Creative conversations with AI: the good, the bad and the weird

The recent arrival of ChatGPT has foregrounded the advantages and challenges of artificial intelligence (AI) in language teaching. Access to generative AI is clearly going to be a game-changer for our field. This plenary talk focuses on AI and what it means for ELT. We’ll examine creativity, big data and digital literacies in the context of the emergence of generative AI tools. We’ll explore the ramifications, especially around issues of privacy, surveillance, equity and creativity. In short, we take a critical look at where AI is taking us and consider how to get there in one piece.

Nicky Hockly is the Director of Pedagogy of TCE (www.theconsultants-e.com). She has worked in the field of English Language Teaching since 1987, is an international plenary speaker, teacher trainer, and consultant specialising in the evaluation of large educational projects, especially in the global south. Nicky has written several prize-winning methodology books about new technologies in language teaching. Her most recent publications are 50 Essentials for Using Learning Technologies (Cambridge University Press; 2022) and Digital Literacies (second edition; Routledge; 2022). Her research interests include blended, hybrid and online learning, digital literacies and artificial intelligence in ELT.

Harnessing Curiosity in the YL Classroom

To be successful teachers we need to be able engage our learners by developing activities that appeal to their basic psychological and intellectual needs – and at the heart of that is curiosity. In this interactive session we’ll explore the importance of appealing to our learners’ natural curiosity and how exactly being curious helps learning and also motivates them. Referencing National Geographic Learning’s New Close-up series, we’ll then look at a number of different ways in which we can harness this natural curiosity in the English language classroom to spark a love of learning English.

Alex is a DELTA trained teacher trainer with over 20 years’ experience of working in ELT as a teacher, academic director and teacher trainer. Prior to his experiences in ELT, Alex worked as a journalist before a chance encounter in the Indonesian jungle began him on the path which has led him to working with National Geographic Learning. A firm believer in a communicative approach to language learning and student-centred learning, Alex enjoys working with innovative, thought-provoking materials and presenting on a wide range of ELT-related topics, all the while driven by his passion for developing teachers on a global scale and helping them to reach their true potential.

Keep them wondering, keep them learning

I will be drawing on my experience as a teacher of English as a foreign or second language, and that as a Teacher Trainer, and the conclusions I have made as a result of observing the learners in the classroom and they ways they respond to tasks set by teachers.

This talk is aimed at sharing ideas on what motivates teen learners, what keeps them engaged and interested and why, to then move on to how to exploit this information to promote learning in the classroom via suitable task selection.

Summary

Studies show that for successful learning to take place, the teacher needs to keep the learners engaged and motivated, this can be done by providing students with tasks that interest them, tasks that require students to interact, to collaborate with each other, and that encourage them to build on previous learning.

In this talk we will be looking at how to promote this in the classroom with teen learners. We will look at the parts of Bloom’s Taxonomy that relate to this talk and these ideas and how we can promote critical thinking skills, such as analysis, evaluation and creation to make the learning more memorable and improve students’ performance.

We will also be looking at appropriate task types to bring about this type of learning and why they are effective.

Stephanie Holme is the Head Teacher Trainer at IH Milan & San Donato. She holds the Cert TEFLA, Dip TEFLA, the CELTYL, CERT IBET, and the CERT ICT. She has been a CELTA trainer since 2006, a CELTYL/IHCYLT Trainer since 2009, a DELTA trainer since 2010.

Stephanie has worked in the EFL/ESOL sector all of her professional life. She is both a teacher and a teacher trainer. Her experience encompasses a wide range of levels, ages and teaching/learning contexts. As a language teacher and trainer, she is deeply interested in helping learners to develop to the best of their ability in a safe and inclusive learning environment. Stephanie trained as a French and Physical Education teacher at secondary level in the UK and taught these subjects there before moving into ELT.

She has accompanied hundreds of teachers, both new to the profession and experienced teachers, on their training journeys, as well as having accompanied thousands of learners on their learning journeys, covering a range of ages from 2 to 75 years old!

Social Learning

Social Learning: what exactly does social learning mean? Why is it important for the English language classroom? Can it help us to improve the English learning process? We will look at the characteristics of social learning and explore how it is related to teaching English and what benefits it has for our learners. We will then look at how to use it to tap into the students’ creativity and get them to produce an end product which has been guided but essentially is theirs. The idea is to give teachers the tools and real examples of how to involve students in activities which they will find stimulating and which they can relate to while at the same time allowing them space to display their creativity in English.

