We often present at ELT conferences and events. Just select the title below if you're looking for the handout or download from a talk or workshop you have attended.
English UK North Academic Conference 2015, Liverpool
Location:
LILA, New Barrett House, 47 North John Street
Extra info:
Plus downloads
Many students studying English want (or even need) to be able to understand the spontaneous, unscripted speech they find themselves immersed in as people chat away around them. For students schooled on a diet of scripted ELT material the challenge is truly daunting; for teachers wishing to help, the unruly nature of conversational spoken English makes it difficult to know where to start.
LILA, New Barratt House, 47 North John Street, Liverpool L2 6SG
Extra info:
Plus downloads
Do you speak and teach in a standard RP accent? How bad is it if you don’t? In this session, we will look at a phonemic chart and how it is organised. We will then consider some of the ways the sounds are different in the North of England.
The slides from the talk can be found below. Also, check out the 'Materials' section of this website to see full downloads, including audio in some cases, and lesson plans for some of the activities demonstrated in the talk.
On the surface of it, unscripted language is a total mess, and it's a wonder that anybody can understand any of it. It stops and starts, interrupts and stumbles, slows and accelerates, and generally breaks all the grammar rules you’ve ever learnt. So, how can we help learners to make sense of it?
(pdf of slides below) Proverbial wisdom tells us that if you give someone a fish, they can eat for a day, but if you teach someone to fish, they can eat for a lifetime. It’s a message about the long-term value of learning new skills and becoming independent. A similar thing could be said about pronunciation and dictionaries.
The slide show of this talk can be found on the PDF below. In this talk, we will focus on pronunciation at three levels – 1 sounds, 2 words, and 3 phrases. For each of these, we will look at some of the typical problems for Italian learners, and try out some fun activities for raising awareness of these.
It’s nearly time for the 38th TESOL-Spain National Convention, where this year, as well as catching up with friends, I’ll be presenting on Learning Listening: The challenge of unscripted language.
I'm delighted to be presenting at TESOL Spain this year on the topic of pronunciation. This year, we'll be looking at individual sounds and things we and our students can do with them, including experimenting and imagining, representing and exploring, and playing and communicating.
