To become a volunteer contact the regional coordinator Olga Fernández Vicente at: regional@tesol-spain.org and ask her to put you to work in something worthwhile. See Conference pdf, TESOL-spain.htm and TESOL-Spain.org for more information.
TESOL Seville 2005
This conference was an
excellent piece of work this year: a real treat. It’s an enormous
sacrifice to go to a conference or convention like this, but
in the end I usually come out enriched and invigorated from
the whole experience. This was especially true this year as
the convention was nearly perfect in every way except in attendance.
 One of the problems associated with all TESOL conventions is the
problem of retention. You receive such a flood of information  the main points of what I learned in each session in a paragraph and then to critique the convention as a whole.
and stimuli that it overwhelms your ability to remember it all, which is why this year I resolved to summarize
The conference speakers I attended and what they spoke about:
Jeremy Harmer
Jeremy helped me to make me more aware of where I stand as a teacher within the TEFL world. I came to better understand the LATS (Learning vs. Acquisition and Teaching-centred vs. Student-centred) framework, which is currently being debated by college professors and authors. He also helped me to see how everyone, students and teachers, has these theories whether they’re aware of them or not, and that it is critical in how they learn and teach. How this affected choice of classroom materials was particularly relevant and the current trend seems to be towards those that favour “acquisition” over “learning” and “student-centred” over “teacher-centred.” Though I agree that this must be the general objective, I think that in practice there’s plenty of space (and even demand) for the unpopular “teacher-centred” and “learning” activities and approaches.
Andrew Walkley – Making Life Easier for Low-level Learners
Andrew helped to make me more aware of the importance of exposing the students to more natural language in “chunks.” Even if it’s some language like “Where are you going?,” and “How long have you been here,” it can be treated as “chunks” because it’s worthwhile (it can be used again and again) and the answers are so much easier to produce (without the grammar). I attended his colleague “Hugh Dellar’s” presentation at TESOL Spain conference in Madrid last year and they more or less “sell” the same lexical approach.
Enda Scott – Making IT work for you
Apart from a great list of sites, Enda implied that IT is indeed working for he and his academies, and also a bit of how IT is working. One really interesting thing is that he gave us the results of a survey on IT use in his academies (regarding the internet as well), which was really favourable.
John Fanslow
John helped me to become more aware of what needs to happen for students
to learn English. Basically, he says, students need to learn how to
think and to repeatedly listen to and/or read songs, stories and dialogs
from movies, books, articles, etc. that you and they enjoy. (He illustrated
getting students to think with a bit of “the Silent Way” approach
whereby he mouthed out sentences (personal information like “I was
born in Chicago, Illinois”) and gave us the first letter of each word
so that we had to figure out what he was saying.) He also helped to
make me more aware of the importance of self-observation and of how
to do it. Basically, he recommended recording yourself in action with
an Ipod and scripting out 2 or 3 minutes of dialog between you and
your students, then going line by line, marking your opinion of what
was said (i.e. “nonsense,” “brilliant,” “useful,” or whatever)
Jeremy Harmer, Joe McKenna and David Hill – Round Table: Multiculturalism in the Classroom
Spain is currently being overwhelmed by an avalanche of immigrants from South American and Arab countries, which is why this Round Table was on the agenda. These guys made me more aware of the problems of working with students from different backgrounds and of how to deal with having a variety of cultures in the classroom: “stress the commonalities. Don’t stress what makes the students different, but what makes them similar.” i.e. Students from Arab and Spanish backgrounds can talk about, as Joe McKenna put it: “all students eat, live in a house and have a family, so students can talk about what they eat, what their houses look like and how many brothers and sisters they have.”
Jessica Ann Forbes – Fun Ways to Use Computers in the Classroom
The first thing I learned is how a younger teacher working in a smaller neighbourhood academy can be every bit as good as an older, more experienced one when they apply themselves with an attitude of excellence and fun. If I were a student and I had to choose an English academy in her town, I would definitely want to go to hers.
Paul Seligson – Teacher Observation
I’ve learned a lot from Paul just by observing him teach at these conferences over the years. He is, in my opinion, the teacher who bests melds theory and practice in his teaching. It certainly is educational to observe him at work.
Herbert Puchta – Motivating Adolescent Students
Apart from drawing my admiration with that “Schwarzeneger-like” voice, Herbert made me much more aware of why teaching teenagers is so darn complicated and of how to deal with them. Basically, I’ve taught in high schools and I really do believe that he’s hit it right on the nail and that I will be able to deal with any teenage classes I might have in the future because of his session.
