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The American Language Teachers’ Training Workshop
Report
March 18 – 19, 2005
The Howard Plaza Hotel
Taipei, Taiwan
Workshop Session Outline – Session A
For Elementary and below English teachers
Friday, March 18, 2005
10:00 AM - 12:30 PM
Best practices, EFL/ESL Instruction and Total Physical Response (TPR)
Four Stages of Language Production
Developing Children’s Listening and Speaking in ESL
The Total Physical Response Method
1:30 - 5:00 PM
Introduction to Language Experience Approach (LEA)
About LEA
Four phases of LEA
Oral Language Development
Moving into Reading
Editing
Reading the Final Copy of the Story
Saturday, March 19, 2005
10:00 AM - 12:30 PM
Reading and Writing with Elementary School Children
Concepts associated with reading for young children
Seven Phonics Rules
Narratives, Expository Writing, Personal Writing and
Writing Across the curriculum
1:30 - 4:00 PM
Grammar Investigations for children and class routines
Parts of Speech as a categorization task based on text from a story
Verbs: definition, using “Semantic Coring” notions
Question types using classroom data collection
Reference, using counts back to referent
What good are pronouns?
Workshop Session Outline – Session B
For secondary and above English teachers
Friday, March 18, 2005
9:00 – 10:00 AM
Welcoming Remarks by AIEF
10:00 – 10:15 AM
Introductions of Workshop Trainers
Objectives of Workshop
Agenda Review
The workshop trainers will introduce each other and explain the nature of the workshop, which will be interactive and “hands on.” Dr. Rowe and Prof. Wormuth expect active participation from all workshop participants, which will model Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) techniques and strategies.
10:15 – 11:00 AM
Reflections on Teaching Practices and Philosophies (Questionnaire)
Workshop participants will reflect upon their own teaching practices and philosophies by completing a comprehensive questionnaire, which has been used in another Asian country to ascertain not only individual but also group attitudes and pedagogical philosophies regarding CLT. Workshop participants will be able to compare their responses to those of English teachers from another nation.
11:00 – 11:30 AM
Overview of American Communicative Language Teaching (CLT): Theory, Constructs, Methods, and Techniques (Presentation by Trainers)
The trainers will present a brief overview of CLT as a refresher for the participants and also to provide them with the American perception of this language teaching approach.
11:30 AM– 12:30 PM
Brainstorming on Identifying Barriers to CLT in Taiwan (Small Group Discussion)
Working in small groups, workshop participants will identify the barriers to communicative language teaching in their own teaching contexts. Each group will choose a reporter who will serve as the group’s spokesperson. The groups may wish to continue their discussion during the lunch break.
1:30 – 2:00 PM
Reporting on Brainstorming on Identifying Barriers to CLT in Taiwan (Representatives of Workshop Participants)
Each group’s reporter will present his/her group’s thoughts from the brainstorming session with the entire workshop. These CLT barriers will
be recorded for later reference.
2:00 – 3:00 PM
CLT Activity Designing: Template, Models, and Peer Review (Presentation by Trainers)
Dr. Rowe will provide examples of adapting Taiwanese textbook activities developed by her own TESOL graduate students at the University of South
Carolina.
3:15 – 4:30 PM
Activity Design Development: Working with Peers and Trainers on Adapting Taiwanese Materials
Working in dyads or triads and with the trainers, workshop participants will revise “oral practice” activities taken from Taiwanese secondary
level textbooks to make them more communicative in design and actual practice.
4:30 – 5:00 PM
Activity Design Peer Review (Discussion in Pairs)
Workshop participant-dyads/triads will exchange their activities with another dyad/triad, and they will review their colleagues’ activities using a checklist that will focus them on the necessary features of
communicative activities. They will make suggestions to improve the designs.
Saturday, March 19, 2005
9:00 – 9:15 AM
Overcoming Barriers to CLT: Critical Incidents and Peer Support (Task Explanation for Small Group Discussion)
Workshop trainers will explain the “critical incident” task, which is similar to case study work, and how pooled knowledge and shared ideas can provide solutions to real problems. Such an activity is an exercise in group critical thinking and requires “thinking outside the box.”
9:15 – 11:30 AM
Activity Design Presentations to Workshop Trainers / Overcoming Barriers to CLT: Critical Incidents and Peer Support (Small Group
Discussion)
This session involves two simultaneous activities. For half of the time period, workshop participant dyads/triads will present their activity designs to their group and the trainers, while other groups will develop
solutions to overcoming barriers to communicative language teaching in Taiwan by working on targeted critical incidents, which have been based on their brainstorming sessions on Friday. Then the groups will switch.
All participants will then have individualized and focused attention from at least one of the trainers.
11:30 AM – 12:15 PM
Solutions to Overcoming Barriers to CLT in Taiwan (Representatives of Workshop Participants)
Each group’s reporter will present his/her group’s solutions for overcoming barriers to CLT in Taiwan.
12:15 – 12:30 PM
Closing Remarks (Trainers) and Workshop Evaluation (Participants)
The trainers will debrief the workshop activities, and the participants will complete a workshop evaluation.
1:30 – 4:00 PM
Integrated Language Skills Preparation for New Proficiency Evaluation by Prof. Stephen Smith of AIEF
In recognition of the fact that English language proficiency testing approaches are changing, Taiwan’s teachers are faced with the challenge of how to quickly become knowledgeable about new ways to help students prepare. New proficiency testing methods will assess the ability of students to successfully integrate the skills of listening, speaking, reading and writing. This session will introduce resources designed to assist Taiwan’s English teachers in developing, and improving the integration of, their students’ fundamental English language skills.
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