Sunday, 9th October – TESOL-Hungary

9.00-10.00	PLENARY 4: Martin Jelinek FUTURE TEACHER SKILLS / FTR TCHR SKLLS Gain insight into your future teaching behaviour. Indulge in the why’s, how’s and what’s of English. Embrace the power of words, art of speaking, and self (re)presentation. Learn about the importance of attention span, visual literacy and how to create a compelling narrative in a digital era.
10.15-11.00	Adriana Blažević (HUPE): The (Under)representations of Culture, Race and Gender in English Language Textbooks In order to investigate the relations between various social groups participating in copious anglophone settings, we analysed forms of culture, race, and gender in English language textbooks for first year secondary school in Croatia. The results pointed out much social bias contained in the analysed material. Thus, English language textbooks are characterised by a preference towards the culture of English-speaking countries, contain a bias towards males and prevalently represent Caucasians. Pursuant to the above, a political colouring of educational materials remains apparent as multi-layered ideologies implicitly permeate teaching contents and contribute to the perpetuation of existing social relations of inequality. BIO: My name is Adriana Petra Blažević. I was born in Perth, Western Australia, but I have spent most of my life in Split, Croatia. Growing up with a mother who is both a native speaker and an English teacher, I developed an interest for the profession from an early age. I am currently teaching ESP at the Arts Academy as well as the Faculty of Electrical Engineering, Mechanical Engineering and Shipbuilding in Split. I have also gained valuable experience in teaching the young ones as I worked at a primary school for a year, a period to which I owe many precious memories. However, for the time being, I see myself in higher education where, alongside language skills, my teaching is used as a platform for the transmission of critical thinking skills, tolerance, and empathy.
	Boglárka Spissich: TikTok in the EFL classroom In this workshop participants will have the chance to familiarize themselves with the popular application, TikTok, and to explore its usefulness in EFL education. Besides useful tips and already created tasks, teachers can use their creativity and brainstorm potential activities. The workshop will mainly focus on how to improve listening and speaking skills by motivating learners with social media. Although this unconventional method can be used in any EFL group, this occasion will focus on engaging teenagers on B1-B2 language levels. BIO: Boglárka Spissich is a PhD student at Eötvös Loránd University at the Language Pedagogy and English Applied Linguistics programme. She is currently teaching academic skills and advanced writing courses for BA students at the university. Her main research interest is EFL learning and teaching with the help of films and social media, focusing on the use of popular applications. Besides university she also teaches at a language school and has some experience in teaching at a secondary school. She finds it extremely important to engage and motivate learners, for which social media and films can be great tools.
	Éva Páli (OUP): Be a Club Member and improve your READING Skills Experts often worry about the fact that people read less and less. That might be partly true, as people do read, but they read different genres in a different format. When you see someone reading on their smartphones or tablets, the texts they read are mostly posts or articles on different platforms and websites, so the content and the language is fairly limited. But reading is an important skill that is necessary in all walks of life. Most school teaching does not seem to encourage learners to read and, typically, learners do not want to read anything that is longer than a few pages. What can we do to revive learner interest in extensive reading (i.e., reading for pleasure), which can feed back into their mainstream studies and make them not only enthusiastic, but also competent readers? Oxford Reading Club can work as a supplement to classroom teaching to improve language skills in an engaging way. Come to this session to find out more! BIO: Éva Páli has an MA from SZTE in English and Russian and currently works as a teacher trainer and educational consultant for Oxford University Press. She started teaching in 1989 and has worked in different fields of education – in a teacher training college, and both in secondary and primary education, as well. She has been involved in teacher training since 1992. She has also worked as an examiner, translator and a materials writer before starting to work for OUP.
	Frank Prescott: Teaching UK Culture – Where to Now? In this workshop we’ll look at the ways in which UK culture is currently experiencing a period of rapid change and we’ll consider how we might engage with this in the classroom. The aim of the workshop is to share ideas and practices on how to teach culture in an up-to-date way and to look at a few concrete examples of what is going on right now in the UK that could be interesting to explore with our students. We’ll begin by pooling our knowledge and experience about what’s been happening in the UK recently and then we’ll take one or two ideas and work with them to see how we might exploit them in the classroom. By the end of the workshop we should have a set of ideas and resources which any teacher can use as a starting point if they want to go beyond the usual vanilla cultural topics that come up in coursebooks. And during the workshop we’ll be using simple online tools to record our ideas so that they will be easily accessible later. BIO: Francis J. Prescott gained his first teaching qualification in 1993 (PGCE in English, University of Heriot Watt) and has been teaching English ever since, first of all in secondary schools in Edinburgh and from 1995 in private schools and at university in Hungary. He is now an associate professor in the Department of English Language Pedagogy at Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest.
