The sin of assumption: motivation in adult learning

I've really been meaning to post up this presentation, done at TESOL Spain earlier this year, and finally have had a chance to run through the slides and update them slightly so that they make sense - without my voice giving instructions or explanations!


Here they are:




To scroll through the slides, use the arrow keys at the bottom of the presentation:

What do you think?

• Are textbooks too pedagogically based?
• Is it important to design materials that take in the differences between adults and children? Why?
• Do you think that children can also benefit from an "andragogical* approach"?

Do let me know what you think, and/or don't hesitate to ask questions if you have them!

Best,
Karenne

p.s. one of my teacher-trainees in a professional development course last week thought that the term shouldn't really be called andragogy because it really means "man-leading" and instead should have a term that refers more to "adult-age-learning/leading." Google and Wikipedia haven't been too helpful on finding sources for these differences however - thoughts, ideas?

• More posts on Teacher Training
• More posts on Motivation

The Greatest Master is HE who

makes the most masters.

This post is not an attempt to gazump Fogarty's brilliant blog, the Tao of Te(a)ching even if the quote is from his guru....

and, considering how many of my posts these days are dedicated to dogme, I wouldn't want to bore anyone with more of that, even if there is one particular post in the blogosphere which is indeed annoying me - in my opinion: another attempt to justify non-student-centered classrooms.

It's also not about a completely different yet equally controversial blog post in the 'sphere... despite being rushed off my feet these days, I have one eye cocked as I vaguely watch my screen unravel an embarrassing scramble of folks killing themselves to be listed or to get their best mates listed on the  so-called "TEFL:100 the list of "influencers..." 

Ya gotta wonder. 

Ya do.

Hallo, it's 

E

L

T...  

Oh.. for heaven's sake, we're in a bubble...a micro-sized niche of education.  Get a grip - it's not Shakespeare and no one is shaking the ground, earthquake style.   Sometimes when you read through the testosterone-driven fields of our profession, you'd almost think we were writing novels, movies and competing for Oscars...

Sigh.

Arrogance is such a big subject in my mind at the moment.  

Sidebar

I talked to a dear friend over the weekend... she was telling me she got accepted to IATEFL and was pretty excited - when she told me about her proposal, I said  

What a great idea! Sometimes it's better to be a big fish in a little pond because  if you'd gone for x...  well, you could pretty much disappear in that very big pond -

and with a smirk she retorted...  

OR you'd have to become a shark.

Sometimes, 

I wonder if that's what happened to some of these old guys... 

They just had to become reef dwellers.. you know the ones I mean, the ones that can not stop talking about themselves.    I wonder if they're afraid that the current and amazing PLN of talented teachers and presenters are going to clean come and eat them up.  So silly, there's sea enough for all of us.   

But I wonder if this will wind up being us, one day - today's explorers and adventurers today - are we going to wind up in twenty or thirty years time scared out of our wits of giving up the stage to the brighter sparks?

Somehow I don't think so, though, as for the most part we have another vision - we share and we care.  And like some of my favourite folks  out there in the 'verse (Harmer, Greenall, Thornbury, Wilson) we'll join in and like them, we'll support: we'll build and we'll continue learning.

Sidebar 2

All this.. you know the Greatest Master stuff... gotta say, it was certainly something to mull over on the way home from the very best conference I've ever attended: TESOL France - Kudos Ms Cagnol - there were just so many incredibly talented presenters there and boy, what an audience!    

Active, lively, interested teachers - filled with super questions, determined to get down to the pedagogy (andragogy) behind all the flash and dash of tech.  

Engaged with the content and profession.

Except... for one old guy.  

A "master"... who hogged the stage in the evening's entertainment event.  

How much more impressed we would have been with him if instead of doing the

GeeLook@Mi 

all night, 

instead,

he'd allowed the real talent to shine.

How much more impressed with him we would all have been if he'd help create masters...

By the way, did I ever tell you I've swum with sharks?  

Twice, actually, once by accident...  months and months later I was sitting in a pub telling some Aussies that I had loved swimming in Nara Inlet at 6 in the morning because I was the only one there at that hour and they said, you mean the place with the tiger sharks? 

