The ELT Profession: Challenges & Prospects

Jeremy Harmer Renowned ELT trainer and writer, Jeremy Harmer is currently on the faculty of the MATESOL at the New School, New York. Among his books are How to Teach English, How to Teach Writing and The Practice of English Language Teaching, all published by Pearson Education. He is general editor of the Longman 'How to' series.

Keynote paper: Difference, medals, missions and angels
If all students are different, do they all need treating differently? And how can teachers deal with mixed-intelligence, mixed-ability classes? This talk looks at the relationship between motivation and individual differentiation, because not all students are the same - but then neither are teachers!

Workshop: Habits, processes & genres: that’s writing for you!
What kind of writing should students be asked to do, writing-for-learning, or writing-for writing? This workshop will look at issues of process, product and genre, and show how writing can be taught and, importantly, enjoyed by students.

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Dr. Manzoor Ahmed Dr. Manzoor Ahmed is the Director of Institute of Educational Development at BRAC University (BU-IED). He served earlier as the Senior Education Adviser at UNICEF headquarters, taught at Dhaka University and worked as education researcher in USA. His publications include books and articles on educational policy, planning and non-formal education

Paper : Bilingualism: Implications for Education and Language Policy in Bangladesh.
Based on the premise that bilingualism should be adopted as a national goal in Bangladesh, the implications of this goal for education and language policy are examined. The argument is made for clarity and rationality in articulating the national bilingualism goal and the pragmatic steps for promoting and achieving this goal are indicated.

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Richard Boyum Regional English Language Officer (RELO) of the U.S. Embassy in New Delhi, Richard Boyum has a Master's degree from Georgetown University in Teaching English as a Foreign Language and Bilingual Education, and a certificate in Distance Education from Texas A&M University. As a RELO, he promotes and supports the teaching of English and the training of English teachers in the South Asia region.

He has been a classroom teacher, trainer and program administrator in Africa, the Middle East, South America and Europe. While in Bangkok he received an award from the King of Thailand for his contributions to education as RELO.

Paper: A Janus Approach to English: Language in the Literature class and Literature in the Language class
This presentation will look at the "two faces" of English teaching commonly conceived of as "literature" and "language". The presenter will note how the two actually form one "face" and will make comments on how and why qualities of each approach should be present in both approaches. The demands of the job marked nowadays require a communicative command of English. Potential employees are screened for their functional use of English. Yet the cultural content delivered through literature study also forms an important context for operating in an international, globalized world.

Workshop : Learning to Communicate through StrategicInteraction".
Role play has long been one of the tools teachers use to simulate real communication and to get students engaged with the language. This workshop introduces the concept of "strategic interaction", which is a variation on the role play technique. Participants will learn what elements are required to set up a scenario for interaction that willpromote creative and communicative use of English. They will engage in some strategic interaction activities and finally produce scenarios that they can utilize themselves.

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George Pickering George Pickering is an educational coach, trainer and consultant. As a senior teaching fellow at the University of Sheffield he has worked on their Distance Learning Masters in Education in England, Singapore and Dubai. He has delivered talks and workshops in over 25 different countries for the British Council and other organisations.

George is a tutor on the English UK Diploma in Management and is an inspector of language schools for the British Council in the UK (Accreditation UK). He is the director of the Professional Development Centre of International House London. He was the treasurer of IATEFL (International Association of Teachers of English as a Foreign Language) for six years and is the co-ordinator of the ELT Management Special Interest Group (SIG).

George trained as a state school teacher in the UK, has an MA in Second Language Learning and Teaching and is a Master Practitioner and certified trainer in NLP. He lives with his pet camel and monkey in Ramsgate, England, and can be contacted at: georgeuk32@aol.com

Paper: How do you motivate yourself and learners?
Many would agree that motivation is at the heart of effective language learning. What do we know about motivation and how can it help us to teach effectively and facilitate learning?

