Abstracts
Teaching Critical Thinking: a 21st century skill.
Presenter: Richard Harrison
Critical thinking is recognised as one of 12 twenty-first century skills – those skills that are needed in the age of the internet. This talk examines different ways students can be encouraged to think critically.
The first step is to get students to ‘think about their own thinking’ (metacognition): to be objective about, for example, their own decision-making processes, study habits or cognitive biases.
Secondly, a thinking syllabus can be introduced focussing on sub-skills such as: supporting an opinion, solving problems, analysing data and defining terms.
A third approach is to include practical thinking tasks or activities which can easily be fitted around an existing programme. These include structured discussions, class debates, the analysis of scam emails and advertisements, and linguistic puzzles and quizzes.
Fourthly, critical thinking ‘value’ can be added to language exercises in the classroom, for example by introducing higher order rather than lower order questions and teaching grammar inductively rather than deductively.
Technology-mediated language teaching in the digital age: Contemporary questions for research and practice.
Presenter: Cynthia White
Globalization and new technologies have transformed the communication landscape in terms of how we communicate (sound, image, text) and with whom. These changes raise fundamental questions for language learning and teaching in the digital age. At the same time language teachers face multiple pressures to respond to changing contexts whether through policy changes, curricular changes, or from the expectations of their students, parents, and employers. In this talk, I draw on recent research to explore how distance language teachers respond to on-going challenges within a continuously digitizing world. Through specific examples, I address such questions as:
how do teachers choose to act in the digital age?
how have new tools transformed practices?
how do teachers interpret and use technology-mediated experiences?
To conclude I present practical implications for students, teachers, teacher educators, and institutions.
“Using Video and Digital Stories to Reduce Cognitive Load in Language Learning"
Presenter: Paul Woodfall
Our working memory is limited, and instructional design should always attempt to reduce extraneous cognitive load and “redirect learners' attention to cognitive processes that are directly relevant to the construction of schemas". Video is easily accessible and subsequent online comprehension exercises help students store new concepts into long-term memory. In a similar way, digital graded readers combine reading for pleasure with the construction of schemas about the target language and the world we live in.
In this session, we focus on two practical examples of how these tools can reduce cognitive load in language learning.
CLT approach in the context of synchronous online teaching: challenges and perspectives
Presenters: Raushan Nassyrova & Aizhan Kalkayeva
In Kazakhstan, since the closure of educational institutions in spring 2020 due to COVID-19, lessons for the majority of university students have been conducted online. To replace face-to-face classes, teachers had to switch to synchronous and asynchronous online platforms. However, some aspects of English language teaching and learning have particular differences in the conditions of online synchronous teaching and face-to-face teaching. One of such aspects is the use of the CLT approach. In this presentation we will share what we think are the challenges and perspectives of using the CLT approach in ELT in the context of synchronous online teaching.
Speaking Fluency via Web 2.0 apps
Presenter: Tatyana Letyaikina
Online learning provides multimedia formats of materials delivery to enhance information acquisition and promote social interaction that corresponds to the connectivism theory (Siemens, ). However, most of the web platforms designated in Kazakhstan exclude forum or other options that promote peer-to-peer interaction and learning. Thus, students have little opportunities to improve their speaking and writing skills as well as critical or creative ones. Presentation will demonstrate web applications (FlipGrid, Voice Thread) to develop students’ productive skills as well as students’ technical and pedagogical challenges in application of these options in their proactive learning.
Designing a course in the digitalized environment: experience and challenges
Presenter: Tatyana Brekalova
It is obvious that it is impossible to replicate the offline classroom experience in online teaching. So, what factors should we take into account thinking about a course design, in general, and planning our lessons, in particular? Using the course "Academic Writing" as an example, I want to share my experience in this process, compare courses in two formats, and discuss the challenges of a contemporary teacher. In addition, I will share the results of a survey to present the students' opinions about the issue.
