On the Road with Gary in…Armenia

‘Fly in, fly out’ trainers and important local knowledge

Earlier this month I was flying in to and then out of Yerevan in Armenia—my 6oth country on my travels for the Press (as we call Cambridge University Press in-house)— and it got me thinking about, well, ‘fly in, fly out’ trainers such as myself.

Gary's talk in Yerevan

I imagine you’ve run across that term before and have taken part in one-hour presentations, half-day workshops or perhaps even one- or two- day training sessions given by trainers from outside your country who, let’s be honest, often at the beginning don’t really know that much about the challenges (yes) and joys (hopefully) of your specific teaching situation. Now, there’s probably something to be said for international trainers from abroad: a wider scope, better knowledge of the materials that they are talking about, wide experience of teaching cultures etc. But there are of course equally or more important things for us to learn from you and your colleagues as local experts who know your own country, language, learners, Ministry of Education or in-house institutional requirements.

Anyway, back to Yerevan: The events took place in the ball room of a hotel which had been converted into a conference room with a small, low stage in the middle of the room for me and my computer, with chairs around on all sides for the teachers and with two screens on the larger walls of the room for my PowerPoint slides. My first experience of presenting in a ‘theatre-in-the-round’ set-up! I gave four talks over two days on Cambridge English exams, ESP courses, on English in Mind for teaching teenagers and English Unlimited for teaching adults.

And as always it was nice after the talks when teachers came up to thank me and, as often happens, say that ‘it’s so nice to hear a native speaker’. But nicer still is when they/you ask questions, agree or disagree with certain points, or comment on their/your own individual teaching situations. Like one teacher in Yerevan whose university language programme is equipped with Interactive Whiteboards and is changing coursebooks and who asked me to explain more about English Unlimited Classware and how it works.

So, please, when you ever attend one of my (or another trainer’s from abroad) presentations, do speak out or come up and share your important local knowledge.

Off to Kazakhstan this week to a Young Learners conference in Astana to present the local version of Primary Colours—and where I’ll have a full day to interact with the teachers and get to know them and their local conditions and specific teaching situation better before I, well, fly out.

What important piece of local knowledge would you give me if I were visiting your country? 

Gary Anderson, Cambridge ELT International Teacher Trainer

On the Road with Gary in…the Baltics

Celebrities, ELT course books and teaching teenagers

 

Was on my way back from the Baltics last month (well, actually only went to Latvia and Lithuania this time), getting ready for IATEFL conference in Glasgow, when I came across an article in the latest IATEFL Newsletter Voices which made me stop and reflect on the talks I had been doing in the Baltics on teaching teenagers with two Cambridge ELT courses, English in Mind and Interactive.

Talk in Riga

Sara Hannam writes a regular ‘ELT under the microscope’ column in Voices and last issue she took a look at ‘the cult of celebrity in ELT’ and especially bad-mouthed course books in which rich and famous people are seemingly presented as role models. And I sort of both agreed and disagreed with her.

Of course, we don’t at all want to foster, as Sara writes, ‘an insidious ideology proposing the acquisition of money and luxurious lifestyles as the only route to happiness’ (Whew!). In fact, such celebrities are often teenagers’ role models. And not just because of their money and fame or outward ‘bling’ and notoriety. Often, underneath their ‘cult’ personalities are those more abstract qualities which they represent and that teenagers are starting to think about and desire to also somehow achieve in their lives:  excellence, creativity, talent, genius, courage, tolerance, love.

For example, during my Interactive talk I showed a page with a picture of Lady Gaga (used to discuss fashion styles and review clothes vocabulary). I also mentioned that if I were teaching from the book, I might bring in – as a follow-up – an interview with her from a recent Time magazine in which we find out that Lady Gaga is—in addition to being a crazy dresser— a philanthropist who launched the Born This Way Foundation to combat bullying.