In this serious and lighthearted seminar we will review:
- general theories of motivation
- individual differences in motivation
- the PRINCESS model of motivation

Workshop: How do you motivate yourself and learners?
The workshop will explore in more detail aspects of the plenary. You will leave it with a clearer sense of what motivates yourself and learners and practical ideas that you can apply in the classroom.

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Dr. Rama Mathew Dr Rama Mathew, Professor in the Department of Education, Delhi University, teaches Evaluation and Research Methodology. She works with practising teachers on action research projects and is currently involved in a project on Mentoring in Schools in collaboration with the Open University, UK.

Action Research for Professional Development
Abstract
This paper argues that teacher development is possible only when teachers are actively involved as researchers in the classroom. It reports on a collaborative classroom-based action research project in which the teacher educator from the university, practising teachers at the secondary level and their students are involved in portfolio assessment.

Moving from Achievement Testing to Proficiency Testing: What does it mean?
Abstract
English language tests in Indian schools typically reflect students’ ability to memorize and present stock responses to reading and writing tasks. This paper presents the results of a study in which students in Government schools of Delhi were administered unseen tasks in reading and writing. The implications of moving to proficiency testing for teaching, testing, teacher training and policy are then discussed.

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Dr. Maya Khemlani David Professor Dr. Maya Khemlani David (Faculty of Languages and Lingusitics, University of Malaya, Kuala Lampur, Malaysia) is an Honorary Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Linguists, United Kingdom and a Research Fellow with UPSI, Malaysia. As a sociolinguist, Dr. David has a special interest in the role of language in establishing and maintaining national unity.

Professor Dr. Maya Khemlani David (Faculty of Languages and Lingusitics, University of Malaya, Kuala Lampur, Malaysia) is an Honorary Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Linguists, United Kingdom and a Research Fellow with UPSI, Malaysia. As a sociolinguist, Dr. David has a special interest in the role of language in establishing and maintaining national unity. She has several national and international publications to her credit and is on the editorial board of the Journal of Communication Practices. Maya David is the Linguapax Prize Winner for 2007.

Strategies to teach Vocabulary
This paper argues that a knowledge of psycholinguistics can help a language teacher become a more effective teacher. Psycholinguistics is a cross-disciplinary field that amalgamates psychology, namely, cognitive psychology with linguistics. One of the jobs of psycholinguists is to study the cognitive processes of the brain in acquiring and generating grammatical and meaningful sentence out of vocabulary and grammatical structures, as well as the processes that make it possible to understand utterances, words, text, etc. (c.f. Steinberg and Sciarini, 2006). This paper will examine how knowledge of psycholinguistics can be used in the teaching of receptive skills; reading and listening skills, with a focus on vocabulary acquisition. Vocabulary acquisition is central to language learning as they are the bricks on which a house is built. In particular, this paper will discuss the strategies (e.g. mind mapping, chunking, decoding context etc) language teachers can use.

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Zakia Sarwar Hon. Executive Director, Society of Pakistan English Language Teachers (SPELT), Head Office Karachi, Pakistan. Zakia Sarwar is a Founder Member of SPELT. She was Chair for EFL Interest Section (1996-8) at TESOL (USA), and is currently a member of its Standing Committee on Global Professional Issues.

She has numerous national, international awards and publications to her credit. She has presented at conferences in Australia, India, Japan, Nepal, Sri Lanka, UAE, UK, USA.

Paper : Teacher Associations: A pathway to professionalism
The paper will highlight the pivotal role of Teachers’ Associations in facilitating teacher empowerment and nurturing teacher autonomy to ensure ongoing professional development. SPELT will be presented as a case study to illustrate the power of networking to develop teachers’ academic expertise as well as hone their leadership skills.

Workshop: Exploiting Literature for Language Teaching
In this workshop, the presenter will share teacher generated innovative materials and techniques to exploit literature for language teaching. She will use a step by step procedure to enable teachers to apply the techniques in exploiting literary stories as well as poems to support learner-centred activities and maximize learner motivation.

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