Guest speakers

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NATECLA is delighted to welcome the following keynote speakers to our 2019 National Conference:

  • Friday 5th July 2019, 20:00 - 21:00 - Professor Anne Burns, Emeritus Professor in Language Education at Aston University on 'Teachers as learners:  Investigating your classroom'
  • Saturday 6th July 2019, 9:00- 10:00 am - Teacher, teacher trainer and author, Nick Bilbrough on 'The Play's the Thing'


Teachers as learners:  Investigating your classroom, Professor Anne Burns: Friday 5th July 2019, 20:00 - 21:00

About Anne Burn's talk

It has been common for teaching and research to be seen as separate activities. However, increasingly it is argued that teachers can continue their development and extend their professionalism by becoming researchers of their classrooms. For many teachers, taking on the role of being a teacher researcher is a challenging, even scary, experience. In this plenary I will reflect on ways teachers can draw on issues that are important in their own work with 

Prof Anne Burns

their students to conduct classroom investigations. My talk will include several examples from teachers of English to adults who have gained deeper insights into their teaching by conducting their own classroom action research. Reflections by teachers on what they have learned by becoming action researchers will also be highlighted. 


About Professor Anne Burns

Professor Anne Burns is Professor of TESOL at the University of New South Wales, Sydney. She is also an Emeritus Professor at Aston University, and an Honorary Professor at the University of Sydney and The Education University of Hong Kong.  Her research interests include language teacher education, language teacher cognition, applications of genre theory to language teaching, curriculum development and change, literacy, and written and spoken discourse analysis. She is well known for her work in the theory and practice of action research.


The play's the thing, Nick Bilbrough: Saturday 6th July 2019, 9:00 - 10:00 am

About Nick's talk

Sometimes when we think of drama we think of complex archaic language, or we think of struggling to feel the motivation for a particular line, or if, like me, you went to primary school in Britain in the 1970’s, you may think of standing for what seemed like hours and being a tree! But drama as a tool for language learning can be a much more straightforward and down-to-earth matter. It’s something that can be incorporated into almost every class, and it doesn’t necessarily require acting skills, or lots of time or practice. But its potential to promote learning is high. It’s a great way to bring to life the language in the coursebook and to make it meaningful and memorable, and on top of this it’s fun. In this interactive plenary, I'll reflect on my experiences as both a language learner and teacher, and propose a strong rationale for the practice and performance of scripted dialogues and sketches as a core component within a modern, lexical (Lewis 1993) or 'play' based (Cook 2000) syllabus.

About Nick Bilbrough

Nick Bilbrough ELTNick Bilbrough is a teacher, teacher-trainer and author, has been involved in the field of language teaching for twenty-five years and is a regular presenter at conferences worldwide. He has taught and trained language teachers in many diverse contexts in Africa, the Middle East, South America and Europe. He is the author of two resource books in the Cambridge Handbooks for Language Teachers series; Dialogue Activities (2007) and Memory Activities for Language Learning (2011) and, more recently, Stories Alive (2016), published by British Council, Palestine. Nick is now devoting all his energy to the registered charity he set up https://handsupproject.org/ , providing learning opportunities for young people, mostly in Palestine, through online conversation, storytelling and drama activities.