Reflection+on+the+11th+ELT+Convention

REFLECTION ON THE 11th INTERNATIONAL ELT CONVENTION by Birgül DOĞAN The 11th International ELT Convention named ‘Embracing Challenges’ was held at METU between the days 31st May and 2nd June in our campus. Unfortunately, I managed to attend only 4 sessions of that tremendous convention, but I am going to write a reflection about one of those sessions which was offered by David Dodgson. Mr. Dodgson opened my horizon about the techniques and activities related with young learners. As he is a teacher in TED Ankara College he is curious about novel strategies in ELT area. The name of his session was also quite attractive. “Do not just fill the gaps, try leaving some space…” He started with some quotations and then he shared a quotation of his own. It was “having lesson ideas when relaxing, spending time with family, watching a video or doing anything away from work is a bad habit all good teachers have :) “I liked that idea and I found it literally true. A good teacher should always seek for new and interesting ways to teach English to his/her students. Even a documentary may inspire a teacher to create various activities. We should be conscious while observing the things and people. They may contribute to our classes. Another point that Mr. Dodgson emphasized was the usage of printable and non-printable activities. He suggested using different activities which do not rely on printing. He also mentioned the importance of involving students into discussions and speaking activities. I agree with that idea and I hope that I will help my students to speak in English without fear. He showed some sample activities which were good to encourage students to talk. The last point that I found useful in his session was the way of giving feedback. He explained that we should not hurt our students’ feelings in the class, but we should make them be aware of their errors in any case. Otherwise, the aim of the activities would fail. He shared his own method of correcting the errors. Firstly, he gives an exercise and wants the students to do it. By the way, the subject of the activity should be taught beforehand. Then, the students do the activities and they make a peer-check. The teacher observes the class and examines the mistakes. Afterwards, the teacher collects the exercises and writes new exercises on the board and those sentences on the board have some mistakes. S/He wants the students to find the mistakes and correct them. When the correction part is done teacher distributes the exercises to the owner of them. Then s/he wants them to check once more to see the unnoticed mistakes. It is a beneficial way of showing the mistakes and students do not feel offended. On the contrary they feel proud thanks to seeing their mistakes. To conclude, I liked the presenter and the topic really much. There is no part that I found useless or deficient. The activities were both entertaining and informative.