2020 Universidad de Nebrija
As part of the the Madrid Science week, the Universidad de Nebrija invited me to participate in their Jornada de Inmersión Lingüística en el Master de Enseñanza Bilingüe: Language Learning and Emotion. It was really interesting to participate in a day dedicated to emotion and language learning. My session looked at accent, identity and emotion.
2020 ACEIA Online Conference
Oxford University Press invited me to collaborate with their work once again, this time in the first ACEIA online conference. As in other conferences this year, I spoke about intelligiblity, and exactly what we mean when we say that a speaker is intelligible. You can see the Presentation here.
2020 IATEFL Pronunciation Special Interest Group
I have been a member of the PronSIG for some 30 years so it was a real pleasure to be invited to collaborate with them once agin, this time in the form of a webinar on the issue of intelligibility, a concept that lies at the heart of pronunciation teaching in ELT. The Powerpoint for the presentation can be viewed here.
2020 Trinity College London Spain
Because of the crisis with Covid-19, Trinity College London in Spain asked my to offer a series of webinars, on the one hand to support teachers preparing students for the ISE exam, and on the other to look at how teachers could take their classwork online. I started in April by examining the skills of listening and writing, and then in May I switched my attention to reading and speaking. The Powerpoint presentations of all four webinars are available here.
2020 Oxford University Press
Just over a year ago Oxford University Press asked me to join three colleagues from around the world and become the fourth member of their Expert Panel on Pronunciation for the 21st-Century Learner. We held three online meetings in which we discussed the position of pronunciation teaching in ELT this century, especially bearing in mind the globalisation of English. The results of the panel’s deliberations will appear soon in OUP’s offical position paper on this issue.
2020 TESOL-SPAIN Salamanca
The conference them in Salamanca was ‘Breaking Barriers‘. I guess it referred more to physical or social barriers regarding access to English, but I chose to speak about intelligibility, which is a huge barrier to communication if it’s not achieved by a speaker, regardless of whether they are native or nonnative speaker. You can see my presentation here.
2020 APAC Barcelona
Trinity College London asked me to take part again in the annual conference of the Associació de Professors i Professores d’Anglès de Catalunya. The conference theme was about the effects of the globalisation of English, so I asked the question ‘So just how global is your English?. Hopefully I was able to answer this. If you want to, though, you can take a look at my presentation here.
2020 Oxford University Press
At the start of 2020 I completed the updating of the Advanced Pocket Book for Speakers of Spanish that will accompany the Fourth Edition of English File at these levels for the Spanish market.
2020 – Trinity College Spain
As I have done for several years now, I have started to work my way around Spain on behalf of Trinity College London with two new Best Practice workshops. This year, one is on how to use the Trinity Portfolio Toolkit to help learners improve their process writing skills. The second is on IDEAS for teaching pronunciation. Both workshops can be found here Best Practice workshops, and an article on IDEAS for teaching pronunciation can be downloaded here.
2019 – Oxford University Press
Back in 218 Oxford University Press asked me to help them with work they were doing to harmonise pronunciation syllabuses for all of their authors and content creators, from A1 though to C1. Working on the principal of international intelligibility as the goal of pronunciation teaching at these levels, I created detailed pronunciation syllabuses for future OUP titles at three levels – A1–A2, B1–B2 and C1.
2019 – ACEIA Sevilla
The ACEIA conference has become one of the best ELT events held in Spain each year. I’ve participated in a good number of recent ACEIA conferences, and was especially glad to go back this year on behalf of Trinity College London, and return to the topic of teaching pronunciation. From being intelligible to being you. An article on my talk can be downloaded here.
