Robbie McDonald, a teacher at IH Palma, spoke for International House at the recent TESOL- Spain in Oviedo, Spain. Below, he tells us more about his presentation 'Helping our learners work with chunks of language' and how the interaction with his audience made it a great experience.
I have long been interested in the lexical approach and the use of chunks of language in the classroom and, after I heard about the Speak for IH initiative, I thought I would submit my proposal to the TESOL-Spain conference and see what happened.
TESOL-Spain is the biggest conference in Spain and is attended by hundreds of people from all areas of the ELT world, so I was slightly nervous when my proposal was accepted! However, the fact that it was accepted pushed me to research my topic further, something useful in itself, and on the day of my talk I soon settled into things and I found the experience enjoyable and useful, especially thanks to the interaction I was able to have with my attendees.
Aside from my talk, the TESOL-Spain conference allowed me to meet several other ELT professionals from a range of different contexts and exchange ideas. I also had the opportunity to go and see different speakers give interesting and useful talks on a whole host of topics, and I’ve been able to integrate lots of the ideas from them into my day to day teaching.
Overall, it was a fantastic experience and I’m grateful to IHWO for providing me with the opportunity to attend and speak at such an interesting conference.
Robbie McDonald, teacher at IH Palma, Spain.
