IATEFL April 2010 Harrogate

Nicola and I attended the conference, you can see lots of the sessions and participate in discussions online. One I found particularly useful on teacher training. They talk about how they focus on key skills in the early stages of a CerTESOL course which they identify as listening to learners and correcting them and creating lsson content from "within" ythrough anecdotes for example DOGME style. Here is the link:

http://iatefl.britishcouncil.org/2010/sessions/2010-04-08/teacher-training-unplugged-simplifying-initial-language-teacher-education-anthon

Here are brief notes on three other sessions I found particularly interesting. E mail me if you would like to know more or meet to discuss any of them :
Adrian Underhill on Coaching
a simple tool called GROW which helps you to help your colleagues focus on their goals. I am using it for appraisals with management staff here at OH at the moment
Ema Ushioda on Motivation and Autonomy
I am very interested in how we can move the focus from teaching to learning to help students move forward more quickly with their English. Ema had interesting things to say about the importance of students having choice and the influence of the peer group in motivation. I have started a blog with a colleague from Cadiz, Dan Barber which you can visit if you would like to learn and contribute on this topic
http://ourenglishlearning.blogspot.com/
Michael Berman on NLP and telling stories
This session reminded me how powerful stories are as a way of transmitting and remembering ideas. We did a guided visualisation which I liked too.