2019 – Centros de Profesores Andalucía
As part of their exams agreement, Trinity College London offer teachers in many parts of Spain free training on key methodological areas. This year I visited the Centros del Profesorado of all eight capital cities in Andalucía, and showed how the Trinity Portfolio Toolkit could be used to help learners improve their process writing skills. Trinity College Portfolio Toolkit
2019 – III Congreso Otoño ACLID, Valladolid
Another chance to collaborate with Oxford University Press España, and to follow up on the work I had done last year at ACLID on dealing with accents in pronunciation teaching. This time I turned my attention to using images to help learners acquire better pronunciation. Imaging pronunciation. From Sight to Sound.
2019 – PronSIG Event, Strathclyde University
It was a joy to be able to help the IATEFL PronSIG at their one-day event in Glasgow. I was asked to help teachers in as practical a way as possible with my opening plenary and so chose to go back to basics in terms of teaching techniques. You can find out what these are here.
2019 – 4th English for Healthcare Conference, Castellón
The invitation to participate in the HEALTHY conference came out of the blue but this was a very fulfilling experience. I was invited to participate in order to explain to ELT professionals how the reality of English as a Lingua Franca affects their work in teaching English to workers in all areas of healthcare. ELF pronunciation for healthcare workers
2019 – C1/C2 Immersion Course, Escuelas Oficiales de Idiomas de Tenerife
Oxford University Press España invited me to be one of their lead trainers in this 3-day intensive course on C1/C2 contents and methodology for teachers from the island’s Escuelas Oficiales de Idiomas. Here are some of the ‘Glows’ and ‘Grows’ that Daniel Barber and I got from the course. C1/C2 immersion Course
2019 – Experiencias en Linguas Estranxeiras, Santiago de Compostela
The Conselleira de Educación, Universidade e Formación Profesional of the Xunta de Galicia invited me to speak at the Xornada de Linguas Estranxeiras which they organised in Santiago de Compostela on May 4th within the framework of the regional EDUlingüe2020 programme. In the morning I spoke about how to make projects work in a CLIL setting, whilst in the afternoon I focused on how to deal with learners’ language errors in a constructive way.
2019 – IATEFL Annual Conference, Liverpool
The IATEFL Pronunciation Special Interest Group, which is more widely known as the PronSIG, very kindly invited me to give a presentation at their Pre-conference event, Pronunciation teaching: a kaleidescope of perspectives. The talk I gave, Imaging Pronunciation, is an exploration of the ways that we can use images to help learners deal with the sounds and connected speech features of the pronunciation of English. You can download the presentation here.
2019 – Oxford University Press
Working on behalf of Oxford University Press España once again, I spoke at the the 3rd ELT Conference in San Sebastián on March 30th. The presentation for my workshop, Language Through Literature, can be downloaded here.
Earlier in the year I finished updating the Intermediate and Upper Intermediate Pocket Book for Speakers of Spanish that will accompany the Fourth Edition of English File at these levels for the Spanish market.
Together with other colleagues and pronunciation experts from around the world, I am working closely with Oxford University Press in a consultancy role on the topic of pronunciation.
2019 – Trinity College Spain
I continue to work extensively with Trinity College London throughout Spain. The bulk of my work revolves around the workshops I give under the theme of Best Practice. These workshops aim to help teachers from primary through to adult with their understanding of communicative methodologies. For the 2018-19 academic year I ran two workshops, Language through literature and (M)other tongue tied. All my Best Practice workshops for Trinity College London can be downloaded here.
2019 has also seen the start of a new project with Trinity College London. Activating Skills in English (ASE) aims to supply teaching resources based around the twenty videos that I did for Trinity College in 2017. These short videos revolve around key issues regarding skills competence when preparing candidates for the ISE exams at all levels. As the ASE project coordinator I am guiding a team of teachers in the preparation of lesson plans that will allow learners to improve their competence in all four language skills, and so be better situated to pass the Trinity ISE and GESE exams.
Following on from the 2017 teacher training videos, Trinity have commissioned me to prepare a further ten. As before, the idea is that these videos will support teachers who are preparing candidates for Trinity exams. Five of the new videos will focus on teaching pronunciation.
