TESOL Macedonia-Thrace Northern Greece E-Bulletin Issue 45

BULLETINTesol Macedonia-Thrace Northern Greece

eIssue 45

Jun/Jul/Aug 2013

Tel: [email protected]

www.tesolmacthrace.org

In this issue:

A Report on the IATEFL Conference in Liverpool(p. 11)

TESOL Greece 34th Annual Convention in Athens(p. 13)

Report on the 11th ELTA Serbia Conference(p. 10)

SEETA News(p. 9)

The Desirable and the Possible(IATEFL article) ( p. 17)

an associate member

Alice and the Others in Wonderland(IATEFL article) (p. 19)

TED meets ELT(p. 20)

Don’t miss!

Rich

post-convention

issue!

N.Sifakis: Αγγλική Γλώσσακαι Παγκοσμιοποίηση(p. 26)

First of all, hats off to everyone who was involved in our 20th Annual Convention.

Excellent organisation and dedicated hard work by all mem-bers of the board along with invaluable support from our sponsors and exhibitors ensured a thoroughly memorable weekend. Pleasant weather, an excellent venue, edifying and entertaining presentations, good facilities and a warm, friendly atmosphere – all of this and more characterised the conven-tion. What really lies at the heart of a convention such as this, aside from the plenary presentations, is the rich variety of work-shops and presentations that go on throughout the two days. Those attending had the opportunity to listen to both their own colleagues from the region and speakers from Italy, Bul-garia, Serbia and Turkey talking on a range of topics of profes-sional interest and relevance to their teaching circumstances. A big thank you to all of you who took part. Here are just a few comments we received by e-mail shortly after the convention:-

‘Thank you for giving practicing teachers like us this won-derful opportunity to become presenters and share our experience with other people.’

‘It was a huge pleasure to participate in such an inspiring and fun convention!’

‘There was very positive feedback almost immediately from participants and other presenters, and I have to ad-mit that I have become an official fan. I look forward to other events.’

You can read more about the convention elsewhere in this bul-letin.

The American College of Thessaloniki kindly hosted the event and allowed us full use of their excellent facilities. Special thanks must also go to Burlington Books for their unwavering support for our organisation and thanks also to Express Pub-lishing, HAU and InputonEducation for their contributions. For a non-profit Teachers’ Association this kind of sponsorship is vi-tally important and enables the organisation to offer its mem-bers the kind of professional development they deserve.

I must also mention that the British Council sponsored our former Vice-Chair, Rea Tsougari, and current Supervisory Com-mittee member Anna Parisi to attend their weekend seminar in Serbia on Fund Raising for Teachers’ Associations. The semi-nar was attended by representatives of 18 different TAs from around the Eastern and South Eastern European, and all the participants received a wealth of information and shared ex-perience on how to raise funds which, in these hard times, will be vital to the continued well-being of our own organi-sation. Anna and Rea will be organising a workshop on what they learnt later in the year so that successive boards can reap the full benefit of it. From now on co-operation should be the name of the game.

Looking beyond the forthcoming summer holidays, there is our annual Welcome Back Event on October 20th to note down in your diaries. There will be at least two main presentations, but of equal importance is the AGM and the fact that this year is an election year for a new board. Your vote will be important, and I would ask you all to consider what benefits you might gain from becoming a board member.

With the exam period now over it only remains for me to wish you all a relaxing summer break and leave you with Nat King Cole. ‘Roll out those lazy, hazy, crazy days of summer.’

Roger House

Many thanks to our Convention Sponsors (in strictly alphabetical order)

American College of Thessaloniki

Burlington Books

Express Publishing

Hellenic American Union

InputonEducation

And those that have supported us:

International Publishers

Study Space

Oxford University Press

Editorial Team

Bulletin Editors: Phil Holland

Brigitte Mottet-DidaskalouDora Pontika

Writers:Phil Holland Roger HouseMike Hughes

Richard Kiely (IATEFL)Errika Petrotou

Adrian Tennant (IATEFL)George Topalis

Dimitris Tzouris & Margarita KosiorKatie Quartano & Paul Shaw

Photography:Nathan Pratt

Design & Layout:Konstantina Kyratzidou

ΕΚΔΟΤΗΣΙΔΙΟΚΤΗΤΗΣ-ΕΚΔΟΤΗΣ

Roger House(ΠΡΟΕΔΡΟΣ ΤΗΣ ΕΝΩΣΗΣ ΓΙΑ ΤΗ ΔΙΔΑΣΚΑΛΙΑ ΤΗΣ ΑΓΓΛΙΚΗΣ ΓΛΩΣΣΑΣ

ΣΤΗΝ ΜΑΚΕΔΟΝΙΑ ΚΑΙ ΘΡΑΚΗ)

TESOL MACEDONIA-THRACENORTHERN GREECE

tel.: (0030)6976845202e mail: [email protected]

A VIEW FROM

THE CHAIR

Sunday, 16th June 2013 8:30 pm

Special prices:

2€ first wine/beer/soft drink 20% discount on other drinksFinger food

Del Arte cafe Bar LoungeWhite Tower Square - Vassiliko Theatre

★Stay entertained with us- quizzes, drinks and chatting!★No entrance fees!★Open to non-members!

‘

Summer fun event

Contact details: (0030) 6976845202, [email protected], www.tesolmacthrace.org

invites old friends and welcomes new members

Thursday, June 13, 2013

20th Annual International

Convention9th-10th March 2013

@

‘”ELT-the What &the How”

byRoger House

3

Pleasant weather, an excellent venue, edifying and en-tertaining presentations, and a warm, friendly atmo-sphere – all of this and more characterised the TESOL Macedonia-Thrace, Northern Greece 20th Annual Con-vention at the American College of Thessaloniki.

Bright and early on Saturday morning the first plenary presentation entitled ‘New Literacies: Teachers & Learn-ers.’ was given by Gavin Dudeney, in which he examined how the digital age has forced teachers to reassess their approach to the traditional 'three rs' (reading, writing and arithmetic), long considered the cornerstones of basic literacy/numeracy. He gave some suggestions as to what it means to be digitally literate and explored the new types of literacy that have emerged with the advent of Web 2.0. He followed this up later in the day with a practical workshop demonstrating these kinds of online tools. As a teacher, materials developer, IT man-ager and web/user interface designer based in the UK, Gavin is at the cutting edge of learning technologies.

Later on Saturday Tom Godfrey, the second plenary speaker, talked about ‘Whole Person Learning: The New Way’ and explained what a whole person approach to language learning is and that some traditional values need to be re-examined. He focused on the practical issues of developing skills in a monolingual classroom environment by recognising the importance of satisfy-ing our students' physical, psychological and linguistic needs. Tom, who is based in Turkey, shared his experi-ence as a teacher trainer in his Sunday morning work-shop, which explored using drama techniques in Eng-lish language teaching.

After a morning round of workshops, Nicos Sifakis, who is an assistant professor in the School of Humanities of the Hellenic Open University (HOU), gave the third ple-nary presentation on ‘Differentiated Instruction: a way forward for teachers.’ which is an approach to teach-ing that takes into account learners' differences. He reviewed the essential principles of differentiated in-struction and considered the practical aspects in terms of ways in which teachers can reflect on and evaluate the impact of their own practice, which he developed further in his follow-up workshop.

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conventionreport! David A. Hill is a freelance consultant and teacher

trainer based in Budapest with a lot of experience in writing educational materials for both language and literature work. All of which he put to good effect in the final plenary presentation, which was on the topic of ‘Language Play & Creative Language Learn-ing’. According to David, playing with language is one of the fundamental ways in which humans learn to speak their mother tongue and it has been seriously neglected in the EFL/ESL classroom. In both this ple-nary and his workshop he worked his way through a series of examples and showed how these might be used in class to develop learners’ language aware-ness.

