Upcoming CPD Opportunities Summer 2026
Upcoming CPD Opportunities: Spring 2026
The lighter evenings are getting longer and the temperatures are rising steadily here in Spain! It’s a busy time of year for teachers here, with end-of-course exams and preparation for summer courses in the private sector. If you are lucky enough to have some well-deserved free time coming up and can manage to squeeze in a little self-directed CPD, here is the latest run-down of opportunities available over the next three months.
I will be updating the post regularly, so if I’ve missed something, do let me know in the comments.
Jessica
TITLE: Using ChatGPT to Simplify Literature to Your Students’ Level
PRESENTER: Thomas Robb
DATES & TIMES: Friday, 24th July, 14:00 (UK time)
LANGUAGE: English
ORGANISED BY: IATEFL LITSIG
TYPE OF EVENT: Free webinar
SUMMARY
While many educators are familiar with using ChatGPT or similar AI tools for basic tasks such as text revision or prompt-based content generation, fewer are aware of their broader pedagogical applications. These include extracting text from scanned documents, adjusting reading levels to align with learners’ proficiency, and generating glossaries of challenging vocabulary with explanations in learners’ first language.
We will start with a quick demonstration of how you can upload any scanned image into ChatGPT and receive an accurate, editable text file in return. Next, the presenter will demonstrate how teachers can use ChatGPT, or comparable tools, to simplify the oft-taught 19 th -century novel Northanger Abbey to a lexical level manageable for their students, so the text can be used for extensive reading and other activities, and how ChatGPT can provide follow-up questions, or a bilingual glossary of difficult vocabulary.
Finally, the session will introduce the “NGSL Profiler”, a free tool for analysing the suitability of a text based on your own students’ vocabulary level. Presentation slides will provide step-by-step guidance for later reference.
TITLE: BEYOND SLIP vs SLEEP: DIAGNOSING PRONUNCIATION
PRESENTER: Donna Brinton
DATES & TIMES: Saturday, 25th July – 16:00 (CET)
LANGUAGE: English
ORGANISED BY: TESOL-SPAIN PronSIG
TYPE OF EVENT: Webinar (free for TESOL-SPAIN PronSIG members)
SUMMARY
The first step in any pronunciation course for second language learners is the diagnostic assessment of students’ second language (L2) pronunciation skills; this process serves the primary purpose of teachers being able to fine-tune their pronunciation curriculum. In this lecture we take a critical look at the past history of diagnostic assessment and at the current state of the art. Following a brief definition of diagnostic assessment, we’ll examine the deep roots of pronunciation assessment in the Audiolingual era and the underlying premises inherited from contrastive analysis which governed the diagnostic practices of the era. We next proceed to examine Audiolingualism’s diagnostic legacy (including minimal pair word and sentence perception/production tasks along with diagnostic passages and free speech samples used to assess learner production). Following this look at the beliefs and diagnostic practices of the past, we examine the disjunct between these practices and the underlying premises of communicative language teaching concerning L2 phonological acquisition, calling attention to the impact of these on current pronunciation diagnostic practices. We’ll conclude by surveying the current landscape of the diagnostic assessment of pronunciation skills, noting several promising trends. Lecture participants will come away with a more nuanced understanding of diagnostic assessment practices and how they can be made to better align with the principles of communicative language teaching.
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