2018 – SAFA Colegio Sagrada Familia de Urge, Madrid
Getting Going With CLIL – short, introductory course on CLIL aims and methodology for secondary schools
2018 IH BCN ELT Conference
ID2EAS for teaching pronunciation – conference presentation about imitation, discrimination, demonstration, explanation and association as techniques for teaching pronunciation. Download the presentation here.
2018 – Oxford University Press
In March I spent two weeks collaborating with OUP Italy, touring the country from north to south with the workshop Did you hear what I said? Teaching listening, not testing.
Throughout the second half of 2018 I was involved in consultancy work on pronunciation teaching for Oxford University Press. This led up to a presentation on pronunciation teaching for the 21st century, which I gave in November to the OUP ELT editors in Oxford. Throughout 2017 and 2018 I was also busy updating the English File Pocket Book for Speakers of Spanish. The pocket book first came out with the Third Edition of English File, and the current work is to prepare it for release as a pdf with the Fourth Edition.
With Oxford University Press España I gave a webinars on using the L1 in pronunciation teaching (Mother-tongue tied) and on project work with teenagers and adults (Making Projects Work). In July I also gave a webinar on behalf of OUP as part of the the Braz-TESOL conference. This was on one of my areas of experise, Teaching the Pronunciation of English as a Lingua Franca. Further exploring pronunciation in the 21st century, in October I gave the presentation They Don’t Do Scottish Accents at ACLID Conference in Valladolid.
2018 – Trinity College Spain
I continue to work extensively with Trinity College London throughout Spain. The bulk of my work revolves around the workshops I give under the theme of Best Practice. These workshops aim to help teachers from primary through to adult with their understanding of communicative methodologies. For the 2017–18 academic year I ran two workshops, Independent listening and Rating scales and marking student output. All my Best Practice workshops for Trinity College London can be downloaded here.
In addition to Best Practice workshops, I gave keynote or plenary talks at numerous conferences including TESOL-SPAIN, March 10th, APABAL April 13th, APPI April 27th, British Council Teacher’s Day Barcelona, Septmber 29th, and ACEIA Sevilla, November 10th. My work with Trinity College also saw me running courses on both CLIL and Pronunciation Teaching for different local education authorities, including those of Ceuta, Castilla-La Mancha and Galicia. I returned to Galicia in July to run two 5-day language immersion courses for the Consellería de Educación, and participated in the II Campus Internacional de Verano of the Universidad Politécnica de Cartagena, where I ran a five-day course on classroom practice for teaching language skills in ELT.
2017 – Universidad Politécnica de Cartagena: I Campus Internacional de Verano
Sponsored by Trinity College, I ran a one-week course under the generic title of Teaching the pronunciation of English. Twenty-five teachers from a mix of primary, secondary, tertiary and CLIL backgrounds joined me to explore how the pronunciation of English works, how to perfect their own pronunciation, and how to teach pronunciation effectively in their very different classroom settings. A challenging but ultimately very satisfying week.
2017 – Trinity College Spain
So far 2017 has been full and varied. Started off working in Castilla-La Mancha through the agreement that Trinity has with the regional education authority for training. Part of the work I did was on pronunciation, but I also did a two-day intensive course on CLIL. This set me up nicely for February and a one-week course for teachers from vocational training in Cantabria. These teachers are preparing to use a CLIL approach in their work, and so here my 22 years teaching English in the Asturias School of Tourism proved of great value.
Related to all this work on CLIL was an intervention in March at a conference on EMI, whilst in July I returned to Madrid to work for the Consejería de Educación helping a mixture of ELT and CLIL teachers to find ways of ‘Supporting effective learning’. The five-day courses looked at the globalisation of English, pronunciation, teaching and learning vocabulary, second language listening, and dealing with learner’s mistakes.
