School Practice-based Long Session (45 minutes)
English for Life: 21st Century Skills through reading
Students will tell you that they don’t like reading, but this is simply not true. On social media and through instant messaging students are reading (and writing) all the time – more than any other generation before them. They do not think of this as reading. Moreover, they are following engaging narratives about people, and responding to what they read on various important cognitive, emotional and social levels. Our classroom practices must and can be adapted now to connect with this very positive reality. So, if we introduce reading which is easy, in contexts learners understand and enjoy, they will be more motivated and will develop essential 21st century life skills alongside natural, meaningful language development. This session looks at ways to implement this with young adults, encouraging them to see how reading leads defining and redefining our values by exploring the lives and cultures of others.
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Starting out as a graduate of German and English Linguistics and an English language teacher, Andy has been in ELT publishing and teacher training for more than 30 years, working in more than 40 countries. Passionate about the creative use of ELT materials and motivating teaching professionals, For the last 15 years Andy has been an independent ELT consultant for publishers and schools, and is known for his enthusiastic and practical talks. He encourages teachers to try new ideas and connect language learning with the real world. He is interested in showing teaching how to use images and video in the classroom and is especially interested in showing practical, proven ways to motivate students (and teachers!) to read more with lasting, language-enhancing results. Andy grew up near Liverpool, England, and now lives in Glasgow with his family. He loves travel, film and film studies, comedy, podcasts, photography and playing guitar.