Working with language teaching materials: development and design

  • 26 September 2024
    2:30 PM
  • CJV, Komenského nám. 2

This session aims to examine the relationship between what we do in the classroom and whether and how that work reflects the realities of language, in this case English, as it is used in the world today. It introduces the concept of design principles, linking the development of language teaching materials to an understanding of the tools provided by linguistics and the insights from sociolinguistics and explore the reasoning behind this approach before doing some hands-on work with both published and teacher-made materials.

Drawing on the ideas presented in the books I have published with my colleague, Tim Marr, (Why Do Linguistics? and Rethinking TESOL), the session is based on the understanding that the language classroom is a site for awareness-raising, analysis and research as much as it is one where students can get to grips with the mechanics of the language itself.

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Dr Fiona English

Fiona is Honorary Senior Research Associate in the Centre for Applied Linguistics at the UCL Institute of Education. She has been working in the field of language, communication and linguistics for many years in both research and teaching and has published books, chapters and articles reflecting her broad experience in the field. Her work has always revolved around the field of Applied Linguistics in relation to education and learning. Since her early days as a TEFL teacher, she has worked in a range of different contexts including researching language across the curriculum at the National Foundation for Educational Research, leading the London School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) Learning and Teaching Unit and coordinating and teaching on the MAs in TESOL and Applied Linguistics at London Metropolitan University. She has been external examiner and consultant on several university programmes in English Language, EAP and TESOL as well as developing and delivering programmes overseas such as on summer schools in Pakistan, Hong Kong and Uzbekistan.

Fiona’s expertise encompasses a number of interrelated specialisms: TESOL and language education, forensic linguistics and language testing and last but not least, academic literacies, genre and multimodality which was the subject of her PhD. She has recently been involved in an ongoing series of workshops and seminars exploring new ways of writing at university based around her concept of ‘regenring’ and in 2018 co-edited two special editions of the Journal of Writing in Creative Practice which showcase work in that area. She has authored three books: the monograph on the affordances of genres, Student Writing and Genre: Reconfiguring academic knowledge, and three books with Tim Marr which focus on promoting linguistics as a core field of social and educational relevance: Two editions of Why Do Linguistics? Reflective linguistics and the study of language, the first in 2015 and the second in 2023 and, in 2019, a book for specifically aimed at language teachers, Rethinking TESOL in Diverse Settings: The language and the teacher in a time of change, all published by Bloomsbury.

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