Sunday, October 12, 2014
Wednesday, September 3, 2014
Daniel Willingham - Daniel Willingham: Science and Education Blog
Daniel Willingham - Daniel Willingham: Science and Education Blog
The goal of this blog is to provide pointers to scientific findings that are applicable to education that I think ought to receive more attention.
Wednesday, August 20, 2014
Wednesday, June 25, 2014
Video interviews with David Crystal | TeachingEnglish | British Council | BBC
Video interviews with David Crystal | TeachingEnglish | British Council | BBC
Watch video interviews with one of the foremost linguists in the world - professor David Crystal. From all of the questions that you have sumbitted we selected 10 and asked them during the interviews with David Crystal in Moscow and Saint-Petersburg
Watch video interviews with one of the foremost linguists in the world - professor David Crystal. From all of the questions that you have sumbitted we selected 10 and asked them during the interviews with David Crystal in Moscow and Saint-Petersburg
Monday, June 9, 2014
Tuesday, April 22, 2014
Monday, April 21, 2014
Monday, April 14, 2014
Friday, April 11, 2014
Christopher Emdin: Teach teachers how to create magic - YouTube
Christopher Emdin: Teach teachers how to create magic - YouTube
TED presentation, how teachers create magic to engage students. Is this magic teachable?
TED presentation, how teachers create magic to engage students. Is this magic teachable?
Aptis packages | British Council
Aptis packages | British Council
Aptis is an innovative English assessment tool from the British Council. It is designed to help organisations and institutions identify standards of English and select the staff or students with the right skills.
Aptis is a business-to-business product for use by organisations and institutions to benchmark the English language levels of their employees, potential employees, students or teachers.
Testing English levels from A1-C on the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR), Aptis is an English test for adults (16+), which can assess ability in all four English skills - speaking, listening, reading and writing.
Aptis packages | British Council
Aptis packages | British Council
Aptis is an innovative English assessment tool from the British Council. It is designed to help organisations and institutions identify standards of English and select the staff or students with the right skills.
Aptis is a business-to-business product for use by organisations and institutions to benchmark the English language levels of their employees, potential employees, students or teachers.
Testing English levels from A1-C on the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR), Aptis is an English test for adults (16+), which can assess ability in all four English skills - speaking, listening, reading and writing.
Thursday, April 3, 2014
What do you say after "Hello"? Successfull networking techniques by Barry Tomalin
Most of the world builds business through relationships. How can we teach our students to do this successfully in English? Good listening techniques, effective interviewing techniques, and the ability to show empathy in a foreign language are all part of the strategy. So is knowing the 'do' and 'taboo' topics of conversation. This workshop practises to get networking right - See more at: http://iatefl.britishcouncil.org/2014/sessions/2014-04-02/what-do-you-say-after-hello-successfull-networking-techniques#sthash.7NKPfn2k.dpuf
Wednesday, April 2, 2014
Plenary session by David Graddol | Harrogate Online
Plenary session by David Graddol | Harrogate Online
David Graddol is Director of The English Company (UK) Ltd which provides consultancy and publishing services in applied linguistics, with a special focus on English language and education policy.).
English and economic development
The extraordinary growth in the learning of English around the world has largely been premised on the economic rationale that English will help make its speakers and those countries which invest in it richer. In this plenary I will critically explore the idea that English brings economic benefits.
- See more at: http://iatefl.britishcouncil.org/2014/sessions/2014-04-02/plenary-session-david-graddol#sthash.xqSMSRk0.dpuf
David Graddol is Director of The English Company (UK) Ltd which provides consultancy and publishing services in applied linguistics, with a special focus on English language and education policy.).
English and economic development
The extraordinary growth in the learning of English around the world has largely been premised on the economic rationale that English will help make its speakers and those countries which invest in it richer. In this plenary I will critically explore the idea that English brings economic benefits.
- See more at: http://iatefl.britishcouncil.org/2014/sessions/2014-04-02/plenary-session-david-graddol#sthash.xqSMSRk0.dpuf
Thursday, March 27, 2014
BRITISH COUNCIL IATEFL OFFICIAL BLOGGER
http://iatefl.britishcouncil.org/2014/
For the third consecutive year, EFL TEACHER TRAINING has been chosen as official British Council IATEFL blogger. Follow our posts on the event.
Tuesday, March 25, 2014
Does Washback Exist?
Does Washback Exist?
