The 19th IATEFL Hungary Annual Conference
Global Skills for Local Needs
Facing Challenges in 21st Century Classrooom
2 – 4 October 2009, Balassi Institute, Budapest
Friday
The plenary talk Let’s put the language back into language teaching! by Éva Illés was followed by four Thematic Strands – Culture and Literature, ICT, Young Learners, Teacher Education and Professional Development. I attended the ICT Special Interest Group Programme. I especially liked the talk by Uwe Pohl and Zsuzsa Lindner called Signs of the Times: What an Interactive White Board can(not) do for you.
During the reception I had a chat with old friends from IATEFL Hungary, Danuta Ruranska from Poland, Yeo Grenville from SOL and I met some new friends from Hungary, the Netherlands, Slovenia, Croatia, …
After the reception we witnessed the launch of a new CD by ‘Simply English‘. Andy Rouse, Bulcsú Babarci and Tamás Zajzon introduced songs from their latest album the Rosy Apples – Children’s songs of the souhern shires.
Saturday
In the morning plenary 1 ½ pillars of wisdom: Globalisation and language teaching Tamás Kiss used his own experience of teaching and working as a teacher trainer in Hungary and Singapore. He has studied in the UK and Poland and has taught in 18 different countries.
My workshop A Walk through Bath was scheduled at 10.30, then I visited the ELT exhibition and to relax I went for a walk to the nearby Gellért Hill, which offers a beautiful view of Buda, Pest, the Buda Castle, the Chain Bridge and the Danube.
The afternoon programme started with Herbert Puchta‘s plenary On being a teacher – management skills versus leadership qualities. Herbert Puchta is the author of a number of textbooks, a teacher trainer and also the President of the IATEFL UK. Here are a few points from the plenary.
W I T ≠ W T L what I teach is not what they (students) learn
Leadership qualities
stay calm
give students confidence
describe what is going to happen
Management Leadership
getting things done through others x getting others to do things
Leadership is about creating a world that people want to belong to
Leadership is about creating classroom culture our students want to belong to
Leadership
empathy
acceptance – accept students with their strengths and weaknesses as human beings; however, that doesn’t mean accepting disruptive behaviour
congruence – admit you don’t know things
Nowadays, it is difficult to earn respect.
The Freedom Writers
Leadership qualities
enthusiasm
empowering students – believe in students‘ cans; success comes in cans, not in can’ts
developing students‘ thinking skills
use of gossip – friendly chat/small talk (gossip – originally intimate friendly chat between godparents and godchildren)
use of humour
knowing when to step back
Jasmina Sazdovska in Hooks: Attention-grabbers guaranteed to wake up a snoozing class or audience introduce fun activities such as jokes, quotations, Murphology, proverbs, etc.
David A. Hill showed how a teacher can ‘CLIL‘ a coursebook. I found this demo lesson on whales called CLIL-ing Your Coursebook: a realistic interim approach to CLIL very useful.
building on knowledge students have – group work – what do you know about whales
reading text 1 –bank of new information
picture – using info from text, comprehension check through questions
reading text 2 + questions
reading text 3 + comprehension check
Conclusion: Look at the coursebook and choose a topic, build on students‘ knowledge, find real information, make it interesting.
Have you heard about Pecha Kucha? As this is what followed on Saturday evening.
Pecha Kucha (ペチャクチャ?), usually pronounced in three syllables like "pe-chak-cha", is a presentation format in which content can be easily, efficiently and informally shown, usually at a public event designed for that purpose. Under the format, a presenter shows 20 images for 20 seconds apiece, for a total time of 6 minutes, 40 seconds. (Wikipedia)
I especially enjoyed Lyndsay Clandfield’s presentation on inventions for teachers which included a remote control that would silence disruptive students or make them give clever answers when you need it. Then, Mark Andrews’ presentation compared the history of Budapest bridges to the history of ELT.
At about 10 p. m. Andrew Miles took us for a night walk to the Gellért Hill to enjoy Budapest by night. It was rather surprising to see so many tourists as well as locals there.
Sunday
After Gordon Lewis’ plenary Bringing Technology into the Classroom I attended Herbert Puchta’s workshop Creativity and Grammar Teaching. Unfortunately, I could not participate in the Open Forum ’Global Skills for Local Needs’ – What are YOUR Views? as I wanted to make sure I would not miss my train back home.
Michaela Trnová
