Training with Christine Tudor Jones

About Christine Tudor-Jones

Christine has been a member of NATECLA for about fifteen years and has been teaching ESOL for the same length of time.  After 5 torrid years in a primary classroom, she found Birmingham Adult Education ESOL classes, decided this was the place for her, and (kindly sponsored by them) did her CELTA.  She works for the newly merged South and City College Birmingham as a lecturer in ESOL, a CELTA trainer and TLC (Teaching and Learning Coach).   She also does a bit of examining of CELTA courses.  Christine took a short break 2 years ago to do an MA in ELT at Warwick University, which was great.  

Christine Tudor-Jones is offering the following ELT training sessions for NATECLA Training:

Differentiation: stretching and supporting learners without over-stretching teachers

This is a practical session for exploring ways of differentiating that focus on helping ALL students to progress as well as they are able.  It’s not about covert  labelling of ‘weak’ and ‘strong’, sheep and goats.  We start with a more nuanced understanding of our students as people who need supporting AND challenging in different ways and at different times. We look at some very familiar strategies and techniques, and consider how they enable us with little or no additional effort to provide support and challenge when it’s needed.  

Giving effective feedback

Are we missing a trick with feedback?  Do we pay much attention to how we do it?  Well researched evidence suggests that it can have more impact on learning than almost anything else we do.   This workshop offers an opportunity to experience and evaluate in a practical way a variety of feedback methods in language teaching and gain some insights into some underlying principles of effective feedback.     

10 grammar-noticing activities

Experience tells us language learners can continue to make grammar errors, often the same ones, despite corrective feedback and exposure to accurate models.  Research suggests there are number of reasons for this, but in any case grammatical accuracy is more likely to improve if learners notice the error and work out the correct ‘rules’ or patterns for themselves.   In this practical workshop we will evaluate 10 activities intended to help students to discover some typical errors and to develop a better understanding of the grammar.