And when I talked about project work with the teachers we looked at one of the projects in English in Mindabout a presentation of ‘a special person’. The teacher’s book reminds the teacher, as the teacher should remind the students, that this person is not at all necessarily a rich and famous celebrity but could just as well be, for example, their football or volleyball coach, or their grandparents who immigrated into the country and ran a small grocery store and raised a happy family.

Talk in Vilnius

In other words, I would hope most teachers as educators of teenagers would use any famous people presented in a course book as a springboard for their learners to, as Sara suggests, ‘comment on whether such individuals deserve so much attention…and not simply accepting these lifestyles as the norm.’

Do you think the use of celebrities in learning materials is a good or bad thing?
Has the use of celebrities in teaching materials ever caused any problems in your classes?
How have you used students’ role models to motivate their learning?

Gary Anderson, Cambridge ELT International Teacher Trainer

Professional development: How does your tree grow?

On the Road with Gary in…Russia

I was back in  Russia last month (the cold!) giving talks in three, new for me, cities: Kaliningrad on the Baltic coast, hometown of the philosopher Immanuel Kant—in fact my talks there were at the Immanuel Kant University; Krasnodar near the Black Sea, not far from Sochi where the 2014 Winter Olympics are to be held (and headquarters of the Kuban—the name of the local river—Cossacks); and Yaroslavl, one of the cities outside the so-called Golden Ring around Moscow and home of the first woman cosmonaut who has an arena there named after her.

I was giving different talks, mainly on the Cambridge University Press and Cambridge ESOL partnership – Cambridge English and Cambridge ELT materials for Cambridge ESOL exams as well as the Cambridge English for Schools programme. But with the audiences we also talked about using supplementary materials and ideas for professional development including the new Cambridge English Teacher website.

There are of course many ways to progress as a teacher:

• attending conferences and seminars (and networking during them!)
• personal reflection and action research on your teaching
• sharing your ideas and challenges (‘No problems, only solutions.’ as John Lennon sang) with your colleagues and peers
• participating in workshops and swap shops organised in your own school
• staying up-to-date in the field by reading professional books, journals, websites (and blogs)
• joining and participating in your local–and international—teachers’ associations
• maybe even taking a course for professional development.

All of the above can be achieved through Cambridge English Teacher. And, as I told the teachers in Russia, now there’s the new Cambridge English Teacher website where you can do those things online: network and interact with other ELT professionals from around the world; participate in webinars and take online self-study professional development courses (for which you receive a certificate for your own official or just personal professional development Portfolio); record and show your achievements;  read articles from a library of methodological resources; get a subscription to the English Teaching Professional online magazine.  Why not have a look at www.CambridgeEnglishTeacher.org to find out how to register and join!?

So how do you get your professional development, i.e. how does your tree grow?

You know, I once met a man at the Technical University in Al Ain, one of the United Arab Emirates, who was running the language department there and who was getting ready to go off (to Spain, I think) to an IATEFL SIG (Special Interest Group) Teacher Development conference. And he said something that I’ll always remember: in fact every member of IATEFL—and every teacher!—should be part of a Teacher Development SIG because, well, that’s what being a professional is all about: growth, progress, development.

Maybe I’ll run into to him at the IATEFL UK conference later this month in Glasgow—where I also look forward to maybe meeting some of you too!

Gary Anderson, Cambridge ELT International Teacher Trainer

How’s your teamwork? On the road with Gary in…Paris

So, how…does your team work?

I’ve always liked working in teams (guess it’s my sports background) and although I’m often travelling and work a lot on the road, I’m based in the Cambridge office here in Paris and I do like working with the Cambridge France team. It’s a small team – three people in Paris and two others in the provinces, one based in Lyon and the other in Lille – who come for team meetings, and to help out with big events that usually take place in Paris, with which I also try to help out.

I was working with the Cambridge France team last week for the big annual ExpoLangues language fair here in Paris, first helping to set up the stand—and inflate the giant balloon/mini montgolfiére for the new edition of English Grammar in Use and English Grammar in Use Online—and then the next day for the opening Professional Day and the evening reception.

