These workshops have been organised by our teacher trainers, and other colleagues, in association with the SOAS and UCL Language Centres. For dates, times and venues of the workshops, please click here.
The themes of this term include:
- Inspirational teaching tools, including technological tools and the
use of realia
- Teaching language skills with particular reference to listening and
speaking
- Perspectives, approaches and techniques in teaching second language scripts
- An appraisal of the use of technology in language teaching
Workshop Descriptions
Using Museum Artefacts for Teaching Language
Whatever kind of learning you’re into, make sure you attend our workshop on Friday
Taking a hands-on approach, we’ll be looking at ancient Greek artefacts and seeing what we can come up with for the language classroom.
Using Puppets & Realia
Led by John Pinder
In this workshop, we shall look at how puppets and objects can be used in language teaching to adults and explore some simple techniques for using puppets in the language classroom. The use of puppets affords a level of safety to language learners, thus allowing them to experiment creatively in the target language. More specifically, we will look at how puppets and objects can provide a material shift in exploring aspects of language learning such as role play and dialogue amongst students.
Using Puppets and Realia: Consolidation and Reflections
This is a follow-up session for teachers who have attended the first workshop or have used puppets and other realia in the classroom. The session gives us an opportunity to share ideas for using puppets, discuss what we’ve tried out during the term.
Engaging Language Learners with Poems?
Do you believe that poetry is a relatively inaccessible medium for language learning and can turn off a lot of learners? Do you endorse the use of poetry in language teaching but would like some more ideas and directions?
Come to this workshop to see and discuss some interesting and effective ways to use poems in the language classroom and inspire your learners.
Sharing Good Ideas: Technology for Teaching Listening and Speaking
During this event teachers will present multimedia materials and technical tools that they use on their language courses. There is plenty of opportunity to discuss and share ideas. There is also time to have a closer look at the materials and talk to their developers.
Why teach language through technology?
The belief that we should use technology to teach languages is prevalent nowadays and very much taken for granted. However, there is a case to be made for the view that technology doesn’t have a place in language teaching.
What do we mean by ‘technology’ anyway?
If you can think of reasons why we should or shouldn’t use technology to teach languages, please do come along and be prepared to argue your case!
Mobile Phones … and other everyday technology for language teaching
In this session we’ll be looking at how we can use mobile phones as a way of encouraging students to create their own material for the production of both spoken and written text in the classroom.
Speaking and Listening tasks for year one, year two and elementary courses
Do we focus on form and vocabulary too much when teaching speaking and listening to our elementary learners? Come to this workshop to a) discuss our methods for teaching speaking and listening to low levels and b) see some useful elementary tasks that involve a more top-down approach to speaking and listening skills.
Techniques and Activities for Teaching the Script – parallel sessions
This is a very practical session following the event “Perspectives on Script”. There are two different venues for this workshop; in one venue we will be looking at ideas and activities for teaching character-based scripts and in the other venue we will be focussing on non-Roman scripts. All the participants in this workshop will come together towards the end of the session to share ideas and to compare and contrast methods for teaching non-Roman and character-based scripts.
What does it mean to learn a language?
Is language learning just a matter of learning vocabulary and how to put it together using grammar? Is it about learning to speak, read and write? What else is involved?
Please join us for this debate to help grapple with these difficult but crucial questions.
Playing Games with Adult Language Learners?
Games are often said to provide light relief and motivation in the classroom as well as giving intensive and meaningful language practice. But can some games trivialise language learning? Are they often inappropriate for groups of adults? Come to this workshop to discuss these issues and play some games that can be effective and suitable for the teaching of adults.
Grammatical Competence
Helping students to acquire Grammatical Competence is an important part of any language programme. In this session we aim to define what exactly we mean by `Grammatical Competence’ and to discuss the importance of integrating this with other aspects of Communicative Competence such as: discourse, socio-linguistic and strategic competencies.
Task Based Language Learning (TBLL)
This workshop will present an overview of TBLL from its roots in the work of N. S. Prabhu in the early 80s, to more recent versions. The aim is to problematise the place of grammar in the communicative approach as well as to explore visions of language teaching/learning.
Teaching script using mnemonics and authentic materials
When teaching a new script to beginner level learners, two of the "jobs" of the teacher are to facilitate learner recognition of the script and to provide meaningful practice. In this session, I present techniques that I developed to teach the Korean script with these points in mind: using mnemonics (memorization techniques) and employing authentic examples of the script.
Noticing Grammar in Text
The aim of this workshop is to present the rational behind a discovery-approach to the teaching of grammar, and to look at some activities and techniques for achieving this.
