If you weren’t able to go to the BESIG (Business English Special Interest Group section of IATEFL) conference in Athens this year, you get a second chance here in Berlin!
ELTABB had three presenters in Athens and they’ve all kindly offered to do their presentations again for us here in Berlin.
Plan of the day:
10.00 open for coffee
10.15 -11.00 Evan Frendo: Rethinking BE: learning in the flow of work (talk)
11.00-11.15 Coffee break
11.15-12.00 Mandy Welfare: Rethinking the unusual: Managing a remote team (talk)
12.00-12.15 Coffee break
12.15-13.15 Nick Munby: Walk the talk (workshop)
13.15-13.30 Coffee and close
Some of us will be going for lunch afterwards. The more the merrier so please join us if you would like to.
Evan Frendo: Rethinking BE: learning in the flow of work
Josh Bersin’s concept of “Learning In the Flow of Work” (LIFOW) sees learning as an integral part of an employee’s daily work, rather than as a separate, scheduled event they must find time to attend. The goal is to provide the learner with content and support precisely when the need arises, using just-in-time tools, microlearning, and embedded practice. This talk uses real-world examples to explore how LIFOW applies to business English, and what teachers can do to maximise its effects
Bio:
Evan Frendo is based in Berlin, Germany, and has been active in Business English and ESP since 1993, mostly in the corporate sector. A frequent speaker at conferences, he also travels widely to run courses or to work as a consultant.
Mandy Welfare: Rethinking the unusual: Managing a remote team
Working remotely has become less ‘unusual’, yet the intricacies of remote management is still complex. When I started at Arden, my manager in the UK and me in Berlin, we worked together to establish our ‘place’ within the organisation, write a course, and grow our team completely remotely. In this talk, I will reflect on this experience, what was crucial to implement so our team was successful, and how we developed inclusive practices which were eventually adopted by the wider organisation.
Bio:
Mandy Welfare is a senior lecturer and manager at Arden University in Berlin. She has over 15 years’ experience doing in-company training across Europe and published widely for digital and print.
Nick Munby: Walk the talk
ELT materials and tests refer to Speaking Skills but perhaps talking is a more appropriate term. Speaking suggests the act of projecting outwards, as in giving a presentation or delivering a speech, but what learners need is to build confidence in exchanging ideas, thoughts, and feelings with other people – the skill of turn-taking, constructing a shared universe of words.
Providing groups with problems or puzzles to jointly solve can be an effective way to encourage fluency practice since they exert a pull that will often distract learners from focussing overmuch on the surface of language and thus expose missing lexis, misunderstood patterns or inappropriate usage, which can be subsequently processed later. Problems are frustrating, mysterious and fun. Reflecting on the procedure adopted by a group to attempt to reach a solution is also useful to discuss, and will reveal unobserved assumptions, false turns and missed opportunities.
This workshop will offer participants the opportunity to work through a number of problems, and make some suggestions as to how to use them with learners.Bio:
Bio:
Nick Munby has been based in Berlin for more than 30 years, working as a Director of Studies at a language school, teaching in-company classes and seminars for companies across Germany, setting up an accredited CELTA level teacher training course, teaching on an English as a Medium of Instruction course for tertiary level lecturers and professors in countries from Japan to Mexico, Palestine to Italy, working as a trainer for IELTS examiners at the British Council, and teaching MPs at the Bundestag.
Location:
Arden University, Room 5.48 Fifth Floor
Dessauer Str. 3-5, 10963, Berlin
How to attend:
ELTABB members: free. Please RSVP on the Ning.
Other ELTA members: free. Please email events@eltabb.com to let us know you would like to come.
Non-members: €10. Email events@eltabb.com to book your place.