Whether you are still on your way, arrived yesterday or are planning to come later this week, I’m sure lots of you are thinking of Iatefl and Glasgow. I was told the weather would be cold and raining, and although there was some rain today it really was not very cold. Yesterday was a beautiful day with sunshine and blue skies. So, I think the key is probably to dress in layers. The weather reporter is actually promising better whether for the second half of the week. In any case, for those of us who were at the Pre Conference day today, it didn’t really matter what was happening outside as we spent the day in our SiG groups.
Joint PCE TEASIG and ESPSIG
This year our TEASIG group joined up with ESPSIG to host a joint event. The day was characterised by various series of shorter (15 min) talks followed by the chance to ask questions to everyone in each group, like mini panels. This worked quite well although there were comments that it did not really give people to go into the issues in much detail, which they would have preferred. There were also those who said that having a joint session meant ‘having to be interested’ in something they actually weren’t. One person who was of this opinion said that she belongs to TEASIG and was not interested in ESP, so she was rather disappointed. However, the fact that the two groups were going to co host the event was well publicised in advance, and it is important to try out new formats for events, rather than always following the same one. In fact the group was split, quite a few people saying that they liked to have the two groups together and the others saying ‘No’.
Read Before You Choose
I, personally, am interested in both assessment and EAP/EMI so I found the content to be relevant. I think the only advice I could give would be to look very carefully at what your SIG is planning and if you are not interested in that, go to something else. One example of this for me is the LTSIG, which I have been a member of for quite a few years. One year the focus was on young learners that I don’t teach, so obviously I chose to go to something else.
Anyway, I was wondering what other people thought about this? So here is a quick poll. Let me know what you think: it expires in one week.
English learning in Our World 