2017 – Oxford University Press
Early March took me the length and breadth of Italy traveling with OUP author Ben Wetz, and speaking about learners’ mistakes and what to do with them (Make No Mistake). I’ve also been collaborating with OUP España and their webinar programme. The first was about pronunciation for teenagers, an age at which getting pronunciation right can be the last thing on your mind. Also for OUP España was a plenary session in Valencia at the 10th Annual Conference of Spain’s Escuelas Oficiales de Idiomas.
More recently I was back in Madrid with colleague Ronnie Lendrum for another La Salle teachers one-week language immersion course. As before, participants eat, sleep and drink English without the expense of traveling to the UK or US. This year we were in the La Salle complex in Griñón, just south of Madrid.
2017 – MacMillan Education
Occasionally MacMillan Education ask me to lend them a hand. This time it was at their Academy Day in Bilbao on June 2nd. They’d seen me talking about dealing with accents in ELT (They Don’t Do Scottish Accents) and asked me to fine-tune this session to the audience they were expecting.
2017 – IATEFL Annual Conference, Glasgow
As part of my own development I attend the IATEFL Annual Conference most years. This year I took part in the Pre-conference event run by the PronSIG under the title of Pronunciation then and now. It was a very good day, but especially memorable for me as sitting in the audience as I spoke was Peter Roach. Principal editor of the Cambridge Pronouncing Dictionary, Peter is also the author of English Phonetics and Phonology (CUP), the book on which I cut my teeth in terms of pronunciation.
2016 – Consejería de Educación de la Junta de Andalucía.
My collaboration with Trinity College in Spain has also seen me back in the Centros de Profesorado run by the Junta de Andalucía. Following on from work I did for the Andalucian regional government in 2015, November 2016 once again saw me working my way around all eight Andalucian capital cities to provide teachers with further insights into the ISE exam, together with training in the theory and methodology behind teaching reading skills to L2 users of English.
2016 – Trinity College Spain
In addition to picking up on any loose ends regarding the Revised ISE exam, I also delivered two new ‘Best Practice’ workshops. Reading More Than Ever looks at the skills and strategies that effective readers employ and ties them into a range of classroom activities to promote these skills. Make No Mistake takes a very hands-on look at the cause and class of learner errors, and suggests different ways we can react to and work with these mistakes in class.
Best Practice with Trinity teachers in Alicante, Oct 2016
2016 – Consejería de Educación de la Comunidad de Madrid
Collaborating with Trinity College in Spain has taken me back to my roots as a teacher trainer. In July and September I worked with teachers through the Madrid Community’s network of teacher training centres (Centros Regionales de Inovación y Formación – CRIF). On both occasions the training was aimed at CLIL teachers from the bilingual schools in the Madrid. In July I spent a week with teachers from primary schools, and a week with colleagues from secondary and vocational training. In September I met with teachers from bilingual secondary and vocational centres to help them with lesson planning for CLIL. I’ll pick up from where I left off with these teachers in February 2017.
2016 – Oxford University Press España
July 2016 saw colleague Ronnie Lendrum and myself back in Madrid to repeat our two one-week residential courses for teacher’s from the La Salle primary and secondary schools in Spain. Teachers from all over the country shared an intensive immersion experience in English whilst living in the heart of the Spanish capital. A centre-piece to the week’s work was the visit to the National Museum of Archaeology, which we used as a focus for project work developed by the teachers on the course. Feedback was once again excellent for both weeks.
With La Salle teachers at the National Musuem of Archaeology, July 2016
2016 – IATEFL Annual Conference, Birmingham
As part of my own training I attend the IATEFL Annual Conference most years. This year my presentation, They Don’t Do Scottish Accents, was about the need to incorporate activities into pronunciation teaching that will help learners deal with the multiple accents they are destined to meet when using today’s globalized English. But the highlight of the conference was the chance to share quality time with American pronunciation expert, Judy Gilbert, who has been an inspiration to so many of us.
With Judy Gilbert at the Pronunciation Special Interest Group dinner.