And then once on purpose, off the coast of Sipadan...  and although I was initally fascinated by their focus and musculed mass I soon saw their greyness, their lack of intelligence and dead eyes,  and turned to concentrate on the incredibly beautiful turtles.  (That wasn't an analogy, btw, it's the way it was).

Hmmm... this is an convoluted post, isn't it.  I don't dare press draft though as it will disappear and become draft #53...

Crowd Wise 2: Online Community Platforms

 I think it's fair to say that personal computers have become the most empowering tool 

we've ever created. They're tools of communication, they're tools of creativity, 

and they can be shaped by their user.Bill Gates

 Do you run, co-moderate or belong to a community of like-minded educators or learners online? 

Which platform(s) do you use?

Yahoo!Group, Moodle, Ning, Drupal, Elgg, Wiki, Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, Jamendo, Slideshare, LinkedIn, Xing, Flickr, Diigo..?

Which do you think is the best one?

How'd you rate it for things like the

- ease of use
- cost
- ability to find and communicate with other participants
- ability to share documents
- ability to share photos, media
- ability to gather opinions
- ability to collaborate on projects
- keep track of and follow threaded conversations

And
- things which really irritate you
- things you really miss from a different platform
- anything else?

Best,
Karenne

This posting is part of the Crowd Wise series and is in part my preparation for the swap-shop I will be hosting on web-based communities at the IATEFL conference in Harrogate, April 8th 2010.  Your answers, as brief or as in-depth as you'd like to be, is very much appreciated!

To subscribe to all the posts within this specific series, copy and paste this url:
http://kalinago.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default/-/crowd-wise  into your reader.  

Note: if you would like to participate in this conversation anonymously, please do feel free to do so.  Alternatively, if you would like to specifically mention an online educational community when making reference to your experiences, adding your group's name and/or its URL, you are most welcome to!

Crowd Wise 1: Introduction to this series

Computers are magnificent tools for the realization of our dreams, 

but no machine can replace the human spark of spirit, 

compassion, love, and understanding.
Louis Gerstner

On Thursday, April 8th 2010,  I'll be hosting a discussion, a share-meet if you will, as my first presentation at the IATEFL conference in Harrogate. 

The title:

Crowd Wise

The participants

Anyone running an online community with students, teachers or other educators.

The blurb

A brief presentation of psychological, historical and evolutionary aspects of real-life tribal communities followed by a swap-shop reviewing the key roles of e-participants; discussing group life cycles, net-i-quette issues and conflict resolution; a comparison of web platforms and sharing tips for accessing the wisdom of the crowd.

Anyway, basically, I thought I'd do a swap-shop and open discussion, rather than a workshop or lecture.

Many of us who run e-communities have paths that cross frequently (on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn or even in each others communities) however, we very rarely get an opportunity to sit down  face-to-face and say

"Hey, xyz works really well in my community but you know, I tried abc - which I saw mnopq do well, but oddly enough it didn't for us... what about in your group, did you try?   Oh you did fgh instead?  Great concept..."

So, in a series of posts running from now until end March, I thought I'd begin to explore some of the subjects we'll be chatting about, on this blog, and that way I can get  to know more of  your thoughts and access your wisdom; see what's most pressing, what's not such a big deal (limited time there and all that) and then feed these into the session... plus your comments would also help to create the discussion cards!

Topics include:

The 10min Presentation

• Animal/human evolution and the move towards the creation of tribes
• The psychology and historical implications behind forming tribes and creating tribal roles
• The relationship between community positions in Real Life versus roles in our Online Lives.

The 45min Swap-Shop

• Online platforms
• Group identity
• Individual identity 
• Roles
• Collaboration, invention and working together
• Life cycles of Groups
• Differences in working with learners vs educators
• Tribes and cash

In my next postings, I'll be highlighting each of the above as individual postings and I'll link back as I go through each for a more concentrated discussion.

Have I missed any core topics?  Got a question?   Don't hesitate to add your thoughts!