What really lies at the heart of a convention such as this is the rich variety of workshops and presenta-tions that go on throughout the two days. Those at-tending had the opportunity to listen to both their own colleagues from the region and speakers from Italy, Bulgaria, Serbia and Turkey talking on a range of topics of professional interest and relevance to their teaching circumstances. Rock & Roll in the classroom, Dickens and the price and value of education, car-toons, on-line courses, TED talks, story telling, dicta-tion, the feelgood factor in teaching and fairy tales were just some of the themes touched on. The op-portunity to learn and share is what made the con-vention such a success, and this is all down to the people who participated.

The Pecha Kucha evening has now become a regu-lar feature of the convention. In a highly entertaining sequence of consecutive six-minute-forty-second presentations the audience enjoyed a poem about moths, the history of pecha kucha itself, a celebra-tion of 20 years of TESOL Macedonia-Thrace, North-ern Greece, bizarre book titles, a humorous look at the classroom and even a song and dance routine. David A Hill, Malgorzata Kosior, Maria Sachpazian, Gavin Dudney, Nikos Sifakis and Tom Godfrey pro-vided the entertainment ably compered by Phil Holland. The fun was followed by a buffet kindly sponsored by Burlington Books. TESOL Macedonia-Thrace, Northern Greece would also like to thank the Hellenic American Union, Express Publishing, the British Council and InputonEducation, as well as our host, ACT, for all their help and support in making it a weekend to remember.

Gavin Dudeney


Convention

‘New Literacies: Teachers and Learners’

by Roger House

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Whether you consider yourself to be a digital native or a digital immigrant, there is no escaping the fact that the new learning technologies are here to stay and we might as well face up to it. Considering my own status to be that of an immigrant, I found Gavin Dudeney’s Saturday morn-ing plenary presentation gave me something of a refresh-ing perspective on the whole issue.

Gavin began with a personal history of his own involve-ment with computers and ICT and surprisingly, given his current involvement with on-line learning, he confessed to having started his teaching career as an unrepentant immigrant. He soon, however, discovered the error of his ways. Then he moved on to a definition of what he meant by ‘digital literacy’ by giving the following quotation – “the ability to understand and use information in multiple for-mats from a whole range of sources” and unpacked, as it were, the four main areas in which this literacy operates. Print code, he explained, was the ability to manipulate the digital environment and involved competency with

conventionreport!

text messaging. He also mentioned ‘hyperlink heroin’ and the ability, or inability, to stay focused on a task without wandering off into cyberspace. The key element, though, was the search skill, which takes in tagging, bookmarking and the process of selecting and organising information. All this, he suggested, constituted what he termed DSL or Digital as a Second Language.

After showing how we all create a ‘digital footprint’ – Face-book being the most conspicuous example of this type of ‘identity management’ – he posed the question of how far your online image defines you and what the possible drawbacks to this type of exposure can be. I needn’t, I think, go any further into this as we are all aware of ex-actly what they might be. At this point he decided to test us all with an ‘Are you digitally literate?’ quiz. I didn’t note down all the questions, but they ranged from ‘Is opening your e-mail inbox the first thing you do in the morning? to ‘Do you have your own blog?’ My own score was quite low, thus confirming my immigrant status.

‘Is any of this really important?’ he asked. Well, yes it is, be-cause, as he said, shift happens. The major shift that has occurred in recent years is the speed at which information is gathered, resulting in a new kind of mobility. For this reason technology should play an integrated role in the curriculum and, as teachers, we all need to become ‘tech savvy’ in order to feel comfortable with the new learning technologies. This involves not only adopting a positive attitude but also undertaking specific training to improve our skills. I just wish I’d known all this ten years ago.

You can catch the plenaries as well

as interviews with the speakers by

Joanna Chletsi on YouTube. The

Pecha Kucha Evening is there too.

Fresh Video did the shooting and

editing.

David A.Hill


Convention

David A. Hill – Playing with Language

by Mike Hughes

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conventionreport!

David started his talk joking about the many impostors bearing the same name and how he had been forced to add a middle initial to avoid confusion – he also alluded to how he had been given the ‘graveyard slot’ – the last session in the convention when many people may have left. But in fact he was talking to a full hall, a tribute both to the power of the 20th Annual Convention and to wide interest in the speaker and his topic!

His subtle sense of humour pervaded his talk and, not sur-prisingly, perhaps, the title was “Playing with Language”. David looked at some of the fun things that can be done with language and how to include entertaining elements in lessons based on language itself, a kind of double bo-nus. He mentioned how ‘play’ is something that charac-terizes animals of a higher order. His knowledge of nature and particularly the animal kingdom was something we had already admired during his very successful Pecha Ku-cha talk on the world of moths. He went on to talk about the wonderful world of horses and explained some as-pects of “the Horse Whisperer”.

David gave us some personal examples of playing with language from his own family situation in Hungary before turning to Fairy Tales and how chants and familiar stories, through their repetitive elements, patterns and rhymes, can be useful in the language classroom. Examples given here included the well-known “Little Red Riding Hood”. These things are used by native speakers with their own children and he asked why we ignore them in EFL.

As an EFL writer, David gave an interesting insight into some of the constraints that are placed on him and col-leagues. The commercial reality of EFL coursebooks means that any elements which could potentially offend any of the myriad markets tend to be left out, and some-times this makes for bland subject material. Most jokes, he reflected, are based on subjects which are taboo and this means that humour, unfortunately, has to be exclud-ed from coursebooks.

David went on to give many examples of things which can be used in the language classroom including the fa-mous knock-knock jokes, wordplay and the ever-popular and creative subject of graffiti. He showed us some fun postcards based on “Lost Consonants” by Graham Rawle, which I know have been used by teachers to add interest and fun to their language classrooms.

All in all, it was a very interesting and enriching talk from a person with a very individual, stimulating point of view. It made for an excellent end to an excellent conference.

Tom Godfrey


Convention

Whole Person Learning, The New Way

And the Oscar goes to…

by Errika Petrotou

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conventionreport!

True to his plenary title and teaching principles, Tom God-frey’s presentation involved the participants and shook them from head to toe! To begin with, for the purpose of warming up our vocal cords (one of the main tools of our trade) and increasing our concentration, we were trans-formed into owls, emitting vowel sounds and moving our heads in an owlish manner.

He then moved on to clarify what Whole Person Learn-ing is about. Tom Godfrey advocates a new holistic ap-proach to learning, away from the old main principles of materialism, reductionism and determinism. The old way revolved around materialism, i.e. the principle that only matter matters. What Tom Godfrey put forward is that it’s not a question of matter but a question of that invisible energy that shapes and connects matter. What really mat-ters is to shape and channel that energy into a meaning-ful learning experience for our students.

The second old dominant way under question is that of reductionism. This principle reduces the whole to its parts, segregates, compartmentalizes. But learning goals would be impossible to achieve without the synergy of all our dimensions, that is, the body (learning through do-ing) the mind (learning cognitively) and the spirit (learn-ing by relating to things emotionally). Extending this new

view, teachers should also bear in mind that what works one day in one class in all probability will not work the same way in other classes.

Finally, contrary to the old principle of determinism, knowledge cannot be standardized (what Tom calls “The McDonald’s Syndrome”). It’s not a commodity that is passed on from teachers to learners. Learners are called to actively make sense of what they are being taught, to make knowledge their own by interpreting it in their own unique, individual way, and that’s what makes learning possible.

To demonstrate and consolidate this new holistic ap-proach, Tom embarked on the dramatization of a story that takes place in the Wild West, taking his eager audi-ence along for the ride. After some necessary preliminary steps such as setting the scene, putting pictures in order (engaging the mind), eliciting the story through mime (engaging the body), then came the casting. Every ani-mate and inanimate role was duly cast; the sheriff, the vil-lains, the unsuspecting bystander, the horse, the cactus, everyone and everything came to life (engaging the spir-it). The outcome was pure, unadulterated fun and learn-ing, the new, whole-person way. My unreserved advice to fellow teachers is to try it wholeheartedly. It will surely make your students feel like they are accomplished Oscar winners!