	Tünde Sütő: Who is in the Mirror? – Portraits and Self-portraits in the Classroom The workshop is based on a museum education activity book titled LOOK AT ME! – The Art of Béla Czóbel’s Portraits. It was written by museum educators Gabriella György and Tünde Sütő, published by Ferenczy Museum Centre, Szentendre. In the workshop we are going to gain some hands-on experience in how to use paintings (portraits and self-portraits) in the classroom. Our imagination is going to play an important part during this playful self-discovery journey enriched with drawing activities. Join the workshop: look into the mirror and create something new! BIO: I was a teacher of English for more than 20 years. I taught Business English language courses to adults, but I spent most of my teaching career educating teenagers, since I worked as a secondary school teacher of English and literature for 13 years. I have had an interest in museums and museum education since 2008, worked for the Museum of Fine Arts and National Gallery, Budapest. At present I am a museum educator in Ferenczy Museum Center, in Szentendre.
11.15-12.00	Barbara Čatar: English as a Tool of Self-Expression I am a teacher of English language and History. I have been teaching in a primary school for a little more than five years now and I have mostly been teaching students from seventh to ninth grade. I love strawberries, red wine and most importantly, music (metal to be exact), so I regularly attend concerts and festivals. I am passionate about growing plants in my garden and I adore my furry companion, a Bernese Mountain called Luna. I spend my weekends hiking or somewhere in nature. I occasionally volunteer at a youth center where I work with troubled teenagers. BIO: Learning a new language gives us an opportunity to create a new world, within which we can build a separate identity. A foreign language provides us with a possibility to express ourselves on a new level. Consequently, it positively contributes to the growth and development of our own personality.
	Mary Sousa: Both Sides Now: America and Hungary This talk covers my recent 7-week trek around the United States, during which I kept a journal of cultural encounters and conversations with teachers. These will be juxtaposed with my three decades of experience teaching English to Hungarian learners, and the talk will finish with new perspectives derived from literature on intercultural communication and personal observations. BIO: I teach English as a foreign language to adults. It’s an incredibly rewarding job that I only wish I had discovered sooner! I’m especially interested in finding exciting new ways to help my learners succeed. I feel challenged to integrate traditional and Internet-based (social network-based) methods. For many years, I have run a weekly discussion group with native speakers of English and Hungarian which is unique because we switch languages half-way.
	Yonatan Puón Castro: EFL language policy in Mexico: history and challenges When the North America Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) was singed in 1993, Mexico started what some have called ‘neoliberal period’ in domestic policy making. This, in addition to the OECD and World Bank recommendations, imposed a neoliberal agenda which was materialized through a series of ‘strategic’ reforms (tax, labour, energy and education). In the education domain, traces of neoliberalism can be found in curriculum (competency-based), teacher labour rights (demetallation of syndicates), and ELT. Drawing from a political economy (Block, 2018 & Holborow, 2015) and Lo Bianco’s (2009) three-dimensional CDA approach to LP, public discourses (official documents and speeches) and institutional practices were analysed to identify the ideological orientations which underpin Mexico’s government policies and, consequently, its English language policy and how the institutional practices reproduce the ideology underpinning Mexico’s English language policy. Findings indicate that official documents and public discourses served the purpose to a) introduce the neoliberal agenda as a desired scenario for domestic policies and b) legitimate the implementation of neoliberal policies and strategies. In this presentation, we will look in detail the case of the National English Strategy as the most prominent English language policy launched in 2018. Its objectives and the extent to which they have been met to the present. A discussion on the idealisation of English as a social mobility asset and quality of education asset and its actual or hidden effects on education, society and even economy will be promoted among participants. BIO: Yonatan Puón has been teaching in TEFL programs since 2005. He holds a BA and MA in ELT from Benemérita Universidad Autónoma de Puebla, and a Ph.D. in applied linguistics from the University of Southampton. He has overseen the Access Microscholarship Program since 2011. He has also participated in several quality assurance evaluations for CIEES and COAPEHUM. His research interests are language teacher education, heritage languages and language policies and ideologies.
	Volodja Šiškovič (IATEFL-Slovenia): Making Test Papers More Fun Tests are usually a time of trepidation for the students, and anxiety for the teacher involved. This teacher wanted to break the tension and lighten the mood, so he introduced some unusual bonus questions at the end of the test which engage students’ general knowledge, wit, and creativity. The strategy worked so well that most students now start their tests more relaxed. BIO: Born and raised in the 20th century, he ventured into teaching by accident, liked it, and has now been doing it for almost two thirds of his life. He often tries new approaches, usually born out of frustration, forgetfulness, or sheer laziness. He is convinced students should do far more work than their teacher. He still remembers the world without internet or mobile phones, yet he embraces them wholeheartedly both personally and professionally. He likes listening to music, watching films and series, travelling, climbing mountains, and spending time with friends. He is a proud father of two.
12.00-12.30	Coffee break
12.30-1.00	CLOSING CEREMONY & RAFFLE
1.00-	Departure