The process

1. Blog posts from today until end March
2. Discussion at IATEFL
3. Summary based on swap-shop
4. Free pdf available: blog posts (selected comments included + notes from conference


Best,
Karenne


updated 13.02.10
The video mentioned by Elizabeth Anne below in the comments is
PBS Frontline, Digital Nation: Life on the virtual frontier

2 more IATEFL scholarships!

Dear Latin American Readers,

You might be in luck... IATEFL have one more scholarship available, check the link(s) below and apply ASAP!

The award consists of:

• conference registration
• £1800 towards accommodation, expenses and travel costs
• a year's IATEFL membership if applicable

To qualify you must:

• be a native of and resident in a Latin American country
• be a practising teacher or teacher trainer in primary, secondary or tertiary education
• agree to write a 500 word report of your conference experiences by June 2010
• not have attended an IATEFL annual conference before

Deadline: 1st March 2010
http://www.iatefl.org/scholarships/latin-american-scholarship

and...

The Consultants-E have another scholarship for teachers (anywhere in the world*) unable to attend the annual conference in person but who participate actively in the online conference Moodle by making relevant and thoughtful postings.

You do not have to be a member of IATEFL for this scholarship.

The award consists of:

• a fully funded 2 week online course to be selected from the course list at http://www.theconsultants-e.com covering Blogs, Wikis, eNetworks or Podcasting

To qualify you must:

• live and work in a developing country
• have 5-6 hours per week available to study for the duration of the course
• have a reliable Internet connection for the duration of the course
• be able to undertake the course within one year of winning the award

Deadline: 25th April 2010.
http://www.iatefl.org/scholarships/the-consultants-e-online-iatefl-scholarship

Best,
Karenne

Business English Teachers Conference - Poland, Nov 20-22nd 2009

For the first time ever, the annual BESIG conference will be held outside central Europe and instead will take place in one of Poland's biggest cities - Poznan.



Every year the IATEFL Business English SIG conference draws between 350 and 550 participants, bringing together teachers, publishers, innovators, school representatives and it is a unique forum for anyone working in the field of business English teaching.

This year the plenary will be given by my favorite business course book author, Vicki Hollett, and she'll be talking to us about relationships and the effect interpersonal language has in the workplace.

Other great presentations include:

Anişoara Pop from Romania presenting asynchronous speaking and writing web 2.0 tools, Nick Robinson designing needs and means analysis in Financial English, Rita Baker spelling and Chia Suan Chong on an alternative to ELF.

Heike Philp, Graham Stanley and Holly Longstroth will be discussing business English in 2ndLife; Christiana Gardikioti will talk about how to make effective powerpoint presentations and Matt Firth will review the Legal English Certificate.

James Schofield will be informing us why Business students should read graded readers - but by the way, I need no convincing on that, my students LOVE his books - some have even written reviews...

David Cotton on authentic business videos, Duncan Baker chatting with you on finding business clients, Paul Emmerson (is this his first live workshop since he became a daddy? ;-)), will be highlighting his book, Business Vocabulary Builder; Anne Hodgson on monitoring and motivating our 1:1 students and also Tonya Trapp reviewing generation Y in business English.

And many, many, many, more fascinating presentations.


For more information about these, full workshop details etc, see the website:

BESIG conference 2009

Early bird registration (by Sept 30) - €120, €95 IATEFL members.

Best,
Karenne

p.s to watch a video from last years' conference, see this posting here.

IATEFL Scholarships 2010 - deadline 18 September 2009!!

Attending something like the IATEFL probably seems like one of those unreachable career objectives.

I mean, the cost of the flight, hotels, the conference itself..?

We're EFL teachers, money is not exactly a plenty, now is it?

Well, guess what - there are scholarships!

Who knew, huh?

This is the copy of the email I got today:

Please can you spread the word that there are scholarships available to participate at IATEFL's Annual International Conference and Exhibition in Harrogate, UK, in April 2010.

There are 16 scholarships available, all with the deadline of 18th September 2009 for applications to reach IATEFL.

Please refer people to our website at

Scholarships 2009

We hope to receive many applications this year.

