London ESOL Research Network L.E.R.N

The next meeting of the London ESOL Research Network (LERN*) will be on Wednesday 3rd November 2010 5.30 – 7.30 in Room L123A, London South Bank University, London Road, London SE1 (London Road building is marked 9) http://www.lsbu.ac.uk/lluplus/contactus/howtofindus.shtml From EAL to ESOL: expertise in theory and practice. Speaker: David Mallows, NRDC In this short presentation I will look at findings from national research on the EAL workforce in schools and discuss it in the light of my own personal research into the integration of theory and practice in ESOL teaching practice groups. In the session we will consider descriptions of expertise from both fields and the assumptions that underpin these. We will go on to consider implications for EAL and ESOL teacher training The Emerging Scheme of Work Speakers: Becky Winstanley and Tish Taylor, Reflect for ESOL, Action Aid In this presentation we will describe the over-arching principles of the Reflect for ESOL project, a Freirean-inspired approach to teaching which uses the notion of 'problem posing' to explore issues which matter in the lives of adult learners. We will then discuss alternative ways to plan ESOL courses and lessons, focusing in particular on the scheme of work (SOW). The conventional SOW focuses on an end result, or product, which is either decided in advance of meeting students or at the early stages of a course. We are interested in exploring ways of working with a SOW which emerges as the course proceeds, focusing on topics which arise in the course of classroom interaction, or in the real world, and on learner language as it emerges from lesson to lesson. We will discuss ways this might be approached, how to deal with the institutional barriers which seem to make this kind of work difficult to put into practice, and above all the challenge of changing our own established practice. We will show some examples of SOWs using the Reflect approach and some examples from a current classroom. *LERN is an informal network of people who teach or research ESOL, or are interested in the field. It is organised by John Sutter of LLU+, London South Bank University, and Melanie Cooke, King's College, London. No need to RSVP - just come along. All publicity for L.E.R.N will be disseminated through ESOL Research List https://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/cgi-bin/webadmin?A0=ESOL-RESEARCH Melanie Cooke melanie.2.cooke@kcl.ac.uk John Sutter j.sutter@lsbu.ac.uk