Listen carefully: Day 3 IATEFL 2014

After the events of last night, I had a bit of a slower morning today. It's also my birthday and my boyfriend flew over last night to celebrate with me and my new friends.

  The first session I attended was by Philip Haines and was all about making maximum use of audio scripts. Philip introduced us to many practical activities that can be combined with other skills, such as, pronunciation, grammar, speaking and functions. The session was in a workshop format which allowed us to work in groups and do the activities. 

  Next was a session led by Sandy Millan on stepping into real world listening. We compared a text book listening recording with a real world recording. Sandy then broke this down and gave us ideas on how we can use these real world recordings of natural, spontaneous speech in the classroom. Again, this was a practical workshop and required a lot of group work, which I was delighted with as my partner was the one and only Jeremy Harmer! 

  Before the last coffee break of the day, Arizio Sweeting presented his reasons and ideas for  using action research to empower teachers to teach pronunciation. He discussed his influences in his own teaching and also invited anyone to come forward who would be interested in taking part in his research.

  After a wonderfully passionate discussion with Robin Walker and some other PronSIG members in the corridor, it was time to make a quick dash across the conference centre to get to the next talk. Lucy Palmer from Teachit ELT made a presentation on how to get you material published on the website. She highlighted the areas in which they are looking for more lessons, worksheets and articles and we discussed how to create an effective worksheet or activity.

  The final session of the day was with Sue Kay and Karen Spiller who created ELT Teacher to Writer. This is a database and training programme for teachers who would like to make the transition into ELT writing. We took part in tasks that guided us in the world of ELT publishing, writing rubrics and distinguishing between general comprehension and critical thinking tasks.

  It was then time to have a birthday dinner and celebrate into the wee hours with my lovely new IATEFL friends.