Using your brain: what neuroscience can teach us about learning, British Council Teaching English
When: 5 October, 2018
Who: Rachael Roberts, ELT materials writer, teacher and teacher trainer (she's on Twitter!)
What: an hour talking about how findings from neuroscience can inform language teaching
Main takeaways:
You can find a recording of the webinar here, I hope you enjoy it as much as I did!
When: 5 October, 2018
Who: Rachael Roberts, ELT materials writer, teacher and teacher trainer (she's on Twitter!)
What: an hour talking about how findings from neuroscience can inform language teaching
Main takeaways:
- the value of using spaced learning as opposed to massed learning;
- encouraging intrinsic motivation, as it supports learning in the longer term;
- stimulating guessing: although some teachers are afraid that by guessing, learners will retain the wrong answer instead of the right one, it's a risk worth taking as guessing makes learning more memorable;
- some stress is goo is good: an optimal level of difficulty, which causes the learner to have to "work for it", is conducive to learning
You can find a recording of the webinar here, I hope you enjoy it as much as I did!
Reflective tools for teacher development, IATEFL Research SIG
When: March 19th 2018
Who: Steve Mann (University of Warwick) & Steve Walsh (Newcastle University)
What: 1 hour 20 minutes on tools teachers and teacher trainers can use to foster reflective practice
Main takeaways:
You can find a recording of the webinar here and read more about reflective practice in ELT here:
Farrell, T. S. C. and A. Cirocki (2017). "Reflective practice for the professional development of TESOL practitioners." The European journal of applied linguists and TEFL 6(2): 5-24.
Steve Walsh, Steve Mann; Doing reflective practice: a data-led way forward, ELT Journal, Volume 69, Issue 4, 1 October 2015, Pages 351–362, https://doi.org/10.1093/elt/ccv018
When: March 19th 2018
Who: Steve Mann (University of Warwick) & Steve Walsh (Newcastle University)
What: 1 hour 20 minutes on tools teachers and teacher trainers can use to foster reflective practice
Main takeaways:
- Current issues with Reflective Practice: Issues with RP
- Lack of data-led, evidence-based material to see how RP is done in practice
- Over-reliance on written forms of reflection
- Reflection hasn’t been operationalised in systematic ways: how it is done from a practitioner and a research point of view
- Useful tools for Reflective Practice:
- Cooperative development: one person becomes the "understander" and the other one has the chance to elaborate
- Post-observation conferences
- Video-enhanced observation (examples of use of VEO around the world)
- Dialogic reflection: co-constructing knowledge through language and interaction
- Cooperative development: one person becomes the "understander" and the other one has the chance to elaborate
You can find a recording of the webinar here and read more about reflective practice in ELT here:
Farrell, T. S. C. and A. Cirocki (2017). "Reflective practice for the professional development of TESOL practitioners." The European journal of applied linguists and TEFL 6(2): 5-24.
Steve Walsh, Steve Mann; Doing reflective practice: a data-led way forward, ELT Journal, Volume 69, Issue 4, 1 October 2015, Pages 351–362, https://doi.org/10.1093/elt/ccv018
