ELI Webinar Series
The Westchester Community College’s English Language Institute webinar series, which began in the spring 2022, aims to provide free, easily accessible, online professional development to English language teachers worldwide.
The webinar presenters are practitioners, researchers, teacher trainers, and authors who want to share their research, ideas, methodology, and teaching techniques. The series supports all teachers and helps to keep moving the English language teaching field forward by addressing the most pressing challenges in teaching English and exploring cutting-edge constructs and ideas.
Effective Homework Tasks your Students will Love
Speaker: Matt Kolbusz
Date: Wednesday, August 11th, 2022 at 5:50 pm
In this presentation the speaker presents proven tech solutions to 1) integrate the target language lesson into fluency practice, 2) evoke authentic communication, and 3) build classroom community, all outside of the classroom.
Language acquisition and the power of pleasure reading
The Sophia and Joseph Abeles English as a Second Language Endowed Chair Lecture Series
Speaker: Stephen Krashen
Date: 6/20 2022 at 5:30
We acquire language in only one way, not by producing it, not by study, and not by getting corrected, but by understanding what we hear and read. An efficient and also very pleasant way of doing this is listening to and reading stories, also known as fiction, also known as literature. Reading fiction is not only a path to language and literacy: Fiction readers know more about a variety of areas, including history, science and practical matters. To take advantage of the power of fiction, readers need easy access to books. The best way to make sure everyone has access to books is to support libraries and librarians.
Extensive Listening: Why and How?
Speaker: Brittany Ober
Date: 5/14 2022 at noon
For many, listening is the most challenging skill to teach or practice. Extensive Listening (EL) effectively complements intensive listening, increases comprehension, fosters metacognitive awareness, and allows for enjoyable practice that builds confidence. The recent literature and anecdotal support from students point to EL as a worthwhile practice that increases fluency, engagement, and empowerment. A brief theoretical background on EL, pedagogical applications, and materials development is presented and discussed.
Supporting Autonomy and Agency in the Language Classroom
Speaker: Lourdes Ortega
Date: 2/16 2022 at noon
Most teachers and researchers agree that language teaching and learning should be learner-centered, placing autonomy and agency at the heart of language classroom practices. In addition, contemporary language education affords students access to a multilingual repertoire that opens up agentive choices for self-expression and communication. But these goals are complicated by the various geopolitical conditions that different students experience: (a) when the humanistic values that traditionally justified world language study are in crisis, (b) when according to the United Nations (2020) 3.6 per cent of the world’s population (approximately 281 million people) live in a country other than their original one, many of them leading multilingual lives by force as much as by choice, and (c) when the dominance of English seems unstoppable, offering valuable capital to multilinguals but also aggravating deep inequities and threatening linguistic diversity. In this talk, I consider how language teachers can best support autonomy and agency in their classrooms while responding to the complex worlds of their students.
Communicative Activities and Speaking Tasks
Speaker: Jeremy Harmer
Date: 2/26/2022 at noon
According to Hamlet: “Speak the speech, I pray you & be not too tame either”. In this webinar we think about how to encourage students to speak, list ways of making speaking automatic, and talk about effective communicative speaking activities.
Storytelling is teaching: the value of narratives
Speaker: Scott Thornbury
Date: 1/15/22 at noon
Stories have always played an important role in language teaching, although traditionally they were used mainly as vehicles for grammar practice or written ‘compositions’. In this talk the presenter reviews these uses of narrative, while suggesting that stories can serve other key purposes as well, such as personalizing the content of the lesson and creating opportunities for genuine communication. The presenter shares some of my favorite storytelling activities, and makes the point that the stories we tell about teaching provide valuable material for teacher development, for, as Oliver Sachs said, ‘each of us is a biography, a story’…
