34th International IATEFL Annual Conference

27 – 31 March 2000 Dublin, Ireland

The International Association of Teachers of English as a Foreign Language held its 34th Annual Conference in Ireland where there are many historic monuments, some older than the Egyptian pyramids. Each tells a story of the successive influence which shaped and moulded Ireland’s history – the prehistoric standing stones, the round towers and high crosses of the medieval monks and the grandeur of large country houses from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

Against this background grew the modern state of Ireland which achieved independence in 1922.

The characteristic Irish love of words led to the development of a long tradition of story-telling and play-writing.

Some of the great Irish writers to gain international acclaim are: Jonathan Swift, Edmund Burke and Oliver Goldsmith, George Bernard Shaw, Oscar Wilde, William Butler Yeats, Sean O’Cassey, Samuel Beckett and Bram Stoker, author of Dracula.

James Joyce is perhaps the best known writer in modern literature.

In recent decades Ireland has produced new talent in all areas of the arts.

Nobel Prize winner and poet Seamus Heaney and writer Roddy Doyle have continued Ireland’s reputation for producing outstanding writers and both have become international figures. There has been a growth in film-making, led by director Neil Jordon, and in the musical field groups such as The Dubliners and The Chieftains have brought traditional Irish music to a worldwide audience. For the younger generation, Irish rock musicians have also taken centre stage through the immense success of people like U2, Enya, Sinead O’Connor, The Cranberries, Boyzone, Westlife and The Corrs.

The participants of the Conference were deeply impressed because Ireland abounds with historical and cultural interest.

There were about 800 ELT professionals from 76 countries at this conference.

The 34th Conference was formally inaugurated by the IATEFL President Adrian Underhill and the Minister for Education & Science, Dr. Michael Woods.

The Opening Plenary was given by Professor Donald Freeman who is Director of the Centre for Teacher Education, Training and Research at the graduate School for International Training. He is editor of Teacher Source and author of Doing Teacher-Research: From Inquiry to Understanding.

He edited Teacher Learning in Language Teaching.

Donald Freeman is past president of TESOL. His research, Through the Teacher Knowledge Project, deals with understanding of what teachers do in their classrooms.

His presentation “Practical Epistemologies: Mapping the Borders of Our Work” points out that as teachers, our work is largely defined by actions, by what we do in classrooms and how we do it. From this perspective, teaching can seem fully regulated be the decisions of others – about policy, curriculum, time-tabling, students and so on. While these eternal “borders” often appear to be more controlling, there are internal borders – of belief, prior knowledge and so on – that are equally potent in affecting our work.

The second Plenary session began with the presentation “Teaching: A Way of Relating” by Shakti Gattegno.

Mrs. Shakti Gattegno is President of Educational Solutions in New York, the organisation which publishes, represents and disseminates Dr. Caleb Gattegno’s contribution to education. She took her BA at the University of Dehli, and taught at High School in New Delhi. From 1954 she studied and experimented with Dr. Gattegno’s approach to learning in India and England and took her MA at the University of London. She has taught languages using the “Silent Way” and conducted work-shops for teachers on behalf of Educational Solutions. She worked on the design of Silent Way charts for Hindi and other languages.

Her publications include The Place of Life in Education and articles in the newsletters published by the Association in France and Educational Solutions in the United States.

It is possible to renew one’s teaching only in relation to learning. For instance, as one considers the teaching–learning situation and one’s place in it, one feels the need to understand better the inner human resources from which the learning process originated and which enable people to continue to function as learners, on their own.

The work of Caleb Gattegno (1911 – 1988) sheds light on such issues. Caleb Gattegno studied babies and young children involved in learning to function in their first language, “guided from within”.

Caleb Gattegno found the element of efficiency (i.e. effective use of time and energy) and that of autonomy in learning, to be mutually enhancing. C. Gattegno developed an approach to teaching in which teaching is guided by the human potential for learning and by the actual learning process of individual learners.

Part of the approach are the teaching techniques and materials designed with the integrity of the human learning process in mind.

