In this introductory workshop, we looked at what creativity means, both for the teacher and the learner, and discussed why creativity is important in the classroom. We did some activities which provided practical experience of creativity.

We also discussed the programme for future ELTeCs sessions.

In our changing world, students are exposed to far more English than we realise. Learners watch DVDs in English, listen to English language songs on the radio, read English magazines, see advertisements in English and often use the internet to communicate in English on a daily basis. We aim to generate ideas to help teachers exploit these readily available materials to provide rich learning opportunities for their students both inside and outside the classroom.

Creative writing is anything where the purpose is to express thoughts, feelings and emotions rather than simply convey information. We focussed on creative writing - mainly short stories and autobiographies. Writing of any sort is hard but rewarding work - students gain a huge amount of satisfaction from a finished piece. Being creative can also be difficult and challenging at times, but immensely fun.

Reading lessons are often viewed by both teachers and students as dull. However, far from being a purely receptive skill, reading can potentially be a highly motivating and beneficial part of language learning.

During this workshop we will be looking at ways of engaging learners’ imagination while developing their sub-skills beyond sentence level recognition. This will involve activities based on authentic reading methods which encourage the reader to utilise their existing knowledge to fully exploit the text. Here is the handouts used in the workshop.

In this session, we explored how we can solve many of our students’ problems in speaking.  We looked at how we can change their attitude from a negative one to a more positive one by using a variety of practical and fun speaking games and activities.

have a look. Here are some documents used in the workshop; the games, pictures and info gap.

The session looked at what can a teacher do if they’d like to improve their learners’ listening skills but they don’t have suitable materials? It focused on using the teacher’s voice to provide authentic listening activities. Participants discussed some of the disadvantages of using published material and be provided with a number of practical ideas for use in their own classes. You can download the presentation and the handouts used in the session.

We discussed briefly why using music and songs is beneficial for learners of all ages and what we need to consider when choosing songs to use in the classroom. We also did some activities with music and songs which included both traditional and non-traditional tasks. You can download the handouts and materials used in the session.