Reflections on the NATECLA Conference 2023
By Lylla Mir de Belder
I had made up my mind to attend the NATECLA 2023 conference as soon as it was advertised. It would be my first real life NATECLA conference since COVID. I had not attended the post COVID on-line NATECLA conferences because for me personally, conferences are about seeing and hearing in real life what others are saying and thinking, as well as having my own face to face interactions with other ESOL professionals.
One evening, I received an email from NATECLA about the forthcoming 2023 conference. It said there were five bursaries available, two full bursaries and three partial bursaries. On a whim, I decided to apply for the full bursary, but because I really wanted to attend the conference, and not expecting to be awarded anything, just to be on the safe side, I also bought myself an Early Bird ticket for the conference. Imagine my surprise and delight when I found out that I had been awarded a full bursary! Furthermore, NATECLA very kindly said they would reimburse me for the full amount of the Early Bird ticket that I had bought.
So, I booked my train ticket and went down to the Aston conference centre in Birmingham, after what seemed to be a very long time. However, everything was arranged exactly as I remembered it from my last pre COVID conference. The welcome tables were set up where they always are, as were the boards giving information about the workshops and room location. The publishers had their stalls set up in the same place and there was some interesting new material to be seen. Even the food was served in the same area as in previous years. The one new feature was the availability of an App for information on the conference, although unfortunately I had difficulty accessing this.
Since retiring after 40 odd years of teaching ESOL/ESL/EAL both in the UK and in various other countries, and the onset of COVID, I have been teaching ESOL on a voluntary basis, first at a large charity in the centre of London and nowadays, in my local community. To date, most of the students that I have taught are immigrants, refugees or asylum seekers. The issue of the refugee and the asylum seeker is now high on the agenda of public discourse, so I was delighted to find that quite a few of the workshops related to these groups and obviously, I went to as many of them as I could possibly fit into the time available to me.
So what makes a good workshop? Is it a dialogue from one person to an audience or is it group participation, guided by a leader, to discuss an idea? While I am happy to attend both styles of workshop, my personal preference is lecture style i.e. to have a person who really knows what they are talking about share their thoughts and experiences and afterwards to have sufficient time for the audience to ask plenty of questions to the speaker. I'm not that keen on workshops that usually involve rather simple group activities and then reporting back to the workshop leader. However, I do appreciate that some people may prefer this style of workshop.
Following on from the above, I will say that my two favourite events of this year's conference were Keynote Speaker Andy Forbes' presentation and secondly, Lora Agbaso’s workshop ‘Beyond being nice: Supporting adult ESOL learners who experience trauma’. Why did I like these two talks the best? Well, firstly, both speakers were interesting and informative and their talks were thought provoking and relevant. Secondly, both talks were delivered in a lecture format, which, as I have said above, I personally like best.
Andy Forbes is, quite simply, a man who knows his stuff! He is highly educated, highly experienced, delightfully articulate and very confident in his delivery. Andy is Head of Development at the Lifelong Education Institute/Commission. He authored the December 2022 ESOL for Skills, ResPublica Report and presented the key points from that report to us. To summarise, in his presentation, Andy maintains that better provision of ESOL would enable the significant non-native speaking English population to fill the gaps in the UK labour force, as these skill shortages continue to be a major constraint to the country’s economic growth and productivity. Andy raised some uncomfortable truths about the insufficient and inefficient provision of ESOL in the UK at the present time. The full report is available to read on the internet and I assure you that it makes for interesting reading.
I also really liked Lora Agbaso's workshop titled ‘Beyond being nice: Supporting adult ESOL learners who experience trauma’. Lora’s talk was very open and honest about the mental and physical trauma as well as the numerous other problems that a refugee or asylum seeker faces on a daily basis and how utterly soul destroying this can be for the person. I got the impression that Lora spoke from her heart and her own painful experiences, although we were never actually told where she was from or what her mother tongue is. Considering that Lora was speaking in English, a language that was obviously not her native language, I was totally bowled over by Lora’s eloquence in English. It said so much for the fact that a non-native speaker can, indeed, learn to communicate very effectively in English, as long as they have the required motivation and linguistic support.
So, what are the benefits of attending a NATECLA conference? Well, the conference provides an opportunity for delegates to be exposed to the latest thinking in ESOL practice, new developments in delivering ESOL via technology, and of course, the opportunity to network with other ESOL professionals from around the country. Networking opens one’s eyes to various issues and problems that ESOL teachers face in different parts of the UK, with different groups of students, as well as the opportunity to, hopefully, share solutions to these problems. I would also like to mention the very useful Teachmeet, where teachers have the opportunity to present tips and ideas from their own teaching practice to the delegates. I guarantee that you are likely to pick up some useful tips after the Teachmeet session. The conference also had a very interesting display of the latest teaching materials at stalls set up by the largest companies involved with producing ESOL materials. Lastly, for a bit of fun, NATECLA organises the Ruth Hayman quiz on the Saturday evening. The quiz is always very well attended and the light relief is appreciated at the end of a long day.
So, to sum up, after two very busy days of listening to talks, attending workshops, and connecting with other ESOL teachers, I came home very tired, my head buzzing with new thoughts and ideas. However, as a seasoned ESOL teacher, I had also found the reassuring validation of my own beliefs in various matters pertaining to the teaching of ESOL.
I would encourage Language Issues readers who have not experienced a NATECLA Conference to plan on attending the next NATECLA Conference in Birmingham in 2024. And do apply for that bursary. You may think, as I did, that you don’t have a chance, but you just never know. Good luck!