this bastion of "Englishness" is populated by international tennis players all communicating together through the one language). Jeremy Harmer argues that "the old ‘learn-to-speak-English-like-a-native’ trope of the middle of the twentieth century is long long gone". 

Instead of focusing on an insensitive and anachronistic view of English language speakers, Ireland has a small enough ELT industry (on the cusp of significant change if school closures and Government promises of reform are to be believed) that it can focus on a far more equitable dichotomy - good teachers and non-good teachers. The first step would be to get rid of these native only ads and see where to go from there.

Dictionaries

My post today is a shameless declaration of love for the Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary. 

Like many teachers, I have a notion that using monolingual dictionaries is better than the bilingual ones. I did a bit of googling to see if I could find some evidence to back me up but the only articles I came across were either a bit suspect or blocked by pay-walls (if you have come across any, I'd love to read them).  

So despite the fact that when learning languages myself, I tend to use bilingual dictionaries (or Google translate), I will persist with the intuition that mono is best. 

If you accept that premise, then the best, and freest, monolingual dictionary is the Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary (I won't link again in case it looks like I am fishing). 

This is why:

1. The definitions are much clearer. Compare these three definitions of the word fundamental 

Dictionary.com: serving as, or being an essential part of, a foundation or basis; basic; underlying
Merriam Webster: forming or relating to the most important part of something
Oxford Learner's: serious and very important; affecting the most central and important parts of something

I think if your level was such that you had to look up the word fundamental, the first one would be overwhelming. The second one is alright, but the Oxford one, I feel, trumps it by starting off with a very clear, simple definition. (In fairness to the other two dictionaries, they are not aimed at second language learners, but they seem to be the ones my students tend to gravitate towards)

2. They give you lovely extra stuff.

Nice Collocations: fundamental difference; fundamental change
Nice Examples: Hard work is fundamental to success
Nice clickables: British and US pronunciation; Academic Word List; Word Families; Share on social media (not sure why anyone would ever feel the need, but still, nice to be hip)

3. The page is clean and unfussy. Compare Merriam Webster and Oxford.

One thing they don't do (which Merriam Webster does) is include a clickable citation button for those students who like to start essays by saying Merriam Webster defines globalisation as.....

Apart from that, it is a really good, free resource.

With that in mind, here is a little lesson (taking a recent article from the Irish Times which will be of interest to students from outside Europe and living in Ireland) that involves some dictionary usage.

It is a really interesting article so I am kind of throwing it away as the only thing they do is dictionary related. My goal with the lesson was just to get students on to the dictionary website, play around with it, see the different elements and see what they make of it, but you could do more interesting stuff like vocab predictions, discussions, debates.....

Also, the article isn't the most EAPy but I think getting students onto the monolingual dictionary is; and one of the questions in the lesson relates to the Academic Word List which is no bad thing to mention to students.

A nice companion for this website might be the British Council Word Book App that students can download to their phones and use as a kind of a personal vocab builder (you can put in definitions, examples, pictures, recordings - very cool and recommended by Gavin Dudeney at the recent Digital ELT Ireland conference)

Click here for the PDF lesson plan

The Problem of Empathy

I've been very quiet of late on the old Twittering and Blogging front because I have taken myself off to the UK for a little while to teach on a Pre-sessional. I thought that this would be a really good chance to find out how things are done EAP-wise in the UK as compared to Ireland, as well as stretching myself as a teacher. So far, it's been an absolutely fantastic experience. My colleagues are all wonderful (as tends to be the case in ELT), the course is really well organised and the facilities are excellent. As I had expected, I've been learning tons from looking at how the course has been put together and then discussing how to approach it with my fellow teachers.

On top of all that, though, I've learned perhaps even more from the students themselves and getting a little taste of what life must be like for them. Back in Dublin, I have an apartment, a car, friends, family and a routine. Over here, I've none of that. As with my students, I'm living in shared dorms, struggling with how to set up a bank account and away from what I know. Yes, the culture clash of being Irish in the UK is not nearly the same as being say, Japanese in the UK, but it has helped me get a better appreciation of how overwhelming it all must be for students. And that's before you get to the academic side of things.