David A. Hill – Language Play and Creative Learning
David reminds me of the importance of keeping “play” on the agenda in any of my language teaching programmes. He showed us many examples of how to play with language in order to teach it better.
I should mention that I also attended both Ruth Howarth’s and Tom Spain’s sessions at TESOL’s regional conference in Madrid in February (both spoke in Seville as well) and that they reawakened and refreshed an interest in using visuals (photos and drawings) in my classrooms and gave me new ways to use texts.
About the conference in general, I was really impressed with the knowledge and authority with which many of the “stars” spoke. However, I was reminded that having “fun” with English teaching and “staying” friendly are the two most important characteristics an English teacher can have. I was particularly pleased to attend a younger teacher’s conference that was definitely more fun and in many ways better prepared and more practical than the others I attended at this conference and had attended at others in the past. Over the years, you can usually see how when even a previously good teacher loses his interest in learning, he loses his ability to teach. In a way, English teaching is like being a marathon runner: you have to really like something about it to suffer it so much and for so long (i.e teaching teenagers).
There was a wide variety of presentations to suit just about
every taste. However, teachers choose to give presentations
on whatever they or their publishers are interested in so you
might not find the exact topic or answers you are looking for.
In my own case, I would have liked to have attended some academy-management
sessions because I might like to open a little neighbourhood
academy in a few years. Or I might have liked to have talked
about how to put together a webpage for English teachers and
academies again, but there was no corresponding category for
this “management” related topic (perhaps because there is relatively
little interest). However, though I don’t currently teach adolescents,
I continue to be interested in the topic (because of my interest
in an academy) and I found plenty of speakers speaking on this
in particular.
Vicky Vidal (Profesores
de Inglés) writes on TESOL Seville:
I found some workshops and lectures incredibly helpful and thought-provoking,
and others less. That's the way these things go, though. Overall,
one negative point about it all was the standard. I know that
there are varying degrees of experience, but I felt that many
of the points made in some of the lectures although valid, should
have been obvious to teachers attending the conference. A lot
of the people at the convention seemed impressed which surprised
me.
One thing I wished was that there were more workshops on grammar.
I feel like this is blatantly missing from so many language
teacher training courses and I never even touched it during
my Masters. It's something that I've had to work though on my
own- trying to understand it myself and then faced with the
horrible task of transmitting it to my students- in a fun, interesting,
clear and memorable way (no biggy). I put a lot of time and
money into it. You must know the feeling!! Do you happen to
know of any teacher training in this area? I know a couple of
people who would be interested. Anyway, some of the convention
was great. Some valuable ones I attended were Phrasal verbs
and storytelling, Ambiguity in the Verb Tense System, and Liven
up your Reading.
My favourite of these three was Phrasal Verbs and Storytelling.
It wasn't a terribly new technique but Dominic Streames presented
it in such a clear way with many examples and demonstrations
that it made a lot of sense and we as teachers practiced some
ways to make this lesson work for us. It also helped of course
that he was an incredibly talented storyteller. Ambiguity and
the Verb Tenses, although fascinating was a little hard to follow,
mostly because Grzegorz Spiewak's theory partially based on
his studies of The Naked Verb by D. Maule, was so innovative.
He talked about a simple new way of thinking about verb tenses
that would facilitate understanding and ultimately retention.
Rather than dividing the verb system in three as we do now with past,
present and future, he suggested we should think of these as remoteness,
anteriority, and duration respectively. Although we didn't have enough
time to cover all of this thoroughly, he left most of us really thinking
about this and wanting to investigate further. He himself has written
two pieces called "The English verb Full Monty" and "Ambiguity is
Power: the English tense system the right way up." Both of these are
probably worth a read. The last of these to mention is Liven up your
Reading by Mark White, which like Dominic Streames made teaching look
easy. He talked about ways to adapt course readings. He demonstrated
this using noticing and memory and running dictations. One notable
point for me in many of these lectures, particularly Mark's and Dominic's,
was the use of memory. It's something I think I've forgotten to do
lately- push my students to use and exercise their memory rather than
handing all the info to them. So although the whole convention wasn't
amazing- I always feel like no matter what, you can always take some
ideas home with you when you listen to other teachers. For those talks
and workshops that were especially good - I have enough material to
last me a while. With teaching I find that one great idea goes a long
way.
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