This reminded me of when I was teaching at the American Center here in Paris where we had a great team of teachers who used to share our materials which we kept in files in big drawers in the teachers’ room. One of the teachers was a good artist and he had a clever picture sheet he drew for beginners for contrasting the present simple and present continuous. Another teacher always found appropriate articles for pre-reading preparation or post-reading follow-up for discussions and vocabulary building with advanced classes on topics from the coursebooks. Yet another had lots of useful flash cards, games and exercises for phonology and pronunciation. I had cartoons with the captions white-ed out for short fun, creative writing work and comic strips with the panels mixed-up for jumbled reading exercises. And we all shared worksheets for exploiting authentic video and ideas we found in published materials such as Cambridge Handbooks for Language Teachers.  I trust you and your teaching colleagues share ideas, activities, experience and practice, i.e. your collective ‘wealth’!? Although, you probably keep things stored on a computer nowadays.

In the Cambridge Paris office the team always passes around any documents before they go out ‘live’ ever since the former office manager sent out a national mailing announcing ‘Cambridge wokshops’ (this was before Spell Check) taking place around the country. Now, he is an excellent cook—but these weren’t lessons to learn how to cook with a wok, but of course pedagogical ‘workshops’. Had to re-do that document and so now we try to proofread each other’s documents and PowerPoint slides as well as of course share ideas for presentations and workshops on Cambridge ELT materials.

So how…does your team work/is your teamwork?

Looking forward to reading your comments and maybe meeting you—and some of your teammates—at an upcoming Cambridge wokshop…er, workshop.

Gary Anderson, Cambridge ELT International Teacher Trainer

How about an end-of-year gift from and to … English Profile?

On the Road with Gary … in Austria

I just came back from my last trip this year – a week-long tour in Austria from Vienna to Graz to Innsbruck. (By the way, what do you do if you’re travelling with four other people and you all miss the last train from Vienna to Graz where you have an event the next day and it’s too late to cancel the hotel booking there? Well, you rely on your local colleague to call the Vienna airport for a reasonably priced ‘people-carrier’ to take you and all your bags there to get in at around 2 o’clock—a.m.) I was doing the opening plenary talk at Cambridge Days in those three cities, speaking on the English Profile programme and particularly on the English Vocabulary Profile.

Now, English Profile is — as I’m sure you know, especially if you read my earlier blogs — a collaborative research programme involving Cambridge University Press, Cambridge ESOL, the British Council, the University of Bedfordshire and English UK designed to enhance the learning, teaching and assessment of English worldwide by using corpora to create a ‘profile’ or set of Reference Level Descriptions for English lexis, structures and functions linked to the Common European Framework (CEF).

English Vocabulary Profile is the aspect of the programme which is the furthest along and with the Austrian teachers we looked at how it will show which words and phrases learners know from A1 to C2 and assign CEF levels not just to the words themselves but also to each individual meaning or ‘sense’ of the word.

I was touring Austria with entre autres Leslie Anne Hendra, one of the co-authors of English Unlimited, a course whose vocabulary has now been mapped to the English Vocabulary Profile and for which you can download wordlists, as well as Vocabulary Extra worksheets, with English Vocabulary Profile tagging to be used in class or as homework to revise, to practice and to extend lexical sets from each level of the course.

At the end of each talk in Austria I offered the teachers—and am also offering you— an end-of-the-year or a Christmas present from Cambridge and the English Profile partners: a free subscription (for a limited time only) to the A1-B2 English Vocabulary Profile. I also invited the Austrian teachers – and am inviting you— to give a present to Cambridge and the English Profile partners by becoming an English Profile Network Partner. Get involved in data collection to help English Profile develop its new corpus of both spoken and written learner English produced by students worldwide!

You can get much more information on English Profile at www.englishprofile.org and find out about both English Vocabulary Profile Free subscription and/or how to get involved in data collection.