Dr. Nicos Sifakis


Convention

Sifakis Speaks on D.I. as the new M.O.

by Phil Holland

8

Dr. Nicos Sifakis of Hellenic Open University spoke on “Dif-ferentiated instruction: a way forward for teachers”. He was also a plenary speaker in 2005, when he spoke on Eng-lish as an international language, a subject that lies at the center of his recently published book, Αγγλική γλώσσα και παγκοσμιοποίηση (Herodotos 2012, reviewed below on p. 26). He is both a researcher into ELT methodology and a teacher trainer with wide experience with the teaching of English in Greek public schools.

He began is talk by saying that, despite its technical-sound-ing name, differentiated instruction offers a simple proposi-tion: “catering to all your learners’ individual learning needs”. He also quoted Earl (2003):

“Differentiation is making sure that the right students get the right learning tasks at the right time. Once you have a sense of what each student holds as ‘given’ or ‘known’ and what he or she needs in order to learn, differentiation is no longer an option. It is an obvious response.”

That may be easier said than done, but Nicos showed practi-cal ways to accomplish it.

The brief video he showed of an American math classroom was eye-opening. Students were working independently and in small groups to solve problems. Some were at the board, some seated at clusters of desks or at tables around the room. There was movement and, it appeared, a sense of purpose. It took a while for a viewer to pick out the teacher. And yet it was apparent that the teacher had set in motion an environment that allowed learners to work at their own pace, getting help from their peers or the teacher himself if necessary. Many lessons were going on at once; no learner was left behind, and no one appeared to be disengaged. There were no obvious boundaries, but there was no disor-der. The class simply went about its business in a way that appeared to have become habitual. No one was looking out the window.

Nicos characterized differentiated instruction as a way of thinking. Its cardinal points are learner (and learning) cen-teredness, teacher autonomy, and ICT enhancement. “The coursebook is dead,” he pronounced. In its place the teacher orchestrates activities that will enable her students – with their diversity of levels, motives, backgrounds, and learning styles – to move ahead in their acquisition of English (or of

any subject) as the individuals they are. “One size does not fit all,” he stated, proposing instead the following principles:

• Every student is worthy of dignity and respect (Freire).• Diversity is both inevitable and positive.• The classroom should mirror the kind of society in which we want our students to live.• Most students can learn most things that are essential to a given area of study.

The presentation had a lively visual component, as Nicos showed some paintings of the classrooms of the historical past, in many of which it was clear that differentiated in-struction was going on, though in those days it was simply known as “school”.

Teachers can differentiate content, process, and product, Nicos maintained, according to learners’ affect, readiness, in-terests, and ways of learning. He proposed a number of strat-egies to manage this, including stations, journals, tiered ac-tivities, learning contracts, compacting, independent study, and the use of portfolios.

He also sketched a larger context for these methods, namely that the world is increasingly demanding professionals who can solve problems, innovate, create, and both think for themselves and collaborate with others. The learning skills that we should be developing in students we should be ex-emplifying as teachers, Nicos noted, and suggested ways for teachers to apply the principles of DI in their own profes-sional lives. In short, it was a talk with both a conceptual and practical dimension that offered plenty of material for reflec-tion and a blueprint for change.

A video of the talk is available on YouTube, along with an in-terview of Nicos by Joanna Chletsi, and the slides he showed are available on request from Nicos at [email protected]

conventionreport!

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and much more at http://www.seeta.eu

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Young Learners: Tips and Tricks!

Anastasia Loukeris, Nora Touparlaki, Ljubica Ruzinska & Sandra VidaOn-going

Teacher’s Lounge Ongoing community ForumDo you want to share your teaching ideas or find new ones? Or do you feel like chatting about this and that? Do you have a problem you’d like to discuss? Welcome to the Teacher’s lounge

SEETA WebchatA monthly chat on a wide selection of ELT topics. Feel free to share your comments and why not? your camera and microphone? Join and share your ideas, tips and experience LIVE! See you in the conference room!

On-going forum ! Steliyana Dulkova

Magic tricks and fun for young learners . Join us and share the fun . And lots of activities and games for young learners!

On-line SEETA course

June 2013Sirin Soyoze-portfolios

An e-portfolio is a creative means of organizing, summarizing, and sharing artifacts, information, and ideas about teaching and/or learning, along with personal and professional growth. Creating e-portfolios supports the updating of skills and personal development planning.During this SEETA course we construct our own e-portfolios and share issues in 2 webinars with Sirin !

Webchat and Teachers’ Lounge

Report on the 11th ELTA Serbia Conference

by Phil Holland

I attended the ELTA Serbia IATEFL Annual Convention in Belgrade on May 10-11 as the TESOL Mac-Thrace repre-sentative. Each organization hosts a delegate from the other at our annual conventions, in return for a presenta-tion by the delegate.

Getting to Belgrade was easy, as was reaching the des-ignated hotel in the center of town. The conference was held at the Faculty of Education of the University of Belgrade, an old building but with all mod cons. I was struck at the Opening Ceremony by the presence on the dais of representatives from the British Council and the British and U.S. embassies in addition to the leaders of ELTA Serbia. It was clear from the brief speeches given by those officials that the promotion of the English lan-guage in Serbia has official Anglo-American sup-port. There are “American Corners” in many Serbian towns, and the British Council spreads its influence in similar ways.

“Makes a change,” as they say in Brit-ain. You will recall (I recall! – and I spoke to those who recalled) the NATO bombing of Slobodan Milos-evic’s Belgrade in 1999. In order to encourage a more democratic and Western-friendly Serbia (the diplomats didn’t actually use those words at the conference), the Anglo-American powers (I consider myself a foot soldier) are promot-ing the study of English in this former member of the Communist bloc that has aspirations of joining the EU. They want to open Serbia up to the English-speaking world. From the look of the stores, restaurants, and cin-emas in downtown Belgrade, the West (in the form of the usual suspects) has already arrived, but I noticed that there were no English-language newspapers or maga-zines at the kiosks yet.

The acquisition of English is happening fast, however, if the energy of ELTA Serbia as an organization and the professional ambitions of those attending the confer-ence are any indication. The English-language skits by school children at the Friday banquet were also proof that the coming generation will be proficient in English; idiomatic language rolled off the tongues of 12 year-old mock pirates. ELTA Serbia was celebrating 10 years of op-eration, and its sense of mission was palpable. The con-

ference was well attended (about 250 participants) and efficiently run by hosts who were hospitable and helpful.

Publishers too have taken notice and sponsored many of the plenary talks, which largely featured speakers from abroad. Thessaloniki’s own Jeanne Perrett was the first of them, speaking on “Context, content, and emotion in lan-guage learning”, complete with a mass-participation Bol-lywood dancing routine. The conference theme was “He who dares to teach must never cease to learn”, and many talks highlighted new trends in ELT, from textbook design and technology to approaching students with special needs. The curious can find the full line-up of talks on the ELTA Serbia website. My own presentation, on “Word Choice (50 Shades of Meaning)”, was well attended, de-

spite being one of the last on the program (I would have stayed anyway…).

The highlight (for me) was the dinner provided on a boat (or was it a barge?) on the Danube. Serbian raki, wine, and slivovitz accompanied Serbian sau-sages and lively talk. After the student skits there was a raffle, and when a school owner won a week-long sum-

mer teacher development workshop in Devon, she promptly donated it to a

teacher at my table who had managed to learn excellent English without ever having

been abroad. Yes, that called for another round.

I should also mention that ELTA Serbia puts out an im-pressive newsletter, or rather magazine, as the “m” in its name (“melt”) signifies. That’s also available on-line.

Thinking of some ELT tourism next year? There’s a direct flight from Thessaloniki, and food and lodging in Belgrade are about half of what you’d have to pay here.

Once again, warm thanks to my hosts.

