The Future of
English Language
Teaching Conference

Main-G  About-G  Events-P

BREAKOUT SESSIONS 2

Saturday 26 June, 11:15 - 12:00 (UK time)

Awareness is growing of some of the negative impacts of ELT on the climate, and of the opportunities the community has to tackle climate change through its classrooms. This talk will explore some of the next steps around climate change that the ELT community can consider taking, as it emerges from the Covid pandemic.

The talk will reference the British Council’s ‘Climate Action in Language Education’ project that the speaker was involved in, explaining a little about the structure of the project and its findings and outcomes. The session will focus on approaches that might be taken by a range of different ELT stakeholders as well as highlighting some of the types of initiative that have already been put into place. It is hoped that the sharing of ideas and best practices will encourage members of the global ELT community to revaluate and develop both their operations and delivery, and the content of what they teach or publish, in the context of the climate crisis.

Even amidst the exceptional expansion of scientific and technological advancements in the 21st century, the increasing rate of mental health issues , interpersonal violence; lack of skills required to meet the demands of the new age economy in young learners indicate the dehumanizing nature of the existing education system. When it comes to a Second Language Learning classroom, the individual cultural repertoire of the learners are pushed to the corner in the attempt to highlight the target language culture. And it creates a major gap between the learners’ real life experiences and the learning expectations outlined by the curriculum. It fails to address the most crucial goal of education i.e. preparing the learners as sensible and compassionate human beings who are capable of peaceful co-existence and open to the innovative possibilities of progress. A language classroom being a potential space for healthy intercultural exchange, and honing learners’ perception towards the world, it is vital to bring a framework which is culturally-responsive for them. Social-Emotional Learning framework with its focus on both individual as well as the social dimension of human personality makes it possible to acknowledge and explore the multilayered identities of the learners. This talk aims to explore how the Social-Emotional Learning could be a potential framework to make the ESL classrooms more culturally responsive for the learners. The study is based in the Indian context and in its preliminary stage of exploration at present.

Keywords: Social-Emotional Learning, Culturally-Responsive Learning, ESL , SLL

The 2020 Covid pandemic threw us all into uncharted waters and placed heavy demands on both teachers and students. Face-to-face instruction had to be swiftly replaced by remote emergency teaching forcing us to understand new tools, rethink the way we communicate, deal with unexpected distractions, and adapt to a new way of receiving and processing information in a foreign language. These challenges taxed students’ mental resources heavily and resulted in an almost permanent mental fatigue.


The Cognitive Load Theory (CLT), initially developed by Sweller in 1988 to understand cognitive processes and improve learning outcomes, can offer us a comprehensive insight into this phenomena: the lack of concentration and fatigue might be direct consequences of a constant cognitive overload. As flexible and resilient as it, the human brain can only cope with so much newness at any given time. Although it has become more relevant in recent times, this cognitive overload is not a problem exclusive to a pandemic world or live online lessons; it can take place anywhere affecting the way we process information and ultimately, the way we learn.


For teachers, CLT is an essential tool to understand the architecture of students’ cognitive systems, how the working memory works and how to properly stimulate it. Wise decisions on the ‘what’, ‘how’, ‘how much’, and ‘for how long' can make learning more effective by increasing and improving long-term retention of information.


This session will examine the Cognitive Load Theory framework and how its key principles can be applied to ELT. It will identify simple, brain-friendly strategies, for both online and face-to-face lessons, to properly adjust the cognitive load we place on our students in a way that facilitates and maximizes learning.

A community of practice is a collection of individuals who engage in some common endeavour. Such communities emerge in response to conditions that then orient participants’ view of and relationship with the surrounding environment. Social constructivism in education describes the process of learning and improvement whereby new meaning is negotiated through the medium of language and knowledge is formed. It recognises that what might be impossible for one becomes possible for two in co-constructed learning space. The Trinity TESOL ethos of social constructivism means that it is possible for it to cater for the diverse communities of practice that the TESOL world encompasses. Given that TESOL practices are socially constructed and organically regulated by the community in which they are situated, the knowledge which these practices embody is only bounded by the community from it they springs. The first step in developing reliable and valid tests is to determine what the test is targeting, or to put it more technically, to define the construct. To define something is to describe its exact limits, or to fix it clearly and distinctly. These two conditions, of unbounded socially constructed knowledge and a clearly demarcated construct, may seem antithetical. How can this gap be bridged? What do testers need to consider when developing assessments of subject knowledge held in communities? This talk will consider these questions in the light of experiences in the development of two TESOL qualifications.

The purpose of this session is to provide a series of techniques to extend and enhance your course books in order to awaken motivation in your students. As it can be tedious to do the same activities which usually lead to useless feedback, we are going to show you how to deal with the day to day difficulties of teaching English. We will encourage your students to receive positive feedback and work with new multisensory activities to practice the different skills in your classroom. With that, we will reach our goal: confirm understanding, achieve learner agency and develop critical thinking, since you will also be able to adapt your course book, using it as a tool, to achieve inclusiveness in your classroom. Technology, creativity and innovation will help us to transform your course books into the most enjoyable class!

REGISTER

JOIN THE 2021 ONLINE CONFERENCE

Use the button below to book your free place at the Future of English Language Teaching Conference

 

FOELT-BOOK-NOW-01

Trinity College London is a leading international exam board and independent education charity that has been providing assessments around the world since 1877.

Quick Links

Trinitycollege.com

Copyright © 2022 Trinity College London