To get a sense of what that must be like, I decided that I would complete the same assignments that they have to do. A lot of this was pre-reading for class discussions which I was able to manage handily enough. But the big thing is the 2,000 word essay. I chose developments in EAP as my topic, thinking it would be fairly easy and quite interesting. I was right on the second count, way off on the first. Writing a referenced, 2,000 word essay is tough. If, like me, it's been a while since you were in university, I'd recommend giving it a go. I've found it easier to explain things to students, I've learned a lot about my field and I've picked up some handy tools for referencing.

I've also given up saying stuff like "students don't know how to critically evaluate". I don't really see this as some independent skill that you can learn and apply across the board. To do this, you have to know a lot about the subject. For most of my reading on this essay, I'm nodding in agreement. Only after reading a ton of articles can I start to form my own line of thought. And I'm reading in my first language. We still talk about criticality in the classroom, not so much as an abstract concept or skill, but rather how to critically engage with the particular subject they're working on.

On a more general, abstract note, I've found myself thinking about empathy quite a bit whilst working over here. The title of this post refers to a book by the philosopher and Catholic saint, Edith Stein. I studied this book as part of my masters in philosophy nearly 15 years ago. It came back to me whilst writing this post (a chap called Kris McDaniel has a very good overview of the book here). Essentially (I hope), Stein's idea is that we recognise another person, not simply as a physical thing, but as an individual person, an I just as we are an I. Stein's objective in exploring the concept of empathy was phenomenological, mine in mentioning it, simply a way of stitching an overarching theme to this post.

If I look for connections between successful teachers, empathy seems to be a commonality (as a side note, this would be part of the argument as to why multi-lingual language teachers are especially helpful to their students). I haven't been able to find a lot on the value of teacher empathy (although there does seem to be a lot on how to teach empathy), but I believe that it is a valuable asset for EAP teachers. The problem is that our empathy can wane a bit as the gap between the present and our former student life widens. That's why a good kick up the backside, as I've been getting this last couple of weeks, is no bad thing. And it can be a self-administered kick - all that needs to be done is to loudly proclaim (it has to be loud so you can't back out) that you will stand shoulder to shoulder with your students during the assignment (unless it's a bloody learner journal! They're on their own for that one).

*I should also point out how amazing the Twitter community is - I did a shout out for sources for my EAP essay and got lots of really helpful responses.

BALEAP - Friday

I went to the BALEAP conference in Leicester over the weekend and it was really inspiring. I've transcribed my notes for Friday below if anyone would like to read them. I know that in most cases, you had to be there, but there might be something of interest in my scribbles.

Suffice to say, that they were all amazing speakers and it was an incredible experience.

(BALEAP - Saturday)
(BALEAP - Sunday)

I'm terribly sorry, if I've misspelt any names or misinterpreted anybody's talks. Please let me know if you would like me to amend anything or add anything. I didn't take notes during the Pecha Kucha which is a shame as it was the highlight of Friday for me.

Navigation in a complex world - Prof. Rebecca Hughes

• Academic writing is an increasingly collaborative process
• English is increasingly the language of academic publication
• EMI (English as a medium of instruction) is on the increase. Therefore, we are likely to have students coming with higher levels of English in the future.
• Consequently, they will have different, perhaps more complex needs
• Predicts India, Indonesia, Brazil, Nigeria, China and Malaysia as the countries where students are likely to be coming from in the future
• "The deficit model is dead" - the student is not the problem. (to be honest, I'd love if someone could explain this to me or refer me somewhere - it seemed to be a theme throughout the conference)
• Delegate from Scandinavia made the point that this could lead to higher levels of English but possibly lower levels of knowledge of the content/subjects (e.g. history, physics etc)

Scaffolding reading comprehension in an L2 academic context - Vasiliki Antoniou

• The use of Moodle to scaffold academic reading tasks
• Students were guided through a series of tasks (and given prompts and reminders) in relation to specific readings (encouraging them to do different things - e.g. think critically about texts)
• Findings from research showed that the scaffolding methods students were most positive about were model answers and notifications about task updates
• Do students perhaps prefer more passive forms of scaffold (i.e. ones that require less autonomy). This was a point made and discussed in Q and A.
• Activites like mind maps were mentioned. Another activity was mentioned - MAZES. I forgot t ask what that was.

