The conference provided excellent chances for the top managers, middle managers, education supervisors, course consultants and tutors to discuss important points concerning English language training provided by WEB International English.
The first presenter was Hero and his opening speech reverberated with everything that was said after. His focus points were:
- language automaticity
- language fluency (as in cutting down stimulus-response time)
- grammar and meaning correlation
- conceptual approach VS content-based approach to teaching English
I was the second presenter and my speech was centered on the criteria by which a foreign teacher class could be judged and evaluated. With my target audience being managers who hire ESL teachers, my presentation was useful in terms of providing them with adequate resources for selecting the right people to do the job.
I also provided the audience with a set of quick methodological tests sufficient for evaluating the methodological background of an ESL teacher.
My presentation also included a methodological workshop and a feedback form, which was provided for every participant. I collected the participants’ feedback and it will be presented in the sections below.
The third presenter was Caitlyn. Her topic was focused on the difficulties that an education supervisor may face in their job. Caitlyn’s presentation was very informative and showed the underside of ES’s job, revealing the inner workings of it to the customers. I learned a lot about professional communication and conflict management from Caitlyn’s presentation.
The most exciting part of Caitlyn’s speech was the problem solving workshop that was conducted in the form of a “complaint (problem) dialogue”. The 3-way feedback on the workshop (participants, group leaders, presiding members) was unique in terms of that it could provide different approaches to the same problem.
Probably the most important phrase said was Kevin’s “韦博不叫英语,韦博教方法”. That phrase clearly explained the USP of WEB’s curriculum. To me it gave a stimulus to suggest a certain change in approach to students’ introduction to WEB that will be discussed later in this report.
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