2016 – Oxford University Press Italy
One of the highlights of 2016 was the week I spent in Italy working for Oxford University Press. The workshop was about how we might go about dealing with our learners’ mistakes, and OUP took me the length and breadth of Italy in five unforgettable days. Starting in Naples I travelled up the east coast then across to Turin, working en route with some of the nicest people you could ever hope to meet, OUP staff and teachers alike. Looking forward to being back there in 2017.
March 2016. About to get the ball rolling in Naples.
2015 – Higher School of Economics, Moscow
A two-day course at Moscow’s prestigious Higher School of Economics thanks to the initiative and hard work of IATEFL colleague, Elena Velikaya. The participants in the seminar all taught English to undergraduate students of economics and finance. In six sessions spaced over two intensive days’ work, we looked at English as a lingua franca, pronunciation teaching, oral communications skills, and strategies for dealing with learners’ errors and mistakes.
2015 – IATEFL Pronunciation SIG event, Dublin
I’ve been a member of the IATEFL Pronunciation Special Interest Group since the early 1990s, so it is always a plaesure to participate in the SIG’s events, especially those that take place outside the main IATEFL Annual Conference itself. In Dublin we had a great day, largely thanks to the hard work and enthusiasm of Louise Guyett.
Discussing goals and priorities for pronunciation in the opening plenary.
2015 – Trinity College London (Spain)
The introduction of revised Integrated Skills in English (ISE) exam has meant a lot of work for me in the second half of 2015, and has seen me travelling to many different parts of Spain in order to explain to teachers what the revision consists of, and what the changes mean for themselves and for the candidates that they are preparing.
A full house in Albacete, CastillaLa Mancha, as teachers come up to speed with the revised ISE.
2015 – MacMillan Education
In the magnificent casino in the centre of Madrid after talking about ways to improve speaking skills with teenagers.
2014 – Trinity College London
In addition to training aimed specifically at the preparation of candidates for their GESE and ISE exams in English, Trinity in Spain provide teacher development sessions around the theme of Best Practice in ELT. I now collaborate with TCL and will be working initially all over the country providing part of this service. Here I am on my home base at the Meres International College, Asturias.
We’ve all just seen that if you teach it well, pronunciation ‘Sounds Fun!’
2014 – British Council Spain
The opening plenary at the British Council 11th Teacher’s Conference in their Somasaguas school premises in Madrid. The conference theme was creativity in ELT, and I spoke about being creative when rethinking goals, priorities, models and instructors in pronunciation teaching. The session went out in live-stream, but a recording can be viewed here.
Re-thinking goals, priorities and models. Photo by kind permission of Antonio Heredia.
2014 – Oxford University Press España
I spent the last week of July 2014 in Madrid, but this time to record a series of twenty-one, 2-minute training videos that will soon accompany the OUP title English File through OUP España’s dedicated online teacher development platform.
Taking a break and a change of role while filming training videos for OUP in Madrid.
2014 – Oxford University Press España
Two one-week residential courses for teacher’s from the La Salle primary and secondary schools in Spain. Teachers from all over the country shared a full–on immersion experience in English whilst living in th heart of Madrid. In addition to the improving their language skills, La Salle asked colleague Ronnie Lendrum and myself to introduce participants to the concepts of collaborative and cooperative learning.
La Salle teachers outside the Museo de Ciencias Naturales in Madrid as part of their training on cooperative and collaborative learning in the language classroom.
2014 – Regional Government of the Principado de Asturias
The Regional Government of the Principado de Asturias asked me to give a plenary on English as a Lingua Franca for their foreign language assistants. I gave the talk in Spanish because of the French and German language assistants in the audience. This forced me to think more deeply about how to apply what we are learning from teaching ELF to foreign language teaching in general.