Speaking of presents, I think I ‘m going to give myself a Christmas present from Cambridge: a copy of the new Duels and Duets: Why Men and Women Talk So Differently by John L. Locke which has apparently caused a lot of media buzz since it purports to reveal the real ‘evolutionary’ origins of communication differences between men and women. Maybe I’ll risk writing about that controversial subject in a blog post … next year.

Season’s greetings to those of you for whom this time of the year is special — and all the best to all for 2012!

Gary Anderson, Cambridge ELT International Teacher Trainer

Too young to learn English? At what age can/should kids start learning a foreign language?

‘On the road with Gary…in Bratislava and Prague’

I was on a long train journey last month between events for primary school teachers in the capitals of Slovakia and the Czech Republic reflecting on my talks on ‘Teaching Kids Inside—and Outside—the Box’ and ‘Ways to Play—and Learn—in English’ (on Kid’s Box and Playway to English courses and on supplementary materials for teaching Young Learners – see a recommended reading list at the bottom of this blog) but also thinking about teaching languages to young children in general and particularly about something that happened at my wife’s school at the beginning of this school year.

My wife teaches in a French primary school in the centre of Paris—right next to the Place des Vosges in the 3rd arrondissement, if you know Paris—and at the beginning of September her school was inundated with publicity from organisations such as ‘Babylangues’ and ‘Baby-speaking’ to be put on the school announcement board and made available to parents about English classes for young learners from…0 years old!

Now, I know there may still be some conflicting views, but the recent articles and research I’ve read seem to agree that in general the earlier the exposure to foreign language input, the more beneficial for the child down the line. (Although some Ministries of Education—and teachers and parents—prefer postponing reading and writing in the foreign language until after children have learnt to read and write in their mother tongue). And when I was in charge of the language program at the former American Center in Paris, we had classes for children, including one for very young learners called ‘Tiny Tots’—but the infants had to be toddlers and potty-trained at least! I also remember doing some market research a few years ago with our primary ELT editor for the pre-school course Hippo and Friends and visiting classes given by a private teacher in her apartment in Paris and it was wonderful watching the kids leave their parents or caretakers and gather to sing songs, play with puppets, listen to stories et al. But starting classes at a very young age!? Before the children are even one-year-old!?

Of course when I read the publicity more closely and looked on the websites, I saw that for very young learners the offer was mainly more for bilingual babysitting and childcare than for real teaching or language classes—and that sounds reasonable and right-headed to me. In fact, I was recently visiting friends in the country whose daughter has had her first child who’s now six months old. And as I picked the baby up and started to take him walking around the garden, the parents heard me speaking French and said ‘Gary, why don’t you speak English to him?’ Indeed, why not? ‘OK,’ I said, ‘Look Edgar, three trees!’ etc. In fact, that’s what I plan on doing with my own grandchildren if/when they come. Of course, that’ll be their parents’— i.e. my kids’—decision…

Do you teach pre-school children? How old is your youngest student and what would be your advice to other teachers of young learners, and indeed young parents?

If you’re interested in the psychology of learning languages by young children, you may find the article by Professor Paul Bloom of Yale University on How Children Learn the Meaning of Words interesting.

Other recommended reading:

‘The Bilingual Family Second edition’ by Edith Harding-Esch and Philip Riley, Cambridge University Press

Teaching Children English by David Vale and Anne Feunteun, Cambridge University Press

Teaching Languages to Young Learners by Lynne Cameron, Cambridge University Press

Very Young Learners by Vanessa Reilly and Sheila Ward, Oxford University Press

Recommended resources:

‘Primary Communication Box’ from the photocopiable Cambridge Copy Collection

Primary i-Dictionaries

Cambridge Young Readers Storybooks and Factbooks

Gary Anderson, Cambridge ELT International Teacher Trainer

Personalisation—is it the same with teenagers as with adults?