With thanks and kind regards,

IATEFL Conference Organiser

I've had a look at what's on offer - basically, there are scholarships for non-members of IATEFL, many more for those who are members: scholarships aimed at teacher-trainers and trainees, first-time speaker awards, scholarships for new teachers(!), scholarships for those who teach with young learners, those who work on humanizing language teaching and much, much more.

So, want to develop your professional career in the field of English Language Teaching?

Head on over to their website and I'll see you in Harrogate.

Can't wait.

Best,
Karenne

p.s Plenary speakers next year include Tessa Woodward, Kieran Egan, Ema Ushioda and Jan Blake - keep posted on updated details on the conference here.

p.p.s. To see how fab it was last year (I watched it all online earlier this year... which is why am going next) check out the forum, photos, filmed keynote presentations etc here.

Cardiff Online - EFL Conference Goes Virtual

Cardiff says hello to the world:

Biggest global teaching event ever!

On April 1st, 2009, over 1600 teachers and academics from around the world will descend on Cardiff for the annual conference of the International Association of Teachers of English as a Foreign Language (IATEFL).

The conference boasts an international line up of world-class plenary speakers;

• Marc Prensky (from USA),
• Elana Shohamy (from Israel),
• Bonny Norton (from Canada),
• Fauzia Shamim (from Pakistan),
• Claudia Ferredas (from Argentina).

There will be over 400 talks, workshops, symposia and the event offers a state of the art exhibition of teaching materials, as well as a rich social program with a distinctly Welsh flavour. This year, 93 different countries will be represented at the event, making it a truly international occasion.

Delegates hail from as far as Vietnam, Venezuela, Cameroon and Micronesia.

However there are many thousands of professionals for whom attending the conference is usually no more than a dream because of the costs involved in travel to UK.

Therefore this year the event is being made accessible to thousands more participants from all around the globe through a virtual community space, known as ‘Cardiff on-line.’ This exciting and ground-breaking innovation is possible due to a collaboration between IATEFL and The British Council and is in line with their aim to link and support English language professionals worldwide.

The event, April 1 - April 4th 2009, is expected to be one of the biggest global teacher development events ever.

A large team will be in place behind the scenes to bring the workshops and speeches to remote audiences. Any teacher, anywhere in the world, from Mongolia, Nepal or Ethiopia to Germany, the USA and Japan will be able to sign up and participate for free in the conference from their own country.

All they'll need is good internet access, a computer and preferably a headset. All the plenary talks, as well as a sizable number of other presentations will be shown live over the Net, recorded and also made available on the conference site for later viewing.

There are also numerous forums discussing all aspects of the EFL profession, (already very active and engaging) photo albums, chat sessions and prizes!

See you there,
Best,
Karenne

+++++++++++++++++++++++++

Useful links related to this posting:

http://iatefl.britishcouncil.org/2009

Poster for your staffroom:
http://www.learnenglish.org.uk/2009/webgraphics/staffroom-poster.pdf

This text is an adaptation of the IATEFL Press release (March 09) , used with permission.

Sights & Sounds: BESIG conference 2008

A quick scan of my micro-sized office will reveal the remnants of a business English conference: brochures and catalogs on the floor, my ticket stubs tucked beneath the scanner, business cards propped up by a six-day old coffee cup -but drat, where's the American guy's card, what was his name again?

Is it in my purse? Hmmm...

Oh and of course, my ultra handy netbook is resting precariously on top of my filing tray - the mini computer looks like a cute toy even though it's actually more powerful than my laptop - he's (his full name is The Little Blue Guy and we're in love) just FULL of draft versions on the different sessions I attended at BESIG.

Ya, my work's cut out for me!

I'll be posting reports of these sessions up bit by bit, in between other lesson tips, ideas and reflections on teaching business and ESP English but in the meantime thought I'd quickly share some of the videos and photos I shot during the conference: made a little compilation which I hope you'll enjoy:

BESIG 2008- video by Karenne Sylvester is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License. You have my full permission to download a copy or embed it into your own blog/website. To do so, go here. To learn more about creative commons, come here.

The BESIG organizers organized a very, very efficient event.

