Session Reports by Duygu Candarli

Incorporating corpora in ELT, Atsuko Furuta Umesaki, 10.25-10.55, Tuesday 19th April

For non-native English speakers, corpora are significant resources to get access to native speakers' use of English.

Atsuko Furuta incorporated corpora into English classes to enhance learners' ability to find answers to their own queries about English autonomously, which facilitated discovery learning.

By using corpora, she stated that her learners could not only learn collocations and formulaic expression, but also noticed grammatical rules of English. 

Politeness: more than just please and thank you, Mark Hancock, 17.50-18.35, Monday 18th April

What would be your answer to this question? In which city are people the most polite? Surprisingly, it is New York, not a city in the UK contrary to popular belief and stereotypes.

Mark Hancock says, "we tend to think that such expressions as "thank you" and "please" are polite, but he claims the context determines politeness.

Practising spoken grammar, Ken Paterson, 13.45-14.15, Monday 18th April

Spoken grammar is basically spoken English that includes discourse markers, interjections, ellipsis, headers and etc.

An important question is “why should we teach it?”
It is an easy and economical way of interaction. Additionally, spoken grammar which gives students extra linguistic choice is useful and interactional as it is stated by Ken Paterson.

I was sitting at a table of with 5 more people who were from 4 different countries. We talked about how intercultural IATEFL conference was, which made it unique, actually.

At first, our team was very eager to win, but….. Our team’s name was “ready to rock”, but we couldn’t rock! Tough and tricky questions came from various categories, such as literature & film studies, homo sapiens, countries and capitals and general knowledge. There were a few very successful groups doing pretty well, but we almost failed!

Creating and delivering online professional development using Moodle, Barbara Gardner, 14.30-15.15, Monday 18th April

If you are a teacher tainer, you probably know Moodle. It is a virtual learning environment with a focus on interaction and collaboration. http://moodle.org

Writing at postgraduate level: building confidence and developing voice, Sarah Varney-Burch, 10.25-11.10, Monday 18th April

Writing academic essays is challenging for students, and writing essays in different academic culture can even be a nightmare for students!

In her action research, she set up a Writing Development Group with her international MA students and tried various creative activites. The result is a success!

Reflective Practice for Language Teacher, Plenary Session by Tom Farrell, 09.00-10.00, Monday 18th April

As a teacher, you may reflect on your own teaching, role and identity all the time! It is pretty good, but Farrell asks: "How do you know your classes went good or bad?"

He claims :"I do not believe in teacher intuition. but I do believe in evidence!"

Does identity awareness facilitate better foreign language learning?Florentina Taylor, Sunday 17th April

“Foreign language classes tend to be skipped by occasional truants more than the other classes,” she said at the beginning of her talk. It a very unfortunate situation, but it is clearly related to learner identity and how teachers see their learners.

ELT Journal/IATEFL Debate: Tweeting is for the birds, not for language learning, 14.35-15.35, Sunday 17th April

Elisabete already wrote about it, but I have a few points to add from a different perspective:

The nature of the debate was so participatory that it could be a sample for English language leraners to learn how to debate! Second, Nicky Hockly was so strong in rhetorical skills that English language teachers could use the video of the debate to teach rhetorical skills, too.

Toxic Childhood, Plenary Session by Sue Palmer, 09.00-10.10, Sunday 17th April

It was a very impressive talk that made me and other conference delegates think about the children around us.

Sue Palmer started her talk with giving striking statistics about children's literacy and attention problems. As Sue Palmer says, "the world moves at electronic speed, but human development happens in biological time."

British Council Signature Event:The role of English in developing countries, 17.35-18.35, Saturday 16th April

In this session, the editor and contributors of a brand-new book "Dreams and Realities: Developing Countries and the English Language" gave a short presentation about the book. It is mainly about language policy  & planning and the role of English in developing countries.

Understanding the relationships between pre-service teachers` cognition and classroom practice, delivered by Dr. Isil Kacar, 14.00-14.30, Saturday 16th April

The session was based on empirical research conducted at Middle East Technical University in Turkey.

Why is it important to do research about teacher cognition?

As Dr. Kacar explains, classroom practice is shaped by interacting and conflicting factors as well as teacher cognition. Teacher cognition has dynamic and complex nature, and it is affected by teacher workload and institutional context.

Panelists in Brighton: Diane Schmitt & Norbert Schmitt ; Online from New Zealand: Averil Coxhead & Paul Nation, 10.40-11.40, Saturday 16th April

There are lots of general high frequency word lists on the internet, but the question is whether they are enough or appropriate for our learners? Also, what about the vocabulary items in textbooks? These were the questions in my mind before the session started.

Diane Scmitt says: "Students need more words than we actually teach." Also, learners' language goal determines how much they need vocabulary.

In the afternoon session of "Doing Good Quality ELT Research" PCE, we continued to criticise bad examples of research designs and find the problems of them in relations to the “friends”(!) of ELT researchers: validity, reliability, generalizability and objectivity. We realised that it was a very effective way of learning!