Kristen Acquaviva, Claire Hart Germany (Freelance)

Mobile Learning for Technophobes and Technophiles

Many teachers and learners have mobile devices but may not be exploiting their potential as engaging, effective and practical learning resources. This workshop, in which participants will get a chance to try out several mobile learning activities geared for adult learners, will be of interest to those new to mobile learning and those who already use it in their classrooms.

Kristen Acquaviva is a freelance Business and ESP trainer and teacher trainer based in Germany. She has been providing in-company training, intensive seminars, teaching training workshops and continuing education classes for nearly seven years. Her professional interests include exploring learning technologies in an EFL context and ESP course design.

Claire Hart is a freelance EFL and Business English teacher, teacher trainer and materials writer. She has been working in higher education and corporate settings in Germany for many years. Claire is currently working on materials for German and international publishers and is particularly interested in demystifying technology in the classroom.

Ian Adkins, Devin Unwin British Council Madrid Young Learners Centre

Multiple Intelligences Theory, Pronunciation and ICT – So What's New?

Multiple Intelligences theory (MI) has a myriad of potential uses for teachers, this workshop shows how it can be applied to two seemingly disparate areas: ICT and pronunciation. With a firm focus on MI we will demonstrate a variety of activities and resources. These have been selected specifically to foster learner autonomy and are ICT and/or pronunciation related.

Ian Adkins is a Diploma qualified teacher and has taught EFL for 20 years in Madrid. He has taught adults and young learners. For the last 7 years he has taught at the British Council Young Learners Centre. His main interests are the use of ICT in the classroom, Assessment for Learning and Learner Autonomy.

Devin started teaching English full time in 2008 and joined the British Council Madrid Young Learners Centre in 2010. He has taught in a number of context including in-company business classes and ELT summer schools in London. Since completing his Diploma, he has given training sessions and talks for teachers on topics like Multiple Intelligences theory and pronunciation.

Aoife K. Ahern, María Dolores Pérez Murillo School of Education, UCM

Training Student Teachers to Create Songs for Children

In this presentation, we will describe an initial teacher training project where students at the School of Education, UCM, created songs, chants and rhymes to be used at Infant and Primary schools for daily routines and transitional times. They were able to work in collaboration, develop creative thinking skills, create their own teaching materials and adapt them to their needs.

Aoife K. Ahern works at the School of Education, UCM, where she has been involved in undergraduate and postgraduate teaching. She holds a PhD in Spanish, and BA degrees in both English and Spanish Studies. She has conducted research projects on the teaching and learning of EFL and published in the fields of Cognitive Pragmatics and teaching English to children.

María D. Pérez Murillo is an experienced language teacher and teacher educator at the School of Education, UCM. Her research interests include bilingual classroom interaction and teacher development. Her recent publications focus on multilingual literacies and the students’ views on a bilingual programme. She holds an MA in Applied Linguistics and a PhD in bilingual education from Lancaster University, UK.

Graciela Alchini ITESM, Campus Puebla, Mexico

Going Beyond Technology...Forming a Person

Our 21st century students are digital natives who need to learn in contexts in which technology rules. However, there are other skills and values that are paramount if we want them to succeed and contribute to a better world. The inclusion of collaborative work, ethics and citizenship (among other topics) will be discussed and encouraged in this session.

Graciela Alchini is an Argentinian teacher of English (IESLV, Buenos Aires) living in Mexico, with over 28 years' experience in universities and in-company courses. She holds a Master degree in Distance Education (UTEM, Santiago , Chile). She is certified in Collaborative Learning and Cross-curricular Ethics and Citizenship by ITESM, where she has been a full-time teacher for 10 years.

Laura Alfonso Soler CIPFP Vicente Blasco Ibáñez

Video-Simulations for VET & ESP: A Case Study

Do you know any Professional Simulators used in Vocational Education? How can we emulate them in SL teaching? We will see how useful student’s video-recordings can be for their personal & professional future. A case study from a Master’s Dissertation will be show-cased. Aimed at any teachers wishing to append a future professional view in the classroom.