As soon as one entered the door, it was clear what to do, where to go and how. Coffee abounded, there was lots of space and most of the presenters were highly professional, prepared and interesting with much knowledge to pass on.

My feedback would include:

To the BESIG coordinators:

Timing - 40 minute sessions are too short.

Most of the presenters could not stay within the time frame, understandably. My personal recommendation would be to provide one hour sessions instead, asking trainers to present for 45 and leave 15mins room for questions and discussion.

Trainers:

Know your audience.

While the great majority of the sessions I attended were fantastic and I'll report on those, some weren't. Some were an utter waste of time.

The main problem seemed to lie in the fact that the trainer didn't know who he/she was presenting to.

Sometimes I felt like I was in someone's very tiny personal institute rather than at an important BE conference - sort of like being with a bunch of unqualified trainers who were being taught the first round of basics or being given information best saved for an in-company group meeting.

However, the reality is that in most sessions I was surrounded by at least one or two

• Authors

• Directors of Studies or Assistant Directors of Studies

• Entrepreneurs and freelancers

• Teacher-trainers
  

and in all the sessions:

seriously committed BE teachers.

It costs time, money and energy to make it to a conference - we're not on holiday, so

1) be prepared
2) involve your audience
3) finish your research before presenting it - we're not interested in what if
4) spend a little time with powerpoint* and get to know it, it can be your friend
*obviously it's not always necessary to use new media, when it's not used the presentation should still be commanding.
5) practice your presentation


Publishers' Panel:

This needs to be a double session (or at least 1.5hrs).

There was only time for 2, max 3 questions(?). The room was jam-packed: we had stuff to hear and stuff to discuss, we are your community: your purchasers, your reviewers, your critics - there wasn't enough time to do this in.

That said, great stuff the rest of you:

John Allison, aside from your fantastic materials, you're a clear and dynamic presenter and I am actually going to cave in and buy yet another Business English coursebook, if you're involved in The Business, I'll check it out. Emery, I may never ever fly again but I will pass on your details if I meet teachers who want to specialize in aviation English. Schofield, my students are currently reading/listening to your readers, enjoying them so far and I've asked them to write up the reviews themselves! We'll post the results up soon. Prof. Azennoud I really enjoyed learning about Morocco - it snows in Morocco!!!- and your developments there, thanks for coming to Germany to share.

Useful links related to the video:
BESIG

New Business English teaching certificate
Skylight, CTLC-C
Training in Aviation English for teachers and learners
Emery-Roberts

Macmillan Education
Aviation English Student's Book and DVD Pack
Business Upper-intermediate: Student's Book DVD ROM Pack

Langescheidt readers by James Schofield
Room Service (Summertown Readers)
Peril in Venice (Summertown Readers)
Summertown Readers: Ekaterina

Cambridge University Press, Cambridge English for...series
Cambridge English for Job-Hunting Student's Book with Audio CDs (2) with CD (Audio) (Cambridge English for)

Best,
Karenne

The McMaster and Commander

As I promised, I've still got to update you on the other two workshops I attended at ELTAF 2008 teacher-training conference! So am back...

Both workshops dealt with the issues of globalization and their effects on language learning.

I'll start off with Comfort's commanding presentation of Best Practice, an intermediate and upper-intermediate course book, published by Heinle.

NB: Unfortunately neither the Comfort handouts or the book have arrived as yet so I'll be blogging only from memory and quick notes.

Jeremy Comfort is one of the directors of York Associates, a firm specializing in intercultural training for the corporate sector. For yonks he's been developing methods and materials which integrate an intercultural dimension into language learning.

And as we all know, this is a real buzz topic at the moment. Perhaps even more so, with the financial crisis unfolding and business partnerships moving and changing.

York Associates does intercultural training for teachers, not just corporations. One of these workshops is called "Developing People Internationally." It's pricey as all get out but you can get 20% off if you belong to a teachers' association.

The Best Practice course books are Business English textbooks, not cultural briefings, sort of a cross between your standard BE book and a guide to intercultural intelligence.

They reportedly look at culture, not only from the perspective of different countries but also down into the depths of company culture - particularly those of the BRIC nations (Brazil, Russia, India & China).

