IH Speakers at IATEFL 2024

The IH World team are delighted to be attending IATEFL 2024 in Brighton. We’ll be at stand 12 with a range of activities for you to play and we’ll be ready to answer any of your questions about teaching and training with an IH school or the IH Online Teacher Training Institute.

It’s not just the IH World team attending from the IH network. The programme is dotted with IH speakers and the diverse range of topics they cover is a testament to their passion and dedication to innovative teaching. We can’t wait to hear their talks and highly recommend anyone attending IATEFL to go and see them.

Here’s a day-by-day breakdown:

Tuesday 16th April

11:50 - 12:20 "Exploring the CELTA teaching practicum on an MA TESOL" - Richard Chinn, King's College London & International House London and Joe Fagan, King's College London

This talk focuses on the initial findings of a research project which aimed to explore the impact of a combined MA TESOL/CELTA programme on novice teachers' beliefs towards language learning and teaching. This talk aims to provide attendees with insights and ideas for maximising the impact of the teacher practicum on MA programmes.

15:35 - 16:05 "Bringing intercultural awareness into the classroom" - Daniel Man-Hon Tse, International House Milan and San Donato

Intercultural awareness is a vital skill that everybody needs in our increasingly connected world. How can teachers integrate this skill into English language teaching and learning? In this interactive talk, we shall explore four classroom activities that teachers can easily exploit for raising intercultural awareness among language learners, be they teenagers or adults in general English or exam preparation classes.

16:35 – 17:05 "Supporting neurodiversity on initial teacher training courses" - Joanna Stansfield and Melissa Lamb, International House London

How do you support neurodiverse trainees? Here at our centre, we have investigated trainer and trainee experiences and the systems in place to support them. The insight we gained has helped us put together new procedures, a guidebook for trainers and trainees and trainer development sessions. Join us to explore ideas of how to make your courses more inclusive.

16:35 – 17:05 "Developing responsible global citizens (DGRC) - an Erasmus+ project" - Jennifer Holden, International House Language Centre Palermo

Are we preparing students with the necessary knowledge and skills to face the future world? This talk describes the processes and outcomes of an EU funded project, DRGC Curriculum Builder, in which 21st century topics and skills have been mapped to the CEFR to allow teachers to easily design courses and lessons which help learners achieve their potential outside the classroom.

17:20 - 18:05 "The joy in being wrong (on so many levels)" - Lucie Cotterill, IH British School Reggio Calabria

In language teaching organisations, we are well aware of how errors act as a springboard for learning but language mistakes are just one way we can help our students and staff benefit from being wrong.

This interactive workshop will provide a range of activities, in line with the 2030 Agenda goals, to be used with students, staff, and teachers.

Wednesday 17th April

11:05 - 11:35 "False beginners adult learners and business English writing" - Choreanne Frei, IH Online Teacher Training Institute (IH OTTI)

False beginner adult learners come with their own strengths and weaknesses, but often forget the transferable skills they bring from their L1 and professional experience. In this talk, I will discuss the approach chosen to support a multilingual Business English group to develop their transactional writing and confidence when English suddenly became relevant to their jobs.

Thursday 18th April

12:05 - 12:50 "Universal design for learning in the primary classroom" - Anette Igel, IH World

When teaching young learners, we might come across barriers that hold them back from achieving their full potential.What kind of barriers these might be and how Universal Design for Learning (UDL) can help us shape lessons in a way that young learners can grow is the focus of this practical workshop.

10:20 - 10:50 "A teacher’s agenda: target language? Emergent language? Or both?" - Marianne Jones, International House London

What are we trying to teach and why? To answer this question, I will explore how different communicative approaches influence teachers’ decisions regarding the language components of a lesson, and how far they result in target language or emergent language, or both. Furthermore, I will examine learner perceptions of the value of both types of language to their learning.

Friday 19th April

11:05 - 11:50 "Emergent language and task repetition with lower-level learners" - Danny Norrington-Davies, International House London

At lower levels, using focused tasks is an effective way of introducing and exploring new or unfamiliar language. In this workshop, we will look at some communicative activities and the language that might emerge from them. We will then explore how effectively learners used the new language when repeating or doing a similar task later in the course.

13:35 – 14:05 "Using online tools to develop deeper understanding of lexis" - Andrea Borsato, International House London

In this talk, I will show how teachers can train higher-level learners (B1 and above) to autonomously use a combination of online dictionaries and a corpus for learners, such as SKELL, so they will be able to develop a deeper understanding of and confidence in using new lexis in terms of collocation, grammatical patterns, semantic association, and accuracy.

Check out the rest of the programme here.