MELTA

Developing Interpersonal Skills for Successful International Communication
2021-07-10 10:00 - 12:15 (Europe/Berlin)
A workshop with Chia Suan Chong. For more information and to register, click here.

Reduce, reuse, recycle
2021-07-03 14:00 - 16:30
An ELTA Rhine online workshop with Laura Edwards. For more information and to register, click here.

Change Management
2021-06-26 13:30 - 16:30
Change is a constant in so many ways, sometimes predictably, often unexpectedly. All around us, technologies, processes, people, ideas, and methods often change, affecting the way we perform daily tasks and live our lives and sometimes forcing us to rethink how we work and what we value. The changes that have shaken our industry this past year, the changes that we are still grappling with today, and the changes that we all have to deal with as we revert to a new normal can seem daunting.
This workshop will give participants tools to understand the change process and reflect on their emotions, attitudes and behaviors in times of change. Participants will also gain deeper understanding of the challenges their students may face when leading others through change. We will also take a look at some of the topics, tips and activities included in Managing Change, a coursebook by Delta/Ernst Klett Sprachen, covering key aspects of international business operations.
For more information and to register, click here.

Dealing with Difficult Students
2021-06-12 14:00 - 17:00
An ELTAF / ELTAS workshop with Patricia de Griese. To register and for more info, please click on the following link: https://t1p.de/ym9v

Neues zum Thema Rentenversicherungspflicht und Webinar zum Thema Haftung für Selbstständige Sprachlehrende
2021-06-05 14:00 - 17:00
An ELTAF online event with Edit Frater of Trainerversorgung e.V. Both sections of the webinar will be conducted in German. More info on the ELTAF website: https://eltaf.de/events/. Register with events@eltaf.de.

Understanding and Being Understood Around the World: Pronunciation and Listening Skills for ELF
2021-06-05 11:00 - 15:30
An ELTA Rhine CPD Special. For more information and to register, click here.

Contribute to the German issue of the HLT (Humanizing Language Teaching) magazine
2021-05-31
HLT is the leading free online magazine for Teachers of English where you’ll find a wealth of ELT articles and ELT resources, lesson ideas, voices, book reviews and articles about 21st Century Skills, NLP, CLIL, Primary, Secondary and more. The HLT online magazine run by Pilgrims is looking for contributions – deadline is 31st of May.
Click here for more details about contributing.

Making pronunciation activities: Tricks and Traps
2021-05-29 14:00 - 16:00
“After several decades of creating and publishing pronunciation materials, I’ve hopefully learnt a few tricks of the trade! In this session, I’ll talk you through some of the thought processes involved in designing activities, from diagnosing a problem through to finding an appropriate solution, while avoiding some of the traps along the way. After this initial presentation, which will be a very practical demonstration and light on powerpoint, we will move into a more extended Q&A session on all matters relating to pronunciation and the teaching of it.”
Mark Hancock is a teacher, trainer, and author of many ELT titles including Pronunciation Games and English Pronunciation in Use Intermediate (both CUP). His self-published collection PronPack 1-4 received the 2018 ELTons award for innovation in teacher resources. His latest books are PronPack 5: Pronunciation of English for Spanish Speakers (Hancock McDonald ELT) and Mark Hancock’s 50 Tips for Teaching Pronunciation (CUP).
Click here to register

Lose Those Words, with Edward de Chazal
2021-05-29 10:00 - 12:15
Achieving a specified wordcount is a vital skill in various educational and business contexts. Yet many students, teachers and professionals find it challenging to write word-limited texts like abstracts and personal statements. This workshop covers seven techniques to reduce wordcount in three different aspects – grammatical, lexical, and critical. Our resulting texts illustrate how using fewer words can enhance the text’s clarity, structure, and logic.
For more information and to register, click here.

Breaking the B1 barrier + How to add variety to online English conversation courses in adult education
2021-05-22 10:00 - 12:30
An exclusive event for members of all ELTA associations across Germany!
To learn more and register, click here.

Tech Talk is back!
2021-05-15 14:30 - 16:30
This week, we are going to talk abut open educational resources (OER) and what they mean for us a teachers and materials developers. All of us have used freely available teaching resources at one time or another. But how do we know what we’re allowed to use? And do we know how we’re allowed to use these materials? What about materials creation? Where can we publish our materials and allow others access to them? In this session, we will explore OERs together. You’ll find out what these actually are, the different levels of copyright and how you can contribute to the project.
Click here to register

Assessment & managing expectations
2021-05-08 14:00 - 16:00
In this interactive workshop, we’ll look at different ways that we can assess our learners’ communication skills and how we can provide more support to all our learners in the classroom. We’ll analyse different approaches to assessing written work and share some ideas for easy-to-use tech to assess speaking.
Click here to register

Swap Shop: Assessment in HE during the Covid-semester?
2021-05-08 11:00 - 13:00
Are you teaching in higher education in Germany? If you are, your courses have most likely been moved online for the 3rd semester in this pandemic. You’ve probably been told that you can’t run your language exams on campus this semester. Are you wondering how you’re going to assess your students? Are you looking for ideas on how to assess creatively? Are you worried about problems with cheating? Then this session is for you!
For more information and to register, click here.

