Getting older… getting wiser?
The aim of this plenary is to make you think a little and laugh a little, and leave you with some ideas to take away and use in the classroom. We will experience stories, poems and anecdotes that relate to different stages of life and provide interesting food for thought and discussion.
The session is designed to work on two levels. It uses the theme of getting older as a framework, taking a very well-known speech in Literature as its starting point. Within that framework, we then take a look at a variety of texts and apply a different technique to each one. The purpose of these techniques is to make the text more inviting: to provide a ‘way-in’ for students and give them a reason for engaging with what they are about to read or hear, and stimulate them to talk about possibilities and share their ideas.
The techniques are not just applicable to the texts I have chosen, but can be adapted to any listening or reading text a teacher is using with a class. Some of the techniques may be familiar but I hope there will be some new ones in there too. I hope too that you will find this session thought-provoking, and even a little bit inspiring!
About the lecturer
Jane Revell has been active in English language teaching for more than forty years. She has taught in classrooms in Rwanda, Spain, Germany, Venezuela and France and has trained teachers all over the world, from Mexico to Moscow and Malaysia. She has written and co-written many ELT courses and books for teachers, including several prize-winning titles such as Buzz for the BBC, and Teaching and Learning in Focus for the British Council. She has also written innovative personal development books for teachers, among them the acclaimed In Your Hands, Handing Over and Success over Stress, as well as readers, games and BBC radio and video material. Most recently, she is the author of Jetstream, the new course for adults from Helbling Languages. In addition to all of this, Jane is an international NLP trainer, a stress management consultant and a Pilates instructor. She lives in Brittany in the northwest of France, with her husband, Bob, and two black and white cats!