- Date: July 03, 2024
- Time: 12:30 – 13:30
- Cost: BAISIS member – £50, BSA member – £65, BSA Member additional attendee – £30, BAISIS Member additional attendee – £20, Non-member – £130
- Audience: Deputy Head Academic, SLT/SMT, all teaching staff, classroom support staff
- Platform: Zoom (online) – webinar
Content overview: In today’s multicultural and multilingual educational landscape, international students often face challenges when it comes to acquiring subject-specific vocabulary. However, it is not just the technical terms that matter; the development of vocabulary and oracy skills more generally play a pivotal role in students’ overall language proficiency. This webinar aims to empower practitioners by equipping them with practical strategies to enhance students’ vocabulary acquisitions across the whole curriculum and help them develop the language skills they need to thrive academically.
Training topics will include:
- Strategies for effective vocabulary acquisition
- The importance of subject-specific vocabulary
- Integrating vocabulary acquisitions in all lessons
- Enhancing oracy skills
- Supporting international students.
Learning outcomes:
- Insights into how enriched vocabulary enhances comprehension, critical thinking and overall academic performance
- Learn how to design engaging activities that promote active learning and contextualise vocabulary
- Vocabulary-focused activities to build into lesson plans to reinforce knowledge
- Suggestions for embedding oracy into everyday lessons
- Tips to create a supportive classroom environment to encourage participation, celebrate diversity and maximise learning outcomes.
Speaker:
James Copland, EAL teacher at Kent College
James Copland is an EAL teacher at Kent College, working at the International Study Centre.
He’s been at Kent College since 2007 and prior to working in the Independent School sector, he had roles in the private language school industry including Teacher, Academic manager, Director of Studies, and Academic programme director.
He’s worked for Cambridge Education group, Concorde International as well as Imperial College and Carl Duisberg Centres Germany. He’s lived, and taught English in a variety of countries in Asia and Europe.
He’s had an abiding interest in ESP and English for Academic purposes and presently teach mainly IGCSE and IELTS candidates in the age range of 14-18. He is currently working on an outreach programme with Canterbury Christchurch University for international 6th formers to prepare them for undergraduate studies.
He has a strong interest in vocabulary teaching, and while he’s certainly no expert, he hopes that other teachers can learn from his mistakes! Over the last few years, teachers of EAL at our school have been engaging with and supporting our colleagues in other departments much more to help our EAL students settle in, and hopefully thrive. Key to this is simple learner training based on some basic tasks and approaches, which he hopes to present and hopefully will stimulate interest and discussion.