LANGUAGE EVENT

Coverage of The 47th Annual International IATEFL Conference & Exhibition

April 9-12,2013

Day(3):Plenary Session:Dr.JUN LIU

He is a Professor and Head of the Department of English in the College of Humanities at The University of Arizona, and faculty member of both English Language/Linguistics (EL/L) and the Second Language Acquisition and Teaching (SLAT) Interdisciplinary Ph.D. Program. In today's plenary session,he talked about the future of the ELT. Dr.Liu focused upon the nuance of the centent of the EFL courses.For example, he talked about the different EFL courses like EAP,EAL,ESL,etc....He added that the continuous technology is necessary to achieve more success in teaching,especially with all what is related to second language acquisition. 

In his interview with Nik Robinson,he stated that he had read EFL publications that went back from 1967 up till 2012 with the purpose of comprehending profoundly how the development of the second language acquisition takes place.

He advised ,in this interview, the teachers to 'teach less'.He meant that the teacher should give some room for the students to talk and the teacher's talking in the classroom should be less than the students' talking.The teacher should give an opportunity  for the students to explore learning.He advised the teachers as well to be multi-tasked,i.e. the teacher should be familiar with various specializations that could assist them in their EFL classes and be familiar with different EFL courses,EFL,ESL, EAL,etc...

The plenary session and the interview were really rich  where Dr. Liu pinpointed essential elements not only related to the EFL ,but also to  the second language acquisition.

Adrian Underhill

The second prominent figure who was able to give significant information today at IATEFL was Mr.Adrian Underhill.He is a  series editor of the Macmillan Books for Teachers, author of Sound Foundations: Learning and Teaching Pronunciation and an advisor in the development of the new Macmillan English Dictionary.

Mr.Underhill delivered a speech and had interview as well about 'Spontaneity in ELT'.He thinks that the spontaneity is the spirit of  the ELT class  where the teacher can elaborate on the content of the textbook. Mr.Underhill with the collaboration of Jim Scrivener published a book bearing that theme where they shed the light upon 'what can make learning visible?'.

He believes that the teacher should get connected to their students through spontaneity,as the teacher should not only focus on the students' output,but also  what is inside their minds.

He stroke two examples to clarify what he was referring to.For example,if the students are asked to pronounce the word'conference', the teacher will repeat several with different tones of voices and intonation to convey specific message.At this point, the students' faculty of comprehension and perception will try to realize the differences through using their mental capabilities.Another example that was mentioned in his interview with Nik Robinson as well was that if the teacher mentions a sentence,they might repeat the sentence in different ways ,as it  can be informative,exclamatory,interrogative,etc....

Mr.Underhill was attempting to give the pronunciation exercises and practices another deep dimensions as the EFL students would not just benefit from practicing some pronunciation exercises,but attempt to perceive these practices to mold them in everyday communicative English.

David Pardoe

David Pardoe is the programme manager for the Africa Knowledge Transfer Partnerships in Sub-Saharan Africa.In his interview with Nik Robinson,he talked about the tough conditions of the classrooms in some West and South Africa and how the British Council attempts to provide the necessary material to schools that could help the teachers to perform well.He talked about cell phone generator(toy) which replaces the electricity power.He stated that it can be used for 8 hours unceasingly,and how this generator is durable.It costed the British Council GBP 7000 to make it available in different regions of Africa.

IATEFL Failure Test

That was a really interesting show .One could have found some  fun in that show.Many vital figures in the world of EFL took part in this show.We had Andy Cowle,Herbert Puchta, Jermey Harmer,and others were asked to mention some of their personal anecdotes where they had met some failure with the purpose of adding light material to the conference after spending many hours attending serious and dry material.The winner in this show was Rakesh Bhanout.

That was a novel idea to be introduced in an EFL Conference ,but I think that many participant would have loved it.I saw the IATEFL Live Chat and I can tell that many chatters expressed their fond of this show.