I watched the recording of Vicky’s plenary from 16th April 2024. You can watch it yourself here if you want to (it’s just over 45 minutes): My own feelings about AI are mostly apathy at the moment. I know that there’s a lot of fuss about it, and I know that it will be one of the tools that will affect my work now and in the future, but I’m waiting a little for the fuss to die down before I start exploring it much myself. If I’d attended the full conference in Brighton, I would have probably avoided AI talks, but I would definitely have attended Vicky’s talk, so I was glad I still get to watch ..read more

Since I can’t attend the full conference this year, I’ve been taking advantage of the live channel on the IATEFL YouTube website. This was the coverage from 16th April, day 1 of the conference. It was an interesting mix of interviews with speakers from the conference, clips that were recorded elsewhere including with delegates from the conference, discussions between the hosts and (perhaps less interesting!) adverts from IATEFL sponsors. Here are some points that stood out to me from the coverage: Lucie Cotterill mentioned how much the Sustainable Development Goals are mentioned in the progra ..read more

Monday 15th April 2024, IATEFL Brighton, the day before the main IATEFL conference, was the 10th pre-conference event run by MaWSIG, the Materials Writing Special Interest Group. I wasn’t able to attend in person, but I was still able to join in the hybrid event, helping to run the online side of things. There were six talks and workshops. This was the programme: Following Elly Setterfield’s advice, I’ve summarised a few interesting points from each of the talks which I’d like to remember for the future. Carol Read – Paradigm shifts in writing materials for children I was surprised that magic ..read more

In March 2010, I did my very first conference presentation at a PARK conference in Brno, Czechia, and I’ve been back many times since, so I really didn’t want to miss this special 30th anniversary conference. This was the abstract for my talk: What do successful readers do? As teachers, we’re often guilty of testing our students’ reading abilities through comprehension questions, without actually supporting them to become better readers. But where should we start? How can you move beyond a comprehension focus and help students to become the best readers of English that they can be? What migh ..read more

I was very happy to be invited back to ELTABB in Berlin to do a talk as part of their 2024 AGM. The last time I was there was around 2016 or 2017, when I did a workshop on lots of different options for how teachers can develop themselves professionally. This time, I ran a 90-minute workshop based on my competency framework for language learning materials writing. This was the abstract: If you’re anything like me, you’ve produced a lot of materials for your learners, whether that’s a worksheet, a PowerPoint presentation, or a video. You’ve also had very little training in materials writing, an ..read more

From 11th-15th March Rachael Roberts is running the third version of her incredibly useful (and free!) Festival of Freelancing, and I’m very happy to say I’ll be presenting at it. While spreadsheets might not seem like the world’s most exciting topic, I think they’re one of the single most useful things you can use to help you manage your business. In the session, I’ll show you various ways I use spreadsheets and you’ll have the chance to try them out as we go along. Here’s the link to sign up to the whole festival: https://earnlearnthriveinelt.com/festival-of-freelancing ..read more

In February 2024, I saw a post in the DELTA & DipTESOL Candidates and Survivors facebook group from Ha Truong. She shared how she had prepared for the DELTA Module 1 exam in 3 months and managed to achieve a Distinction. I asked her to write it up as a guest post for my blog to share her tips with the wider world and save them for posterity. Well done to Ha for your Distinction, and thanks for sharing how you got there! Note that I have a page of Useful links for DELTA if you would like more advice / help. Over to Ha… In December 2023, I achieved a distinction in the DELTA Module 1 exam af ..read more

On 9th February 2024, I presented a plenary at the Educast online conference. It was called Introducing a competency framework for language learning materials writing and was a 45-minute version of the talk I did in January at the IH AMT, sharing the framework I put together as part of my NILE MA. This was the abstract: A competency framework sets out the knowledge, skills and abilities needed to do a job successfully. Frameworks exist for ELT teachers, trainers and managers, but not for materials writing. Inspired by Denise Santos’ IATEFL 2022 talk, I created one for my MA dissertation. I wi ..read more

IATEFL TDSIG is the Teacher Development Special Interest Group. They have an excellent podcast called Developod (find more podcasts for ELT teachers here). I was very happy to be invited to chat to Christian Ludwig about the future of Teacher Development from my perspective, especially focusing on the power of blogs and social media. You can listen to the 36-minute episode here or by clicking on the link below. https://www.podomatic.com/podcasts/developod/episodes/2024-01-31T14_00_00-08_00 Thanks very much to TDSIG for inviting me ..read more

This is part of a series of posts showing you all the different ways you can approach the Cambridge DELTA. They are designed to help you find out more about the course and what it involves, as well as helping you to choose the right way to do it for you, your lifestyle and the time you have available. If you’ve done the DELTA (or any other similar higher-level teaching course, including a Masters), and you’d like to join in, let me know by leaving me a comment or contacting me via LinkedIn. If you’re interested in doing DELTA yourself, I run Take Your Time DELTA Module ..read more