With Belén Álvarez of the Consejería de Educación, Cultura y Deportes of the Principado de Asturias Regional Government
2014 – Servicios y Gestión Educativa
Teacher training with the Asturias-based company SyG (Servicios y Gestión Educativa), who ask me to run workshops for the staff that accompany their students on immersion courses either in Garaña, Asturias, or in Vegacervera, León. The teachers choose from a menu of workshops which I then adjust to fit the teachers’ profiles – primary or secondary, English teachers or CLIL subject teachers.
In-service training with teachers in Vegacervera, León.
2014 – OUP Teacher’s Day, Bern, Switzerland
As part of their annual teacher’s day, OUP Switzerland asked me to run two workshops for users of English File. The first, Mind the Gap, was on how to help learners to get off the intermediate plateau successfully. The second, Techniques for Learning Vocabulary, drew a big crowd. As it had been the previous year in Bern, it was a pleasure to work the local OUP team.
2014 – International House Bucharest
Based on what she saw in London, Catinca Nicolau, the Academic Manager of IH Bucharest, invited me out to the centre to do a weekend of workshops on teaching pronunciation and listening, and on English as a Lingua Franca.
Still smiling after a weekend’s workshops on teaching pronunciation and listening
2014 – IATEFL Annual International Conference
The IATEFL Annual Conference returned to Harrogate this year. I started the week as one of the speakers at the Pronunciation Special Interest Group’s Pre-conference Event, and finished the week off speaking about motivation on behalf of OUP.
Re-visiting old friends – motivation, topic and text
2014 – OUP España, Teacher’s Day, Madrid
OUP España invited me to participate in their Teacher’s Day in Madrid. I gave a session called Pronunciation 14s in which I explored what to focus on in pronunciation when teaching adolescents, as well as on IDEAS, the basic strategies of Imitate, Demonstrate, Explain, Associate, and Stimulate that we can use with teenagers.
Pronunciation 14s – teaching pronunciation to teenagers can be done
2014 – International House Andalusia Teacher’s Day, Seville
Sponsored by OUP España, I was asked to participate in the IH Andalusia Day and to talk about pronunciation in response to the need to increase its presence in the teaching done in IH centres throughout Andalusia.
Addressing the audience in the patio of CLIC Seville
2014 – International House World Organisation DOS Conference
Two years ago I was invited to speak at the IHWO DOS Conference. This annual event takes place in the most wonderful part of London, Greenwich, so when I was invited to go back this year and run two 1.5h workshops on Teaching pronunciation: Priorities and Practice, I jumped at the chance.
During my pronunciation workshop at IHWO DOS. Brita Haycraft can be seen sharing her vast experience on the left of the photo.
2013 – Palma de Mallorca
Speaking on behalf on Oxford University Press at the II APABAL Convention on the theme of fostering quality teaching. Have you anything to say for youself? was a session about getting teenagers and young adults talking to each other in English. No easy matter as we all know.
2013 – Poland
Two full days in Krakow (October 26th) and Warsaw (27th) working on skills for listening (Earful), pronunciation (Tongeful) and speaking (Mouthful) as part of the e-DOS ELTea Masters in Action programme.
2013 – Santiago de Chile
Working for OUP, I was able to return to my routes and talk about English as a Lingua Franca with teachers and trainees teachers at the Universidad Alberto Hurtado, and with tourism students and their teachers at the School of Tourism, DUOC, Universidad Católica de Chile.
2013 – Mar del Plata, Argentina
A great experience. I was made to feel really welcome and felt completely at home in my first, but hopefully not last, visit to the Jornadas Internacionales de Fonética y Fonología. And as if the warmth of the welcome wasn’t enough, the level of enthusiasm and commitment from the students during the afternoon workshops was unbeatable.
2013 – Buenos Aires
I spent a week in Buenos Aires working with Oxford University Press giving talks to primary school teachers on pronunciation (Sounds Fun), to DOSs and Heads from private language schools on getting students talking in English (Have you anything to Say?). I ended the week at the 38th FAAPI Conference, with the talk ‘So What’s so Great about Britain?’.
englishglobalcom 