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A Report on the IATEFL Conference LiverpoolApril 8-12, 2013By Katie Quartano

The Disabled Access Friendly campaign had the honour to win the first Julia Tanner Memorial Scholarship co-sponsored by TESOL Macedonia-Thrace, N. Greece and Burlington books.

The scholarship gave us the opportunity to make a presentation at one of the major events on the international ELT calendar, the annual IATEFL conference, which this year was held in Liverpool, U.K.

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This event attracts approximately 3,000 delegates from all over the world, and if you visit IATEFL’s website www.iatefl.org you can find a copy of the conference programme. We were given this as a hard copy, and it was the fattest, fullest and heaviest programme we have ever seen!

TESOL Macedonia-Thrace, N. Greece, is an affiliate member of IATEFL, and I had the pleasure of represent-ing the organization at the dinner on Sunday evening which was organized for affiliates, staff and volunteers, at which David Crystal, the patron of IATEFL, Eric Baber, the outgoing president, and others gave speeches. It was a great delight to find myself sitting at the same table as people whose names I recognized as the au-thors of most of the coursebooks I used when studying for the CELTA qualification, and I tried hard not to make any grammatical mistakes in conversation.

On Monday, Paul gave a presentation at the Global In-terests Special Interest Group (GISIG) pre-conference event entitled “Stepping into unknown shoes”, focus-ing on how firstly teachers need to feel and under-stand, not assume, what it means to have a mobility disability, before they can raise awareness in their class-rooms about such issues. The talk also highlighted the fact that when students are exposed to an interesting idea their thoughts are stimulated, and this creates a real desire to express themselves, and subsequently a need for grammar and language.

While Paul was at the GISIG event, I attended the Af-filiates Day event, where I represented TESOL Mace-donia-Thrace, N. Greece. This was an opportunity for networking and to hear examples of best practices and innovative ideas from teaching associations from all over the world. The overwhelming message I got was that virtual conferences, joint events and collabo-rations are the way to go. There were representatives from associations with more than 3000 members, rep-resentatives from newly established associations in Africa, and experts who offer support to teaching as-sociations such as the British Council.

The British Council also works together with IATEFL to provide an Online Conference so that people not able to attend the event in person can still benefit. http://iatefl.britishcouncil.org/2013/. Paul and I were interviewed on the very first day of the main confer-ence about our work with the Disabled Access Friendly campaign, and you can watch this online at http://iat-efl.britishcouncil.org/2013/sessions/2013-04-09/inter-view-katie-quartano-paul-shaw. That same afternoon, we gave our presentation “Lessons in Life that Matter” and this was also filmed, although unfortunately there were some dreaded technical problems so there is a chunk missing, but you can still watch it here http://iatefl.britishcouncil.org/2013/sessions/2013-04-09/lessons-life-matter. The talk was very practical, and showed how teachers can use our free teaching mate-

rial with students at all levels, and whilst still teaching English, at the same time open their eyes to issues of mobility disability.

The room we were allocated was quite small, and be-cause of Britain’s all-invading “health and safety” regu-lations, people were not allowed to stand at the back, and whereas on the one hand it was very pleasing to find that our room was completely full, on the other it was a pity to have to turn people away at the door. The feedback we got after our talk was very encouraging, and we are proud that our work is so well received by the ELT community and that it is having such a wide impact. We now get visitors to our site from over 120 countries worldwide, and average 10,000 page hits a month.

Disabled Access Friendly also had a huge poster on display in the exhibition hall, and this attracted a lot of attention.

The fact that people were so interested in the work of the Disabled Access Friendly campaign and sought us out to talk to us meant that we were also easily able to network with colleagues on behalf of TESOL Macedo-nia-Thrace, N. Greece. We spoke to many experienced and well-known presenters, who not only expressed an interest in speaking at next year’s conference, but also in visiting Thessaloniki.

As a Londoner going by the anything north of Watford rule, I was really surprised to find that Liverpool is a beautiful city, and it was a great pity that we were so busy at the conference that we did not really have any time to explore it. However, we did manage to go to the Albert Docks, which were right by our hotel. This is where the Beatles museum is located, and the Tate Gallery. No gyros or souvlaki, but some truly excellent fish and chips.

Thank you once again to TESOL Macedonia-Thrace, N. Greece and Burlington Books for this wonder-ful opportunity. As friends of Julia’s it was an honour for us to win the scholarship, an honour to represent TESOL Macedonia-Thrace, N. Greece, and wonderful to have the opportunity to promote the Disabled Ac-cess Friendly campaign in its efforts to use EFL to put something good back into the world. Just in case you haven’t already visited our site with free teaching ma-terial, please have a look here www.disabled-access-friendly.com.

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TESOL Greece’s 34th Annual Convention - ‘Innovation, Motivation, Education’Athens, March 30 – 31, 2013

By George Topalis

Upon arrival at the HAU building, a convenient down-town venue, I was immediately welcomed by the friendly, smiling faces of the board’s treasurer Sevi Iosifidou and the eager-to-help volunteers. I felt quite pampered from the first minute. My luggage was quickly tucked away in a specially designated room for speakers’ luggage and equipment, and after being given my visitor’s badge and convention bag, I dashed to the plenary room.

Unfortunately, I arrived on Saturday evening and was only able to attend the Interactive Plenary Panel discus-sion. The plenary speakers answered a range of thought-provoking questions which ranged from exam backwash to the best moment in their teaching careers.

This was followed by the Convention party on the roof garden. I was able to catch up with old friends like Ansa Laskioti, Michael Robbs, Eftichis Kantarakis, Daria Breus-Samolada and Michael Onushco and make new ones like Dimitris Primalis and more while enjoying a glass of wine and the magnificent view of the Acropolis, accompanied by the sounds of a live band playing traditional Greek mu-sic. A lot of sheer joy and lively dancing took place till the early hours.

On Sunday, I attended an intriguing plenary talk entitled ‘English as an International lingua franca: A threat to mul-ticultural communication?’ by the current director of the PhD course in Applied Linguistics offered by Hellenic American University, Dr Juliane House. She raised the issue of whether English as a means of global commu-nication and intercultural understanding poses a threat to multilingualism and the profession of translating and interpreting. She drew some quite thought-provoking conclusions for all.

WorkshopsThere were a number of professional presentations with very arresting titles throughout the day that made me wish I could be in several places at the same time. I have attended quite a few talks that have tried to ad-dress the issue of working with dyslexic students but I had not attended one of such a practical nature until now. After briefly presenting the nature of dyslexia, Anna Prifti presented an impressive collection of homemade board games, not only very useful and practical when

dealing with students that have specific learning difficul-ties but also so when trying to achieve automaticity with those reluctant to speak or when trying to tap into the kinesthetic nature of all young learners.

Anna Petala and George Stefanidis took us step by step through the process of creating a school newspaper and uploading it to the web. They readily answered any que-ries and simplified all the steps so as even the most tech-nophobic practitioner could muster the courage to take on this absolute learner-engaging class endeavor.

Mark Osborne, in his lively hands-on presentation, pre-sented the audience with an array of applications for iPad’s and tablets such as Boogle, Moonbot books, and more that can be downloaded and used in class. These tablet apps via a connection to a laptop and projector can be viewed by the whole class and the tablet passed around, thus engaging even the most bored teen.

I found these workshops very engaging and I sincerely hope we might have the pleasure of enjoying some of them in Thessaloniki in the near future.

Closing plenaryThe current TESOL International president Christine Coombe delivered a talk that was highly inspiring for all EFL professionals in these financially difficult and demor-alizing times.

Through her account of her own experiences, she took the audience down the road of self-reflection and regain-ing hope, self-confidence and motivation by implement-ing some widely accepted general business manage-ment goal setting techniques on a personal level, thus facilitating setting a personal and professional strategic plan. She also gave her view of the 10 characteristics that make for an effective EF/SL teacher.