The complexities of preparing international students for group and seminar discussions - Ann Smith

• Chained tasks - don't just get them to do one task but a series of tasks that feed into one another
• The task she described was to ultimately give a presentation with the aim of persuading the audience (in this case it was a bid for a project)
• So to complete the presentation there were a series of tasks that they had to complete, all building up to the presentation (e.g. researching, planning etc)
• Oh I forgot to mention - they were working in groups - larger groups of between 5 and 7
• She considered the pros and cons of self selected groups and careful team formation/assigned groups. 
• Felt that self selection was better than random selection (e.g. you're sitting beside each other so you're altogether)
• Assigned selection is better if the project is being marked
• There was peer allocation of marks! If they all gave them the same marks, it was given back and they had to do it again. 
• The students had to log everything they did - i.e. whilst working on the project minutes had to be taken.

Becoming Metacognitive Teachers - Maggie Heeney

• What makes an exemplary teacher?
• Discussed the idea of letting students inside your head - seeing the process
• This involves thinking aloud, modelling for the students, interacting with the students and scaffolding)
• Studied a teacher - charted them over many weeks - taking notes throughout their lesson. Looking at instances where the teacher thought aloud, modelled what they were asking the students to do.
• Made a good point that teachers need to be able to do what they are telling there students to do. I found this quite salient - some tasks our students are required to do, I would struggle with. Point seemed to me to be that you have to do it yourself in order to better understand how to help someone else do it (and by thinking and reflecting upon how you do it)

The EAP of spelling learning together - Bee Bond

• talked about exploratory research - that it is very cooperative; that you don't go looking to prove something but instead to find out the answer to a question; that it is about developing understanding rather than proving.
• Different to action research
• Talked about the EAP treadmill - feeling jaded, doing the same things over and over. Without the time to develop, to tweak.
• Talked about not seeing the students as individuals, as capable of taking their education seriously (perhaps because you only see them not doing what you want them to do)
• Really good point - students are independent - they are choosing not to listen!
• So listen to students - show them that the onus is more on them.
• Bee made students co-researchers, not objects of research.
• Looked with them at why their spelling is bad. Threw the question back to the students. Tried to figure it out together.
• Discovered that beautiful joined up writing helps with spelling.
• Distinguished between scholarship (i.e. you critically evaluate what you do as a teacher) and research 

Technology tools for teaching English for Academic Purposes - Dr David Lefevre

• Says that online pre-sessional courses are going to be big stuff
• For many students, online is the only option. Face to face not an option.
• Pros - you can target who needs the help through feedback on their online submissions.
• Wondered which of the skills could be taught more effectively online and which not so much (speaking, writing, listening, reading, vocabulary)?
• Videoing lessons from experts - putting that online. Makes knowledge accessible to a far wider audience

Pecha Kucha

Once upon a time in a pre-sessional classroom in Sheffield - Elaine Lopez

• Noticed that students don't have great grammar. But we don't teach grammar in EAP
• Did a research project
• Turns out they learn the grammar anyway, even without explicit instruction

Ten Tips to Survive your first year as an EAP tutor - Emma Hillman and Zella Phillips

• Full of great observations - e.g. the new serious EAP clothes when we shift from ELT; the worries about our ability to teach academic stuff

Why you should use a randomiser in class - Hannah Gurr

• write students names on lollipop sticks - pick them out randomly so you make sure to ask different people. You don't just rely on the stronger students.
• Use an app to do the same function but more technologically.
• Great line - if my student says I don't know (as a way to avoid contributing/cop out), Hannah responds with "Ok, well what might you say if you did know).

EAP materials for prospective MSc science/engineering candidates - Jon Wordie

• Hilarious. Impossible to do justice to it here. Sorry, if you weren't there, you missed out. 

Pre-sessional migration: managing the masses - Linda Hurley

• Dealing with the large numbers of teachers coming in for pre-sessionals
• Ideas linked to beautiful paintings (again, very visual so can't do justice)
• As someone coming for Ireland where pre-sessionals don't have the same scale, I missed lots while gaping in awe at the volume of students, and teachers employed in UK universities

Accessible feedback for international students: a colourful approach - Rebecca Thomas

• The use of colour code as a way to engage students more with feedback
• Students more likely to engage with higher level feedback if colour code used (because they don't have to uncode complex language to understand the problem in the first place)

The social media diaries - Susie Cowley-Haselden (aka The EAP Archivist)

• Whitesnake
• How blogging and tweeting has helped her tremendously
• Encouraged everyone to blog - to tweet - to get involved in the wonderful online community that is out there for EAP teachers.