Sessions

Bridging the Gap: Academic English for Pre-intermediate – Intermediate Learners

These days, many students need to study academic English before they are at an advanced level. Teachers are expected to help develop academic literacy skills in students who have not yet had the chance to build a strong foundation of English proficiency. This presentation will focus on the classroom realities of effectively teaching lower-proficiency students (< CEFR B2) in time-limited, academic contexts and how teachers meet these challenges. To explore what techniques and approaches teachers use for teaching academic English in high-expectation settings, practices backed by research findings (e.g., corpus-determined academic word lists) were gauged by how much impact and acceptance they had among self-reported academic English teachers working with pre-intermediate and intermediate level learners. Quantitative data was used to see what experienced teachers do in the classroom to help learners be academic users of English while a deductive reasoning approach was used to examine why certain classroom techniques pervade.

Feedforward: Text Response Techniques That Improve Student Writing

Teachers spend hours reading, correcting, and giving feedback on learner writing. It is widely perceived as being part of a teacher’s job and a valuable form of language input. But how much do learners understand from teacher responses to texts? What do the learners take away from teacher feedback, and how useful is teacher input on student texts for language learning and writing skills development? If teachers are going to invest time and effort in text response, then it is important to identify what writing feedback techniques are impactful and effective for making the next piece of writing better. This presentation focuses on effective, accessible methods of responding to learner writing, the ideas behind them, and how teachers and students perceive feedback in practice. Quantitative data will show which techniques learners and teachers prefer and why. The session will explore tactics for realizing learning through teacher input on student writing.