Even though I could not attend the whole convention, and I received only a taste of what was available, I am sure that the rest of the presenters were of equal interest. I hope that I will be able to attend next year’s convention and once again enjoy the whole-hearted hospitality of our southern counterpart.

Welcome

back event!

October 20, 2013

Drop in and say hello at the TESOL Macedonia-Thrace

Northern Greece stand:

August 27, 2013: The 3rd Foreign Languages Forum & Book and Re-

source Exhibition organized by ELT News, at the Grand Hotel Palace,

Thessaloniki.

The Forum will feature professional and commercial presentations

as well as a Panel Discussion on the theme of Common Mistakes That

English Teachers Make.

31 August / 01 September 2013: the International Publishers Exhi-

bition, at the MET HOTEL, Thessaloniki. Book exhibits, professional

and commercial presentations.

August 29 - 30, 2013 : PALSO NORTHERN GREECE, Macedonia Palace,

Thessaloniki 26η Διημερίδα Ξενόγλωσσης Εκπαίδευσης

“Should I stay or should I go? Language learning, a crucial factor

towards a final decision»

And don’t miss the annual

Save that date!

Pecha Kucha Evening


Convention

P3K

by Phil Holland

15

conventionreport!

The 3rd annual Pecha Kucha Evening brought Saturday’s presentations to an entertaining conclusion. The upper floor of the Bissell Library at ACT provided an intimate setting, and every seat was occupied. Host Phil Holland opened the event by asking that members of the audi-ence have sympathy for the speakers, who he said were subjecting themselves to considerable pressure. In fact, he claimed to have seen on the Internet that “Pecha Ku-cha” was a Japanese rendering of “pressure cooker” – be-fore disclosing that the Internet source for this dubious assertion was his own TESOL Mac-Thrace Pecha Kucha of last year.

He knew he could take liberties, because he had been tipped off that the subject of the first presenter’s talk was the form of the Pecha Kucha itself. Malgorzata Ko-sior stepped up and started to roll her 20 slides at 20 seconds apiece. Her talk highlighted the critique that the compressed form of the PK makes of the all-too-frequent “Death by PowerPoint” style of presentation. Her own snappy and fluent PK presentation was a case in point.

Holland called it a tough act to follow, but follow it Gavin Dudeney did, and in style. He claimed to have a range of hobbies, chief among them reading. He then led us on a hilarious tour of his Amazon wish list, which included titles that, while perhaps not best-sellers, apparently do exist. For example: “Towel Origami”; “Knitting with Dog Hair”; “Nuclear War: What’s in it for you?”; “Tattooed Moun-tain Women and Spoon Boxes of Daghestan” – no, he was

not making it all up, I have checked. “Do-it-Yourself Cof-fins” and the perhaps related “How to Teach Your Wife to be a Widow”, and many more – all peppered with Gavin’s amusing commentary – kept the merriment flowing while enlarging our conception of the universe, at least that of books.

I should say here and now that if you want to see any and all of these PK’s in their complete form, they are on You-Tube in one continuous video, at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k24RT6nKWIE.

Next up was Tom Godfrey, or rather Tom Godfrey and a woman who identified herself only as “the wife”, as this was a team effort. The subject was serious – “The New Way” of global awareness, imagination, collaboration, and creativity – and it was treated in a correspondingly theat-rical way which included song and dance as well as slides and speech that bounced back and forth between the speakers, concluding with an uninhibited “Do the Pecha Kucha with me” that had the audience clapping in rhythm as the speakers locomoted off the stage. It was undeni-ably a new way for PKs at our convention.

It was time for a change of pace, and David A. Hill pro-vided one, inviting us into the world of a poem he had written called “Mothworld”, which he illustrated with his own photographs. “Perhaps you do not know the world of moths,” he began, to an audience uncertain as to how to respond. Was it a something out of Gavin’s reading list? Not at all. It was an invitation to contemplate an-other world, the world of the night and the silent flight of moths with their wings in unexpected colors and pat-terns, “a heraldry of bars, lines, patches, spots, geometrical and perfect, book-matched on scales across frail, folded wings…now and then weaving their fragile, secret lives inside ours.” It cast a spell. For 6 minutes and 40 seconds we werein another world.

Maria Sachpazian, longtime TESOL Mac-Thrace member and former General Secretary and Vice-Chair of the Board, was up next. The 20 x 20 PK formula invited the theme


Convention16

of her talk, which was the 20 years of our organization. It was a trip down memory lane as well as an assertion of the sources of strength of TESOL Macedonia-Thrace, not least the efforts of its volunteer leaders through the years and our TA’s versatility and ability to grow and respond to changes in our field. “TESOL has given us not only the chance and space to express ourselves, but most of all, choice.” Her parting message: “Engage.”

That was the perfect segue to the opening message of Nicos Sikakis’ PK, which focused on the dynamics of teacher-student interaction, beginning with the need to motivate students. He reminded teachers that students want to be challenged, but that does not mean that they want to be tested! He stressed the value of keeping classrooms in motion and advocated breaking down the barriers that all too often separate students and teachers. In short, he provided a check-list of the fundamentals of good teaching in today’s connected and evolving world.

It was the perfect way to conclude as spirited, creative, and thought-provoking a set of PK presentations as you’ll find anywhere. A special thank you to our six brave pre-senters.

Feature articles

10 IATEFL Voices 232

the sharing of ideas is one of the teacher’s responsibili-ties.

11 Learning activities should have three features: com-municative purpose, choice and feedback (including self-assessment).

Student

12 students are communicators and are actively engaged in negotiating meaning.

13 students should focus on figuring out the speaker’s or writer’s intentions and meanings.

14 When communicating, a speaker/writer has a choice about what to say and how to say it.

15 students should be given opportunities to develop strategies for interpreting language in authentic use contexts.

16 students should reflect on the kind of learner they are, and the implications of this for strategy development and planning.

The possibleThe possible is the other entity. This is not so fixed, and certainly not so transmissible. What is possible in a given classroom context or eLT environment can be explored through three questions: What is possible for the teacher? What is possible for the students? And what is possible in the context?

What is possible for the teacher?

This is a self-assessment question for each teacher. It relates to students and context of course, but most importantly, it is a personal, private question, to be engaged with in a safe reflective space, and answered as a tentative set of new activity-types for the classroom. In relation to activities which correspond to the desirable, the key question is ‘Can I make this happen?’. Thus, when considering innovative practice such as a focus on fluency, telling stories, student self-assessment, or using internet resources, each teacher has to look inwards and imagine themselves using and performing this kind of activity to transform their classroom into an engaging, fun, fizzing learning space.

The factors which shape the answer to this question include teaching identity and language competence and confidence. Teaching identity refers to the sense of self in the professional environment. The teacher has to consider how the innovative practice can align with their typical style of teaching:

• how does the focus on input determine my teaching style?

• how does the focus on control determine my teaching style?

• how much time is available for planning innovative activities?

The desirable and the possibleRichard Kiely looks at managing change in ELT.

Managing change in eLT is about making the desirable possible. The desirable is a constant, but the canvas of the possible is infinitely variable. so the challenge of managing change is one of fitting a square peg, not into a round hole, but into a hole the shape of which is unclear, undetermined, and in all likelihood changing all the time. This article sets out an approach to this task.

The desirableThe desirable in eLT can be understood as a set of principles which, although varying according to culture and context, tends to cluster around those core values in eLT which have become universal in our sector: teaching english using a curriculum referenced to the four skills (listening, speaking, reading and writing) in an interactive way, and emphasising the development of a strong individual learning identity. Much of the success of labels such as ‘student-centred learning’, and ‘communicative language teaching’ (CLT) arises from their usefulness in identifying such values. Thus they provide a handy characterisation of the desirable in eLT. The principles are set out below in terms of implications for language teachers and students. They reflect what I mean by ‘desirable’: the principles which have guided management of change initiatives in english language teaching in class-rooms and in online learning contexts over recent decades.

