Exams Catalunya 6th ELT Conference: Roundup

Exams Catalunya 6th ELT Conference

17th November, 2018

Conference Roundup

This year’s Exams Catalunya 6th ELT Conference was held at the beautiful Il.lustre Col.legi d'Advocats de Barcelona

ICAB, venue for the Exams Catalunya 6th ELT Conference, 17th Nov, 2018

I’ve already dedicated a blog post to the closing plenary by Simon Ward, which you can find here. Here is my summary of some of the other key sessions of the day.

Plenary: Mary Whiteside Technology to transform teaching, learning and assessment: Trends, challenges and opportunities
 

As is often the case with talks about technology, this talk was plagued by technological problems, as the internet connection was lost at the beginning of the session. Nevertheless, Mary managed to carry on and deliver an engaging, informative and thought-provoking plenary.

The introduction of technology (in any area) can take four forms: substitution – replacing the original; augmentation – enhancing the original; modification –changing and improving the original; redefinition – changing the way things are done. These can be seen as enhancing the existing system (in the first two cases) or transforming for the latter two.

Technology has transformed many aspects of our field, but the focus here was the area of assessment. In the past, assessment was...

- paper-based
- summative
- timed

The impact of technology in assessment can be seen in the following aspects

- content
- delivery
- calibration – checking level
- marking
- records of assessment, e.g. certificates

An example of new means of recording assessment is through ‘open badges’. As an alternative to a certificate of attendance, these contain information about date and content of the session attended.

One example of how technology has ‘re-defined’ the area of evaluation is through ‘stealth assessment’, which can reduce anxiety in the learner, for example assessing young learners by means of a vídeo game.

Technology has also transformed the way that learners prepare for assessment. Increased access to and availability of learning resources have obvious implications for learner autonomy. An example of this is Cambridge English Write and Improve and the new online resource Cambridge English Speak and Improve.

This application gives feedback on the learner’s spoken production. Still in Beta, it currently does not give very detailed feedback, but will improve the more it’s used.

Another transformative innovation is the use of Virtual Reality (VR) in language learning. This is already widely used for training in the Medical, Aviation and Oil industries. Apparently, there is already a speaking test vídeo for Cambridge First, that recreates the experience of what it’s like to do a speaking test.

Finally, Mary used Answergarden to elícit the audience’s perception of the future of assessment in ELT.




Who is Pauline and what has she done with exams?

 

Panel Discussion: How can we help English teachers respond to the challenges of ever-changing teaching and technological landscapes?

Panel discussion in progress

 

The panel was formed by Amanda Davies, Sarah Gessler, Nina Lauder and Graham Ward. A number of 'challenges' were touched upon, as well as questions from the floor, but here is my selection of some of the topics covered.

  

Avoiding burnout

The discussion began by talking about how teachers should avoid burnout when there is little obvious financial reward in ELT. Some suggestions and comments included:

- following the Cambridge English teaching framework in order to set goals and objectives.

- seeking support from the institution: there is a need to be proactive if you find you are not supported, even if this means changing school!

- Amanda Davies pointed out that teaching can be a lonely profession, especially when teachers are not supported and there is a lack of communication with the institution.

- Graham Ward warned against seeking validation from your students, especially if you teach teenagers – it would be dangerous to depend on their positive feedback.

- Finally, if you lose your passion for teaching, re-evaluate and explore other areas of ELT, e.g. studying, writing, management.

How to best develop as a professional.

Professional development is often associated with quality control and observations. Nina Lauder pointed out that observations should be pre-planned and the objectives should be agreed with the teachers. When she does this (in Andalucia), the management is often shocked but, as she pointed out, if a teacher doesn’t do something regularly it’s immediately obvious from the students’ behaviour. 

- Amanda Davies: teachers can be overwhelmed by the amount of CPD opportunities available, as there are so many conferences and workshops.

- Graham Ward: The teacher is the central resource in the classroom and should adapt the ideas and theories you come across to reflect who you are as a teacher.

- Sarah Gessler: In the corporate world there is a move towards ‘quick-fix’ solutions: 20-min ‘learning episodes’, which would not work for language learning. In Human Resources, they talk about the 70-20-10 principle: what we learn is 10% - formal; 20% - informal; 70% - real world experience. Sarah equated ‘informal’ with ‘out-of-class learning’, which can be accessed by technology.

Incorporating technology into your classes
 

- Graham recommended Google Classroom. He asks his students to make short vídeos of themselves and upload them, for example, watch a TED talk and record their impressions of what they’ve seen.

- Amanda reminded the audience of the importance of online security and obtaining parental consent before uploading content to the internet.

Maintaining learner motivation

- Nina: if students are negative, try not to take it too personally. We don’t know what has happened during the day to make them feel that way.

- Graham: learn to back off if a YL/teenager is not in the right place.

- Sarah: leave some flexibility in the lesson plan, so students, especially the younger ones, can choose what the next activity is.

Workshop: Dan Shepherd - Where do I go from here? Career paths for English teachers

Dan Shepherd’s workshop aimed to provide advice to early-career teachers on how to develop your ELT career in the following areas

- Management
- Teacher training
- Examining
- Materials writing

For each of these four career paths, Dan invited the audience to brainstorm the qualities that a practitioner in the field might need, compare with his suggestions, then presented tips for getting involved and advice from an expert in that particular area. 

 

Management

Qualities of an academic manager (see picture)

 

Some of his tips for becoming an academic manager included:

- Take opportunities that come up to get coordination experience, as this will be a stepping stone to more responsibility in the future
- Show interest in your school or institution as a business.

His expert in the area Michael Terry (Centre Exams Manager at Exams Catalunya), reiterated this advice, with the following tips:

- Get yourself noticed
- Make youself available
- Be seen to be keen

Teacher Training
 

A lot of the participants in this workshop were actually teacher trainers. Suggestions from the floor about the qualities necessary in a teacher trainer included the need to be diplomatic and the ability to empathise - trainers shouldn’t mind being observed if they are going to observe.

First experiences of teacher training can take the shape of internal, in-service training (INSET) sessions. These can be teacher-led. An example is the get-togethers organised by Oxford TEFL on Friday mornings before the public teacher development workshops. Called ‘Fast-freebie Fridays’, teachers use these mini workshops (only 30 mins) to share useful ideas.

Here are Dan’s tips for getting involved.

Examining

Many teachers get involved in examining in order to learn more about the exams and better more effective teachers of exam preparation courses, but it can also be a lucrative supplement / alternative to teaching.

Effective examiners should be able to change from teacher to examiner. This is more difficult than it sounds. As teachers, our instinct is to help the learner: recast utterances and clarify, but as a speaking examiner you have to follow a script strictly in order to ensure that the exam conditions are equal and fair.

If interested, you should approach local examining centres. It is often easier to get taken on as an examiner outside the big cities, where there are fewer teachers. In Barcelona, for example, it’s difficult to get a start as there are so many examiners.

Dan’s tips for getting into examining:

Materials writing

I’ll let the slides do the talking here. The expert advice here is from none other than David Nunan!

How to get into materials writing

David Nunan on materials writing