Workshop: Language resources for the classroom

 

 

WORKSHOP: LANGUAGE RESOURCES FOR THE CLASSROOM

As language educators, we need to understand how our learners/students are changing and the ways technology can be used to aid their teaching and learning strategies. The movement towards multimodal language learning, from contact teaching to autonomous as well as blended and fully online modes, requires different skill sets such as e-moderation and new ways of designing and developing language learning tasks in the digital age.

With this workshop, we will engage with participants in an interactive manner to empower them to eventually contribute to the larger language user community (teachers, learners, lecturers and students, general public/newspapers).

Our presenters include local as well as international scholars who have solid track records of working in the field of language learning and multimodal approaches in teaching and learning.  We have three broad topics that will be addressed by sharing best practices and involving participants.

Topic 1: Added value of online language learning and support – digital tool development for the language classroom

  • Introduction to the syllabus and course design in a multimodal language learning environment (Prof. Kris van de Poel)
  • A digital showcase:
    • Skryfhulp – Writing support; the development of an online writing support tool (Ms Suléne Pilon, Mr DJ Cloete, ???)
    • Write-it – Multi-modal academic writing assistance (Mr Zander Janse van Rensburg, Mr DJ Cloete)
    • Wired – Writing, Information Literacy and Reading Development (Dr Kristien Andrianatos, Prof. Tobie van Dyk)
  • Interactive session: round table discussion
    • Beauty and the beast: What happens behind the scenes?
    • FAQs: Costs, Timelines, Human Resources, Software

 Topic 2: Best practices

  • Moving from general to specific (Prof. Kris van de Poel, Prof. Lieve de Wachter)
  • Interculturate (a platform for developing language for specific purposes) – Summarising as a component of transactional writing (Prof. Kris van de Poel)
  • Taalvast (a platform for academic language learning) – Developing presentation skills (Prof. Lieve de Wachter)

Topic 3: Assessment

  • Test purpose: achievement, progress, placement, diagnostics (Prof. Tobie van Dyk)
  • Showcase:
    • Diagnostic language testing (Prof. Albert Weideman, Ms Anneke Butler)
    • Fair and unbiased language testing (Prof. Tobie van Dyk)
    • From generic to specific (Prof. Kris van de Poel)
  • Is online really that different from paper-based? (Prof. Albert Weideman)
  • Interactive session: round table discussion
    • Beauty and the beast: What happens behind the scenes?
    • FAQs: Costs, Timelines, Human Resources, Software

A maximum of 15 participants can be accommodated in this free of charge workshop, funded by SADiLaR.

The workshop will be held four times at different universities. Click on the workshop that you are interested in for more information and to register for the event.

 

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