Josefina Ares has been teaching English and training teachers for more than twenty five years. Her experience comes from teaching all ages and levels. She has worked for many different academies around the world including International House and The British Council. She is also a Cambridge examiner and examines from Young Learners to IELTS. She is a freelance speaker and collaborates with Macmillan, Cambridge and Mondadori at a variety of teachers’ events. Apart from this, she has many different passions and hobbies which include watching films, dancing tango, acting and singing in a choir.

Inquiry-based Learning: Curiosity ‘didn’t kill’ the cat

Inquiry-based Learning (IBL) encourages students to be curious about what they learn by asking questions, so that they are fully engaged in the learning process. How can teachers apply this pedagogical method in the EFL classroom? In this session, I am going to reflect on my experience of using mini-projects with teenagers as an example of IBL lessons. We shall explore four crucial aspects of planning and teaching: lesson procedures, learning materials, classroom roles, and assessment of learners.

Daniel Tse went into ELT in 2019 and started teaching at IH Milan and San Donato in the same year. He works with Young Learners, teens and adults across the full range of CEFR language levels. As a language teacher, he lays great emphasis on developing learners’ autonomy and communicative competence. Prior to ELT, Daniel trained as a classical musician and delivered outreach workshops for a number of major performing arts organisations in the UK.

Spreading creativity: classroom activities inspired by coaching 

Coaching is a profession of its own, yet there are indeed several aspects it shares with language teaching. We can see this in the aim of nurturing our students’ ability to envision success, structure progress and empower its achievement. So how can teachers dive into this immense field of knowledge to stimulate creative thinking in the classroom? In this session, we shall take a few steps into this world and focus on adapting the use of mental images to spread creativity with practical classroom activities.

Alexandra is a member of the teaching community of IH Milan & San Donato and a freelance English teacher. With two MAs in Communication and a professional background in marketing, her teaching spans through ages and levels, animated by her keen interest in student-centricity and the development of 21^st Century skills in teens and adults.

Reaction Creation – The Creative Circles that Reading Makes

With screen time at an all-time high, it has never been more important to encourage learners to move. Surprisingly, there are benefits not just for health but for learning outcomes and language development, too. In this session we will see how there is an important relationship between movement, language and learning, and consider how we can introduce movement into language classes in a principled, manageable way.

Michael Lacey Freeman has taught English at the Università di Ancona for more than 20 years, during which time he has also written numerous graded readers. He has won several Language Learner Literature Awards for both his adaptations and original stories. In 2017 he was appointed to the board of directors of the prestigious Extensive Reading Foundation. He has worked on several projects for Oxford University Press, including the popular podcast “Tea at 5:00: Authentic Listening with Michael Lacey Freeman,” longlisted for a British Council ELTons Award for Local Innovation. He authored the reading for pleasure pages in Oxford’s lower secondary course for Italy, Think Big, co-authored level 3 of Oxford’s lower secondary course, Kickstart, and most recently co-authored New Identity with Carla Leonard.

Here is a video link of one of his talks.

The Role of Language in Global Citizenship Education: Exploring Learning Through Multiple Literacies

Language plays a pivotal role in shaping our understanding of the world and facilitating meaningful interactions across cultures.

Through the exploration of various literacies, learners gain the necessary tools to critically analyze and evaluate information, navigate digital spaces, and engage with different cultural artifacts and texts. Language acts as a medium through which learners acquire and apply these literacies, empowering them to become active global citizens. Drawing upon practical examples and materials from Pearson publications, the presentation explores strategies for integrating multiple literacies into language classrooms.

Silvia Minardi holds a PhD in Linguistics from the University for Foreigners – International University – of Siena. She teaches English at Liceo Statale “S.Quasimodo” in Magenta (Milan) and at Insubria University (Varese) in three courses: English at Biology, Scientific English in the Master’s Degree in Biotechnology and English for Computer Studies in the Master’s Degree of Computer Studies.

She is an associate member of the LCT Research Centre for Knowledge-Building (Sydney University) and a member of the Center of Excellence for Research (University for Foreigners, Siena). She is currently involved in the COST Project “CLIL Network for Languages in Education: Towards bi- and multilingual disciplinary literacies” (CA21114 – CLILNetLE).

She is the author of educational materials, articles and publications on language teaching and an active member of various committees, councils and advisory boards at national and international levels.

Her main areas of expertise are language education, second language acquisition, second language curriculum design, learning-oriented assessment, CLIL and bilingual education.