IATEFL Conference

Hello everyone!

Today I'd like to tell you about International IATEFL Conference which took place in Liverpool, UK  from the 2nd up to the 5th April 2019.

There were different sessions at the conference, they were devoted to language learning and teaching. Many teachers all over the world came there to attend kind of lectures of professional speakers.

The topics of the sessions are all really engaging, they give you a hint on the solving issues which real professionals should know how to deal with; however, some of them are even striking as you've never even thought about them.

For example, the session I've chosen is called "Managing individual differences in the language classroom". The topic relates to several individual variables which should be kept in mind while learning languages.

 

 

The aspects are the following:

• age - people of all age can learn languages

• race/ethnicity/nationality/culture - the importance of knowing the differencies, being aware that all of them are not identical, unless it might lead to cultural shock

• personality - several types, all of them are important

• style(of learning) - not the universal one, but the ones suitable for each student

• strategies - a teacher should give his/her students some strategy knowledge

• autonomy - give students different tasks to learn which one would help improve their autonomy

• affect - feelings and emotions can both increase and decrease productivity of studens
  aptitude - sometimes it’s not that important as autonomy  
• motivation - the most important factor leading to success; it’s dynamic, complex; it should be kept high for the students. 

• sex/ gender - keep in mind the differences between males and females “to avoid oversimplification and unproductive generalisations”. 

Having watched the session, I learnt that teachers should be aware of all the individual variables above mentioned to make the process of learning more efficient for students. I’d like to read more about such variables as autonomy and motivation as I regard them to be the most significant ones and want to learn about them in depth.