Laura Alfonso Soler has been a teacher of English for eight years to students of different stages, mostly adults. She taught for one year in the University of Bangkok (Thailand), three years in the Language Centre of the University of Valencia, one year in Secondary Obligatory School, and has lately worked for three years in VET Education in Valencia (Spain).

Juan J. Almagro EOI Madrid

The Speak-a-Motion: an Organic View at Speaking and Evaluation Even though the field of L2 speaking assessment has experimented great advances in terms of intra-rater and inter-rater reliability, teachers’ judgments still seem to be more intuitive than technical (CEFR’s ‘can-do’ statements may not be a systematic reference for practitioners). This presentation could help us understand those more organic aspects of our L2 speaking ability, and how the operationalization of its assessment could take a new direction based on Complex Systems Theory.

Juan holds a Master of Education in TESOL from the University of Edinburgh and has completed Postgraduate coursework in Linguisticsat the State University of New York. He also has a Postgraduate Diploma Teaching of Spanish from the Universidad Complutense Madrid. Currently, he works as an EFL teacher at Escuela Oficial de Idiomas, Madrid and is an EFL Teacher Trainer for Test Prep. Courses: Oposiciones Cuerpo de Secundaria y EOI and Habilitación Lingüística.

Suzanne Anderson British Council Somosaguas

Bringing your Coursebook to Life

This session aims to identify ways we can bring our course books to life and make them more engaging for our learners. It will present participants with a demonstration of how we can adapt or substitute activities with little preparation, give them a bank of ideas to draw on and the opportunity to brainstorm ideas of their own.

Suzanne has been working in ELT for ten years and is currently Senior Teacher for Client Relations and the Junior Department at British Council Somosaguas. She has extensive experience in materials development and is currently working in collaboration with RTVE to provide academic support for the ‘Let’s Clan’ project.

James Baggesen British Council Madrid Adults

Using Wiki-based Collaborative Writing to Develop Writing Skills

The talk aims to illustrate to what extent the use of a wiki by a group of learners to collaboratively produce a single piece of writing facilitates the development of their writing ability.

James has been teaching English for over 20 years most of which has been spent teaching at the British Council in Madrid. He is just about to finish an MA in Digital Technologies, Communication & Education at the University of Manchester.

Kevin Balchin Canterbury Christ Church University, United Kingdom

How Learners Learn … How Teachers Learn

This talk highlights how we might continue to develop as teachers during the course of our everyday working lives. Taking as a starting point, the kinds of activities we ask our students to do, the talk suggests parallel activities that we as teachers might engage in for our own professional development.

Kevin has been working in the Department of English and Language Studies at Canterbury Christ Church University for more than ten years and before that taught English as a Foreign Language in Spain. He contributes to a number of undergraduate and postgraduate teacher training programmes. His main interests are in professional development for language teachers and English language teaching methodology.

Daniel Barber Freelance

Old Dogs, New Tricks: Neuroeducation and the Chronologically Challenged

It is a myth that children learn languages faster and better than adults. Where did this myth come from? What’s wrong with it? What really differentiates young learners and held beliefs and suggests ways we can improve adult learning in and out of the classroom.

Daniel Barber lives in Cadiz where he writes books and materials for learners and teachers. He’s taught kids and grown-ups of all ages. As well as writing he is also a teacher trainer and blogs about language learner coaching. When he can get a moment, he sort of learns Greek and all about brains.

Michael Bennett

Taking the Classroom Outside

Young learners need to be outdoors and they need to move around. TPR activities have always been a great means of getting children to move, play and thus interiorize the information they are receiving. In this workshop I will present different activities and ways to take the classroom outdoors and have kids playing, working together, laughing and really thinking.

Michael Bennett has been working as a Primary Educator for over five years in Madrid. He has dedicated his career to designing activities and exploiting children’s creativity in CLIL environments. He has given various conferences presenting his no-textbook philosophy on teaching and continuously investigates how to maximize student’s learning.