Language

1 Language as it is used in real-world contexts should be an overarching principle of the teacher.

2 Language is a puzzle as well as a set of rules: one function may have many different linguistic forms, and different forms have different meanings.

3 errors are seen as the natural outcome of the develop-ment of communication skills.

4 fluency is as important as accuracy.5 The social context of the communicative events is essen-

tial in giving meaning to the samples of language.6 The target language is used a great deal, though not

necessarily exclusively, in communicative activities.

Teacher

7 Opportunities should be given to students to express their stories, ideas and opinions.

8 The teacher acts as an advisor during communicative activities, a facilitator of students’ learning, a manager of classroom activity, or a co-communicator.

9 The target language is the preferred vehicle for class-room and online communication.

10 Creating situations in classrooms and online to promote

Richard Kiely is professor of Applied Linguistics and Language education in the Centre for

International language Teacher education (CILTe) at university College plymouth st Mark & st John.

17 Article taken from IATEFL Voices 232

Feature articlesMay–June 2013 Issue 232

IATEFL Voices 232 11

… each teacher has to look inwards and imagine

themselves using and performing

this kind of activity to

transform their classroom into

an engaging, fun, fizzing learning

space

Language competence and confidence refers to the teacher’s sense of self as a language user and language authority. Therefore, in the context of each innovative activ-ity, the teacher has to consider:

• how does this practice align with my language level?• Can I use this activity to enhance my own language

skills?• What are the risks for my authority as an english expert

with this activity?

What is possible for the students?

students can be the participants in the eLT context who are most oriented to the traditional practice. The successful students may wish to adhere closely to the requirements of tests and examinations. They may want to focus narrowly on the grammar rules and vocabulary lists which they are good at. Other students may not have thought much about their role as ‘learner of english’ and may be confused about any innovative activities. Their confusion and insecurity may lead them to resist, make fun of, or undermine initiatives introduced by the teacher. The questions for teachers to consider here are:

• What kinds of activities seem to work well in my lessons?

• how can features of the desirable be integrated into such activities?

• how can students be nudged to participate in an innovative way?

What is possible in the context?

The context in which english teachers work is often charac-terised by the coursebook and the examination format. It is natural that these should represent the shared sense of pur-pose of the curriculum for stakeholders, such as teachers, students, parents, and managers. The questions for teachers to consider here are:

• how closely does teaching follow the coursebook and examination formats?

• how closely does teaching have to follow the coursebook and examination formats?

• What are the opportunities to introduce new features of the desirable?

• how can these be justified in terms of achieving the learning goals of the coursebook and examination format?

This is an outline framework for managing change in eLT, through a focus on teacher development. This development is not so much based on transmission of new knowledge and techniques (though these may play a part), but on teachers’ own individual reflection on, and analysis of what is possible. This may be largely a private activity, but can be supported and guided by a workshop and planning process.

The workshop process could have three elements:

1 The desirable, which can be set out in terms of the innovative practices and the policy framework. This can be an input aspect to start the workshop, and focus the description and reflection stages.

2 The description of current practices, which is both col-lective—what typically happens—and individual – what happens in each teacher’s own classroom. The goal here is to establish for each teacher, a realistic base line for the innovative practices.

3 The reflection by each teacher, on how they can engage with the implementation of the desirable, is the transla-tion of glimpses of the desirable into a practical plan by each teacher. Thus, the input may provide explanation and demonstration, the workshop may explore issues of implementation and pedagogic strategies which bridge the desirable and the possible in a general way. But the essential characterising of the possible is a task for each individual teacher. This possible has no ‘ifs’: there are no additional conditions which need to be met first. This involves a plan of implementation, based on an analysis of what is possible in terms of self, students and context. essentially the plan has to have:

a an innovative activity, representing something from the desirable, but which is implementable;

b a time-framing, such as 20 minutes of the weekly scheme of work, and which can become a strand of the teacher’s planning, alongside grammar input, reading comprehension, etc.

c a framework for evaluation which allows initial disasters to be understood as part of the development process, and embeds perseverance which ensures both teachers and students can make the strand work.

Two further points are worth bear-ing in mind in understanding this framework for managing change in eLT. The desirable has to be understood by teachers as an idea, rather than as a fixed technique or body of practice. Thus, it can be changed, fragmented, reconstructed and re-moulded in ways required for teacher ownership and classroom implantation. The explana-tion and demonstration in the input stage need to be workshopped so that teachers see the innovative practice as their own practice, not someone else’s.

second, the input and demonstra-tion need to be engaging as effective practice. sometimes this happens with the trainer or presenter playing a teacher role and the teachers playing the student roles. The workshop and reflection stages need to ensure that this is understood, and the practice is effectively transformed into what is possible for the teachers. If the teachers see the demonstration as a superbly engaging performance, which they can admire as they might the performance of a prima ballerina or Olympic gymnast, they might not be on the road to seeing it as pos-sible for them, in their own classroom.

[email protected]

18

Feature articles

12 IATEFL Voices 232

she disappears. however, she is fond of pronunciation par-ticularly the distinction between ‘p’ and ‘f’ as in pig and fig.

In the staff room (with the Mad Hatter, March Hare and Dormouse)As in most staff rooms there are characters aplenty—the dozy one who has spent all night burning the candle at both ends, the loud, brash one who is full of themselves and the slightly demented one who may have been teaching young learners for too long! Of course, these three teachers frus-trate the Alice teacher no end. As she says ‘I think you might do something better with the time than asking riddles that have no answers’.0 Welcome to the tea party!

The Queen of HeartsThere’s always one in every school, isn’t there? full of herself, even more so than the Mad hatter! A disciplinarian who doesn’t really think about the effect they have on their students or colleagues and who isn’t used to being chal-lenged. The Queen of hearts can often be heard declaring, ‘It wasn’t like that in my day’ or ‘young people today!’. demanding and exacting, the Queen of hearts teacher expects nothing less than perfection and has some of the best exam results in her school—which she uses to vindicate her methods.

do you recognise any of [email protected]

Alice and others in WonderlandAdrian Tennant takes a light-hearted look at teaching styles.

here are a number of the charac-ters from Lewis Carroll’s most famous novel to describe teachers and teaching styles that I’ve seen in my twenty-plus years of teacher training...

Alice‘What is the use of a book’, thought Alice, ‘without pictures or conversa-tion?’ Alice as a teacher would use visuals to stimulate her students and lots of pair and group speaking prac-tice. however, she is rather impetuous. After all, who would jump down a

rabbit hole, or drink out of odd bottles without thinking? she also likes to show off her knowledge and use big words—even when she isn’t quite sure what they mean.

The White Rabbit‘Oh dear! Oh dear! I shall be late!’ how long will activities take? What happens if I run out of time? The White rabbit teacher also often calls people by the wrong name, mixing up Alice with Mary Ann, though it can be hard remembering students’ names!

The DodoAll-action and far from extinct, the dodo teacher thinks that the best way to explain something is to do it and he certainly is fond of games. The only problem is that there is often a lot

of confusion involved—after all, unless the rules of a game are explained before you start playing the result is generally controlled chaos!

The CaterpillarWhat a teacher! supremely confident and constantly probing his students with ‘explain yourself!’ and ‘Who are you?’ keeping teacher talking time to a minimum by never saying more than is necessary, the instructions are concise

and he tries to include critical thinking in his lessons. Believes in using traditional methods such as drilling, memorising and reciting long texts such as ‘you are old, father William’.

The Cheshire CatGrinning ear-to-ear, you’d think the Cheshire Cat would make an excellent teacher, but how wrong you’d be! When asked a question she gives the kind of evasive answer you’d expect from a politician. ‘What should I do?’ asks a student. ‘That depends on what you want to achieve’, replies the Cheshire Cat teacher. And, just when you need her most,

Adrian Tennant is a freelance trainer, writer and consultant and is particu-larly interested in linking

methodology to teaching. he runs in-service training courses including trainer training, materials development and educational change courses. he’s currently studying archae-ology and has signed on for a course in forensics!

