Day 1 - My reflections from the 11th International METU Conference - Embracing Challenges

The 11th International METU Conference - Embracing Challenges was held in Ankara, 31 May - 2 June.

The conference kicked off on May 31st with Eli Henkel's plenary on Academic Writing - the Vocabulary Connection.


How important is vocabulary?
Eli quoted Wilkins to emphasise the importance - 'The fact is that while without grammar very little can be conveyed, without vocabulary nothing can be conveyed' (Wilkins; 1972). She stressed that if use of vocabulary is good, grammar tends to be overlooked.


How about our learners?

Eli explained that early vocabulary learning is easy because it includes highly frequent words but, less frequent words are harder to learn and need to be taught i.e. academic vocabulary because it  does not occur in daily interaction and conversational exchanges. 

How do we teach academic vocabulary?

The secret Eli stressed time after time throughout her plenary is review review review! Encourage your learners to use flash cards - they are easy to carry and are practical to review vocabulary. In fact, research shows that flash cards reflect the single most efficient way to learn vocabulary.  Give learners a writing activity and encourage them to use the new vocabulary. Have vocabulary quizzes in class, this encourages learners to review vocabulary outside class. 

Eli's final words of wisdom for vocabulary teaching - review review review!!

Nicky Hockly, the second plenary speaker of the day, talked about Digital Literacies.  

Do we really need to be digitally literate? The answer is 'yes'. Nicky had most of the audience fooled with the internet information she presented on the tree octopus. Conclusion - be careful with the information you find on the internet - show students how to analyse web sites. For example - look at hyperlinks (beware if there are many within one paragraph), style of the language (is the language accurate?), the url (does it look official or suspicious?) and images (are the images real?)

Nicky referred to Mark Pegrum's four main areas in digital literacy:

1) Focus on Language

2) Focus on Information

3) Focus on Connections

4) Focus on (re) design

and suggested how these can be integrated in the language classroom. 

An example of (re)design would be to 'remix' something. Nicky illustrated this by showing a literal video of a Harry Potter trailer http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MahTKZDHXaA. We then discussed how remix can be exploited in class.

The tree octopus lesson plan can be found at http://www.theconsultants-e.com/resources/ToolsResources/DigiLit.aspx

In Talip Karanfil, Erhan Guzel and Steve Neufeld's workshop on  Lowering the Affective Filter with Text-To-Speech Animations in Class Dialogues they demonstrated how to use GoAnimate.GoAnimate is a free online tool for preparing self-made videos and works in collaboration with YouTube. Students prepare their own dialogues and then transfer this to GoAnimate. There are a variety of scenarios to choose from. In the workshop, we used wild animals and watched our self-created dialogues being brought to life on YouTube with wild animals.