Very practical tips on how to make our classes well rounded and student centered.
Chapter President Brad Serl is the presenter, he aims to do three things:
- To help participants understand their own beliefs about teaching and to introduce them to an approach that is widely regarded as being effective in ELT.
- To give participants a lesson plan that they can use in their classrooms.
- To give participants a toolkit to allow them to direct their own self-improvement.
In addition, before Brad's presentation, we have a reflective practice meeting that runs from 12:00 until 2:00. And after the meeting, a group goes out to a local restaurant in Nampo-Dong for some dinner (usually Ashley's buffet) to socialize. Everyone is welcome to join.
Find the location via our directions page: http://www.koreatesol.org/content/workshops-venue-ess-hagwon-nampo-dong
Presentation Synopsis
Currently, ESL teachers are told to make their classes as communicative as possible, to make them student centered, and to make the material motivating. Often we are given very few guidelines on how to do this. This presentation/workshop will first seek to explore what the participants believe is a good lesson, and why they think it is good. It will then outline the approach that I have found to work best in my classes, namely Nation’s 4 strands approach, and how it can be used to motivate, to make class very student centered, and to create well rounded lessons (hitting all 4 skills). Knowing that it is essential to give participants something they can use in their classes, not just a large chunk of theory, I will introduce, and demonstrate a lesson that I have found best achieves all the teaching goals introduced in my presentation. I will close with an introduction to reflective teaching, a technique for self-development and analysis, that can help teachers to take responsibility for their own improvement, and can give them a greater understanding of their own classroom practice.
Bio
Brad Serl came to South Korea in 2002. Since that time he has worked with students as young as six and as old as seventy-five. His undergraduate major is in Rhetoric and Composition from Thompson Rivers University. His M.A. is in Applied Linguistics from the University of Birmingham, and was completed in September 2010. He is currently president of the Busan-Gyeongnam chapter of KOTESOL and works in the teacher training department at Busan University of Foreign Studies, as well as working as a tutor for the Birmingham CELS MA program. Brad enjoys mountain biking, cooking and takes a significant amount of guilty pleasure in all manner of geekery. Brad is currently working on a PhD in ELT and Education Management, focusing on teacher motivation. He can be reached at bradleyserl@gmail.com or via Twitter: @bradleyserl
