About the event
This one day webinar event featured three webinars with ELT experts from around the world and took place on 8 September 2023. All three webinars focus ways to support literacy development in young learners. The webinars are for teachers of primary, secondary and young adult English language learners.
About the webinars
Session 1: Bringing EFL reading instruction up to date
Speaker:
Robin Skipsey
Session information:
A lot of EFL reading pedagogy is still based on popular ideas from the 1970s, such as speed-reading techniques and the concept of reading as a “psycholinguistic guessing game” (Goodman, K. S. (1967)). However, since then research and evidence has upended these ideas and suggested alternatives. Unfortunately, much of the research has struggled to make it across the first-language reading – EFL divide. In this session, we’ll look at evidence-informed teaching techniques for first-language readers and discuss how these could be applied to help EFL students.
Download the handout from this session
Session 2:Unlocking Language Learning: Maximizing the Potential of Picture Books in VYL and YL Classrooms
Speaker:
Fiona Hunter
Session information:
This workshop will give you practical ideas to help you get more language learning from your storytelling sessions. You’ll come away feeling more confident about structuring a lesson or series of lessons around a picture book. To do this we’ll consider tips to help identify language learning objectives, see dynamic activities and crafts to help children understand the new language, and explore useful procedures and activities that encourage experimenting and using the new language.
Download the handout from this session
Session 3: ‘The Polar Bear’s Pin’ - An EFL phonics story to teach pronunciation to young learners
Speaker:
Stella Palavecino
Session information:
This webinar will show teachers how to work with a phonics story for young learners of English. She will reveal how simple it can be to introduce new articulatory habits through a story of her own called ‘The Polar Bear’s Pin.’ This story creates a world of fantasy to experiment the distinction between the “P” in polar and the “B” in bear. Unless EFL learners produce aspiration, they would tend to say ‘bin’ for ‘pin’. This context will provide the right scaffolding for the distinction of this minimal pair, in a memorable and fun way.
Download the handout from this session
About the speakers
Robin Skipsey is the academic manager of English programmes at the British Council in Japan. He has also worked in the Japanese public education system, and played a key role in a large-scale teacher training initiative commissioned by the Japanese Ministry of Education. Currently, Robin is working on a collaboration with a major publishing company to produce ministry-approved English textbooks for senior high school students. He is particularly interested in the research into the teaching of listening and reading.
Fiona Hunter is a teacher and teacher trainer based in Spain. She is also the creator of Kids Club English where she publishes materials for the preschool and primary classroom. She is particularly interested in teaching children through stories, songs, games and crafts and has a bit of a soft spot for puppets.
Stella Palavecino is a graduate teacher, teacher trainer, and writer based in Buenos Aires, Argentina. A validated specialist in Phonetics and Phonology, she holds postgraduate degrees in Phonetics and Phonology, Higher Education, ICT and Pedagogy. She has published extensively and has delivered presentations in the fields of phonology, pronunciation, and phonics. She runs a teacher trainer resource hub called Emo-Pron stories.
Watch all three recordings below
since 2023 my interest was so huge upon English language and its history, linguistics, literature based content and contemporary culture and literature of English language