How to Write Excellent ELT Materials: Reading and Listening Activities
2021-04-24 14:00 - 16:15
Writing good comprehension activities is hard, but Sue is ready to help us take on the challenge in this online workshop. She’ll take us through different stages of writing a skills lesson, including lead-in activities, comprehension and language focus; present some rules and guidelines that can help; and also go into some detail on how to write multiple choice activities and add distractors in the text to ensure a good level of challenge.
For more information and to register, click here.

A hands-on approach to soft skills and leadership development
2021-04-17 14:00 - 17:00
In this highly interactive workshop, I would like to share insights into the world of leadership development (the challenges leaders face and the training and coaching solutions I typically provide). We’ll explore the opportunities and challenges for ELT professionals to increase further the scope of their activity beyond language. More details here, and to register, please email events@eltabb.com.

A workshop with Hugh Deller: Teaching Lexically
2021-04-17 10:00 - 12:00
In our first session, we look at what a lexical way of looking at language involves – and how it differs from a more traditional grammar + words approach. We’ll explore why a grammar plus words approach can be hard to sustain, and consider some of the problems it presents in terms of classroom content. We will then move on to workshop some key principles of a more lexical approach to language teaching before touching briefly on some of the theoretical roots of this approach.
For more information and to register, click here.

Webinar: Assessment in a post-pandemic world
2021-03-27 14:00 - 17:00
Global school closures mean that even teachers who have avoided online teaching are being forced to deliver lessons and/or content to their students digitally. In the absence of face-to-face contact, good assessment is more important than ever in providing feedback to students and keeping them engaged and motivated. In this session, we’ll talk about some different scenarios where good assessment can be implemented. We’ll also provide you with a toolkit for carrying out assessment online.
For more details and to register, click here!

How to learn from Communicative activities
2021-03-27 13:30 - 15:30
The excitement generated by the arrival of the Communicative Approach all those years ago included attention to activities in which students had a communicative purpose, focused on content rather than language form, and encouraged students to use all and any language at their disposal.
But how useful are such activities in reality? Do they genuinely help students to ‘get’ new language items or even practise previously encountered grammar and lexis?
In this talk we will revisit the concept of communicative activities and try to see how to re-fashion them so that they are communicative learning activities.
Please register at info@melta.de
Jeremy Harmer is a teacher, trainer and writer who has worked in the UK and Mexico and as an online MA tutor. He haas written many books including The practice of English Language Teaching, How to Teach English and Essential Teacher Knowledge (published by Pearson), graded readers for Cambridge University Press, and course books (Coast to Coast – Pearson, Just Right – Marshall Cavendish, and Jetstream -Helbling). His most recent book is Story Based Language teaching, with Herbert Puchta, for Helbling. Away from ELT Jeremy is a practising music, performer and singer-songwriter.

Tech Talk March
2021-03-20 14:30 - 17:00
Why do we call it “hardware”? Because it’s hard to choose and hard to use, or so it seems sometimes. If you want to make a better impression in your virtual live sessions, but haven’t yet found the right equipment, this Tech Talk is for you. We’ll be talking about picture and sound quality, and other factors that influence the way you come across in virtual meetings. And if you’ve already found equipment that makes you look and sound great, please join in and share your discoveries with everyone else.

This Tech Talk will be moderated by our member, Mike Allison, a business English trainer who loves virtual training. He has spent many hours trawling the internet for suitable hardware, but still hasn’t found what he’s looking for. Definitely not a gear geek, he would like to use our time together to share experiences, talk about best practice and, hopefully, come up with recommendations that will help everyone.

Register with: events@elta-rhine.de

When Journalism Meets Language Teaching
2021-03-20 14:00 - 16:15
In 1981, Spotlight magazine was founded with the aim of helping German-speaking learners to improve their English via journalistic content that was more up-to-date and entertaining than course books and also more accessible than regular English-language media.
Forty years later, Spotlight Verlag is part of the ZEIT Publishing Group in Hamburg and publishes six magazines for language learning, including Business Spotlight, which celebrates its 20th birthday in March 2021.
In this workshop, Business Spotlight editor-in-chief Ian McMaster will look at ways in which journalistic and pedagogical elements are combined to aid the acquisition of language and communication skills. He will also discuss practical ways of using Business Spotlight in your teaching/training.
For more details and to register, click here!

Reduce, reuse, recycle – using technology to improve efficiency
2021-03-13 14:00 - 17:00
Being efficient and effective – this is the goal of many teachers. Technology can help, but good organisation is key. When planning or creating lessons, we should ensure we get the most out of everything we do. Take inspiration from the environmental mantra ‘Reduce, reuse, recycle’ – reduce the amount of time we spend looking for materials, reuse the materials we love or create ourselves, recycle students’ contributions to use as future lesson content.
For more details and to register, click here!