The notion of ‘washback’ is common in the language teaching and testing literature, and tests are held to be powerful determiners of what happens in classrooms. Claims are made for both negative and positive washback, and some writers go so far as to claim that a test's validity should be measured by the degree to which it has a beneficial effect on teaching. However, very little evidence has been presented to support the argument that tests influence teaching, and what evidence has appeared tends to be based on teachers' accounts of what happens in the classroom rather than on observations of teaching and learning. This article explores the notion of washback and advances a series of possible Washback Hypotheses. It then reviews the empirical research in general education and in language education to see what insights can be gained into whether washback actually exists, how it can be measured, and what accounts for the form it takes. The article concludes with a series of proposals for further research into a phenomenon on whose importance all seem to be agreed, but whose nature and presence have been little studied.
The notion of ‘washback’ is common in the language teaching and testing literature, and tests are held to be powerful determiners of what happens in classrooms. Claims are made for both negative and positive washback, and some writers go so far as to claim that a test's validity should be measured by the degree to which it has a beneficial effect on teaching. However, very little evidence has been presented to support the argument that tests influence teaching, and what evidence has appeared tends to be based on teachers' accounts of what happens in the classroom rather than on observations of teaching and learning. This article explores the notion of washback and advances a series of possible Washback Hypotheses. It then reviews the empirical research in general education and in language education to see what insights can be gained into whether washback actually exists, how it can be measured, and what accounts for the form it takes. The article concludes with a series of proposals for further research into a phenomenon on whose importance all seem to be agreed, but whose nature and presence have been little studied.
Sunday, March 23, 2014
How We Learn and How We Should be Taught: An Introduction to the Work of Caleb Gattegno
How We Learn and How We Should be Taught: An Introduction to the Work of Caleb Gattegno
Young and Messum’s title is a welcome addition to the literature, the first of two volumes aiming to re-present the work of Caleb Gattegno (1911–1988) to a new generation of teachers. During the 1970s and 1980s, many language teachers encountered the Silent Way or heard about it at some remove. They may associate it with coloured rods and word charts, but the Silent Way is neither of those things and is better seen as the language learning application of Gattegno’s much larger vision for education, the Subordination of Teaching to Learning. Gattegno was a scientist, mathematician, psychologist, investigator of human learning, and polyglot (English, which he spoke and wrote both fluently and elegantly was his fifth or sixth language.) Some readers of this review will recall a number of Gattegno’s publications, in particular The Common Sense of Teaching Foreign Languages ([1976] 2010), The Universe of Babies ([1973] 2010), and What we Owe Children ([1971] 2010). More widely read, perhaps, were Earl Stevick’s accounts of the Silent Way, especially in Memory Meaning Method (1976) and Teaching Languages: A Way and Ways (1980). The authors of the title under review would probably describe themselves as committed students of Gattegno’s work. Roslyn Young met Gattegno in 1971 when she saw him teaching Chinese the Silent Way, and Piers Messum met him in Japan in the 1980s while learning Japanese through the Silent Way.
For many teachers in the United Kingdom and elsewhere, the 1970s was a colourful time of professional excitement. The places my colleagues and I worked at thrived on the discussion and testing of rival educational theories and practices. In addition to experience of the successful ‘eclectic’ training originated by International House, teachers were likely to have a passing knowledge of a variety of approaches such as the direct method, …
Moving beyond accuracy: from tests of English to tests of ‘Englishing’
Moving beyond accuracy: from tests of English to tests of ‘Englishing’
This article examines how English is conceptualized in the domain of testing, and particularly the tendency to identify the concepts of ‘standard English’ and ‘native English’ with ‘the language itself’. I argue that such a monolithic view is inconsistent with the diversity of Englishes attestable across both native and non-native users and uses, and that this undermines the inclusion of accuracy criteria in English language tests. Adopting an alternative ‘plurilithic’ orientation, I challenge the traditional view on both cognitive and social grounds, arguing that the Englishes encountered and appropriated by non-native speakers will inevitably be qualitatively different from ‘standard English’ models, and that the effectiveness of the resources learners do develop should be assessed, where appropriate, independently of linguistic criteria. I conclude that a shift is required from tests of English to tests of ‘Englishing’: from testing how people use the language to testing what they can do with it
This article examines how English is conceptualized in the domain of testing, and particularly the tendency to identify the concepts of ‘standard English’ and ‘native English’ with ‘the language itself’. I argue that such a monolithic view is inconsistent with the diversity of Englishes attestable across both native and non-native users and uses, and that this undermines the inclusion of accuracy criteria in English language tests. Adopting an alternative ‘plurilithic’ orientation, I challenge the traditional view on both cognitive and social grounds, arguing that the Englishes encountered and appropriated by non-native speakers will inevitably be qualitatively different from ‘standard English’ models, and that the effectiveness of the resources learners do develop should be assessed, where appropriate, independently of linguistic criteria. I conclude that a shift is required from tests of English to tests of ‘Englishing’: from testing how people use the language to testing what they can do with it
Sunday, March 2, 2014
Saturday, March 1, 2014
Wednesday, January 8, 2014
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