 I was trying to catch up a little on my professional reading while travelling to and from events in Budapest and Strasbourg recently, and on the French TGV train I came across an article on ’Personalisation’ by Rose Senior, which made me stop and think. The article was in July issue (yes, I am somewhat behind…) of the English Teaching Professional. 

Gary at teacher training session in Hungary

 Now, I always read the articles by ‘Dr. Rose’ (as she signs her regular column) and I usually agree with her. But this time something she wrote had me shaking my head in a slight disagreement: ‘A powerful technique for encouraging interaction is that of personalisation: giving students the opportunity to share with others aspects of themselves as people—their likes and dislikes, feelings, personal experiences, knowledge, opinions and so on.’

 Yes, of course…but, well, maybe not always. Seems to me it’s different when teaching teenagers than when teaching adults. In fact, that difference is exactly something I mentioned in my separate talks in Budapest and Strasbourg: on teaching adults with English Unlimited and on teaching teenagers with English in Mind. Let me explain and see if you agree—with me.

 In my experience, adults usually like talking about themselves and sharing their experiences. Ask an adult ‘What did you do last weekend?’ (although you might want to phrase your question as a ‘two-step question’ since data from the Cambridge English Corpus of spoken English shows that is how native speakers often ask typical questions, e.g. ‘What did you do last weekend? I mean, did you go out or stay at home or what?’) and he/she is usually ready to tell you—and the rest of the class. And, yes indeed, adults are usually ready and willing to express their opinions and share their knowledge on most matters. (Of course you must be careful bringing up topics concerning politics, religion or sexual matters…)

 But it’s a whole different ballgame with teenagers! Ask a teenager in front of the class on Monday ‘What did you do last weekend?’ or on Friday ‘What are you doing this weekend?’ and the teenager is probably first of all thinking,’ Hey teacher, it’s none of your business!’ And also ‘I don’t want him to know because he didn’t invite me to the party’ or ‘I don’t want her to know because she’s on the volleyball team and I didn’t make the cut.’ Also, some teenagers may not have informed opinions, knowledge or experience on a lot of topics. So, no need to potentially put them on the spot and in the difficult position of trying to formulate a personal response—and in a foreign language!—while they are also perhaps thinking inside ‘I don’t want everyone to look at me and see my spots (Br)/pimples (US)—or messy hair.’ Adults joke about having a ‘bad hair day’; that’s not necessarily a laughing matter with teenagers. No, there’s a lot going on in a typical teenager’s mind-set.

 Anyway, that’s my personal opinion and experience. What do you think? Can you ‘personalise’ as easily and in the same way when teaching teenagers as when teaching adults? I’d love to hear your comments.

 Gary Anderson, Cambridge ELT International Teacher Trainer

 P.S. Rose Senior has a good book on The Experience of Language Teaching in the Cambridge Language Teaching Library. And you can read her regular column in the English Teaching Professional or online at www.etprofessional.com

On the Road with Gary in… Serbia, Bosnia-Herzegovina and Romania

Well, I got back from summer holidays and immediately jumped back in the saddle…er, seat belt again with three trips before the start of the 2011/12 school year: to Serbia for a weekend with Cambridge residential summer school in Kovacica outside Belgrade; for a four-city tour around Bosnia–Herzegovina; and for the Fischer International conference in Bucharest. I was giving lots of different talks, including a new talk on Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL)which is the subject of this post.

Gary with Serbia English Language Teachers Association (ELTA) vice-president Danijela Serafijanovic

The title of my talk—CLIL Won’t Kill —alludes of course to the Quentin Tarantino films Kill Bill Parts 1 and II.  Now, although Tarantino is my son’s favourite film director, I personally am not a big fan of his: a wonderful stylist, yes, but I don’t find a lot of feeling or emotion (except violence) in his movies.