Grinning ear-to-ear, you’d think the Cheshire Cat would make an

excellent teacher, but how wrong

you’d be!

The Mock TurtleWith the word ‘mock’ in the name of this teacher you’d almost expect a stooge, a teacher who prepares the students for the exam so that the Queen of hearts can take credit – well, you couldn’t be further from the truth, the Mock Turtle teacher is his own man! fond of history and telling stories, although rather slow to warm to anything (other than soup) the Mock Turtle teacher’s lessons can be quite boring and laborious. his teacher was a turtle called tortoise, because, as the Mock Turtle says. ‘he taught us.’ Of course, the Mock Turtle teacher likes laughing at his own jokes while everyone else around groans. he’s also rather lazy as his lessons get shorter each day as they lessen from day to day!

so, which of the teachers are you? do you know anyone who’s the Queen of hearts or the dodo? Is your staff room like the tea party?

ReferenceCarroll, L. 1865. Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. Bookbyte

digital edition.

Article taken from IATEFL Voices 232 19

TEDmeetsELT

Malgorzata Kosior ([email protected])

Dimitris Tzouris ([email protected])

The following article is based on a talk given by the authors at the TESOL Macedonia-Thrace 2013 Convention

How do great ideas spread in a connected world?

How can educators use suchideas to inspire their studentsand help them learn?

TED

You do know TED, don’t you? Then I don’t have to mention the many astonishing ideas presented by brilliant people at the TED conferences each year. But did you know that TED stands for Technology Entertainment Design? At first, most of us relate the second letter with education instead. In fact, TED has been a lot about education, since it’s much more than a conference. TED is a platform for sharing ideas, which educators around the world have been tapping into in order to inspire their students. Not surprisingly, the most popular TED talk, counting more than 20 million total views to date, is Sir Ken Robinson’s talk about schools killing creativity.

A Platform for Spreading Ideas

In 2009, TED launched the TEDx program, allowing any-one to register and curate an independent TED-like event. Four years later, the TEDx programme has allowed people all over the world to share their ideas and inspire local communities. Today, more than 6,000 TEDx events have taken place in 1,200 cities (including Thessaloniki and Athens), by 2,000 registered organizers in 133 countries. There are even events focused solely on education or teen speakers, as well as events organized at univer-sities or entirely by students. Since all talks have to be recorded and made available online for free, some get picked up and amplified by TED by getting posted on the TED website. Really inspiring TEDx speakers might also be invited to give a talk at a main TED conference.

Going Mainstream

Although TED started appealing to a constantly increas-ing audience via the Internet, offering all the talks for free on the TED website, as well as on YouTube, iTunes and via iOS and Android mobile apps, it has also started spreading via mainstream media in order to reach a wider audience and create conversations around those ideas. TED Books offers longer narratives based on TED talks and NPR’s TED Radio Hour focuses on specific themes by grouping talks and interviewing speakers. TED’s latest ini-tiative was a TV special focused on education. TED Talks Education featured 8 speakers, including Sir Ken Robin-son and Bill Gates. All talks are available online.

ELT loves TED

We are rapidly moving away from a world of information scarcity to a highly networked world, where information is in great abundance. The Internet has enabled all of us to become active learners and to connect with the grow-ing community of educators who share ideas on teaching and learning. TED is where English language instruction and social me-dia meet and thrive. Educators have been encouraged to use TED talks in the classroom for two reasons: To provide students with the

context within which the English language can be used, and to help them gain a different perspective on a vari-ety of issues, change their attitudes and spark their minds through contact with dynamic users of English.

Talk Selection

TED talks are a brilliant resource for listening and speak-ing classes at (upper-) intermediate and advanced levels for young adults and adult learners. They are presented in a casual manner, but introduce advanced vocabulary and colloquialisms at the same time without, however, overwhelming the students with sophisticated lexis and syntax.

Several criteria should be considered in the selection of the talk appropriate for your class.

In terms of content, the selected talk should be of gen-eral interest to the target audience. Young adult learners who are about to start their careers need positive mes-sages which will make them believe that one day they can make a difference in the world. Another important criterion is the level of difficulty. Al-though there is an option of watching each TED talk with English subtitles, talks delivered by native speakers or ones with near-native but clear accents, and with a chal-lenging but not intimidating level of difficulty will help your students engage in the process, maximize language learning benefits and capture their attention. An interac-tive transcript provided for each TED talk enables you to go directly to the part you want to watch and focus on. However, it is worth emphasizing that talks delivered by non-native speakers, or speakers of languages other than English, can be equally engaging, inspiring, and enter-taining. The goal is accomplished if your students leave the classroom with upgraded language competence and cultural awareness, and walk away with a message, a memorable line…

Finally, learning English is not only about expanding vo-cabulary and learning new structures. It is about connect-ing with the world. TED talks make students global citi-zens who are willing to experiment, explore and discover, and embrace diversity.

A language is not just a body of vocabulary or a set of grammatical rules. A language is a flash of the human spirit. It’s a vehicle through which the soul of each par-ticular culture comes into the material world. Every lan-guage is an old-growth forest of the mind, a watershed, a thought, an ecosystem of spiritual possibilities (Wade Davis: Dreams from Endangered Cultures)

Once watching TED talks becomes a new everyday habit for your students, English gets integrated into their lives in a natural way, and from a mere tool for passing stan-dardized exams it becomes the key to meaningful com-munication.

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Steps, Tasks, and Activities

Use the following practical hints to prepare your own tasks:

1. Prediction - introduce the speaker, ask the students to deduce the content of the talk from the speaker's profile

2. Vocabulary work - while watching, ask the students to select 5-10 vocabulary items (words and expressions) which convey the message of the talk

3. (Classic) open-ended questions to be answered while watching the talk

4. Debate - follow-up on a controversial talk

5. Essay assignment - ask the students to respond to a quotation from the talk they have watched

6. Presentation style critique and evaluation - ask the stu-dents to consider the following questions:a. How would you describe the tone of the talk?b. What does the presenter do or say to convey his or her confidence?c. What overall impact does the speaker’s body language and eye contact have on the quality of the talk? (watching parts of the talk muted helps focus on the body language)d. In what way does the speaker use the slides?e. What elements can you identify in the structure of the talk (how does the speaker begin, develop an argument, conclude)?

7. Encourage your students to prepare their own TED-style talk a. Tell a unique story b. Speak from experiencec. Convey a strong idead. Be authentic and passionatee. Sound confidentf. Rehearse, but do not “over rehearse” - make sure you do not sound like a presentation robotg. Leave the notes behind and be yourself

Technology provides a great advantage for teachers: It can free up class time by providing tools for educators in order to create educational content that can be accessed from anywhere, thus enabling personalized learning and turning class time into an opportunity for practice, col-laboration and discussion. This is known as the “flipped classroom” model.

TED Begets TED-Ed

In April 2012, TED launched TED-Ed, a website aimed at teachers and learners that features talks and original animated lessons based on TED talks. TED-Ed is an edu-cational platform that allows anyone to create an online lesson, not only based on any TED or TEDx talk, but also on any YouTube video. Using TED-Ed, any video can eas-

ily become inspiring teaching content, supporting the “flipped classroom” model. This means that students be-come independent learners and in charge of their own learning process. They learn about new ideas by means of a foreign language, and vice versa, they learn the lan-guage while discovering those new ideas.

Flip it! The advantages of using the TED-Ed platform to create flipped lessons It is a given that our students are digital natives. They of-ten take the use of technology in class for granted, and they enjoy online tasks more than the ones printed on paper, even if they are exactly the same tasks. Another advantage is that TED-Ed gives students access to the lesson at any time, at their convenience. Their an-swers are tabulated and the instructor can provide online feedback and use student responses to generate further dialogue. And finally, lessons uploaded by any teacher can be avail-able to any user and shared, just like the ideas promoted by the talk you chose to flip.