Creativity in Secondary School: Exploring the Relationship between Kazakhstani Teachers’ Beliefs and Practices
Presenter: Laura Ibrayeva
The significance of creativity is widely recognized in the educational sphere and fostering students’ creativity is seen as important. There is sufficient research evidence showing the advantages of nurturing creativity in the classroom. The renewed curriculum of Kazakhstan is also emphasizing the importance of developing creativity in schools. While the importance of creativity in educational spheres is recognized, creativity development in the K-12 education setting has been deteriorating (Cho et al., 2017; Kim, 2011; Kim, 2017; Yi et al., 2013). Some teachers lack a clear understanding as to what creativity is (Kampylis et al., 2009; Vincent-Lancrin et al., 2019), and there is a creativity gap between social expectations concerning the promotion of students’ creativity and the reality of classroom practice (Gajda et al, 2017; Gralewski, 2019; Karwowski, et al., 2020). These problems may exist in Kazakhstan too, and another problem in Kazakhstan is connected with current educational reforms (e.g., the renewed curriculum) that are causing disruption between teachers’ beliefs and practices (Fimyar & Kurakbayev, 2016; Kulakhmetova et al., 2014). Therefore, it is critical to explore teachers understanding of creativity and how creative environments are developed by studying the beliefs and their practices. The purpose of this research is to explore teachers’ beliefs about creativity and developing a creative environment and to examine how teachers' beliefs and practices are shaped by contexts (micro-context of classrooms, exo-context of schools, and macro-context of society), and the relationship between them. This dissertation study aims to follow and extend the complexity theory of teachers’ beliefs (Zheng, 2015) and the conceptual framework for teachers’ beliefs about creativity (Bereczki & Kárpáti, 2017). This dissertation study will apply a holistic conceptual framework of teachers’ complex belief system about creativity, where these two frameworks are combined to study how teachers’ beliefs and practices about creativity interact according to their contexts. To achieve this, a qualitative approach is going to be applied in the research. The research is designed as a qualitative, interpretivist, multiple-case study to answer the research questions in this study. The cases will be four Kazakhstani secondary schools. This study intends to use pre- and post-observation semi-structured interviews of the participants involved, observations of their classes, and document analysis as main data collection tools.
Issues in Learning English for Legal Purposes
Presenter: Prof. Reima Al-Jarf
Students majoring in translation at the College of Languages and Translation take a stylistics course in Semester 5 and a legal translation course in Semester 9 of the translation program. The stylistics course aims to introduce students to the stylistic features of different genres in English including legal texts. To enable the students to read and fully comprehend legal texts, an instructional module was designed for the students to help them identify the lexical and syntactic features of legal documents and hence comprehend their content. The module consisted of the following: (i) specialized legal terms such as (alias, amicus, peosequi, res judicata, puisine, puis ne, estoppel fee, simple laches, quash); (ii) grammatical structures that are common in legal documents such as use of long and complex sentences, conditional clauses, adverbials cluster, long complicated nominal groups, modal auxiliary shall, and French word order (court martial, heir apparent, secretary general) and (iii) specialized legal documents such as insurance policies, wills, statutes, contracts and agreements between individuals, leases, petitions, investigations...etc.
The legal technical terms were selected from online legal dictionaries and legal documents were selected from Internet resources. Assignments were posted on Blackboard.
The students received direct instruction in the lexical and structural features of legal documents. each feature was explained and illustrated by examples using an interactive smart board. Then the instructors performed text analysis. She went through a sample legal document, located legal lexical items and structure, and associated each with the lexical and syntactic feature it represents. For practice, the students performed text analysis of a sample of legal documents in class, identified the lexical and structural features in each, with the instructor’s help.
At the end of the module, the students were tested. which consisted of a legal text. The were asked to identify the stylistic features of a legal text and give two examples that illustrate each of the features they give. Students’ responses were scored and analyzed to find out which features were easy to identify, and which ones were difficult. The instructional module, instructional stages, test results and recommendations will be given in detail.
Replacing classroom!?
Presenter: Bartholomäus Minkowski
Since the beginning of the pandemic we are all more or less forced to digital teaching and learning. While the technical advantages and disadvantages of the digital space seem to become clearer to us, the multidimensional significance of the physical classroom or stage at a conference may still be underestimated. Hence I provocatively ask: Is classroom going to be replaced, or do we finally aim at returning ‘back to roots‘? In my short presentation I will refer to some scientific results about the role of classroom and teaching space. In the second part we analyze, which „fields“ or „spheres“ are unique for teaching in classroom.
The power of images in the ESL classroom
Presenter: Olga Ichshenko
During the workshop, I will demonstrate the advantages of using a variety of images and how they could be exploited in a classroom. We will look at the examples of warm-up activities, presenting and practicing grammar, presentations, speaking activities, and CLIL lessons.
By the end of the workshop, teachers will be able to learn about the power of visual messages, how to stimulate the imagination, learn about the suitable sources of images for their teaching context. I hope this workshop would encourage teachers to implement images in their classes more.
Bridging the Screen Gap
Presenter: Mariya Bachurka
The study examines educational discourse and its transformation in the digital epoch, pays attention to the concepts of online learning within the context of high school. The author differentiates traditional educational discourse and online educational discourse and considers communicative peculiarities of these two discourse types. Based on the teaching experience, the author is analyzing student’s learning motivation in traditional and online educational discourses.