The 56th IATEFL Conference at Harrogate April '23.

 My last post described our trip to the lovely city of Harrogate and now I’d like to focus on the conference we attended there: that of the International Association of Teachers of English to Foreign Learners. People arrived at the venue from all over the world, often re-establishing contacts from previous such events.                                                   

Two topics I thought interesting were “Practical Critical Thinking Activities for the Language Classroom’ and ‘Motivating Teens to Talk’. Teachers are always grateful for practical tips on methodology and motivation.

The Plenary session on “Workplace English’ shed new light on developments in the domain of language learners within their professional context. The concept of ‘dropping ‘language teachers in to the workplace to deliver a quick language ‘injection’ is no longer considered valid. The language teacher would ideally be a member of a corporate training team of experts and experienced operators responsible for drawing up and presenting an educational program. Trainees are seen as ‘users’ rather than ‘learners’ and their efforts would be assessed by performance outcome rather than isolated indicators. This offered an interesting perspective as to where English for Specific Purposes/ Business English may be heading.

 The next session worthy of note (but not necessarily in a good way! ☹) was entitled ‘Sharing Words and Worlds’ in the context of teaching English to refugees, migrants and asylum seekers. Citing UN statistics showing that in 2022 one hundred million displaced people entered the USA, the speaker  deduced that learning English is vital in establishing place and voice for these learners. She advocated that teachers prepare a Paedagogy of Politics wherein their roles are:

Ally                    to compensate for inequality

Advocate          to stand up for rights

Activist              to be an agent of change.

This did not sit well with me as it echoed the now passe concept of language specialists being ’dropped’ in, this time with an underlying political agenda rather than with a pre-ordained syllabus. Such a case was when at the height of our refugee deluge from Turkey, some NGO personnel in Greece refused to cooperate with government agencies lest their freedom to operate their own policies be curtailed.

                                                     

Now it goes without saying that we want the lot of refugees to be improved, but each country has its own infrastuctures and organisations designed to do that. Surely it’s their prerogative to assess where and to whom the facilities and services that they have available can be best put to use?

The session presenter showed a video clip showing a particular refugee who was describing his personal plight, but he was employing the services of a translator to do that. Later on it transpired that he had been in this English speaking country for ten years! This made me wonder if these resources were being directed to the right person. To be so long in the country and not communicate even at a basic level of English indicated something was not right.  Fellow-delegates near me in the session agreed we were being manipulated into emoting over this individual in a variety of ways and did not join in the standing ovation afforded at session-end. Rather than have our emotional strings pulled, we were ready to consider the many implications that the talk had generated.

Our critical analysis of the talk was confirmed very soon afterwards when we phoned to book a taxi to take us to a local park where we were to meet up with my family. We were told the driver would call us on his arrival at our pick-up point. And so he did. But as we approached the cab, he was reluctant to acknowledge that we were his actual fare. We fast assessed that reasoning with him was well nigh impossible, given his language level was so low. He accepted us only after we suggested calling the client again, and it was the phone ring-tone rather than verbal appeals that saved the day!

                                      

My point? This Bangladeshi man had lived in Yorkshire for 7 years, was a taxi driver whose communicative competence was very low indeed - even with the use of GPS support he was really struggling ….and initially took us to the wrong park. :O AND this was despite the combined efforts of four highly-trained language teaching specialists!!

                                                               

 Yes, we felt heart-sorry for him. But, yes, as clients we could also see that, even after all this time, his conversational abilities did not match the demands of his job.

 I guess it was a case of cabbies for courses.