Need a break? Well, slip on your slippers, grab a coffee or tea, get a donut and slip on into the Break Room, a new feature from the IATEFL BESIG is back.

The committee would like to invite members and non-members to join us in online networking meetings. The idea is to provide a platform where both can meet up informally, and chat about life, the universe and everything. If lots of people turn up it will be easy to split into smaller break-out rooms and chat in smaller groups. A great chance to catch up with IATEFL BESIG friends and make new ones.

Just click on the right Wednesday below to enter the Break Room.

2nd Wednesday of the month at 10:00 UK time (09:00 UTC)

Last Wednesday of the month at 18:00 UK time (17:00 UTC)

What content do we need to prepare for teaching English for Business? My answer: unlike other branches of ELT, none! Whatever the field – Legal, Banking, HR, Marketing or whatever, we cannot ever own the content. That belongs to our participants. Our role is to elicit, access, understand and work with it.  As well –known BE author Vicki Hollett explained, we can do very little to prepare in advance of a BE session but we need to be firing on all cylinders once we are engaged in it. When our participants explain their world to us they are being authentically communicative. They require our close attention and genuine interest. We must insist on understanding what they are telling us, not just pay lip-service. At the same time we must note any significant mistakes or gaps, ready to reformulate and feedback on their language. That can be scary for a less experienced teacher who may feel out of control – but we gain respect when we say honestly, ‘I don’t know’, providing that we follow it with, ‘but I will find out and get back to you’. In this workshop, I will demonstrate how we can use frameworks to navigate this field.

Rita Baker: During an EFL/ESL career spanning over 50 years, both in the UK and abroad, I have covered the full range from young learners to adults. In 1985 my husband Duncan and I founded Lydbury English Centre specialising in residential immersion training for business and professional people, using my comprehensive brain-friendly accelerated learning system (the Global Approach Ltd.) We are now launching this online in the form of animated training videos. My current focus is on supporting the next generation of English teachers and trainers while enjoying our family of 4 adult children and 10 grandchildren.

We know our students learn best when they become so absorbed in a topic (of great professional or personal significance) that they ‘forget’ they are learning. We also know that students want to learn how the language works.  The challenge, as Zoltan Dornei put it, is how we teachers manage to “maximize the cooperation” between implicit and explicit learning. This talk looks at principles and examples of a teaching approach that attempts to do that.

Paul Dummett is a teacher and writer based in Oxford, UK, where he ran his own school teaching English to professionals from 1996 to 2007. He has been writing adult course books and methodology books since then. His main interest in ELT is how to make learning more memorable through the use of images, stories and critical thinking activities. He likes travel, exercise and live music/spoken word performance.

More info coming soon.

Go to the Members-only Area for the materials and joining link. 

No pre-registration needed.

Questions? Email Maria at [email protected]

Please note, this event is exclusive to members and the joining link will be posted on the day in the Members-Only area of our website.

Come join us for a very special IATEFL BESIG Round Table- the Conference edition! #besig2022

Pull up a chair and play to help us shape our November conference on Thursday, 20 October at 18.00 UK time, with the IATEFL BESIG Joint Coordinator, Rob Howard.

The format: members only, with cameras and mics on, get up to 1 minute to make their point. As we go around the table, each person can comment, add or pass. Come and see where the journey takes us.

Questions?  Email us at [email protected]