Accademia Britannica International House 50th Anniversary Conference, Rome, 22-23 October, 2010

MY IMPRESSIONS (to be expanded later...)
DAY ONE

Nothing beats an ESL conference for giving your teaching a lift, and the first day of the IH conference had me soaring. Although I must admit that gone are the days when I just absorb everything. I am now more attuned to the presenter who is really informing me, and more aware when the presenter is just trying to sell me the latest textbook or product.

In this post, I'm going to deal with the speakers who really taught me something, and  inspired me to be a better teacher. Therefore, I have to begin with Norman Cain who, with just a few comments to open the conference, reminded me what a truly gifted teacher he is. It was fascinating to learn that back in 1984, Norman got his CELTA (which was called something else back then) at the very school he now runs (IH, of course).

The first speaker of the day was the famous (in ESL circles) Jeremy Harmer, the author of The Practice of English Language Teaching, among many other titles. His presentation, entitled "The marriage of True minds: poetry and music in language teaching, began with an enthralling performance of Shakespeare's Sonnet 116. He then went on to explain that his talk had arisen from a show he'd created with a musician friend called Steve Bingham, called Touchable Dreams. As well as some ideas for helping our students learn to pronounce perfectly through poems (I will deal with specifics in a later post), he touched on the use of music (rather than just songs) in the classroom. An important point - as teachers, we should remember to ASK our students if they would like some background music while they do a task, instead of just playing it...and then turning it off when we think the activity should end, even if the music hasn't finished!

Margaret Horrigan was the next presenter to inspire. Her talk on Biodiverse Teaching was based on a lesson using shoes as the theme. I'd seen part of this during the CELTYL course, but that didn't detract at all. The main message was that as teachers, we should show respect for accents, cultures, races, and beliefs, and that our teaching (especially of children) can be a chance for us to gently open the minds and broaden the horizons of our students. I got to help Margaret on the stage, too, which was a thrill (yes, my nickname IS Herminone!).

Norman Cain then gave a presentation on CLIL - Culture, Traditions and Religion - going where many ESL teachers fear to tread! And, of course, showed us how it can be done, in the most engaging way! He videoed a taxi driver in Malaysia, talking about Thaipusam and the Batu Caves, and played it to his students. REAL English, unedited...and they loved it. There are just so many possibilities.

The after-lunch slot is never easy, but Hugh Dellar (author of the Outcomes series of ESL textbooks) made it look that way. He compared ELT with the British Royal Family, with vocabulary and pronunciation coming in as lowly ranked nobles in thrall to King Grammar. His talk ended with King Grammar is dead! Long live...?
...lexico-grammatical structures?
...grammaticalised lexis?
... curiosity and wonder in the ordinary!
...learning and teaching!
and an invitation to join him on facebook (which I did, naturally...)

My brain was about full by this stage, and I didn't manage to get very excited by the last presentation, which was an introduction to the web platform english360...that is, until the presenter, Valentina Dodge, began to show us what we could do with it. It looked like the future, manageable, right there on the screen. And you can try it for free www.english360.com - which I will do, after the conference ends, tomorrow.

As with any conference of this nature, there is a lot of information to process. Tomorrow, I will reflect on Day Two, and then in later posts, go into specific details, applicable to lesson planning.