Grammar Q & A with Scott Thornbury
2021-03-13 11:00 - 13:00
The role of grammar in overall language proficiency (central or peripheral?), the best way to teach it (e.g. explicitly or implicitly?), and even its very nature (e.g. patterns, structures or constructions?) are issues that continue to engage teachers, course designers and materials writers. In this interactive webinar I invite you to pose your own questions about the teaching and learning of grammar and I will attempt to answer them.
For more details and to register, click here!

Put it another way: developing learners' vocabulary beyond a comfortable core
2021-03-06 14:00 - 17:00
At lower levels, it makes sense to teach a core vocabulary based around the most frequent 2000- 3000 words, but beyond that where do we go? Many students develop a core productive vocabulary that allows them to operate within their comfort zone and although their receptive vocabulary continues to grow, the range of words and phrases they actually use often stagnates.
For more details and to register, click here!

Creating the right impression
2021-02-27 14:00 - 17:00
Impression management is about how we seek to look and sound good when we interact with other people. Successful communicators know how to do this, and use specific language and techniques in order to create the right impression.
The workshop will be in two parts. First we will examine what we mean by impression management and look at its relevance to us in our own roles as teachers. What techniques can we use to make sure that we give the right impression as we interact with our clients, colleagues and learners?
Second, we will look at activities which we might adapt for use in our own teaching contexts, and consider whether or not teaching such impression management skills and language is part of our role as language teachers.
For more information and to register, click here!

Managing conflict
2021-02-20 14:00 - 16:30
Many of us may find it challenging to deal with conflict proactively because we lack fundamental conflict management and resolution skills. Conflict is a natural part of our lives, and, probably, we learned the strategies we do have before the age of 7…
This workshop will offer a range of tools and useful skills to help you handle conflict more effectively, dealing with questions like: What is conflict? What are the common causes of conflict? How do we navigate the intersection of logic and emotion? How can we avoid argument traps?
For more information and to register, click here!

Wordwall workshop: Custom activities for your classroom
2021-02-20 10:00 - 12:00, 2021-02-06 10:00 - 12:00
Since language classes have been forced to move online, we’ve been confronted with so many tools claiming to be the one tool you need for your classroom or course. From Kahoot!, Miro, Padlet, Quizlet and Wordwall, how do we know which tool to use? Is it really worth paying for a subscription for any particular tool, and if so, which subscriptions are good investments?
This interactive two-part workshop is going to take a look at Wordwall. In the first session we are going to look at how Wordwall can be used both in online as well as face-to-face classes. This is important as we want to invest in something not just for the present situation, but also for a time when we return to classroom teaching. We are going to look at the types of activities you can create, go through the basics of Wordwall and create your account and possibly, first activity. In the follow-up session, you will have the opportunity to share your own Wordwall activities with the group, test other activities and give and receive feedback on these.
No extensive knowledge or experience is needed. All you need to bring is your enthusiasm to try something out and your willingness to share your experiences. It would help if you could familiarise yourself with the Wordwall website in advance. You do not have to attend both sessions but if you are new to Wordwall, do try to attend them both. We will be working with Zoom and you’ll get the best out of the workshop if you join the meeting on your laptop or computer.
Khanh-duc Kuttig was thrown into a very challenging teaching situation when her university went online in April 2020. From never having heard of Zoom, she zoomed her way through 15 weeks of the summer semester, bumbling at first but with much encouragement and enthusiasm from her students, she taught 8 classes a week entirely online. Now in her second semester of full online teaching, Khanh-duc is honing her digital skills and is actually enjoying being able to teach from home. She has taken numerous courses in online teaching and learning and believes that once you know the basics of any programme, software or platform, it can be a valuable teaching tool. Khanh-duc is also the events co-ordinator for ELTA-Rhine and TESOL’s 2021 Teacher of the Year.
To register, please send an e-mail to info@melta.de

Dogme in ELT
2021-02-13 14:00 - 17:00
Born from an article written by Scott Thornbury almost exactly 21 years ago which sparked the emergence of a global, grassroots collective counter-movement against both the prevailing waste and excess in ELT courseware and the lack of genuine conversation in classrooms, 2021 is – literally – the year in which Dogme ELT, also known as Teaching Unplugged, comes of age.
What better time, then, to look back a little at the roots of this … what, exactly? This movement, this mindset, this method? What better time to take stock of where we are now, in this radically disrupted point in the history of our profession, and ask ourselves how, despite – or perhaps precisely because of – current pressure to embrace technology and tools to “deliver learning”, an analog approach like Dogme ELT is more relevant today than ever.
For more information and to register, click here!

The Pilgrims Café
2021-02-13 14:00 - 16:00
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Meeting ID: 381 759 0990
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How to Learn from Communicative Activities
2021-02-13 09:30 - 12:30
The excitement generated by the arrival of the Communicative Approach all those years ago included attention to activities in which students had a communicative purpose, focused on content rather than language form, and encouraged students to use all and any language at their disposal. But how useful are such activities in reality? Do they genuinely help students to ‘get’ new language items or even practise previously encountered grammar and lexis? In this talk we will revisit the concept of communicative activities and try to see how to re-fashion them so that they are communicative learning activities.
For more details and to register, click here!