At the Second Plenary Session there was one more speaker – Scott Thornbury.

Scott Thornbury works at International House, Barcelona, both as a teacher trainer and materials writer. His previous experience includes teaching and training in Egypt, UK, and in his native New Zealand. He has an MA (TEFL) from the University of Reading. He is currently Chief Examiner for the Diploma Scheme.

His writing credits include a task-based course for Spanish secondary schools, numerous articles for ELT Journal. His latest book is How to Teach Grammar (Longman).

Scott Thornbury suggests that grammar be marketed, packaged and consumed as if it were a commodity. Students “do” grammar like tourists do Italy. It is imbued with values that have less to do with its intrinsic worth in terms of language learning, than with what it represents as a cultural artefact.

In his talk Scott Thornbury showed how the grammar had been constructed to serve the needs of a number of interest groups – not least the teachers and their need to have a subject.

“If grammar didn’t exist, we would have to invent it. (Maybe we did.)” – said Scott Thornbury.

The Third Plenary Session was opened by Antony Humphreys’ “Self-Esteem and Teaching”.

Dr. Tony Humphreys is a Consultant Clinical Psychologist in private practice and specialist lecturer for health care and teaching professions in University College, Cork and Limerick University. He is Ireland’s most influential psychologist and leading speaker on individual, couple and family relationships. He also has become well known internationally.

Anthony Humphreys is the author of seven best-selling books:

A Different Kind of Teacher
Self-Esteem: The Key to your Child’s Education
The Family Love It and Leave It
The Power of “Negative” Thinking
Myself, My Partner

and his recently published books:
A Different Kind of Discipline
Children Feeling Good

Dr. Tony Humphreys thinks that infants are born with a natural curiosity and love of learning. By contrast, many children and adults have come either to dread or hate learning. Teaching has become the most stressful social occupation, and this is in no small part due to the fact that many children and adults are threatened by learning.

Other contributing factors are a rising tide of discipline difficulties, low motivation, poor staff relationships, large class sizes, poor psychological and social back-up services, and teachers’ own self-esteem problems.

Teachers and parents typically make the mistake of viewing students’ rebelliousness avoidance of around learning as the challenging behaviours that need to be confronted. However, such an approach only serves to escalate these difficult responses. The real problem is hidden behind these ingenious protective devices and is about individuals’ worth and relationships not being determined by academic and other learning performances. The clever purpose of the so-called “challenging behaviours” is to reduce or eliminate further blows to self-worth and security in key relationships.

Unless there is a clear separation between loving and learning and person and behaviour; children and adults will wisely maintain their defences in situations when teaching threatens their emotional and social well-being.

John Ayto devoted his presentation to “Exploring the Fourth Dimension – Lexical History and Language Teaching”. He is a lexicographer and writer. John Ayto was formerly the Managing Editor of Longman Dictionaries, and was senior editor on the first edition of The Dictionary of Contemporary English.

Since becoming freelance in the mid-1980s he has written and edited a number of dictionaries and other language reference books, including the Longman Register of New Words, Euphemisms, The Oxford Dictionary of Slang, Oxford Essential Guide to the English Language, Dinner’s Dictionary (about the origins of English food words), Twentieth Century Words (his most recent book). John Ayto writes that the teaching of English as a foreign language has always ignored etymology.

At the Third Plenary Session John Ayto pointed out that his principal aim was to demonstrate that etymology is fun. Behind its unfortunate (but sometimes self-inflicted) dust-shrouded image, there lie many hundreds of stories about the origins of the lexicon that are full of fascination for anyone with the remotest interest in language. He suggested that such stories, if well told, may have a role to play in language teaching, and particularly in the acquisition of vocabulary: the formation of links between related words is an acknowledged aid to memorisation, and there is potential for forging such links etymologically as well as semantically.

Besides Plenary Sessions there were over 200 workshops.

The Conference was closed by Adrian Underhill, IATEFL President.

The 35th International IATEFL Annual Conference will be held in April 2001 in Brighton.

By Professor L. Fedorova,
All-Russian Distance Institute
of Finance and Economics