Anyway, I changed the sword to a nice bouquet of flowers that language teachers can offer to both subject teacher colleagues and to their own language students when involved in what I call either ‘real’ CLIL, i.e. teaching a subject and a foreign language together (as is happening in a lot of countries), or CLIL ‘lite’ which for me means the language teacher bringing topics and activities from other subjects in the school curriculum, e.g. geography, maths, science, history et al, into the language classroom.

Since my audiences were language teachers, we first looked at how language teachers can help their colleagues teaching a subject in a foreign language to, if you will, ‘ride a bicycle built for two’ (That very nice analogy for ‘real’ CLIL comes from a teacher in Novi Said, Serbia, who agreed to let me use it.): choosing and adapting materials, helping with assessment and techniques such as eliciting vocabulary and scaffolding language. We looked at practical examples from the forthcoming (in spring 2012) CLIL Activities in the Cambridge Handbooks for Language Teachers series.

CLIL: Activities with CD-ROM (forthcoming 2012)

For CLIL ‘lite’…Well, you know that all of your students are not going to be future English teachers (although let’s hope some of them will!) and may not be interested in languages.  But they might be interested in math or geography etc.  As an English teacher you of course are not supposed to know a lot about those other subjects. But if you bring into the language lessons some matter and materials from other subjects in the school curriculum, then those non- verbal/linguistic learners can sit up and shine—even in English class.

Good for individual motivation and also for class dynamics seems to me. We looked at examples of how this is achieved in Kid’s Box for Young Learners, More! for tween-agers and English in Mind for teenagers as well as supplementary activities from various Cambridge Copy Collection titles and, of course, extensive reading opportunities in both Cambridge Fact Books for Young Learners and ‘Fact Books’ strand of the Cambridge Discovery Readers series for tween- and teen- agers. Plus secondary school students, who are already thinking about their future university studies and professions, can well profit from a dictionary such as the Cambridge School Dictionary that offers them curriculum words in other subjects for, say, report writing and presentations or just for simple information and interest.

CLIL won’t kill—au contraire! Don’t you agree?

Gary Anderson, Cambridge ELT International Teacher Trainer

PS CLIL: Content and Language Integrated Learning by Do Coyle, Philip Hood and David Marsh gives a comprehensive look at the subject. And you’ll find some interesting ideas in The TKT Course: CLIL Module by Kat Bentley—even in you’re not taking the Cambridge ESOL Teaching Knowledge Test.

On the Road with Gary in … Russia; Summer Schools and Cambridge English

Forewarning: ‘Cambridge English’ in the running title above has nothing to do with William and Catherine being named by Queen Elizabeth, as you might know, Duke and Duchess of Cambridge after their recent Royal Wedding. (You know, I wonder if there is anyone in the world who didn’t view part of the ceremony?  I watched a little over lunch in a restaurant in Brno, Czech Republic with two colleagues – and okay, Olga and Leslie, yes, Kate’s dress was lovely.)

My last trip before the end of this school year (well, at least for those of us in the northern hemisphere) and before my

Gary Anderson presenting on teaching teenagers

upcoming summer holidays was to Russia for ‘summer schools’ for (mainly secondary) teachers in St Petersburg and Kazan organised by our Moscow office in collaboration with Britannia Books and the Ministries of Education.

I really like Russia and I’ve been there five or six times. This time I was doing a number of different talks: on teaching tween-agers with More!, teaching teenagers with English in Mind and Interactive, and on using supplementary materials for ‘tweens and ‘teens. I also presented  on the range of Cambridge Classware – digital course presentation software for Interactive Whiteboards or mimio® – a technological device that allows you to turn any surface into an interactive whiteboard.

But I also talked about ‘Which comes first: language development or exam preparation? The chicken or the egg?’. Or maybe you can have both—if you’re using good language development materials (for example from Cambridge ELT) which also prepare for recognised exams (for example from Cambridge ESOL), i.e. Cambridge books for Cambridge exams. (You can share your opinion on the subject by voting in our poll at the top of this page.)

