It was my first time to attend an EARCOS conference for teachers, and wow, was it overwhelming. Four days of presentations on every topic you can imagine related to education. If it hadn't been for the pre-conference workshop, my head would be spinning. Because the preconference workshop I attended was focused on one theme, it gave me a focus for the entire conference.
I finally had a chance to attend a workshop by Virginia Rojas, who I had heard was an ESL guru. I don't actually know much about her, but at least here in SE Asia, she is credited with bringing the "Inclusion Model" of ESL pedagogy to international schools.
The workshop was called "Scaffolding Success for English Language Learners: A Toolkit for Teachers" and focused mainly on vocabulary development. As an ESL teacher, I was familiar with most of the jargon and many of the strategies, but one thing I liked that I hadn't heard before was a framework which Gini described with the catchy phrase: Input, Intake, Output. She went on to reword this as Exposure, Practice, Mastery (among other rewordings specific to different content areas). I found it appealing, because in ESL pedagogy I seem to hear the phrase Comprehensible Input more commonly than any other. I enjoyed being reminded that language learning is not just about Input, Input, and more Input. Interestingly, Gini gave percentages about how much time should be devoted to the three parts of her framework: 20-60-20. That too gave me something to think about, as I planned my own lessons.
I also learned that the IB started addressing the ESL phenomenon. I had searched the website before, but I couldn't find much. Gini says that the IB has consulted with her about a section for the website. Apparently, there will soon be information online, as far as I understand, regarding some classic ESL strategies, among other things.
As I write the phrase "ESL strategies," it makes me think about the fact that the most common title for an ESL workshop seems to be just that, ESL strategies, especially when the workshop is for mainstream teachers. As an ESL teacher, I've seen the textbooks that list vocabulary strategies, reading comprehension strategies, listening strategies, etc, etc, etc. It starts to make me wonder if ESL is giving the world the impression that ESL is just a bunch of strategies. That makes it sound like ESL is a methodology rather than a discipline. Is that really the case? Or is that missing the point? I'm worried ESL might get misinterpreted, because I think it's more about language acquisition. And language acquisition is not just accessible through ESL strategies.
Anyway, for the rest of the conference, I attended as many presentations of Gini's as possible, and although there was some overlap with the preconference workshop, I enjoyed them all. Gini is a spunky presenter who models what she presents, and that lets you experience what you're learning about.
Her handouts are all online at the EARCOS conference website, but I'll link to them here as well since between EARCOS's conference website and EARCOS conference wiki, I had some trouble finding just where handouts were posted.
They aren't 100% stand-alone documents, but they give a good overview of the presentations. She did say she would respond to emails, so ask her any questions these handouts generate.
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