January 2021 Advanced Speaking Practice

     

Maintaining range and fluency while teaching beginners or younger learners is at best challenging, and many if not most teachers have been unable to manage either or both in today's reality. We all need adult conversation, and exploring professional topics and issues ices that particular cake. 

These are discussions so prior reading and consideration, and the sharing of personal views and experiences is expected. Each topic is also available as "Practice and Feeback" support; please ask for details. A C1 or higher level is assumed.

Click on the session title(s) for more information.

Week One     Monday 4 - Friday 8 January 5.00 - 4.00pm daily
Session One : Do teachers have free speech?
Session Two :  What should a school do? "Problematic" issues and student behaviour
Session Three : Grade inflation and the Harvard problem
Session Four : Do "bad" teachers exist?
Session Five : Friday News Roundup (major headlines from the day(s) prior)

Week Two     Monday 11 - Friday 15 January 5.00 - 4.00pm daily
Session One : Teacher appearance; does it matter?
Session Two : Bullying; what happened here?
Session Three : Gifted education
Session Four : Controversial or appropriate?
Session Five : Friday News Roundup (major headlines from the day(s) prior)

Week Three     Monday 18 - Friday 22 January 5.00 - 4.00pm daily
Session One : Teachers and bias
Session Two : Education, a public or private good?
Session Three : Educating boys
Session Four : School choice; a human right?
Session Five : Friday News Roundup (major headlines from the day(s) prior)

Week Four     Monday 25 - Friday 29 January 5.00 - 4.00pm daily
Session One : Teacher pay, pay scales and fairness
Session Two :  Performance-related (merit) pay and teachers
Session Three : Are private schools wealthy?
Session Four : Is for-profit education bad?
Session Five : Friday News Roundup (major headlines from the day(s) prior)

Each session considers an aspect of a topic based on a pre-reading, pre-viewing or pre-listening text to orientate participants and to allow for participation and interaction. The session briefly reviews the prompt's explicit and implicit meanings, and then explores some of the points raised, guided by the session facilitator.

Texts or discussion prompts are sent to participants the day prior to allow for pre-reading. Group sizes are limited to allow for participation.

This is a probable scope and sequence; we will let you know of any changes and improvements.

You can register for one session, one programme, five programmes, all 100 sessions or anything in between! Each session has a maximum size so first come, first served.

Presenter Robert Young has a Masters from Oxford, a Bachelors from Auckland, a New Zealand Diploma of Teaching and the RSA DELTA (now Cambridge DELTA). Prior to becoming an international, British, Cambridge and IB school Director, he was a middle and high school English Language and Literature and Journalism teacher in EFL, E2L, E1L, Cambridge International and IB schools.

Click here to return to the main page.

Please contact us with any queries, for fee and registration information or to be placed on any specific interest list(s). 

Ask us about a closed session of any of the above works where you choose who, where and when. 

Ask us about methodology, written / oral / visual activities and examination preparation for any of the above works.

Ask us about Cambridge IGCSE, AS and A-Level and IBMYP, IB Dip Literature, Lang&Lit and Language support.

Click on the label(s) below or to the right for related programmes.