During his presentation, Comfort went through the familiar images of the iceberg - what is seen above is only a part of what is seen below:

i.e. Artefacts, words, behavious being obvious and visible, above the surface; while customs, norms, attitudes, assumptions and thought processes lie hidden below.

He also touched on the models of Hall and Trompenaars and gave us an overview of the onion, the layers of cultural meanings and discussed the skills involved in developing transparency of communication, attitudes of tolerance and exposing intention.

Comfort explained that mostly his corporate clients are interested in developing their managers' Leadership abilities - intercultural competence skills fall in with this. He went through the various factors involved, from business knowledge to language ability, personality, motivation and business skills.

He also discussed communicative skills: how influence, establishing rapport and developing active listening skills are crucial building blocks of any successful cultural competence course.

But, to be absolutely honest, although Jeremy Comfort is a very commanding presenter, and I was very pleased to get to see him in action, his slides were a bit jumbled.

How can I describe this and still be nice?

Er, kind of a "mindmapping" circles and sticks leading out into various directions on powerpoint.

From my own cultural perspective, this was a bit disconcerting. Still, the books sound awfully interesting.

McMaster took us from the world of English to the German market.

As Editor-in-chief of Business Spotlight, (an English language learning magazine published for the German, Austrian, Swiss markets) Ian McMaster is well equipped to do this.

First off, he challenged us to an exercise involving a quadrant on the advantages non-native speakers of English have over natives in business situations(!) and vice-versa.

This then led to a mini-presentation of the Business Spotlight, great mag, and then he got on with the meat: back in Spring 2007, Business Spotlight did a survey of Germans who speak English for business purposes and what problems they have when communicating.

Their results were really quite fascinating and in many ways surprising.

Did you know that France is Germany's main trading partner (import and export)?

The US is second, the UK third.

And although 52% of the respondents they surveyed said they speak English to both Non-natives and Native speakers, 31% speak mainly or only to non natives.

And who, do they find easier to communicate with?

Yes. That's right: not us.

39% think that we're the problem.

Alright, not completely the whole problem but the difficulties Germans face when talking to native business partners range from speed (86% say this) and

60% of us use unknown expressions, 57% use far too many idioms, 56% say the words we use are too difficult, 56% that we don't speak clearly enough and 45% have declared our accents too thick.

"Mr Graddol says the majority of encounters in English today take place between non-native speakers. Indeed he adds, many business meetings held in English appear to run more smoothly when there are no native English speakers present."
Michael Skapinker, FT, 9 Nov 2007.

So, NATIVE-ENGLISH business leaders: would you just slowwwwwwwwww down!

Are you ready to call it a day yet? Pack up and go home?

Oh, come on, you're a language teacher! You know we don't still speak that way.

Later on that year, in Sept 2007, Business Spotlight did a follow-up poll of their respondees and asked them where the people were from, the ones who they have the most problems understanding - 192 (of the 1,330 who initially did the survey) answered.

This time the Chinese topped off the list at 34%, the Americans following close behind at 32%, French at 24%, Indians 22%, Japanese 21%, British 21%, Russians and Italians sharing 12%.

I hear that in another presentation across the hall, in Ian Badger's room, his survey results revealed slightly different statistics:

in fact, the real culprits are the Scottish.

But that might just, could be just, a rumor.

What does this all mean for us, on the ground and in the classroom?

Our German students have a clear need to communicate interculturally and they need materials that reflect a global world.

What you do with this information is down to you.

But my personal top tip would be to read this book, recommended to me by one of my colleagues: it's excellent and really challenges you to have a look at who you are, as a language teacher, as a person living overseas.

Culture from the Inside Out: Travel--And Meet Yourself: Your Personal Strategy for Crossing Cultures

Useful extras:

You can also view last year's presentation by Ian McMaster at the BESIG 2007, most of the slides are the same - all statistics (very clearly presented, potentially great for a lesson on the subject with your students) are contained within. Click here.

You can get a full report of the survey on the Business Spotlight website if you're a registered subscriber.

Business Spotlight is also now published in the Czech Republic, Ukraine and Bulgaria.

