Teaching for Success – Teacher Conference
Palma, Saturday 28 September, 09.30 to 14.30
VENUE: Centro de Estudios Superiores Alberta Giménez; Calle Costa Saragossa, 16, 07013 Palma, Balearic Islands
At the British Council in Palma, we are celebrating our fourth annual conference for teachers with the theme ‘Teaching for Success’. Once again, we will have a full programme of practical teacher training sessions to help and inspire you over the teaching year.
Our speakers give sessions full of useful tips and advice which you can immediately apply in your own classroom. There are plenty of sessions to choose from, so, whether you are a primary or secondary teacher, or a teacher working in adult education, our teachers’ conference has just the right training sessions to support your professional development.
In addition, this year, we are excited to welcome guest speaker Erica Balazs, who will be giving the following sessions:
CEFR: Promoting Quality in language learning and teaching
The CEFR‘s impact has been felt worldwide on language policy, course materials, teaching and assessment. In this presentation, I will introduce the CEFR and its updated and extended version published in 2018. I will first discuss the aims, approach and uses of the CEFR, Then I will focus on the CEFR’s shift from the four traditional skills of reading, listening, writing and speaking to the four modes of communication (reception, interaction, production and mediation) and how this shift promotes real-life language use and communication skills. Finally, I will address the relevance of the common references levels and the descriptor scales to the classroom.
Assessment Literacy for Teachers: Basic concepts in language testing
The purpose of this presentation is to give language teachers an understanding of the 4 most important concepts in language testing: validity, reliability, practicality and washback. These concepts are the main principles that guide test construction and evaluation. However, these principles do not just apply to high-stakes tests but need to be applied to all tests and assessment tools created by teachers. Understanding these principles will allow teachers to design better assessment tools, which in turn will allow better decision-making based on the results of the assessment tools. In this presentation, I will discuss each principle in detail and offer suggestions for classroom relevance.
Understanding Aptis: How different CEFR levels are assessed
Aptis is an innovative English language test from the British Council designed to make a practical and accurate assessment of your level of English according to the CEFR levels. The question for teachers is how to reduce negative washback and improve the overall proficiency of students whilst preparing them to achieve their best performance in the test. In this presentation, I will focus on the underlying skills and competences being assessed in each task in Aptis and how these skills and competences differ at each CEFR levels. The presentation will assist teachers in understanding CEFR levels and how tests assess them. This knowledge will lead to more informed language teaching and test preparation.
