A conference and insights

During the second week of the Webskills course I managed some time to attend the 6^th International Conference titled “Multiple Realities of English: ELT & Beyond” organized by Bangladesh English Language Teachers Association (BELTA), British Council Bangladesh, American Center, English in Action and National Academy of Educational Management (NAEM) from 18 to 20 January 2013.

As this blog is used for the purpose of reflective teaching, I thought it would be a good idea to note how this conference created a chance for me not only to mingle with the ELT professionals from around the world but also to have new insights and food for thought.

Adrian Tennant, Freelance Teacher Trainer from the UK spoke about “Some issues in ELT in South Asia.” One particular idea that Adrian emphasized is that Bangladesh need to address the ELT issues and work out the solutions to problems by the help of the ELT teachers who directly work with Bangladeshi students in the field level rather than bringing in foreign ‘experts’ (he actually professed to ban the word ‘expert’) to offer solutions or design curriculum. He also opined that it’s important to incorporate ‘relevant’ technology rather than the ‘latest’ in the concerned field.

In a workshop session “What kind of teacher am I” Adrian made the audience (ELT teachers, practitioners) reflect on which type of teacher we are – someone who fills in the students with information, someone who molds, someone who shows direction or someone who help students grow. With his ‘iceberg analogy’ he focused that teachers’ values, thoughts and beliefs control their behavior which is the only visible factor. Teachers should understand multiple intelligences and different learning styles in a class and thus use such an assessment which is a fit one.

George Pickering, Educational Coach from the UK conducted a workshop on “Involving learners in beginnings, middles and ends of lessons.” Most teachers concentrate on the middle of lesson but beginnings and ends are the parts that stick to learners’ mind more because of the primacy and recency effect. Frequent breaks and change of activities provide lot of new beginnings in one lesson and thus is more rewarding. I personally implemented one little game that I learnt from his workshop into my class today. The students were required to stand back to back and describe what his/her partner is wearing (photo). George’s plenary session “Changing ourselves in changing times” was the most rewarding to me. I got introduced with lot of new terms like CLIL (Content and Language Integrated Learning), flipped learning, prosumers (producers and consumers), phlog (photo log) etc. The main idea of this session was - change is inevitable and we should welcome change as a friend other than an enemy.

Eric Dwyer, Associate Professor in Modern Language Association, Florida International University, in his plenary paper “Starting with our students’ stories” (http://www.ericsdwyer.info) shared his travelogs and pointed out the importance of generating culture friendly materials for language classrooms rather than importing foreign books and materials in Bangladesh.

Fife MacDuff, US Regional English Language Officer for South Asia, introduced second life (virtual learning process) for students of 12-16 age group in his “The latest on multimedia games for learning/teaching English.”

Kathryn Kelly, English Language Advisor, British Council in her workshop on “Language skills development: can’t speak, won’t speak?” showed the importance of simplicity in case of making students speak by providing stimuli like a photograph, playing memory game etc. Teachers do not need a lot of resources and technology to create the reason for students to speak. I felt this was very relevant because in lot of villages in Bangladesh there’s a scarcity of resources in the classroom. Teachers’ willpower is the only available driving force.

I thoroughly enjoyed a debate session on the topic “ELT is killing the learning of Bangladesh” where theorists and practitioners debated on the methodology change, curriculum, textbooks etc.

Bringing about changes and adapting to it, and the feeling of empowerment as a teacher inspire me as the aftermath of the conference.