Karenne,

ELTAF conference 2008

One of the best things about a PNS (or a participants-no-show in KMP speak) is not that you get paid for not teaching, but that you get to rush back on home and finally catch up on the long list of things to blog about instead!

Teaching conferences are super fun - if you don't believe me, just ask any teacher who's been to one recently.

Generally, if you belong to a good teaching association, you'll get a newsletter or yahoo group notification from them about once a year, pleading with you to fork over some cash and go attend a conference.

Guys: ignore the cost, write it off of taxes for heaven's sake, plead with your DOS to take you seriously and fund at least half... and go to these things - there's really little else more fulfilling as a language trainer than some great professional development.

We EFL teachers have it rough, I really don't have to tell you that - and many times it feels like we're wading somewhere at the bottom on the barrel in terms of getting enough moola to pay the bills - or what is that other value I like so much? Getting self-worth when you're just plugging away at planning and teaching and planning and teaching and planning and...

The other day, a fellow teacher said to me "you mean, you still prepare your classes?" - er, duh.

This blog entry is for er, the teachers who know that you can never learn or know enough about teaching English and there's absolutely always another teacher out there who's got more tips and tricks they can share with you. This blog's for the planners ;-)

Alright, enough of the lecture-hat. Let me get on with telling you about what happened at the very exciting ELTAF conference held in Frankfurt, Germany.

The line-up was extraordinary: trainers from all over Europe, from all the great ELT publishing houses, writers of the methodology books (you know the ones on your shelf that you haven't read yet) and over 40 workshops were on offer.

From this list you could only choose 4 - Yikes! Dilemmmmmmmaaa?!?!

I must say that back in July, when I did my on-line registration, I fretted and fussed about which ones to go to... I mean what do you do when you've got Comfort, Rosenberg, Newbolt - all scheduled at the same time? Not to mention that there'd be a workshop on using youtube, testing intercultural competence, English for engineers, speaking skills with the six-hats method, a Sharma workshop...clashes abounded, how could I be in three rooms at the same time?

Oh heck, I mean how'dya choose? This is money we're talking about. Who can teach me the most? What is something I know nothing about but really should, ARGH, headache. I clicked and then promptly forgot which I'd chosen, sounds like me.

Well, a mix-up and a wrong email address, 2.5 months later (from my side, of course) - I never use my real website account address when signing up for things, it's a spam phobia thing - occurs, and this mix-up almost led me to missing the whole conference!

But phew, the ELTAF administrators (Tricia Hunter and Daniel Payne) were super helpful and they sorted out my app in no time at all - and even let me change around one of them ;-) you'll never know which, so don't even ask.

Anyhoo, I happily found myself scheduled for the Comfort, Laing, Dudeney and Beder workshops. Unfortunately, Beder ended up being unable to present that day which meant being shoved, last minute, into McMaster's - a workshop I wasn't really looking forward to going to.

Reason: deep rooted fear of the 'blah, blah' factor.

McMaster is editor of Business Spotlight and the workshop was unfortunately titled "Natives and non-natives: good, bad or ugly?" Yeah, really.

Teachers: every now and then, the "blah, blah" is really, really good. I'll be giving you the skinny on that one later.

BUT in order not to turn this entry into a war epic, actually I'll blog about each workshop separately. You'll just have to come back - if you want the juicy details.

So I'll wrap this one up by saying it was a great conference - in three words: professional, well-organized and dynamic.

There could have been more coffee - I missed it three times, seriously!

The SMARTboards were for a techie like me - the coolest bananas.

Overall, ELTAF and the Frankfurt international school students were efficent and everything went smoothly - we got some free books - er, hallo, Heinle and OUP I'm still waiting for my promised post to arrive!

And... there was loads of chatting and networking with super teachers and trainers, I got to meet the Timberlake of ELT, Mr Sharma himself, laughed and touched base with my dear friend Laura who I miss oodles since she took a job with Macmillan as a sales rep and I had lunch and a mini argument with Gavin Dudeney over the values of Twitter vs. Facebook.

Ya kno' - fun, fun.

K