One month, two countries, two huge conferences, countless memories

April 2011 was full of activities and a lot of rewarding moments for me.

JanThe month started with the excitement of ISTEK 2011 which was hosting many reJack Richardsspectable and well known people in the world of ELT. I was honored by being invited as one of the keynote speakers to this huge conference. I was both very excited about my share on the first day and about meeting fascinating plenary speakers such as Jan Blake took us to the enchanting world of stories and Prof Jack Richards whose notes from his studies reinforced what our classroom practices should be based on.

My session was called Different Recipes for Different Tastes and Needs focusing on the different needs of teachers at different stages of their careers. Here is my abstract;

istek_interview“As the best teachers are learners themselves, professional development for practising teachers is essential regardless of the stage in their careers. What does professional development stand for? Is it attending lots of conferences and workshops? Is it taking part in institutional induction programs or training sessions? Is it observing peers or being observed by teacher trainers?”

iatefl_interviewOne of the most professionally active months of my career was this past April. Following ISTEK, there I was in Brighton for IATEFL with another talk and another interview. My talk this time was about the vocabulary project we initiated at BILGI, the institution I work for. My session was called Size matters in teaching vocabulary in EFL. I talked about how we scanned the course books we have been using in our prep program and how we analyzed the words in terms of word frequency in order to prioritize our teaching according to frequency. I also mentioned how we prepared supplementary vocabulary materials for our students, and shared the theory behind what we have been doing. For more details you can watch the interview by following this link: Burcu IATEFL Interview.

iatefl 2011I had a  great time with my lovely roommates Ozge Karaoglu and Esra Girgin Akiskali, my friends and travel companions Aybike Oguz and Nergis Ozbay, my friends from Pearson Erdem and Bahar who we laughed together in the evenings, all the lovely people at ‘offical’ conference pub Globe such as Burcu Akyol, Shelley Terrell, Luke Meddings and of course dear Beyza Yilmaz and Isil Boy.