And that’s the idea of ‘Cambridge English’, the new joint partnership between Cambridge ESOL and Cambridge University

Cambridge English

Press: bringing together expertise in exams and in publishing. The two ‘Cambridges’ have already been collaborating on, for example, English Profile and the Cambridge English Placement Test. You may have already seen the new ‘Cambridge English’ logo on the cover of the Cambridge ELT 2011 catalogue.

In Moscow, we have launched the Cambridge English Solution for Schools project developed through a partnership between the Cambridge University Press, Cambridge ESOL and Britannia Books. And there are plans to roll-out the project to other cities across Russia next school year.

So look out for ‘Cambridge English’ events in your country in the near future.

Have a nice relaxing and reinvigorating summer break! As I hope to do here in France before my next trips to Serbia and Bosnia in August for…summer schools and back-to-school events.

Gary Anderson, Cambridge ELT International Teacher Trainer

On the road with Gary in… Opatija, Sofia, Prague,Sarajevo, Amsterdam and Vilnius

Gary presenting at the LKPA conference

So what do all of the above cities have in common? Well, they are all places where I attended and presented at conferences in the last two months. Yes, I’ve been doing lots of travelling! (Maybe too much, says my family).

The best? Well, that’s impossible to answer as each conference was special in its own individual way. But I must say that the annual HUPE (Croatian Association of Teachers of English) conference held this year from April 7-10 in the lovely town of Opatija on the Adriatic coast was one of the best conferences I’ve ever attended: impeccably organised; a great selection and range of talks (including my plenary on ‘ELT in(to) the Digital World’ and my workshop on ‘Teaching Adults ‘real’ English’ with English Unlimited); civilized half-hour coffee breaks on the terrace for networking and discussion; a Pecha Kucha evening; and a gala dinner and DJ 80’s Party (I hadn’t been forewarned about the party’s theme so just wore my HUPE t-shirt and had a great time!).

The biggest? The annual Cambridge-Pons School Association Day on Saturday, April 16, in Sofia, Bulgaria, which started with a wonderful ceremony during which the student winners of primary and secondary school competitions received prizes followed by local entertainment from members of the Cambridge—Pons School Association and then over 400 teachers attended four (!) talks by me and by Cambridge ESOL representatives. 

The most northern? The Lithuanian Association of Language Teachers (LKPA) 5^th annual conference on Saturday and Sunday May 20-21 in Vilnius where about 80 teachers of all

On the Riga-Vilnius coach on my birthday

languages and from all over the Baltics, Russia, Kazakhstan and Europe met to debate and discuss ‘Languages for Work and Life: A Challenge for Teachers and Learners’. I gave a plenary on ‘Language Teaching in(to) the Digital Age’ and a workshop on ‘Teaching Teenagers’ with English in Mind 2^nd edition and Interactive. (On my birthday the day before the start of this conference, I had been giving talks in Riga, Latvia, and then had a four-hour bus ride (USA)/coach journey (UK) to Vilnius. 

The most unusual—for me? The 1^st International Conference on Foreign Language Teaching and Applied Linguistics held on May 5-7 at Burch University in Sarajevo, Bosnia-Herzegovina, where researchers from all over the world read and gave papers on a huge variety of subjects and where I gave talks on English Profile and English 360.

And I was also in Prague on Saturday, April 30, for the Cambridge English Day for teachers of adults where I gave three different talks—including a workshop on using Cambridge Classware with mimio (a USB that turns white surfaces into interactive whiteboards) and in Amsterdam on Friday, May 13 (it wasn’t unlucky), for the Cambridge Business/ESP Day where I gave the final talk on (yes, again) ‘Teaching Adults ‘real’ English’ with English Unlimited.

Phew! Glad my travel is winding down now… Perhaps you also attended a conference or two (or six!?) these last few months as spring is the time for conferences (in the Northern hemisphere, at least). In any case, hope to see you at one of these or another upcoming conference or Cambridge English event in the future.

Gary Anderson, Cambridge ELT International Teacher Trainer