Teaching with TED Workshop

The TESOL Macedonia-Thrace Northern Greece com-mittee was kind enough to offer us the opportunity to present a workshop titled “Teaching with TED Talks” at the 20th Annual Convention and also invited us to host a SEETA webchat shortly after that. Here are the links:Workshop material: http://tz.rs/ted-ed Webchat recording: http://tz.rs/tedwebchat Pre-webchat online interviews: http://tz.rs/seetakosiortz-ouris

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Here are some of the TED talks we have flipped:

Matt Cutts: “Try Something New for 30 Days”An entertaining talk in which Matt Cutts encourages us to develop and maintain new habits and/or subtract old ones in order to improve the quality of our lives.http://ed.ted.com/on/8q8OAF7e

Benjamin Zander: The transformative power of classical musicA moving and entertaining talk about classical music, leadership and the role of a leader, and the power of positive thinking.http://ed.ted.com/on/UaFFRT6Y

Richard St. John: "Success is a continuous journey"A self-described average guy who found success doing what he loved, Richard St. John spent more than a decade researching the lessons of success -- and distilling them into 8 words, 3 minutes and one successful bookhttp://ed.ted.com/on/nNfuooMc

Edith Widder: How we found the giant squidEdith Widder combines her expertise in research and technological in-novation with a commitment to stopping and reversing the degradation of our marine environment.http://ed.ted.com/on/YL0hf8aw

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TED talks recommended for an ELT classroom

1. Sir Ken Robinson: “Do Schools Kill Creativity?”A funny and engaging talk arguing that we need to change the education system so it fo-cuses on the natural creative abilities of children.http://on.ted.com/gbZr

2. Rita Pierson: “Every Kid Needs a Champion”A call to educators to reach out to their students, connect with them, and make a difference in their lives.http://on.ted.com/caKo

3. Aimee Mullins: “The Opportunity of Adversity”Born without both shin bones and, as a result, a bilateral amputee, Aimee explains that ad-versity is not a limitation, but a challenge that can be overcome, or even an opportunity opening door to human potential.http://on.ted.com/baMU

4. Jamie Oliver: “Teach Every Child about Food”A talk supporting Jamie’s campaign in favor of a healthy diet and food revolution.http://on.ted.com/fbKs

5. Susan Cain: “The Power of Introverts”A compelling talk dispelling common myths regarding introversion and extroversion.http://on.ted.com/eaPD

6. Jonathan Harris: the Web's secret storiesArtist and computer scientist Jonathan Harris makes online art that captures the world's expression -- and gives us a glimpse of the soul of the Internet.http://on.ted.com/gba7

7. Cameron Russell: Looks aren't everything. Believe me, I'm a model.Cameron Russell has stomped the runways for Victoria's Secret and Chanel, and has ap-peared in many magazines. But she is much more than just a pretty face.http://on.ted.com/qERy

8. Jill Bolte Taylor's stroke of insightBrain researcher Jill Bolte Taylor studied her own stroke as it happened -- and has become a powerful voice for brain recovery.http://on.ted.com/baNA

9. Wade Davis: Dreams from endangered culturesA National Geographic explorer celebrates the variety and diversity of the world’s indige-nous peoples and cultures and tries to convince us that a language is more than just words and structures, and that storytelling can change the world.http://on.ted.com/sFVs

10. Amanda Palmer: The art of askingAlt-rock icon Amanda Fucking Palmer believes we shouldn't fight the fact that digital con-tent is freely shareable -- and suggests that artists can and should be directly supported by fans.http://on.ted.com/gcfZ

25

Αγγλική γλώσσα και παγκοσμιοποίηση Nicos Sifakis

If you’ve ever wondered how you come to be doing what you’re doing as an English teacher in Greece, this book probably has the answer. Addressed not only to teachers but to policy makers and members of the general public, it’s a comprehensive look at the worldwide spread of English and in particular at the role of English and ELT in Greece. It is almost 500 pages long and supported by scholarly references, but it’s written in a lively and accessible style aimed at the Greek general reader, befitting a work that its author once characterized as “a labor of love – love of English (and of Greek and all languages), love of users of the language, and of those who teach it”. It is, in fact, the only book of its kind written in Greek (with a five page summary in English at the end).

The author, Nicos Sifakis, is a university professor of ELT method-ology with both a theoretical and practical feel for his subject, the latter acquired in the course of research and training activi-ties involving, among others, English teachers in Greek public schools. Given the rapid advance of the twin forces of globaliza-tion and English (closely related, says Sifakis) over the past de-cade, the book is timely and aims to suggest a way forward for the use and teaching of English in this country.

The pervasive presence of English in Greece, says Sifakis, makes it less a foreign language than the country’s unofficial second language. Its predominance in fields related to science and technology, entertainment and communication, is well known. Sifakis argues convincingly, however, that English functions in Greece as a lingua franca, not as an extension of the influence of anglophone countries like the US and Great Britain. That is, Greeks look upon and use English as an international language.

Sifakis sees a paradox. Countries such as Greece where there is a relatively high degree of competence in foreign languages may be seen, on one hand, as progressively cosmopolitan, and on the other, as subject to the invasion of foreign cultural elements. At what point does openness to the culture and language of globalization begin to threaten national cultural identity and the mother tongue itself? English is a famously assimilative lan-guage whose spread in the 20th century was powered by a na-tion which sees itself as a cultural melting pot. Sifakis says that the stronger a country’s national identity is, the more it can ab-sorb English on its own terms.

Given that Greeks still use their mother tongue almost exclusive-ly in speaking to one another, he sees English as no particular threat to Greek identity. He does note, however, that it can lead to inequities, especially in the workplace. Older workers may have acquired English certificates in years past that may not give them the skills needed to function in the language in the pres-ent. Those who, for whatever reason, fail to have a command English in Greece, may operate at a disadvantage in a world where competence in the language is assumed.

Sifakis distinguishes two approaches to English that differ in theory. The first (and the dominant one in Greece, according to Sifakis) sets the standards and culture of native speakers as

the target and views the study of English (or of other foreign languages) as part of the general study of human culture. The second aims to give students communicative abilities in English as an international lingua franca, that is, to enable them to com-municate with others whose native language is not necessar-ily English. In practice, Sifakis argues, these approaches can be combined. He is concerned not to foreclose the open-ended-ness of a classroom where English is a medium of cross-cultural exchange in the name of a narrower standard of correctness which can undermine learners’ self-confidence. He envisions an interactive English classroom where students see themselves as achieving functional goals, not falling short of native-speaker norms as embodied in standardized tests. What matters, he says, is less how and how well someone learns a foreign language as how they are able to use it to get to know our globalized world.

Sifakis outlines the skills needed for teachers to be effective in this new environment. The good news is that he campaigns hard for increased teacher autonomy. At the same time, he ex-pects teachers to have increased cross-cultural awareness and be able to tailor their lessons to the needs of their students as individuals, which takes extra preparation and awareness.

And then there is the matter of “πιστοποιιτικοκρατία”, a coinage of his own which he glosses as “the dominance of certificates for their own sake”. He has some recommendations on how examination bodies, especially the Greek State through its ΚΠΓ exams, can reform their exams to lay greater emphasis on can-didates’ abilities in lingua franca English, but he concedes that the standard exams now narrow the scope of what should be a broadening experience. He has strangely little to say about the frontisteria, which are the real backbone of English teaching in this country, but what he does says applies equally to them.

In summarizing the lessons of his book Sifakis begins by saying that students should be no less aware of the value of English as a means for communicating with other native and non-native speakers of English than of the fact that every time they use the language they make it their own. In this he echoes the view put forward by Chinua Achebe in 1975 in “The African Writer and the English Language,” that English must become a creative tool in the hands of its users, reflecting their own cultural identities.

You don’t have to take my word for it. The book is available for sale and at the Bissell Library at the American College of Thessa-loniki. Sifakis also discussed the work in a presentation last year that is available on YouTube.

by Phil Holland

26

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