Mª Luisa García Bermejo Universidad Complutense de Madrid

Meeting the Language Education Needs of the 21st Century: Is Teacher Training Doing the Job

What are the training needs of English teachers? Are they any different from the training needs of teachers of other subjects? Are they any different from the needs of 20 years ago? And whose responsibility is training anyway? For this roundtable we’ve brought together a group of trainers with many years of experience in pre- & in-service training to discuss these and more questions and to try to identify a core set of training needs for teachers of and through English. We’ll be asking you for your questions and comments too.

Dr. M. Luisa García Bermejo is an Associate Professor at the School of Education, Complutense University of Madrid, Spain. She holds a PhD in English, an MA and M.Ed. in Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL) and an MA in Spanish. She conducts seminars in English, didactics and the teaching of literature. Her research focuses on Second language Acquisition (SLA), Information and Communication Technology (ICT) and language and literature teaching.

Emma Berrocal, Louise Desmier British Council Madrid Young Learners

Developing Learning Strategies in the Primary Classroom

A successful language learner is independent, willing to take risks and able to reflect on their learning. How can we foster these characteristics in our young learners? In this session, we will look at how to raise awareness of learning strategies in Primary learners by encouraging them to think about their learning and take more responsibility for their own progress.

Emma Berrocal is a teacher and Academic Coordinator at the British Council, Madrid Young Learners. Her position involves teaching Young Learners from age 4, materials development, and delivering INSETT sessions. She has been teaching English to Young Learners for nine years and holds the Trinity TYLEC and Dip.TESOL. Her particular interests include learner training and the psychology of education.

Louise Desmier is a teacher and academic coordinator at the British Council, Madrid Young Learners. She has a wealth of experience in materials development and teacher training and has been involved in a variety of roles, including management. She has the Cambridge Delta and has also been a speaking examiner for the Cambridge Young Learner exams.

Hamish Binns Saint Louis University - Madrid Campus

Are You Who You Think You Are?

Sometimes students claim to be succeeding despite the fact that their grades indicate the opposite, and several recent studies have found that students nowadays tend to perceive themselves to be doing better than they actually are. Although doubts and a lack of self-confidence in students can lead to demotivation, a lack of self-criticism and consciousness can hinder their development.

Hamish Binns is the Modern Languages and ESL Department Coordinator at Saint Louis University - Madrid Campus, but has also worked at a Rudolph Steiner school and in various language academies giving business classes, and runs a yearly English language summer camp in Extremadura. He holds a MA in Human Sciences from Oxford University, is a composer, and plays the spoons.

Isabel Blecua IES La Senda, Getafe/UCM

Scaffolding Reading and Writing for Bilingual Secondary Classes: Reading to Learn in Science

This presentation introduces participants to a Vygotskian-based pedagogy of reading and writing in English as a Foreign Language. After an overview of the genres of school subjects, an example of working with a text using the Reading to Learn pedagogy (Martin and Rose 2012, Rose 2012)) is presented. Participants will then practice preparing the scaffolding for a reading/writing task for Science/Social Sciences

Isabel Blecua Sánchez is an English Teacher and Coordinator of the Bilingual Program at IES La Senda – Getafe. Currently she also teaches at the Department of Teaching Language and Literature in the Teacher Training Faculty of Universidad Complutense Madrid. She studied English Philology at the Universidad de Zaragoza and has a Master’s Degree in Applied Linguistics from Universidade Federal de Brasilia, Brazil. She worked as Education Advisor in Brazil for the Spanish Ministery of Education. She has implemented different courses on Methodology and English Language for teachers. She is a member of the Spanish team for the European Comenius Project “Reading to Learn” and organiser of the Madrid Conference telcon2013 in October this year.

Leslie Bobb Wolff Universidad de La Laguna

CLIL & TESOL? CLIL in TESOL? TESOL in CLIL?

When English teachers move from EFL to CLIL, what changes or adjustments need to be made in the way classes are planned, developed and assessed? We will examine, reflect on & debate these changes. I will also describe, open for discussion, the CLIL postgraduate program now in its third year at the University of La Laguna.

Professor at the University of La Laguna and director of the post graduate CLIL Experto, Leslie Bobb’s areas of research are all interwoven with & carried out in the light of teacher and learner autonomy and now include work with practicing teachers who are “CLIL-ing” in their classes.