10:45-11:30
Authenticity in Spoken Production
Alex Walls is the Director of Studies at Windsor English Language School and holds CELTA and Delta. Having been teaching since 2012, he has taught in 4 countries (Uzbekistan, China, Oman and Russia) and has presented at conferences in Russia and online on a variety of topics from using L1 to teaching the iGeneration. He is also the recipient of the IATEFL LAM SIG scholarship for 2020.
Imagine: You're sat in a quiet bar or café with three friends at the end of the week. Strangely enough, your conversation has run dry. A waiter suddenly comes over having noticed the lull in your conversation. He separates your group into two pairs, and provides both pairs a list of questions to discuss on the theme of crime and punishment ("Should criminals be given harsher sentences?" for example).
Has this ever happened to you? Probably not, because this would be nothing except bizarre. This is an inauthentic speaking activity which is exactly what happens on a daily basis in classrooms all over the world. In this session, we explore some alternatives with a focus on bringing more authenticity to spoken production.